Midnight In Paris Notes
I went to watch Midnight in Paris last night, it was the final screening in the whole of London.
It was at the Panton St. Odeon, what a strange cinema! With very noisy a/c, cruddy seats.
Midnight In Paris Notes
Overall: Woody Allen In Paris
Sponsored by France!
The first 5 minutes are shots of contemporary Paris, from its green pastures to its bonkers motorway around Place De La Concorde, its patisseries to its boulangeries that aren’t open on any saints days related in any way to France.
Sponsored by Paris opening, it’s Woody Allen (nee Harrelson) saying ‘do you know what? Who needs New York i’ve got Paris and the Cesars and lots of budget from France PLC. (nee EDF Energy) to work with, look how beautiful it is i don’t need Mayor Bloomberg”.
This is important: the rest of the film is about Woody Allen and no one else. WOODY ALLEN AND NO ONE ELSE.
Owen “Woody” Wilson (nee Allen)
Owen Wilson i am led to believe plays a similar character in most films. Helen mentioned that he also played a writer in Marley and Me, “Tim Dowling but less of a twat”. He’s a writer in this too.
Owen Wilson plays a screen-writer who moves to Paris and finds inspiration. So it’s Allen innit, that’s what he did mainly for tax reasons but dressed up as creative freedom).
So Owen Wilson is Allen, he even takes on all his mannerisms, a TERRIBLE pastiche which is the film “en totale”.
He has the neurosis “I had this horrible nightmare that I went to the dentist and they had run out of novacaine and oh…”; the crowbarred-in physical comedy mix-up routine “they uh, the earrings? Oh they er i saw them with oh i saw them with the cleaner, maybe the cleaner took them? [cue SPANG]”, the self-centred VERBOSITY “See me, i’m a writer but um i guess writing is er well writing isn’t really a thing though is it and what i write is so oh it’s not good, i mean really not good” {meta blogging}
Allen In Paris
The storyline is so stupid i shan’t bore you with it, but it’s an autobiographical look at Allen sans New York: An American Director In Paris. Why did Allen come to Paris? Well he’s read about all the amazing people in Paris, but only in Taschen books.
So he begins to think that he’s misunderstood Paris, and he’s made a big mistake as he was hoping it would be like it was in 1920s with lots of celebrities.
Luckily, before making this film, he’s realised Paris is so wonderful because of the tax-breaks and support for his films the wonderful atmosphere in 2011 that he will stay here! That’ll show you, Allen’s fiancee’s parents in the film who stand for Holywood greed and American grotesque!
The Celebrities In Paris 1890 and 1920 who appear
Paul Gaugin
Degas (pronounced in the nouvelle way of saying his name Degazzzz like “pazazz”)
Dali - Adrian Brodie
Earnest Hemingway
Zelda Fitzgerald
FFScott Fitzgerald
Pablo Picasso
Getrude Stein
Picasso’s shoe-horned in Muse Adriana
Cole Porter
Matisse
Man Ray
Luis Bunuel
I get that it’s supposed to be a post-modern take on American understanding of Art and Literature in 1920s Paris but it doesn’t work cos he rattles through them too quickly, and all the actors say lines like Dali: ‘I shall paint you, with your skin dripping off, and maybe a clock also dripping” URGH.
I imagine there was Duchamp in the original cut, possibly seeing paint fall on to glass and saying ‘mon dieu, le paint sur le glace! I have an idear”
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The Character of Adriana:
Marion Cotillard who is very pretty. Plays that pretty lady Woody Allen likes to hang around with in films. She is VAPID: she has an argument with Picasso, runs off with Hemingway but writes in her diary she’s fallen in love with Woody Allen. She is defined by her looks and her fancying Woody Allen played by Owen Wilson.
At one point he gives her some earrings that she dreamt about and then wrote about in her diary that Carla Bruni reads back to Owen Wilson (Woody Allen) proceeded by her dreaming of screwing him. A lowpoint in the film.
Overall: 1/10 it’s really bad! Go and watch #justforalaff
