Brandon's movie memory

Valentine’s Day screening with Katy (who liked it more than I did, but has issues with Owen Wilson) ends my 8-year ban on Woody’s new films since his Melinda & Melinda was so awful. Owen is about to marry irredeemably bitchy Rachel McAdams (potentially of the next Terrence Malick movie), so they’re vacationing in Paris with her condescending/republican parents (Kurt Fuller: Karl Rove in That’s My Bush! and Mimi Kennedy: the anti-war diplomat trying to wrestle into the war meeting of In The Loop, also of the Mr. Boogedy movies).

Owen is an annoyingly self-effacing frustrated novelist (but not so self-effacing that he doesn’t push people he’s just met into reading his manuscript) and a lover of old-fashioned things. At the titular magic hour/location he finds himself in his ideal 1920′s, mingling with Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill: Scott Pilgrim‘s girlfriend), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody, wonderful), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and fifty others. Each time Owen manages to stammer out their name and indicate that it’s an honor to meet them, then the famous character gets a couple lines before we’re whisked away to another famous character. Owen also meets non-famous Marion Cotillard, who dreams of an even earlier time, and then that ol’ Paris magic whisks her and Owen back to a pub in the 1880′s or 90′s where she meets her own art heroes (Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Degas) – who dream of an even earlier golden age. This was my favorite bit, where the movie seems to mock Owen and its own nostalgic premise. Marion opts to stay in her ideal past, but Owen returns to his present, dumps his wife (she was sleeping with Michael Sheen anyway), and picks up tour guide Lea Seydoux (baddie who shoots Paula Patton’s boyfriend in Mission Impossible 4).

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Midnight in Paris DVD

Steve says it doesn’t hold up anymore, and Katy was dismayed to find that Woody is a shrill & neurotic whiner and Diane Keaton isn’t much better… and on top of that, they don’t even stay together at the end of the movie! What is up with that? That’s not romantic. How then can it be #4 on the AFI’s list of all-time greatest comedies and the #125 top all-time film on the IMDB?

I’ve always loved this movie, but last time I saw “Play It Again Sam” (with the same three lead actors as this movie) I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed “Annie Hall” last night, so maybe that one’s due for another viewing. Or maybe I should stop rewatching comedies I used to like, so I can remember them as being funnier/better than they really are.

I mistook Shelley Duvall for Sissy Spacek, but they’re the same age so now I don’t feel as bad about that. Marshall McLuhan’s cameo was funny even before I knew who he was, and even now I only know who he is from reading some articles about “Videodrome”. Jeff Goldblum, who cameos at a party scene having forgotten his mantra, previously appeared in two Robert Altman films and “Death Wish”. Almost-co-star Tony Roberts is only recognizable from other Woody Allen movies. I didn’t recognize Paul Simon as a Hollywood hot-shot who flirts with Annie.

Wow, never noticed this before. Annie Hall was co-written by Marshall Brickman, who also co-wrote Manhattan, Sleeper, and Manhattan Murder Mystery, which are all my favorite Woody Allen movies. Coincidence? Can’t be. DP Gordon Willis shot eight Woody Allen movies including this one between Godfathers 2 and 3. He also shot the movie I am lately obsessed with, Pennies From Heaven.