Truly magical things happen after "Midnight in Paris"

Having a Woody Allen flick in midstate theaters at all is a minor event in itself for movie lovers. but having one as good as "Midnight in Paris" is a flat-out reason to celebrate.

It's also the first time that I can remember a Woody Allen movie being in the box office top 10, as this has been for a few weeks, and it's well deserved. Though not as great as Allen's best movies - which for me will always be topped by "Manhattan" - it does share with those flicks an extremely strong sense of place, here Paris rather than his early home base of NYC, and adds to it an often irresistible embrace of life and art, along with the city itself.

As the movie opens, we meet Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams), an American couple engaged to be married and on vacation in Paris thanks to the largesse of her parents. And it's clear from the outset that Gil, Wilson doing his best to channel Allen now that the director has finally realized he's simply too old to do so himself, is less than thrilled, both with the company he's keeping on the voyage and also with his impending marriage. Though many of his best bits have already been revealed in commercials and trailers for this flick, keep an eye out for the very funny Michael Sheen as half of a fellow young couple on vacation in Paris, particularly the face he makes at a wine tasting. Just pure comedy gold.

But its Wilson who manages to embody the spirit of Allen, from all his neuroses even down to more charm than the director himself has shown for many years, and that's key to how much you're willing to suspend reason and just dive into the crazy world of what comes next. As Gil, seeking both release from his traveling companions and inspiration to finish his novel, is walking through the city of light at the titular hour, he encounters a series of familiar faces who transport him back in time to the 1920s.

It starts with Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and continues with a who's who of giants of the literary and art world of the era, and the gimmick only starts to get old just before Allen wisely wraps things up. Keep an eye out for Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway and Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali, both of whom eat up their parts for some of the movie's funniest moments, and the thoroughly beguiling Marion Cotillard as Gil's muse, Adrianna.

What keeps all this madness going with an entertaining spirit until Gil discovers the truth he so sorely needs is a genuine infusion of both whimsy and fantasy, more of both than Allen has shown since "Bullets over Broadway" or way back with "Broadway Danny Rose." The bottom line is it's just Allen having a whole lot of fun, and if this flick manages to stick around at the AmStar Cinemas 16 in Macon and Galleria Mall Stadium Cinemas 15 in Centerville for another week and you can catch it, I guarantee you will too.

Only you can stop the virus that is 3-D

In the race to discover the most despicable use of 3-D technology yet, James Cameron's plans for a 3-D Black Eyed Peas concert movie (if that is still on) have now been surpassed by an even more ridiculous idea.

Now, before I spew any venom, let me say that I'm a very middle-aged dude, so far from the target audience for anything about Justin Bieber (though I really did enjoy that German TV clip in which when, asked to say something in German, he replied, "What is German?")

However, even a few of his most devoted teen and tween fans might scoff at this: A 3-D biopic about the 15-year-old singer's life, to be released next February and somehow be directed by Davis Guggenheim, who made "An Inconvenient Truth." Yes, really. Now, I suppose it's possible that his 15 years have been filled with enough drama and suffering to make a feature length movie work, but I somehow have my doubts.

As regards 3-D overall, and in case you couldn't tell already, I pretty much thoroughly hate it, The Wrap had an interesting set of numbers this morning about the gimmick's failing arc at the box office. Now, this isn't entirely fair, since I don't think anyone expected the "Cats & Dogs" sequel to make a ton of money, but the chart below is still very telling. Enjoy.



An $80 million opening for "Alice in Wonderland" (which, unlike a lot of people, I quite liked, IN 2-D) down to the dismal bow of "Cats & Dogs"? Now, that's a progression that has me hopeful, but The Wrap's article quickly doused those hopes with a big dose of reality. Here's an excerpt:

“I think the overall message isn't that 3D is a fad or that it’s going away, but I’m not sure we’re moving to a point where 50 percent of the box office is derived by 3D ticket sales as some of the bulls currently believe,” BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield told TheWrap.

With, as the New York Times noted Tuesday, nearly 60 3D releases queued up for the next two years, the “bulls” can still be found in herds back in Hollywood. In fact, the flurry will continue this weekend, when Disney releases “Step Up 3D.”

Now, I'm perfectly able to simply skip "Step Up 3D," and with "The Kids Are All Right" somehow opening at my local multiplex this week, I can even see a good movie, but 60 3-D movies in the next two years? Sheesh. All I can say is keep hope alive, because only you can stamp out the scourge that is 3-D, and it all starts with simply saying no.

OK, that was a lot of bile for a Wednesday morning, so why not some actual good news about a movie I really want to see instead? Edgar Wright's "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" finally drops next week, and I'm totally amped for it.

As part of the appropriately aggressive marketing push, Cartoon Network's [adult swim] will air a short animated film titled "Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation" in two installments between midnight and 12:30 a.m. Aug. 12. The short will cover Scott's relationship with Sex Bob-omb drummer Kim Pine, and will feature the voices of Michael Cera and Alison Pill from the movie. And for those of you who, like me, are rarely up at that trouble-making hour on a school night, it will re-air on Friday the 13th (yes, again), the day the movie comes out, on both Adultswim.com and its facebook page. Nothing but groovy there.

And since I have a bit more time, there are some other TV tidbits out there today that are pretty juicy.

As "The Office" embarks on its final season with Steve Carell's Michael Scott as the boss of Dunder Mifflin, it seems he'll tangle with Timothy Oliphant, star of the great F/X Western of sorts "Justified" and just one of my favorite actors.

According to TV Guide, he'll have at least a two-episode run as a rival paper salesman who angers Michael and Dwight by stealing away their customers. In my mind, that's already funny.

And speaking of Westerns, they certainly seem to be getting new life on TV these days, and that's welcome news in my little corner of the world. AMC is now developing a period drama called "Hell on Wheels," which follows the story of a former Confederate soldier who ends up working on the transcontinental railroad in the Nebraska prairie as he hunts down the Union soldiers who killed his wife. Juicy. And in the latest casting news, Reel Fanatic favorite Colm Meaney has signed on for the role of Thomas “Doc” Durant, a businessman determined to make his fortune building the railroad.

The final bit of good TV news today is that FX has, somewhat surprisingly, picked up a second 13-episode season of "Louie," starring the comedian Louis CK. I'm only really surprised because, while I like it quite a bit, it certainly is a dark and bitterly funny brew, so not exactly designed to appeal to a broad audience.

And I'll leave you with this nugget from the latest Ebert Club newsletter, an enjoyable read every time it pops up in my e-mail box. It seems that BBC1 is either airing or has aired a series of three 90-minute episodes of "Sherlock," a take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories set in modern-day England (and hopefully more than a bit better than that mess with Robert Downey Jr. last year, and I have to assume, next year too.) In the best news of all, the series, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch (great name there) as Sherlock and Martin Freeman (of the original "The Office" - see, synergy) as Holmes, will be aired on PBS as part of its Masterpiece series early next year. Enjoy this short clip from the series, and have a perfectly bearable Wednesday. Peace out.