Melinda and Melinda was directed by Woody Allen. The premise: 4 Hollywood types at dinner, discussing whether comedy or tragedy is more popular and why. They start talking about a scenario - a woman interrupts a dinner party, and there are 2 plotlines - 1 tragedy and 1 comedy, each being described by a different person. Except the tragedy wasn't really that tragic, and I never once felt like laughing at the comedy. Will Farrell was Woody Allen incarnate in this movie as the husband of the couple giving the dinner party comedy-style - everything he did and said was Woody Allen except he didn't use the NY accent, and of course he's taller, and younger. Still, I felt Woody's voice in everything Farrell did. I liked him better in Elf.
Melinda is the female protanist in both stories, played by the same actor. Each story has her disrupting a dinner party, but with different relationships to the guests and with a different backstory. She's a mess in both. In both, she's the catalyst that breaks up the marriage of the primary couple hosting the dinner party. Yeah, funny, huh? Not. The stories happen simultaneously, jumping from one set of actors to the other. I kept thinking maybe they would all meet before it was all over. The acting was wooden, and I never exactly got interested in what happened to anyone. I did read Roger Ebert's review (he loved it) in which he basically says the point wasn't to actually present a full story, but to explore the idea of tragedy v comedy or something. See, not only did I not pay attention to the movie, I didn't pay attention to the reviews either. There ya go. I also think his point was, it's just a movie and it doesn't matter what happens to anyone at the end. Is that a point?
I read the same 1st page of Nigel Tranter's MacBeth The King 2 or 3 times today but made no other reading progress. I did spend a lot of time looking for good deals at PBS, entering DVDS at Swapadvd and sending 5 DVDs out. I think I might have about 15 books coming! That will last about 1/2 a month... We couldn't agree on any DVDs to get from Swapadvd so we have 7 credits just waiting, and 4 items on the wish list.
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