Midnight in Paris

I finally saw Midnight in Paris recently, and I was a little disappointed, even though it was a perfectly fine movie. The opening was long and unfocused (I get it: we’re in Paris…happy as I am to watch endless picturesque shots of the City of Lights), and the whole thing felt too fluffy to mean very much to me. (I also kept getting bogged down by the “practical” considerations of the time travel magic…and how it worked exactly...though I recognize this is probably mostly my problem.) I’m not in love with the time period (true, I haven’t read all that much of any of those writers), and I’d already heard the best jokes from a friend of mine who was talking up the movie, and Rachel McAdams’s character was enough of a caricature (wasn’t she just awful?) to make the whole thing seem mostly like a pleasantly diverting little comic strip.

Then I was reminded of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a movie I don’t recall all that well, but which I remember well enough to be surprised all over again, when I think about it, that it was made by the same person. It felt like an entirely different category of movie. That’s Woody Allen for you. Prolific!

A few interesting Woody Allen links have crossed my desktop lately.

On Woody Allen’s typography (he uses Windsor, based on the recommendation of a printer who used to eat breakfast at the same New Jersey diner in the late seventies):

http://kitblog.com/2007/12/woody_allens_typography.html

9 things entrepreneurs could learn from Woody Allen (I think they’re pertinent to anyone involved in a creative endeavour):

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/14/woody-allen/