WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME DRUNK HEMINGWAY WAS IN THIS MOVIE?!

A Night at the Jewseum: Woody Allen Molests His History Book

I walked out of Midnight in Paris with a smile on my face, and frankly, I’m shocked.  The last time I walked out of a Woody Allen film, it was on an airplane.  Not really, but that’s exactly the kind of joke you expect to hear in a Woody Allen movie, a hacky, Borscht belt knee-slapper interspersed amongst the polysyllabic bloviating and romanticized notions of intellectual cocktail chatter. The “turgid discussions about categorical imperativeses,” and whatnot.  More so than just about everything, comedy has a way of passing you by if you don’t evolve. A style tends to die as soon as people recognize its structure, and I thought the Woody Allen rom-com was dead. D-E-A-D, dead like the Farrelly Brothers.  I figured the critics writing glowing reviews were just nostalgia junkies. At best, I expected inoffensive chuckle fare, conversation fodder for my mom and men with ponytails, something to help them relive the glory days while boogeying to moderately-volumed Steely Dan. Instead, I actually laughed. Hell, I thoroughly f*cking enjoyed myself.

It’s not that it’s not Woody, it’s very Woody. At it’s most basic, Midnight in Paris is about a man searching for a woman who can appreciate the beauty of rainfall in Paris. If that was all it was about, I would’ve never stopped vomiting.  Thankfully, there’s a middle section. Owen Wilson plays Gil, one of the Woodiest of Woody Allen surrogates, a chatty screenwriter who wears earth-tone suits and shirts with no tie, and talks philosophically while gesturing with his hands. Visiting Paris with his bitchy fiancee played by Rachel McAdams (OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HER ASS IS A MIRACLE), Gil has dreams of one day ditching screenwriting and moving to Paris to write novels like his golden age idols. The story begins the way you’d expect a Woody Allen movie to begin.  With stagey, contrived dialog about psychology (“you’re living in the past!”) and politics (“Palin is a lunatic!”) that you could never imagine two people having in the real world unless they were pretending to be in a Woody Allen movie.  But quickly it leaps from Woody Allen-land into the realm of fantasy, becoming, like… this whole other thing.  This magnificent tall tale, this light-hearted Charlie Kaufman.

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You know that (*BRAAAAAAAAHMM*) sound from Inception with which we’ve been having so much fun?  Well as you can see in this video, some brainiac on the internet put it together that the main musical cue in Hans Zimmer’s Inception score is actually a slowed-down version of Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”  Says the A/V Club:

Significance? Well, in the movie, we learn that the further the heroes dive into a person’s subconscious–into a dream within a dream within a dream, and so on–the more slowed-down time becomes. So if composer Hans Zimmer is playing us a super-slowed-down version of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” then the implication is that we’re still submerged deep within the dream, far from the kick that will wake us up.

And in case you assumed that this was just some stoner conspiracy theory, like the Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd, or that Boondock Saints was good, Zimmer actually confirmed as much to the LA Times:

“You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next,” Zimmer said.

Plus 100 hipster points if you’ve already put it together that Marion Cotillard, who plays Cobb’s wife in the movie, won an Oscar for playing that same Edith Piaf in the biopic La Vie En Rose. I believe you can redeem those for a keffiyeh scarf at American Apparel.  Anyway, according to Nolan, the Piaf connection was conscious, but not intentional:

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BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHMMMMMMM…

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHMMMMMMM….

That super-serious foghorn-like bass noise can mean only one thing: a new Inception trailer (via ThePlaylist).  This one is more character focused and gives us a little better idea of the plot, which I’m not sure I want.  If anyone, Christopher Nolan has earned the right for me to go in cold.  Luckily, it doesn’t seem like a plot that a two-minute trailer could come close to explaining.

“This can’t be done.  Dreams within dreams is too unstable.”

“What’s happening?”

“My subconscious is looking for the dreamer.  Me.  Quick, give me a kiss.”

Malkovich Malkovich?  Oh man.  I can’t wait for this movie.  It’s going to attach my own d*ck to my ear and make me skull f*ck myself like ouroboros.  So meta.

(*BRAAAAAAAAAAAAHMMMMMM*).  They should make Vuvuzelas that make that sound.  It would make the World Cup seem so much more… important.

This is the final theatrical trailer for Rob Marshall’s Nine, exhorting you one last time to “be Italian” before its release on Christmas Day.  Luckily I’m already Italian, so I can grab my crotch and tell this trailer to “get lost” while thanking God I don’t have to post any more trailers about a guy who’s so cool that he’s “wearin’ shades in the middle of the night.”  If wearin sunglasses at night is cool, peeing your pants is Miles Davis.  Wait, what?

Anyway, it looks like there might be a good movie in there somewhere, but that music makes me want to cut off my ears and eat them.

Hey, Hollywood, just because Hugh Jackman said “the musical is back!” about 1000 times at the Oscars doesn’t mean you had to run out and make a musical.  No one takes Hugh seriously, he just really likes to dance.  And even if I wanted to see people sing and dance, I could just watch… EVERY GD SHOW ON TV.  Anyway, this one’s called Nine, from Chicago director Rob Marshall, it’s a musical based on Fellini’s 8 1/2.

“NINE” follows the life of world famous film director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he reaches a creative and personal crisis of epic proportion, while balancing the numerous women in his life including his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his film star muse (Nicole Kidman), his confidant and costume designer (Judi Dench), an American fashion journalist (Kate Hudson), the whore from his youth (Fergie) and his mother (Sophia Loren). [Apple]

Sometimes me and the whore from my youth like to take paddleboats out on the pond, other times we play badminton, or ride a bicycle built for two.

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