Blue Sponge Movie Review: Midnight in Paris

We went to see a movie today; the newest Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris.  It had gotten good reviews, so we decided to give it a shot.  We are both big fans of Allen's old movies--Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Manhattan, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Annie Hall, Broadway Danny Rose, Purple Rose of Cairo, Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Husbands and Wives... the list goes on and on.

I was a little wary about this film when I read in the review it involved time travel.  I've never been a big fan of time travel as a plot element.  I thought it might be interesting to see how Woody would do such a thing.

The story is of a young American couple traveling to Paris--Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiance, Inez (Rachel McAdams).  He is a screenwriter that loves Paris and wants to move there to work on his novel.  Inez doesn't see the allure of Paris, and wants Gil to go back to Hollywood and make lots of money.  She meets up with an old boyfriend and Gil wonders the streets until an old car drives by at midnight each night and takes him back to the 1920s where he meets up with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, and a host of other geniuses.  Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) offers to read Gil's book and he falls for Pablo Picasso's girlfriend.

I have to say that I was not as taken with this film as the critics.  I thought it was kind of boring.  The best part of the film was seeing the scenes of Paris.  It is quite a love letter to the city.  It made me want to be there, but I wished I didn't have to watch the dull characters populating the film.  The movie had very little humor.  Like many Allen films, it was quite talky, but this one was talky in an irritating way.  I guess you can tell it was not one of my favorites.

As for the time travel, Gil did not seem to question the transport back into time after he realized how to do it -- like it was not that big a deal.  I'm still not a fan of time travel in movies.  I would give this film only 2 out of 5 blue sponges--and that was just for seeing Paris.

Finally Using Our Capitol Hill House Backyard

We've lived in our Capitol Hill house for more than 8 years, but we have never really used our very small back yard.  Last year we had our fence and deck redone and bought a gas grill. Recently, I bought a small bistro table with an umbrella and tried fixing up the backyard a bit with some potted plants and petunias in the flower bed.  Also, our cactus and crape myrtle are blooming.  So, tonight, since the weather was nice (not too hot) I cooked some steak kabobs out on the grill and we used our bistro table for the first time.  Other than a slight explosion with the grill that singed my eyebrows and eyelashes, it was pretty nice.  Shane loved the kabobs.