Let's Move to Rome

Saw the new Woody Allen movie last night, To Rome with Love. I believe Dan and I might have been two of the youngest people in the theater--most were of the older generation.  Four stories that were loosely based on this idea of what celebrity means. My favorite was the Roberto Benigni story line--an ordinary Italian man who steps out his door one day to find that he's become famous overnight and the paparazzi are waiting to flash photos of him and ask him what he had for breakfast, how long it took him to shave, whether he wears boxers or briefs--the point being, I guess, how people can now be famous for just being famous. Talentless, insipid, and famous because of who they know or their level of wealth and connectedness in Hollywood (the Kardashians, the Hiltons, the Tori Spellings of this world).

The second story line that was the most interesting was the one involving Alec Baldwin and that kid who played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. The kid falls head of heels for his girlfriend's actress friend who is visiting. That character is played by the girl who had the lead in Juno. Here, she's a chameleon who transforms herself into the guy's object of desire by raving about the architecture of Rome or quoting lines from the guy's favorite poets. Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin hovers in the background, not really as part of the scene, but more as the guy's guardian angel, telling him that this girl is a phony and to not get sucked in by her manipulative charms.

I was glad to see Woody Allen in the movie, though distracted by his eyes---one seems noticeably smaller than the other and I didn't quite ever get past that because it means he's getting old and I don't ever want him to stop making films, even though this wasn't one of my favorites.

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