woody allen

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.

shakey mo i feel bad for you son

VCB was great fun. But oh my Whatever Works was offensively dogshit.

i havent seen VCB but i made the mistake of trying trying to watch Cassandra's Dream... i couldnt even finish it, it was so bad

jeez, even my editor liked this one.

'match point' was the last good one, yeah -- and it's not a patch on 'crimes and misdemeanors.'

woody's interviews are more entertaining than his films at this point.

match point incredible terrible and also bad

Woody on his next one -- Eisenberg! Inevitable.

“The new film stars Alec Baldwin, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Roberto Benigni, and myself,” he explained. “It’s a broad comedy of various interwoven tales. I’m in one of them. All of the parts are significant. There just happened to be a part that I could play. I can’t play the love interest anymore, and of course this is tremendously frustrating, because that’s really what I want to play. But that’s not as believable anymore. I have to play Pops, the backstage doorman at the theater or something like that. But in this one there is a part for me.”

Caught the new Ebert show for the first time, and both Lemire and Vashtevhnatvskiyy were over the moon about Midnight in Paris -- like "best since the '80s" raving.

match point incredible terrible and also bad

This.

xp i saw that too and i do not trust them

"best since the 80s" - no. But decent. Can we say "best since Deconstructing Harry"?

woody made some excellent movies in the 90s... husbands & wives, manhattan murder mystery, everybody says i love you...

mighty aphrodite!

“The new film stars Alec Baldwin, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Roberto Benigni, and myself,” he explained. “It’s a broad comedy of various interwoven tales

someone might be able to smack this down by naming an ensemble piece he made more recently that sucked - melinda & melinda? - but if this is anywhere close to deconstructing harry i can see it being a good thing, & it might be preferable seeing him dealing in vignettes, rather than seeing a single angle stretched to full length.

I can’t play the love interest anymore, and of course this is tremendously frustrating, because that’s really what I want to play. But that’s not as believable anymore

TRANSLATION: "I really wanna tap Juno, but I'll have to do through avatar Zuckerberg."

We have this argument every four years -- whenever Woody makes a film that doesn't inspire a public flogging.

Loved Scott and Zelda in "Midnight in Paris."

I have to say, having seen the "MiP" trailer, that I'm kind of loving Owen Wilson as the Woody surrogette.

He's great in it (though not nearly as dweebish as a true Woody-manqué) and I say that as someone who has never liked him in anything, ever.

there was an article about this in the NYT EVERY DAY last week. sheesh.

"sweet and lowdown" was the last WA i enjoyed

Can we say "best since Deconstructing Harry"?

I think we can, yeah. Although the tone is completely different. But the tone of Deconstructing Harry is different than any other Allen movie, IMO. This one is a lot more Purple Rose of Cairo. Owen Wilson is surprisingly great as the Allen stand-in. Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein is pitch-perfect casting. Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali is over the top, but what makes it work is that it's also not far off the mark. I think the scene where the Owen Wilson character pitches a movie idea to Luis Bunuel will be talked about for decades, at least in art and film schools. I won't give it away, but it's a genius gag.

Thinking about this the next day, and remembering how many big laughs are in it. Like Hemingway asking the coquettish young girl if she's ever shot a wild animal who was charging at her. As if the answer could possibly be "yes".

this was fun! and cute! his best in a while!

i like a lot of his more recent films, sweet and lowdown, match point, cassandra's dream; VCB was ok I guess but I preferred the others. this was excellent also, does seem to hearken back to the 80's; it's light, smart, funny. really good!

how old is Woody now? I was thinking, as it started, how like Bob Dylan he is; singular and never equalled, really the best as what he does.

think he's ten years older than b-dilly. and doesn't like him.

Woody was born 12/1/35

I've just recently pushed myself into the difficult 2000s period of my complete Woody Allen filmography watch-through. Small Time Crooks, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, and Anything Else...ugh. The latter two were just as limp as I'd been led to believe (although they contained the germs of better movies), but the first two were pretty much just bad. And were immediately preceded by Sweet and Lowdown! Which is definitely the last of his films that I loved. And then Melinda and Melinda was okay if not mind-blowing. So...what exactly happened to him during those four pictures he made at Dreamworks? Post-Bush and 9/11 malaise is only a valid scapegoat for half of that run. I'm looking forward to this last stretch, though, considering I've heard good things about at least half of his movies that I've yet to see. Oh, also: is Don't Drink The Water worth checking out?

P.S. I'm really looking forward to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF8pwbgTfPA

don't drink the water is a dumb clump of cliches that barely relate to each other but it is often hilarious. julie kavner's great; woody is in Tacky Mode, which is his better mode. there's a romantic subplot that is mgm-marx-level boring. it's shot with the husbands and wives shaky-cam for some reason. woody allen's total lack of interest in or knowledge of any kind of politics or history is a little more noticeable in a movie that takes place in an american embassy in the khrushchev-era ussr, but once you figure out the thing's a vaudeville cartoon you can forget about that. except possibly when some vague kind of middle eastern oil prince shows up traveling with an enormous harem of burqaed women who do nothing but ululate; that's pretty embarrassing. but yeah it's worth checking out.

there's some woody interview where he talks about one of the problems of the original play being that "we made it too funny" -- the audience's laughter wrecked the timing and made the underplotted play last forever.

This was clumsy. While Owen Wilson is by far the best Woody proxy cast yet, I didn't believe him for a second as a writer, even a third-rate one. Other than a funny gag involving Hemingway guzzling a bottle of wine and shouting, "Who wants to FIGHT?" and Adrien Brody as Dali, the actors playing the writers had to mouth a lot of the platitudes we most associate with them. Sharper dialogue would have made Kathy Bates an awesome Gertrude Stein, and Tom Hiddleston had the right profile if nothing else for Scott Fitzgerald.

Also: the Rachel McAdams half of the movie was spectacularly lame. I just have no patience anymore for Woody's hamhanded exposition (e.g. "Remember we have that private exhibit at the museum tonight. Paul is a Monet expert, you know").

There's no comparing this to "The Kugelmass Episode" or The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Wish he had made it more about the peripheral figures around Hemingway, Fitzgerald etc. rather than the writers themselves. When Belmonte showed up I thought it might head in that direction, but no.

"Kugelmass" is great. I was trying to remember the title of that story the entire second half of the movie.