woody allen

I was iffy when it came out, tried again a couple of years ago but didn't really get anywhere. I will, somewhere down the road, try again.

By the way, I played both clips for my class this morning. As predicted, mass puzzlement over the universe-is-expanding clip. Me: "But don't you see, he won't do his homework because he says there's no point...he's 10 years old and he's worried about the universe expanding...it's funny!"

I saw Husbands and Wives recently and I'd consider it a middling work - not bad but not great. a lot of the acting is top-notch and I always love Judy Davis doing her "I am CRAZY and UPTIGHT" schtick. but honestly thought the most satisfying moment in the whole thing is when Juliette Lewis tells Woody how sexist and pretentious and stupid his novel is, it's basically an internalized critique of Allen's entire ouevre.

Is it weird that Interiors is my fave Woody movie? Nobody else seems to like it

never seen it. scared of the Bergman homage

i finally saw manhattan this year and i was blown away... think its p much perfect tbh

my interpretation of Manhattan has changed almost 180 from when I first saw it as a teenager, but that has only deepened my appreciation of it

Is it weird that Interiors is my fave Woody movie?

Yes--I think even Sarris, probably Woody's biggest fan at the time, was perplexed. (I might not be right about that.) Many critics were merciless. But a conventional wisdom quickly developed that if he hadn't made Interiors, there wouldn't have been a Manhattan. Anyway, eccentric favorites are always interesting.

I'm exactly where Shakey Mo is on Husbands and Wives.

over photographed !

oh my eyes!

tone it down to 23 frames a second could ya pal

oh man i LOVE the argument in the classroom actually despite it having that slightly-under-rehearsed feel. it is a little underwritten Manhattan too in parts but i kinda like that about his stuff. i thought that's what a lot of people liked about it? you can tell he only does 2 or 3 takes or whatever and has the actors say whatever they want so long as the general gist comes across. i still think "i wanna make sure that when i.. thin out that i'm.. well thought of" is brilliant.

My thoughts: C/D - Woody Allen's "Husbands & Wives"

Yale: Psychobabble
Isaac: One-liner

(repeat for five minutes)

This is the only way to reply to psychobabble.

"Every (orgasm) I had was right on the money."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmnLRVWgnXU

i finally saw manhattan this year and i was blown away... think its p much perfect tbh

― Princess TamTam, Thursday, December 2, 2010 12:34 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm + i love the nazi/baseball bat joke.

jeez clemenza, it's a JOKE, in reply to a straight line about "a devastating piece in the Times"

Morbius--I know that it's joke. I did get that. It's just not, to my ears, a particularly good one, and I'm trying to explain why I don't think so. One of the things I reguarly try to do when I post on here is explain myself. I know your style is more the, uh, hit-and-run zing. (Are you saying that all jokes--good, bad, and otherwise--are beyond criticism?)

I mean, you've clarified why I hate that exchange: he makes the O'Donohue character look like a pompous fool by sticking the word "devastating" in his mouth, just so Everyman Woody can cut him down to size with talk of beating Nazis over the head with baseball bats. It's as corny as can be.

(Are you saying that all jokes--good, bad, and otherwise--are beyond criticism?)

If they're not funny, they deserve criticism. If they are, they speak for themselves -- loudly, and better than an NYT column.

Michael O'Donoghue does not have the "devastating" line, a woman does. MO'D talks mostly about the guy who "screws so great."

(There was a confrontation sequence w/ New Jersey Nazis cut from the film)

Okay, faulty memory. Are you sure it's the woman, though? I can picture the guy she's with, and I'm seeing him deliver the line. In any event, it doesn't change my objections to the joke. (Same scene: Tisa Farrow.)

it's not a woman who has that line either:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG0Y5Ki1GpY

The faulty memory is vindicated...Great line within the first 30 seconds: "Something's not flowing."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/woody-allen-pays-tribute-ingmar-95679

The younger generation is just basically film-ignorant. Not just about Bergman, but Antonioni, Truffaut, Kurosawa, Bunuel. Film is not part of their general literacy. But the Bergman films remain great. They are great films — just as are the Bunuel films, the Kurosawa films, all of the films of that great flourishing of European cinema — all those films were great, great movies. The Seventh Seal was great then, and it’s great now. They don’t know The Bicycle Thief; they don’t know Grand Illusion. And many, many of them don’t know Citizen Kane. If they do know it, they know it as something they happened to see on television. They don’t have the same general reverence — which I’m not criticizing them for — there’s no reason why they would or should. It’s just a different time. Their icons and their heroes lie in a different area.

woody more or less otm

megalol that that quote is immediately followed by:

The first Bergman I ever saw was that one because there was talk in the neighborhood that there was a nude scene. This was unheard of in any American film, that level of advancement.

Dennis Perrin:

"Watched Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger last night. Message: realists are forever fucked and compromised, desperation can lead to horrible choices, and the only truly happy people are delusional and superstitious. Sort of like Bananas with an English accent."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2rCnTF1xlo

WHERE ARE THE JOEKS

The still looks like a Stillman outtake.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/06/woody-allen-top-five-books

this was a nice read

That was indeed a nice read, thanks! "Epitaph of a Small Winner" sounds very intriguing.

The comments on that article are moronic otoh, even by the usual standards of guardian commenters.

"If you become obsessed with films or baseball or your children -- or if, in my case, you're worried about how the third act is going to turn out -- you become focused on that and you don't think about the terrors of life. You become focused on something that's apparently meaningful, but it's no more meaningful than the outcome of the Yankees game. I'll say, 'Gee, the Yankees lost today,' and the non baseball fan will say, 'So what?' It's as meaningful as his life or my life. They're specks of light in an eternal void having no meaning whatsoever in a universe that's eventually going to not exist. In the end, like in Stardust Memories, we all get flushed. The beautiful ones, the accomplished ones, the Einsteins, the Shakespeares, the homeless guys in the street with the wine bottles, all end up in the same grave. So, I have a very dim view of things, but I think about them, and I do feel that I've come to the conclusion that the artist can not justify life or come up with a cogent reason as to why life is meaningful, but the artist can provide you with a cold glass of water on a hot day."

http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2011/05/woody_allen_midnight_in_paris.php

given his 00s track record I'm really skeptical of this one. all of his movies have sucked since Match Point, which is an extremely long fallow period for him imho. have you seen this yet Morbz?

no. I've skipped a whole bunch of the recent ones, but am intrigued by The Purple Rose of Cairo comparisons.

(if I do see this, it will be early, bcz of spoilerrific plot apparently)

When French producers first approached Allen (who has directed five of his last six pictures abroad) about making a film in the City of Lights, he happily agreed. "But I had no idea for Paris at all -- none," he says. "So I asked myself: what do you think of when you think of Paris? Well, romance is what you think of -- at least it's what I think of. I'm not going to do a political thriller in Paris. If I was making a film in Berlin, a different thing comes to mind."

gives you some idea of how much of a "sense" of his "locations" this guy has at this point

very unkind to Vicky Christina Barcelona, SMC - not a "great" film but extremely enjoyable

I dunno, as Lubitsch said, I prefer Paris Paramount to Paris France.
xp

ugh, hated VCB.

im sure this movie will be wretched, but i liked this part of the interview:

Now, at age 75, with a career as a comic, writer and filmmaker that spans a half-century, Allen himself has become an iconic part of American cultural lore -- something that gives him more than a bit of pause. "I was thinking with great horror the other day that, since I'm a known person, a hundred years from now someone will make a movie about New York in my time, and I will be, let's say, not an important character in it, but a peripheral character," he says. "Someone will go into Elaine's, and there I'll be, played by some schlemiel, because I'm conceived of as a schlemiel, and he'll have glasses on, and he'll be a gloom-ridden recluse who shivers at the thought of going out into the country -- some execrable exaggeration of what people think I am. And that will be my hell. If I'm ever in a work of fiction as part of the atmosphere, they'll be doing to me the same unjust things as when I show Ernest Hemingway sitting at a bar talking the way he talks."

sure but further retreat into a robot-world constructed of old hollywood cliches and dostoyevsky glosses is not what our man needs right now

that said i just read too far into that nyt article and was spoiled and omg

ugh, hated VCB

^^^Morbz otm

don't hate, appreciate

there were no jokes, but then there was no drama either. it was just ... there. it seemed very aimless and misshapen to me.

totally

there was a lot of drama! especially when penelope cruz shows up! without cruz it would have been as you say. but no, you are the hater. of fun.

she was so bad she won her Oscar for it.

vcb is p lol

i mean that camera

she came across as an empty stereotype to me. the fiery, passionate, latin. she shows up, breaks some dishes, has some sex, yells = eh, whatever.

xp

vcb is easy to pick apart but very watchable. it's the only woody allen movie my gf has made it through iirc.

the american boyfriend in VCB was lolsy.