Cinema club to present Woody Allen’s whimsical bohemian fairy tale “Midnight in Paris” and director Jonathan Levine’s dramedy “50/50.” Levine will speak Saturday night after the screenings at the Malibu Jewish Center.
By Michael Aushenker / Special to The Malibu Times
As Hollywood’s awards season hits a fever pitch, Malibu Film Society will screen two critically acclaimed contenders for Oscar gold on Saturday: Woody Allen’s time-traveling “Midnight in Paris” and the poignant comedy “50/50,” about a young man dealing with cancer.
Allen’s film just picked up four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, while Jonathan Levine’s “50/50,” starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, received two Golden Globe nominations earlier this month. Levine will appear at Saturday’s screening of his film.
“Midnight in Paris” plays at 5:15 Saturday evening at the Malibu Jewish Center. The film was recently named Best Movie of the Year by the American Film Institute and also just won Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes. It has been roundly praised as Woody Allen’s best movie in years, which is really saying something considering recent Allen works such as “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Match Point.”
Produced on a $17-million budget by Allen producer Letty Aronson (Allen’s sister), “Midnight in Paris” has become Allen’s highest-grossing movie of his career, with a worldwide box office of nearly $150,000,000 to date.
Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, a successful Hollywood screenwriter with aspirations of writing the Great American Novel. He runs into trouble with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams), when he informs her on a pre-wedding trip to Paris that he wants to stay there, eschewing his materialistic lifestyle and divining inspiration from the culture that fueled the creativity of the artists and writers of Paris’ 1920s bohemian scene.
One night Gil strolls alone through the cobblestone streets of Paris and, at midnight, suddenly finds himself transported to Paris in the 1920s. Over the course of a few nights living in Paris’ storied past, he hobnobs with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Degas, Picasso and Gertrude Stein.
Increasingly, Gil has a hard time wanting to return to the present-day Paris and the real-world problems he faces there.
The second feature playing at 7:30 p.m. Saturday night is “50/50,” a new film directed by Jonathan Levine. MFS Executive Director Scott Tallal said Levine will be on hand after the film for a Q&A with the audience.
“50/50” stars Rogen as Kyle, the best friend and co-worker of Adam (Gordon-Levitt), a 27-year-old journalist who discovers he has a rare type of cancer. In between Adam’s chemotherapy treatments, Kyle coaches Adam on using his disease as a pick-up line to meet women. The drama intensifies as Adam learns that his body is not responding to the chemotherapy and that he must undergo drastic surgical measures to save his life. The film draws inspiration from the real-life cancer scare of Rogen’s best friend Will Reiser, who wrote the screenplay for “50/50.”
“In fact,” said Tallal, who will introduce both films on Saturday night, “it was Rogen who encouraged Reiser to write the screenplay, which is based on Reiser’s own battle with cancer while they were working together on the HBO series, ‘Da Ali G Show.’ Together, they kept finding the humor in an otherwise very dark situation-and that humor eventually became the core of the screenplay.”
“Midnight in Paris” will screen Saturday at 5:15 p.m. with “50/50” to follow at 7:30 p.m. at the Malibu Screening Room of the Malibu Jewish Center, 24855 Pacific Coast Highway. Admission is $10 per film. For more information, visit MalibuFilmSociety.org.