Annie Hall: Classic or Dud?

I'll remind Ms. Streep that Allen's stab at Chekhov in September was exactly that -- into his neck.

what year is that Streep quote from?

some time in the late 90s maybe? http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/kammer/gossip-is-the-new-pornography/
i first read it on IMDB way back.

I love Manhattan. You guys are loons.

― polyphonic, Monday, October 3, 2011 3:47 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

― Juggy Brottleteen (ENBB), Monday, October 3, 2011 3:59 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

philosophy schmilosophy

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llwy6n7fOX1qbyzufo1_500.gif

What an intense young Method actress.

what a fucking babe

weirdo

And I don't care for the clumsy way in which the movie tries to have it both ways: romanticism and sourness.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 3, 2011 5:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

thats why i dig it! real life tries to have it both ways too, man

the only thing i'll say against manhattan is a lot of the supporting characters are too wooden, too caricatured, but fuck me its a gorgeous movie... clemenza otm about 70s cinematography

Eh. The cinematography freezes the characters' crises like pins through a butterfly.

Streep can shut up now that she mostly plays cartoon bitches (w/ the odd cartoon chef tossed in for flavor).

Annie Hall is intimate, Manhattan tries to have the characters stand in for a class. And they're around, I've seen them, but they don't talk to me.

there are few films i dread like that thatcher biopic looming out there

also, what is so fascinating about a bunch of pituitary cases trying to stuff a ball through a hoop?

ha are there woody allen movies where the characters don't stand in for a class? manhattan's at least slightly aware of it.

Manhattan is totally mediocre at best except for the first 5 minutes when it doesn't have people in it.

I saw Annie Hall recently and thought it very good, often: it seemed like the best of Woody Allen, like the best feature film version you were ever going to get of the thing that Woody Allen does or did on feature film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPh59jOoiEs

you always hurt my feelings pinefox

i think annie hall is prob better, but i mean i don't even like to think like that

pinefox not otm except for the fact about the first 5 mins begin great because they unquestionably are

horseshoe otm... its like chocolate and vanilla... why cant we just appreciate living in a world with two delicious flavors in it

if you're gonna dismiss a film just cuz of sour characters, lotta Altman gonna fall by the wayside.

so we already covered that AH was supposed to be a murder mystery, yeah?

if you're gonna dismiss a film just cuz of sour characters, lotta Altman gonna fall by the wayside.

that's right!

but except for Short Cuts (remember those musical sequences) Altman didn't sentimentalize his sourness.

uh you seen the long goodbye?

No sourness in TLG -- he's having a great time transforming the source material.

so that's a no then

Those loving shots of nude women doing yoga, the security guard and his terrible Barbara Stanwyck investigation, Gould's performance -- none of this is sour!

Plus, it's not like the Chandler material wasn't itself sentimental.

long goodbye's at least as cornball sweet and sour as manhattan. it's an incredibly better movie obv - altman vs allen isn't much of a contest - but the wounded rejected romantic dumb heart at the core of every grouchy cynic is laid bare there as much as in manhattan or crimes and misdemeanors (the lesser allen storyline obv), most of the time altman's cynicism is more jovial misanthrope (or at least misogynist) but the long goodbye definitely has a romantic streak.

I know a cynic is an aggrieved sentimentalist, but I don't see cynicism in TLG, or even misanthropy, which is more obvious in the mid and late seventies movies.

popeye sentimentalizes sourness also, but whatever romanticism is there is due to nilsson.

and such small portions!

wow, i read altman v. differently than you do. i see his films as disappointed humanism, maybe a touch sarcastic. but sour? i think altman's winking at his audience all the time, and the 'sourness' is always bracketed by a heavy dose of absurdity.

(except brewster mccloud, which might actually be sour, but that's only b/c i don't understand it at all)

agree with remy here re: Altman

weird that I have never noticed the complete lack of score/sdtk/music in this movie before.

amazing how breezily this movie blows by, the scenes are all really short but so perfectly sequenced

Interiors doesn't have much music either (someone plays the piano?). He only got the swing/jazz jukebox going w/ Manhattan.

all the good meetings are taken

i'd somehow never noticed that when alvy goes over to kill the spider the photos of him w/ the lobster are framed on the wall.

Gordon Willis rocks

http://www.filmforum.org/images/sliders/AnnieHall702.jpg

Haven't read through this thread, but I can't even believe this is a question.

I can't believe Face to Face isn't available on DVD

Face To Face came out on DVD (but not BluRay) in the states last year from Olive Films.

will be esp revelatory to New Yorkers of a certain age -- the filming locations, in two parts:

http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=5704

thats awesome

spent a fair amout of time in those vanished movie theatres... including an Allen marathon in the New Yorker circa 1979-80.

god I loved the Thalia...we used to cut class at Columbia and go for all day one price movie marathons, and you could smoke in the back! Bliss....

I remember seeing a double bill of Head and Skidoo there, also a Reagan twofer of The Killers and Hellcats of the Navy.

9-year-old Alvy to doctor: “The universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything.”
Mom: “What is that your business?”
For me, the first hour of “Annie Hall” is the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen in a film. The movie line scene slays me every time, maybe because that’s how I feel whenever people pontificate loudly so everyone can hear them.
Hannah’s another favorite. My favorite Woody jokes are the ones that reduce a hugely profound topic to a cheap punch line:
1) Mickey’s father, during a discussion on the existence of God: “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don't know how the can opener works!”
2) Mickey: “And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived, we’re gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.”

he had a similar line in his early humor prose: "Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Tuesdays."