Woody's Midnight in Paris

No thread for this? Pretty fun. Oddly Inception-like in its structure. The actors sold even the moldy lines.

Maybe this is vaguely challopsy but I found it seriously irritating.

I couldn't stand it.

I think most of the chatter is in the woody allen thread. (I could be wrong; I've been avoiding that thread since I haven't seen the movie yet.)

you're right, jaymc

for some reason people in my theater exploded w/applause whenever they recognized one of the historical figures - especially this one lady way in the back who would go OH MY GODDDDD at every reveal

i thought it was fun. doesnt make much sense, even on a character motivation level, and its not nearly as much of a "valentine to paris" or whatever as the marketing campaign would like you to believe. but owen wilson is a good woody substitute and the (self-congratulatory) english-major jokes are good

for some reason people in my theater exploded w/applause whenever they recognized one of the historical figures - especially this one lady way in the back who would go OH MY GODDDDD at every reveal

― Ayatollah Colm Meaney (Princess TamTam), Wednesday, July 6, 2011 9:03 AM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

heh, when i saw this the biggest laugh was the throwaway djuna barnes line i assume because everyone wanted their companions to know that they got the joke, djuna barnes, shes a lesbian, how droll

Here's where the most recent debate starts.

I'm glad he'll enjoy his biggest hit since Hannah, but it's like a cook enjoying his biggest hit with microwaved pasta.

I forget who called it "A Night at the Museum for liberal-arts grads."

That description makes total sense. And I definitely felt the self-congratulation in the theater with each historical figure. While watching, I did picture some dud lines as they would appear in one of his not-funny Shouts and Murmurs pieces.

Mostly it's Owen Wilson and the locations that made it work for me -- Owen W. being comfortable with his own rhythms and ways, and as far as the locations, Rohmer's gone, so...

Thanks, A,LS--thought there might be talk of it somewhere else but wasn't sure which Woody Allen thread.

"A Night at the Museum for liberal-arts grads."

HA! That's funny.

But so is the movie.

Having Owen Wilson end up with a young looking girl is kinda creepy Woody Allen. Yes, there were funny scenes with Hemingway and Dali, but too much of the script was just Woody Allen on autopilot.

on a plane missing a rudder, wings, and proper food.

the thing that bugged me most--rachel mcadams is supposed to be this kind of... well she doesnt care about owen wilsons writing or anything? or culture? but then shes really into michael sheen?

I thought the flea-market gal was Kate Moss until I saw the credits (even though I knew she looked young for 2010).

i laughed at some of the hemingway stuff but here was the really representative Late Woody line in this one: "As you know, I'm excited about the upcoming business deal with the large French company."

"as you know"

haha was that really a line?? jeeesus

"As you know, I'm excited about the upcoming business deal with the large French company."

l'omg. dying

"Remember we have that private exhibit at the museum tonight. Paul is a Monet expert, you know"

A poll on Woody's worst examples of exposition would be painful.

idk i havent seen this or anything but i tend to find his clunkiness p charming, like i like a lot of the ones everyone hates. i dont even hate interiors.

how is it charming?

I might find it so if the movie offered compensatory pleasures.

then I realized that the whole fucking movie was exposition for a movie that never started.

idk its like when you know somebody whose emails are exactly like how they talk

Woody doesn't talk that way. NOBODY talks that way.

i want to talk that way

which I would accept if his fantasies were better drawn these days.

xpost

i dont think you're really getting what im saying

it saddens me to give up on Woody, but I have.

"lol he talks like he writes" is amusing for half a second -- are the talking and writing any good?

i think i intended that analogy a lot more loosely than you're taking it

we write like we right.

its less the expository dialog thats amazing and more the fact that he cant even be bothered to fill in the blanks

he literally wont take 90 seconds to think up a kind of business deal or the name of a french company. they dont even have to be jokes!

like i don't even mean dialogue exactly, you know the bit in annie hall where he's talking about alison portchnik and the kindof relationship between diane keaton talking about her and then him doing this little character sketch to her face. its really like the process of remembering an anecdote, and i think a lot of his stuff is how things get literalised in some way through how they're told and this can seem really clunky and rough but in a way thats kindof oddly right. i feel like crimes and misdemeanours has loads of great examples of this maybe. anyway like i said i haven't seen this movie i guess im just like addicted to my own opinions.

Plus he won't bother to establish whether the actor cast can incarnate the intelligence he's supposed to project. I didn't buy for a moment that Wilson would have known (let alone appreciated) Stein, Bunuel, etc, just like McAdams looks too sensible to be a harridan.

Biggest grossing Woody movie in US ever apparently - just overtook Hannah and Her Sisters.

i haven't seen this movie but i would buy owen wilson being familiar with gertrude stein and luis bunuel!

oh man im all about hannah and her sisters

in a better written and directed movie I would!

xpost

Biggest grossing Woody movie in US ever apparently

daily stories in the NYT for 2 wks probably didn't hurt

i think your problem is you're worrying about wh/ or not this is good like just relax really its a movie

Plus he won't bother to establish whether the actor cast can incarnate the intelligence he's supposed to project. I didn't buy for a moment that Wilson would have known (let alone appreciated) Stein, Bunuel, etc, just like McAdams looks too sensible to be a harridan.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 13, 2011 6:06 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the part thats hard to buy is that mcadams would be annoyed with wilson for being a dreamy writer type but love sheen for being a dickish intellectual

yeah whatryou gonna do, ppl are inconsistent.

What're you going to do except post on a message board?

i guess i could finish packing?

what for? It's only life.

that's such a negative attitude

Biggest grossing Woody movie in US ever apparently - just overtook Hannah and Her Sisters.

Inflation, goddammit.

It stinks.

It's official. Owen Gleiberman also thinks it sucks.

Up until now, the movies that crossed over from Woody Allen’s core audience to become his major hits were also his greatest films. (That’s true even if you go back to his Early, Funny Films. The cathartically hilarious Borscht Belt-surrealist comedies that planted Allen on the cultural map were crowd-pleasers that raked in substantial amounts of money, from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, at $18 million, to Love and Death, at $20 million.) Midnight in Paris is a movie that a lot of people seem to love, or at least like a lot, but to me it’s a minor shock that this movie, with its one-note flippancy and Great Artist caricatures that seem to have stepped out of an old Saturday Night Live sketch, has gotten such a hold on audiences. The movie may on some level be charming, but, I’m sorry, its daffy la Vie de Boheme nostalgia is so, so thin. Which is why its all-time-biggest-hit status for Woody looms as quite a paradox in his career.

Guess he thinks little of The Purple Rose of Cairo and Husbands and Wives.

can we be sure of woody himself coming to despise this one then?

i'm almost tempted to see this only to get out of the heat. does it suck balls? vicky cristina barcelona sure did.

there is a funny scene about luis bunuel.

The last couple of his films I saw just seem extremely unambitious. They were enjoyable enough but it almost feels like he's become a solid genre fiction writer, only his genre is Woody Allen movies. I kind of imagine this one to be the same -- I expect I'll laugh a bit and leave in a reasonably good mood and forget a lot of the movie within a few weeks. Hence I'm keeping it in my pocket for a movie night when there's no movie I want to see.

not even solid

ha al you really hated this didnt you

Not really -- I just can't understand a Woody fan's enthusiasm.

the part thats hard to buy is that mcadams would be annoyed with wilson for being a dreamy writer type but love sheen for being a dickish intellectual

― ☂ (max), Wednesday, July 13, 2011 6:25 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

i think it was more that sheen was paying attention to her and wilson wasnt

i dont think anyone's really enthusiastic about it, are they?! its sort of a mystery why its so popular

obviously there is a spreadthinness to this script (/recent 1s) that i think is what alfred is on about, but imo u can either find it infuriatingly underwritten or u can marvel at how charming & suffused with his personality & an appreciation of life it is in spite of that

can i just think it's OK

oh yeah u can do that, too

ya i think its okay! it seems like such an inconsequential thing to hate which is why i am ribbing soto abt his frequent posts itt

It's so fun to hate though

Last week I re-watched Crimes and Misdemeanors on Netflix for the first time since seeing it a few times in the early 1990s. Holds up, really terrific, especially Martin Landau and Jerry Orbach. Also has the same triangle as Midnight in Paris: Woody (or Woody surrogate), girlfriend, and fake-intellectual competitor (Alda).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuSaohflsR0

^^^classic

i dont think anyone's really enthusiastic about it, are they?!

as I've pointed out several times already, the NY Times LOVED this and promoted the shit out of it.

I guess the pundits have forgotten to mention that C&M is one of his bigger hits.

The pink turtleneck and matching socks is one of my favorite things in that.

Mia Farrow's character notes his fashion sense. "I can't take someone seriously who wears loafers and no socks."

woody's written great snobs in the past: besides alda there's jose ferrer in a midsummer night's sex comedy. "i have consented to give a series of lectures on renaissance art. it will be a pleasure to bring tintoretto into perspective for his innumerable sycophants."

does he correctly pronounce Tintoretto

he pronounces it as i do, so probably not.

This wasn't all bad but it reminds me of 'Manhattan' a little in its shamelessly pornographic depiction of Paris. Also, I am SO over the American love-affair of Paris in the 20's.

I too was annoyed by my fellow audience members and their overdone laughing and nodding at every historical figure. It was a bit hard to even form my own impression of the movie because they seemingly killed every small joke and throwaway bit with their wild overreactions.

yeah like how many people in the audience roared at the appearance of Djuna Barnes?

"college audiences are wonderful"

perceptive quote!

I half-slept through Crimes and Misdemeanors yesterday afternoon (because I nap with the TV on, not because of the film). For me there's not a Woody film without problems, so the ones I like best are the ones with the fewest problems. Crimes and Misdemeanors would be very near the top. Alda and Orbach are great, Woody losing Mia to Alda actually has some resonance in real life (more I'd say than Landau's situation), and "You probably wondered why all the references to Dublin" is my favourite Woody line ever.

Saw this again with a friend tonight (caught it alone the opening week). Had forgotten how much of Rachel McAdams' part involved tight pants, having her back to the camera, and occasionally bending over.

Apparently the studio, in an attempt to squeeze this lemon dry, is "rereleasing" it.

It's passed $50 mil in North America.

Jeff Wells:

"It's now Allen's biggest all-time North American earner.... If, that is, you don't adjust the grosses of Annie Hall ('78), Manhattan ('79) and Hannah and Her Sisters ('86) for inflation. If you do that, their respective earnings are $135,027,530, $129,427,567 and $80,568,922."

how does this thing compare to everyone says i love you or even small time crooks? are there any actual laffs or is it just family guy for nyrb readers ref humor (not that i mind this exactly - manhattan was my fave woody when i was 14 for a reason - but not exactly what i need anymore). tbh paris porn plus rachel mcadams bends over alot might be enough.

I smiled once.

the paris porn isnt very good tbh. looks like it could've been shot by anybody, unlike Manhattan

I was stunned when a friend said this movie made him wanna see Paris. Not even postcards look as flat as this movie.

alfred, did you like this movie i dont remember?

Nope.

This movie was quite pleasant. McAdams was hott was not really given shit to do.

Despite years of critical derision and a general perception that his career is in terminal decline, Woody Allen has confounded his critics by engineering a commercial renaissance – joining the $100m club in the process.

Allen's 41st feature as director, Midnight in Paris, which is due for release in the UK on Friday, is already his highest-grossing picture: its worldwide take stands at more than $107.4m (£68.7m).

0-O

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/30/woody-allen-midnight-in-paris

this was a shitty movie. a shitty shitty movie.

Culture
Film
Woody Allen

Woody Allen gets his groove back with Midnight in Paris after years of decline

Veteran director joins $100m club with his acclaimed new picture despite being written off by critics

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Comments (56)

Andrew Pulver
guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 September 2011 15.18 EDT
Article history

Lea Seydoux puts her arms around Woody Allen's shoulders
Woody Allen and actor Lea Seydoux attend the Midnight In Paris premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Despite years of critical derision and a general perception that his career is in terminal decline, Woody Allen has confounded his critics by engineering a commercial renaissance – joining the $100m club in the process.

Allen's 41st feature as director, Midnight in Paris, which is due for release in the UK on Friday, is already his highest-grossing picture: its worldwide take stands at more than $107.4m (£68.7m).

Allen has not reached these heights at the box office since the mid-80s, when Hannah and Her Sisters took $40.1m in the US, compared with Midnight in Paris's $54.4m. Manhattan (1979) and Annie Hall (1977) are the next highest, with $39.9m and $38.3m respectively.

The reasons behind the success of Midnight in Paris are open to debate. In recent years Allen's commercial credibility has been on the rise, with films such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point performing well.

Mike Goodridge, the editor of industry trade magazine Screen International, said: "Midnight in Paris is a very accessible film, a light, frothy comedy that has certainly hit a nerve, especially in the US."

The film tells the story of an American novelist, played by Owen Wilson, who finds himself transported back to the mythical era of bohemian Paris between the wars that proved such an attraction to expat Americans at the time. There he meets Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

Goodridge suggested Allen's decision to make films in Europe might account for the easy tone of his current output. Since Match Point in 2005, he has made three films in London, one in Spain, one in France, and he is shooting his next in Rome.

"To me they're like postcards," added Goodridge. "It's about the most commercial thing you can do. He makes charming portraits of cities that are essentially for tourists."

this movie was bad

It was like a bad episode of Doctor Who.

it wasn't that bad

The only good thing about this movie is it made me have a crush on Corey Stoll, who's like a male Peter Sarsgaard.

i really liked this movie! surprised at the hate. the exact definition of lightweight and lovely.

I love Woody but this was Terrible. The only good thing was that the one girl looked like Mia Farrow and I enjoyed the irony of the idea that Woody was cheating on Soon-Yi with her.

Also, "We're going dancing." Who says that??

still pissed off abut this piece of shit movie.

This was pretty lightweight and inconsequential, but I liked it. Don't really understand why it would piss people off so much, I feel like it pretty much did exactly what it said it was going to do.

Kudos though for managing to make Owen Wilson the most likable person in a movie.

awful dialog
awful characters
"love letter to paris" that was just shots of the eiffel tower and the other usual tourist spots
usual woody allen bullshit (boring jazz score, woody allen stand-in)

i did like marillon cotillard though.

Additionally:

awful color-timing - maybe if it had been used consistently? Still, so heavy handed.

I'll give you boring characters, but I didn't think the dialog was that awful and it was often pretty to look at. The "usual woody allen bullshit" is to be expected though, which is why I don't understand the hate for this one - you had to know that stuff was going to be there going in.

No it wasn't a great movie, but I thought it was a mildly pleasant way to pass 90 minutes. But then I like looking at Rachel McAdams and I have a much higher tolerance for Owen Wilson than most.

i typically avoid nu-woody allen but sarah really wanted to see this ahead of her trip to paris.

My wife said the best thing about it was imagining Woody himself in Bill & Teds' Excellent Adventure.

I was just constantly like "oh of course Dali is ridiculous" and "of course they're now going back to HER golden age" as in lol, this is fluff, but why not?

maybe i wouldn't hate it if everyone hadn't been WOODY ALLEN'S TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO FORM! and instead had been like hey he made some pretty, amusing fluff

i kinda want to see this in the hopes that it's even pleasant and passable, because recent stuff like Whatever Works and Cassandra's Dream stand among the most incompetent movies ever directed by a major filmmaker imo

maybe i wouldn't hate it if everyone hadn't been WOODY ALLEN'S TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO FORM! and instead had been like hey he made some pretty, amusing fluff

See I didn't even see it until a couple weeks ago and didn't even really pay any attention when it came out.

This IS Bill & Teds' Excellent Adventure, only for ppl's whose idea of '20s Paris was cemented in college (in the '50s).

Who exactly has claimed that this it "Woody's triumphant return to form"? All the reviews I've read have said that it's a piece on amusing fluff, I definitely didn't expect anything more, and wasn't disappointed.

It's gonna get multiple Academy Award nominations and has won a bucketful of other honors, if you use that sort of thing as a yardstick.

Bill & Ted's > this movie

I was just constantly like "oh of course Dali is ridiculous" and "of course they're now going back to HER golden age" as in lol, this is fluff, but why not?

Yeah, I pretty much had this reaction.

its also made a shitload of money

second only to The Help in attendance by senior citizens, I imagine.

The Help badly needed some time travel, btw

shit, I can't believe my "tv vs. movies" poll was on the sandbox, i was going to post "midnight in paris" to push everyone over to TV :(

Who exactly has claimed that this it "Woody's triumphant return to form"?

there was a story about this movie and how great it was EVERY DAY FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK in the New York Times when this came out.

It is annoying that it was so successful and highly praised, but that doesn't make the movie itself any worse than it actually is.

Though it is kind of lol that it will be only the third Woody Allen movie nom'd for Best Pic.

Bill & Ted's > this movie

I'd like a word with whomever was arguing otherwise.

This def was not deserving of any Oscar noms though.

i feel bad saying this after friends have said they like it but i feel like 75% of the enjoyment people get from this movie is feeling smart after they recognize the historical figures

I don't know about that, he pretty much put nametags on 90% of the historical figures.

yes it is, bcz the Oscars define middlebrow shruggery

xxp

guys i really didn't like this movie

Woody probably would've done better adapting his short story where Madame Bovary comes out of the book into contemporary NYC and has an affair.

I don't know about that, he pretty much put nametags on 90% of the historical figures.

I suppose the pleasure in recognition also encompasses how the figures conform to their broad-stroke popular images, e.g. a couple of throwaway jokes about Gertrude Stein being a lesbian because that's all anyone who hasn't actually read her writing knows about her.

If I'm feeling charitable, though, I can sort of defend this by pointing out that the entire fantasy-world is seen through the eyes of Gil, who himself romanticizes these figures without much deep understanding.

i think it was max upthread who pointed out just how slapdash and lazy woody's scripting is these days (perhaps always was) - so the images of paris are cliched and not even especially pretty, the characters are stock caricatures etc etc. but i actually like these late period woodys precisely because of their crudeness and functionality, his compulsion to still crank out a movie a year, wherever he can raise the cash. places like paris, london, barcelona are actually irrelevant to the endless eternal grind of allenville. some of these films - particularly the excellent You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger - remind me a little of rohmer, another compulsive filmmaker who spent his career spinning variations on a tiny, concentrated set of obsessions and passions.

I went to a party this weekend and asked a crowd of people what their favorite movie of 2011 was and they almost all said it was this movie.

It was very hard for me to not just go home.

One other defense of the film: Owen Wilson reciting Woody Allen dialogue is lots of fun to imitate.

What was your favorite movie of 2011, polyphonic?

i feel bad saying this after friends have said they like it but i feel like 75% of the enjoyment people get from this movie is feeling smart after they recognize the historical figures

^^^ this, especially for the geriatric crowd.

Owen Wilson was fine as the Woody proxy though.

Also: the Rachel McAdams half of the movie was spectacularly lame. I just have no patience anymore for Woody's hamhanded exposition (e.g. "Remember we have that private exhibit at the museum tonight. Paul is a Monet expert, you know").

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 11, 2011 12:51 PM

What was your favorite movie of 2011, polyphonic?

My favorite 2011 movie was Attack the Block. The best movie I saw this year in general was The Woman in the Dunes.

xpost to Alfred, I didn't really read that so much as needless exposition as a hamfisted way for McAdams' character to remind Wilson how much better Paul was than him; still annoying dialog though

this is the guy who gave a character in September the line, "We have to get back to the city, honey. We don't want to miss that Kurosawa festival!"

I dunno the gross and cheap way in which he treated the McAdams character is line with Claire Bloom, Helena Bonham Carter, and other stranded female leads.

*is in line with what he did to

but i actually like these late period woodys precisely because of their crudeness and functionality, his compulsion to still crank out a movie a year, wherever he can raise the cash.

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, January 12, 2012 5:42 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

but do you really enjoy the movies? just sounds like u like the idea of them...

^^^ this, especially for the geriatric crowd.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 12, 2012 5:49 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

the young ppl get into it too

i dunno if 'enjoy' is exactly right, but perhaps the comparison i wld make is that it's like listening to an old old jazz dude, like late european dexter gordon concert recordings, where the chops maybe aren't quite what they were but there is still the need/ability/stamina/experience to carry on making art, and it's quite moving and even inspiring to see that

Woody Allen is definitely that kind of guy for me, but I 100% am down with what Ward Fowler is getting at.

"definitely NOT that kind of guy for me"

Woody probably would've done better adapting his short story where Madame Bovary comes out of the book into contemporary NYC and has an affair.

I didn't know anything at all about the plot going into it so when the time-travel fantasy stuff kicked in I was super-delighted to be seeing The Kugelmass Episode: The Movie!

ok "excellent" is really not the word for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

wow, never heard of that before, it didn't even get released here

thought gemma jones was superb in YWMATDS, one of the best female performances in an allen film, and the autumnal mise-en-scene (vilmos zsigmond!) was well suited to a film about love and desire in old age (old age being a subject that allen - and cinema in general - tends to avoid. Maybe the new haneke will change that!)

Not sure if this was the Woody Allen version of the "Willoughby" Twilight Zone episode or the Rod Serling version of "Play It Again Sam." Kinda liked it, but glad it was short.

Like the US Supreme Court thread, every time this one is revived my heart trembles.

not as bad as I expected this to be tbh. which is probably the highest praise I can give it.

altho dude who portrayed Hemingway made me want to shoot him in the face

a metaphor Hemingway understood all too well

lol

Owen carried the entire movie imho, nobody else really had anything to work with - no jokes, no characters

I knew this bit as a teenager, don't think it's been mentioned -- God knows it's funnier than MiP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z85zt_EUySg

i rly liked this movie

I just watched this tonight, I really enjoyed it! It's not amazing Woody, that's fine and I didn't really expect that...but I found it lighthearted and wistful. It put me in a good mood.

As an aside, and I think this was mentioned upthread: WS Rachel McAdams in this movie. Whoa. I've never really looked at her in a phwoar way. But the translucent shirt dresses and tight jeans etc, kinda ridic.

saw this on a plane to Paris two nights ago, & enjoyed it enough to skip faking sleep during the Atlantic crossing. I thought it was very superficial & knowingly so: like the whole "point" is that Americans loving Paris is a "thing" obv: all those Monet posters in dorm rooms etc. & "Americans in Paris" is also a "thing": I spend a lot of time in Paris with Americans, & you can't help it if you're here; this morning walking along the Blvd St Germain I heard more American English than French, trying to walk past e.g. a gaggle of ladies in their 60s gawking at cathedrals in the distance. They come here & hit the highlights & then they skip out, without speaking French ; at least, I know a lot of Americans who do this. It's no problem! It's a lovely place for superficial gawking. But I got that Allen was poking fun at that by filming Paris this way; like the scenes could have been anywhere; there was almost nothing distinctive about this film being set in Paris: but I think that was the point? it's not the deepest point in the world to make, obv, but I dunno you spend enough time in the Great Cities of Olde Europe & you become accustomed to this mode of tourism amongst Americans & whilst it needn't grate it sticks with you.

Yeah, in Vicky Cristina Barcelona there's a line in the voiceover that I thought conveys the same thing:

Vicky and Cristina drank in the artistic treasures of the city. They particularly enjoyed the works of Gaudí and Miró.

there is something so kind of automated about neo-Woody that makes it hard to grant that sort of moment the judgment of being wry. i think a lot of the decisions, cinematographic, stock character rendering, territory, &c, are so generic & reflexive it's not hard to imagine he's just writing "gaudi & miro because spain"

Could have watched much more Hemingway parody.