Woody Allen, one of the more prominent and versatile players in Hollywood, has been nominated for 23 academy awards in his lifetime: 1 for Best Actor, 7 for Best Director, and 15 for Best Original Screenplay.  Not too surprisingly, his latest picture “Midnight in Paris” has been nominated for four more awards in this year’s Oscar show. Despite his prestige, Allen has chosen to remain humble throughout his career, for personal reasons.  “Midnight in Paris” is yet another exercise in humility from one of Hollywood’s finest.

“Midnight in Paris” is an excellent film with a stacked cast and well written story.  It is about a man named Gil (Owen Wilson), who is on vacation in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams), a woman poorly matched for his creative and artistic personality. In a fictional twist, he soon finds himself inexplicably traveling back in time and consulting with some of the creative legends of the early 20th century, including Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates).  He finds himself falling in love with the time period, the city, and the people he meets, and is forced to reevaluate his current life situation.

Traveling back in time to meet your biggest inspirations in life is certainly not an original dream.  However, Allen built this story perfectly, and did well to depict how life changing such an event would be.  Altough this film didn’t recieve all the Hollywood hype that some of it’s high budget counterparts did this year, it was by far one of the better ones made.  Not only did it deserve it’s Best Picture nomination, it deserves the award itself as well.