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| Another short guy discovers that Ms Bruni doesnt take direction well |
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Midnight In Paris is harmless enough and has one or two laughs (I liked the Djuna Barnes joke) and there's some nice shots of Montmartre at night. It's all really a bit of fluff, probably best watched on DVD. I do think that it's an interesting dinner party question to ask which city in which era would have been the most fascinating to live in. Paris in the twenties does sound enticing, as does Paris in the 1950's - that's probably the one I'd pick, but I'd also be intrigued by Vienna around 1900, London in the 1590s, first century Rome and fifth century BC Athens.
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Anyway, if the last movie you saw was The King's Speech and you're itching for another flick then this is probably the film for you. Be prepared to stay until the very end of the credits because the people on either side of you will need assistance getting up.
54 comments:
I haven't seen it, but it seems like a lot of younger people went to it here.
I'm interested in the period, so I'll probably rent it at some point. Cut outs are better than nothing.
I hope it's better than 'You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger.' That was rubbish. It had a couple of good lines but so it should.
It was so sloppy. A less experienced film maker would cringe at its amateurishness but luckily for him, Woody has no shame.
London in the '50s/ early '60s for me. It was the suits, I think.
I've given up on Woody. When it comes to scripts he seems to have forgotten the concept of second, third, and, yes, even fourth drafts. I'd pick L.A. in the '30s. In Paul Fussell's autobiography, "Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic" he describes it as a paradise, and he's a pretty flinty guy.
"Midnight in Paris" was a very enjoyable movie. I was entertained throughout and look forward to seeing how well it stands up when it appears on HBO in a year or so. Owen Wilson is well suited to the role, his best in a very long time.
In any case, I wouldn't judge a film on the age of the audience...we go to movies aimed at the teen-30 crowd and particularly enjoy the comic book films. Though maybe they are aimed at us golden oldies who actually read the comic books way back when.
Carry on, McKinty.
I've never seen a Woody Allen film. I have heard of him. I would choose Paris in the 1920s. I always think that whatever time in history I could go back to I would like to be able to have a bath everyday and be rich. I guess that's why perfume was invented because everyone was so ripe and stinkin.
In crime books they often have shadowy figures seen in ornate doorways in Vienna don't they?
Seana
Be a good rental I think.
Paul
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.
London circa 1968 would have been fun.
Cary
Have you ever seen those early Laurel and Hardy movies? There's one called Big Business about them selling Christmas trees (its brilliant by the way) and as they're driving round LA you notice that the roads are empty and there are vast empty lots with the odd house and orange grove. It looks really fascinating.
Michelle
You are made of sterner stuff than me. If I went into the movie theatre and found it full of teenagers I'd probably high tail it out of there.
Agree about Owen Wilson, this is his best in a long time, probably since Bottle Rocket (which is a must see if you havent seen it).
Frankie
Rent Annie Hall today. Now. Seriously just do it.
The guy in the doorway is Orson Welles. The film is The Third Man. Rent that one too.
If you think I was harsh on Woody (and you'd be wrong about that) wait till you see what this guy thinks about the horrible looking Tin Tin movie:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/28/adventures-tintin-secret-unicorn-spielberg
Ha! I went and saw that the other night with my mother and yes, i had to help HER out of her chair, bless her.
Yeah wody allen does appeal to a certain baby boomer demographic and his films sometimes work for me, sometimes they don't but hey, good on him...
the last cracker i saw was DRIVE...awesome stuff based on the awesomer (???) james sallis book of the same name...despite the weird angelo badalamenti s/track it worked for me...
new york in the early 60's for me...they made suits good then hehe
... because the people on either side of you will need assistance getting up.
So sit on the aisle.
Uruk in 2,500 BC might have been interesting
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Dan
Yeah Drive is good and I really must read the book. It has been rec'd to me by so many different people that the moral pressure is becoming too great to resist.
Peter
They already thought of that. The aisles get taken first.
Do you speak Sumerian?
" truly execrable offering"
Don't sit on the fence eh? I saw Jamie Billy Elliott Bell on tv he's a nice lad but with the all the effects you can hardly recognize him as Tin Tin.
Oh, the Sumerians I meet manage weak smiles when I speak their language, but I can hear them thinking, "Damned Akkadian parvenu."
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Frankie
The whole project seems like a misguided disaster. Tin Tin looks so lifeless and flat and the one thing about Herge is how bursting with colour his books are.
Peter
Are you sure you're hearing damned Akkadian?
It's an Assyro-Babylonian thing. You wouldn't understand.
Peter
You know there wont be a good hockey game for about 4500 years.
But you'll be able to get a beer.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
As a woman, I don't think I'd risk going back in time to far. Although the first feminist wave around the early 1900s might have been okay, except then you were pretty much guaranteed to lose all the men your age and probably feel obligated to go off and become a nurse or something. At least that's what happens to every woman I've ever read about after WWI starts. But before that with the colleges opening up a bit it must have been pretty fun.
I have to say that I have never been a big Woody Allen fan. He's one of those people I always thought I should find funnier than I did. No, not even Annie Hall said a lot to me. But I'm not a huge Diane Keaton fan either.
Peter
Indeed. Beer built the pyramids too.
Seana
I dont really understand how anyone cannot like Annie Hall. I get how people can hate Star Wars or Raging Bull or whatever but Annie Hall seems very close to perfection for me.
Still it takes all sorts. The missus and I had a big discussion about Ghostbusters the other day (yes it's quite the salon here at chez mckinty) and I tried to convince her of the films goodness, but she wasnt buying.
Law codes in the ancient Near East were positively soaked in beer.
I've seen Annie Hall eighteen times, but I suppose I could understand if someone did not like the cuteness surrounding it. A female friend of mine long ago lost patience with the whole Woody Allen persona: the guy who pretends to be terrified of women yet knows he can get any woman he wants.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I know--I don't like a lot of things that everyone else likes. I think it is more the persona of Annie Hall than anything else. She's a bit too insubstantial for me. I don't mind her, but I don't see her appeal really. I have thought Allen was funny at times, but I'm sure nowhere near as many times as you guys have.
I haven't seen Ghostbusters. Not because I'm against it,it's just one of those mysterious gaps.
Today some friendly acquaintances came in and I managed to dis Steve Jobs AND the Sixties before they were able to walk away from the counter.
Ghostbusters is in my top 5 films. I know every word. The 1980's was indeed a golden era in film making.I miss John Candy.
Seana: A bouquet to you for dissing Steve Jobs, and I say this as I write on one of his computers. He was an arch-capitalist who made products that people wanted and reaped the reward. He did not change the world. He was not, as his hysterical Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said, in any way comparable to Martin Luther King.
Frankie
Terrific film. I really hope they never make Ghostbusters 3.
Peter, Seana
I thought the bigger news of last week was the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations quiet announcement that perhaps they had found a vaccine for malaria. That really would change the world.
Steve Jobs's contributions to charity?...Famously Jobs was a non giver.
Here's a fluffy but interesting piece in the Daily Telegraph on how to find twenties Paris today:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/france/parisandaround/8855918/Its-always-Midnight-in-Paris.html
And here's a brilliant piece way way off topic on what goes on inside the mind of an octopus:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474
Read this. You wont be sorry.
Funny--I saw that Orion magazine piece at work on Friday. I was drawn by the cover of the two smiling owls on the cover.
I know about octopi and their brilliance already though. I think it was here that I was trying to convince everyone that I had seen a documentary on them that showed one sneaking out of a tank at night, crawling across the floor climbing into another tank and eating the fish then sneaking back again. They had to set up a secret camera to prove it. As I recall, no one believed me at the time either.
Peter, I'm not truly a Jobs hater, since I really haven't been interested enough to follow him, but I really am a hype hater, and Jobs' hype is completely inundating me right now.
And yes, I think Bill Gates grew into his role and power in a way Jobs did not.
Seana, I'm like you, a hype-hater rather than a Jobs-hater. As I said, I typed that comment on an Apple product: my new MacBook Air computer, which I bought because it met my need for a computer light enough to carry around but powerful enough to do the work I need to do. Good for Steve Jobs for making such a thing.
But the degree to which he suckered comsumers, especially younger ones, into believing that he was anything but a canny businessman is one of the interesting facts of our culture.
Maybe Jobs' failure to move into the traditional charitiable endeavours of the American mega-capitalist is part of his appeal to young people. Isn't America rewriting its social contract and, in effect, breaking many of the promises it has made that it will look out for people as they grow older? Isn't the message to today's young Americans: Look out for yourself, because no one else will? And, if one is a multibillionare, perhaps that translates into: why give to others? I'm out for what's mine. Maybe that is part of his aura.
Well, I do remember that all the tech giants were criticized quite a bit for their lack of charitable giving some years ago, and Gates' monstrous house was cited as a self-aggrandizing sort of thing. But he became motivated by different things. I don't know if it's fair to equate them, they have such different kinds of personalities, and maybe Jobs was too aware of his own time running out to concentrate much on others.
And I remember reading a wise answer years ago to the criticism that today's tech tycoons were miserly. Perhaps, the writer said, they had simply not been around long enough to start giving money away.
Peter
Jobs was as much a genius as the guy who invented the slinky, forget him, read the thing about the octopus, it will make you happy.
From Ken Bruen, Rilke on Black:
“I got off my stool and gave her a direct look, said, `I’m due back on Planet Earth as Woody Allen told Chris Walken.’ I could hear her even alter I got outside, `Woody who?’”
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
One of the stories is that the techmasters were so busy working they had no time for charity?!? It was noted that Jobs' wife was the charitable giver in the family. Just because he was a visionary doesn't mean he was Mother Teresa. As we are finding out. I tired of Woody Allen after Manhattan. I got a little tired of listening to upper middle class whiners struggle with their lives, and Allen's obsession with sex began ringing a little false. Of course, then he married one of his young maidens, and I felt his selling of fantasies was tiresome. One of thhe funniest parts of Annie Hall is the split screen therapy session. I found it ironic; I do that for a living-therapy, I mean, and the lines were classic.
Well, I'm not knocking Jobs; I'm knocking the people who elevated him bodily to heaven.
Lil
Post Manhattan there are a few gems:
Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Radio Days.
It looks like Adrian is finding, as I did, that being the PR person for an octopus is thankless work.
The Slinky has made a lot of people happy over the years, although admittedly, for a very short time.
Now that I see that Midnight in Paris is about a kind of Cinderellaish time travel, I am really not at all sure why you thought you would like it, Adrian.
Peter
I don't care enough about Jobs to knock him or not. He never really appeared in my consciousness until his retirement from Apple and his computers were always way beyond my price range.
Now an octopus's consciousness is a different thing completely...
Seana
I didnt hate it. It was harmless piece of fluff. A rainy Sunday afternoon DVD movie.
I think that Octopus qualify for the don't eat me just because you can list. The Spainish eat every cute sea creature going and why when there's chicken. Think a Crab has a certain something going for himself aswell
Adrian, you're right. I had forgotten "Radio Days." I'm still not sure about "Hannah."
“But to me, Athena’s suckers felt like an alien’s kiss…”
And how, exactly, does the author know what an alien’s kiss feels like?
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com
Peter, the author may know more than he or she tells.
Here's the cover (scroll down), by one Simen Johan. It made me pretty happy as well. And this when I was working the cash register, which is no small feat.
Peter
Maybe he's using his imagination.
Seana
Lovely cover I agree. Weird. And a bit creepy. But nice.
I was just yanking' yer chain. I enjoy a good bit of octopus erotica as much as the next person.
I liked Annie Hall. I thought the dialogue was hilarious, particularly Woody Allen's side of it.
I have to confess that the dining scene of the two quite opposite families makes me laugh. I lived both those lives, ate at both those dinners. It is stereotypical, but so true and funny. I will testify to that.
And Hannah And Her Sisters: Parts of it are hilarious: Woody Allen's conversion routines, his trying out different religions.
I'd probably insult someone if I repeated those scenes and the dialogue, some of which I'll never forget, including his trying to explain why he wants to change religions to his parents.
I knew someone quite well who thought he had a brain tumor after he saw that film -- for a few days anyway.
The thing is that Woody Allen can convey certain cultural mannerisms, inflections and comments precisely on target.
Maybe one had to have been there to get the full measure of these films.
Steve Jobs was a brilliant entrepreneur. He didn't invent things. He knew how to market and sell, using other people's inventions and work.
However, he was often mean-spirited. A letter in the NY Times is from a woman who worked with him. She said that he blamed his bad character on his being adopted. She, speaking as an adoptee, said that was ridiculous and explained his complicated personality, including his negative traits.
Articles have also told of horrific working conditions at some of his plants.
Cinematography was fabulous. Story line was interesting. However.... Woody Allen's love of Woody Allen was obvious as he had Owen Wilson playing the same neurotic, whiney, irritating role that he's always played. The show would have been so much better with anyone else playing anyone else.
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