Good piece today by Christian Toto in the Washington Times on Woody Allen’s critical darling “Midnight in Paris.”  I found the film to be quite the disappointment; as Toto notes, Allen takes a bludgeon to America and the Tea Party, but more irritating still is that–aside from the eye candy–the movie is basically one joke repeated over and over from beginning to end.  Aside from a couple of very funny scenes with the talented Michael Sheen, the premise runs thin within the first 45 minutes.  The payoff is also a letdown.  Furthermore, the pompous underlying theme is that Allen equates today’s crop of artists with history’s all-time greats.  Is Allen subtly suggesting he is the Hemingway or Fitzgerald of our time?  Well, he’s not not suggesting it.

[I]n finding artistic and commercial renewal across the pond, Mr. Allen often has flattered European vanities by ogling the sights of their storied capitals with his camera. Unfortunately, in “Midnight,” he also has pandered to European stereotypes of the Ugly American.

[...]

The cross-cultural comedy concerns a burned out Hollywood screenwriter named Gil (Owen Wilson) who hopes a trip to France will inspire him to finish his novel. Gil fantasizes about Paris in the 1920s, a time when artistic giants such as Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter and F. Scott Fitzgerald roamed its streets.

One mysterious car ride later, Gil finds himself magically transported back to the Lost Generation golden age of his daydreams.

“Midnight in Paris” taps into a timeless American attraction to the City of Light as a cultural beacon, a place even ordinary artists can visit and emerge reborn. Throughout the film, Mr. Allen treats the city’s creative minds, native and transient alike, as intellectual titans.

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“I want a river,” murmured D. W. Griffith, his eyes unfocused and gazing into space. “A misty river. A river of dreams. The Thames as Whistler — or perhaps Turner — might have painted it. Only it must be a real river. Do you understand? A real river. Flowing, endlessly flowing. Carrying destiny — the never-ending destiny of life — on its tide. I must see that flow, that silent flow of time and fortune, with all the mystery of unknowable future there. To be seen — and yet not to be seen. . . .”

For cinematographic “boy Friday” Karl Brown (1896–1990), this latest impossible request was all in a day’s work. Ever since begging his way into a job with Griffith as a camera assistant, he had often been sent on strange excursions to capture some particular shot haunting the director’s imagination. “One man who was the master designer, Griffith, drew all the plans,” Brown wrote as an old man in his book Adventures With D. W. Griffith. “The rest of us, from the highest to the lowest, gave whatever was in us to the realization of the master plan. I was the lowest, a beast of burden by day and a chore boy by night. The work was cruelly hard, the hours exhaustingly long.”

This latest task, Brown soon discovered, was for a new film called Broken Blossoms, a title “so sickly sweet that the working crew, a godless bunch by definition, never called it anything but Busted Posies.” The film was supposed to take place in the infamous Limehouse district in London, a poverty-wracked den of thieves, swindlers, brutes, hookers, and opium addicts bordering the Thames. Griffith had pulled strings to get young Mr. Brown called back to Hollywood (from a World War I stint in the Army) just so he could create and capture one master image of the Limehouse riverfront on celluloid. (more…)

Christmas Day is upon us, a day of celebration for Christians AND Hollywood: Christmas Day is the day when many blockbuster and Academy Award wannabes are released. If you’re a screenwriter jonesing for an Oscar, how do you prove you’re part of the “cool clique” in Hollywood deserving of recognition by your Hollywoodite peers? Why, by trashing the very schlubs who may be thinking of shelling out 10 bucks plus to see your new movie as a bunch of zombies, vampires and werewolves.

Were you thinking of seeing “Nine”? Well, sucks to be you, doesn’t it?

“Nine” Screenwriter Michael Tolkin

Ah yes, the Academy Awards – specifically, Best Picture. And maybe in this case, Best Screenplay. (Only the actual winners get excited about categories like Best Makeup and Best Editing.) Best Picture winners don’t necessarily reflect a movie’s popularity with the public, but often the political statement the movie makes – or, perhaps, statements made by those closest to it – like the screenwriter.

Yep, Michael Tolkin may have written a movie about an “arrogant, self-absorbed movie director” looking for meaning in his art (is this based on a true story???), but he’s positive that the bitter clingers who populate Middle America don’t have a clue either, and he’s prepared to educate the masses. (more…)