Tag Archive: Woody Allen


LOST IN PARIS, FRANCE

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August 23, 2012

2 DAYS IN PARIS  directed by Julie Delpy (France/Germany,2007)

Julie Delpy's 2 Days In Paris

Hey, look! Isn’t that Woody Allen?

When I first came to live and work in Italy, I barely spoke a word of the language and frequently felt linguistically marooned and occasionally paranoid (what are they saying about me?).

I can therefore fully sympathise with the plight of Jack (Adam Goldberg) in this movie. We see him dragged around Paris by his French-born girlfriend getting more and more frustrated.

Fortunately, I didn’t have a partner like Julie Delpy who chats, argues and rants yet rarely bothers to translate for the confused Jack.

Delpy plays Marion in what you assume is a largely autobiographical role; she even gets her own mom and dad play her character’s parents.

She also wrote and directed a movie which presents the French in such an unfavourable light that I imagine she’s not a hot favourite with her real-life former neighbours. Continue reading →

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MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: QUELLE MERDE!

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January 9, 2012

What do you mean, you don’t want to wear my hat?

Let me start by saying that I used to be a huge fan of Woody Allen movies. In the late 1970s and 1980s, I would make a point of seeing his annual release as soon as it came out.

But  I could never quite see him in the same light again after the scandal in 1992 when he left Mia Farrow for their adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn when she was 21 and he was 56.  I don’t think of myself as prudish, but I lost respect for him and all those scenes in his films where an attractive young woman falls for an older guy suddenly took on a more squalid aspect. I found I couldn’t enjoy his movies the way I once did.

I was ,however, fully prepared to overcome my prejudices and join the throng who are raving about his latest movie, Midnight In Paris. This has received universal critical acclaim and is even tipped as a possible Oscar winner.

But I have to count myself in a minority here as I found the movie shallow, smug and deeply irritating. Continue reading →

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B & B IN BARCELONA

Filed under: Movies — 3 Comments
March 3, 2009

I can’t say that I’m a fan of the saccharine day time soap opera ‘The Bold and the Beautiful ‘ (B&B) but I do remember watching the tail-end of one episode that has always stuck in my mind. It featured an idyllic honeymoon scenario in which the Eric & Brooke were whisked away by hot air balloon  to some unspecified far off desert location. From there they rode on horseback to a luxurious tent within which was a makeshift, but highly luxurious bed bathed in candlelight . With her hair still perfectly coiffured,  it remained only for Brooke, in awe of the elaborate arrangements set in place for her benefit, to succumb completely to the charms of her handsome groom.

There is something of the impossibility of this fiction romance invested in the fantasy male character of Juan Antonio played by Javier Bardem and conjured up by Woody Allen’s in his movie ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’. Continue reading →

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BORING AND UNREAD BOOKS

Filed under: Books, Humour — Leave a comment
March 1, 2008

How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard
(translated from the French by Jeffrey Mehlman – Granta, 2007)
Boring Books by Louis Theroux (The Idler-Issue 10 -July/August 1995)

Pierre Bayard’s book is a columnists dream. Here we have the paradox of a professor of literature in Paris proposing non-reading as a legitimate academic strategy.This isn’t as whacky as it first sounds.
It’s an undeniable fact that even the most erudite scholar can only scratch the surface of the world’s literature. In our short lifetimes there are only so many books it is possible to read.It follows that we will often find ourselves in situations when we are called upon to express an opinion on works we have only a scant knowledge of, or in extreme circumstances haven’t even heard of. Continue reading →

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