"Midnight In Paris" (2011) directed by Woody Allen at age 76! Impressive...........: Comments and memories of Woody in 1972 by Tex Allen, SAG Actor

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2012)

The following are comments about "Midnight In Paris" (2011) and also (at the end of the comments) a brief memory of a time I met Woody Allen personally.... from Tex Allen, SAG Actor.
--------------------
The "Midnight In Paris" (2011) movie is OK and interesting many ways....movie making is very hard work, and Woody obviously went easy on himself and the actors part of th movie....took a lot of short-cuts....how to make movies at age 76 and not die from overwork, it appears!
The main character gets into a time warp and goes back to both the 1920's and the 1890's and talks with celebrities in Paris during those two periods...quite a WHO'S WHO laundry list of famous people...maybe 2 dozen of them.
Nice photography of present day Paris, too, which is very clean, clean, clean and so scrubbed is lacks charm in contrast to older movie depictions of Paris when it's charming (AMERICAN IN Paris [1951], etc.).
The actors improvise a lot, and Woody's script has about 3 very good short sections with memorable writing, etc.
The movie is no classic, but not bad, either. Young Owen Wilson has the lead role, plays the part of a writer with girlfriend problems and job problems...all comic ones...same as Woody when he used to star in his own movies.
Documentary part of the DVD I got shows Woody at a press conference in 2011 at Cannes, and his looks very fragile and unhealthy...his skin is very yellow and pasty looking, and one eye looks bad, like a man who had a stroke...and his speech isn't clear at times......but...he keeps on going like old man river.
He really is one of the great figures in cinema....like D. W. Griffith, I think. I met him face to face in NYC in 1972 at a place where he played his clarinet several times weekly with the house jazz band...called "Michael's Pub" as I remember. I was living in Manhattan then, selling educational movies....had a jazzy apt. in the easy 60's near the place where Woody played...went to see him one afternoon with a girlfriend who knew about it. He talked about the Mets baseball team.
Woody is very important...made 41 films since TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN in 1968...... Woody made that movie in SF CALIF on almost no money!
-----------------
Written by Tex Allen, SAG-AFTRA movie actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for more information about Tex Allen.
Tex Allen's email address is TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com.
See Tes Allen Movie Credits, Biography, and 2012 photos at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen. See other Tex Allen written movie reviews....almost 100 titles.... at: "http://imdb.com/user/ur15279309/comments" (paste this address into your URL Browser)