woody allen

I wrote this at the time.

dlh's post reminded me of this awful claptrap:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/03/thus-ate-zarathustra

i was mortified by the laziness and the tone deafness of that when it appeared, so dumb and weak and not remotely nietzsche-ish, just a hack jeer at a philosopher from someone who hadn't read him. and since then i've always noticed when his films have similar glib magpie displays that bank on the ignorance or impressibility of the viewers, it's rotten slothful writing.

That review was a good read, even if I can only (mostly) agree on the two first paragraphs. I don't feel like I owe Woody anything, but every year he makes a movie I enjoy and sometimes he makes a movie I fall in love with - I wish Bob Dylan was that productive. Still I think I understand your points, and totally agree that it's weird to defend late Hitchcock, Frenzy is so bad.

I didn't understand the premise of BJ as "if you’re a woman and poor, it sucks if you don’t have a man; if you’re a woman and rich, it sucks if you don’t have a man; if you’re a woman who was once rich and is now poor, it sucks if you don’t have a man." The main (female) characters (all the males are supporting, right?) are looking for love, maybe in vain, but actually I thought the movie was as much about social classes, the financial crisis and mental disorders as it's about the question of being with the one you love or loving the one your with (but as quoted dialogue was supposed to demonstrate, the subject is not simply treated as cliche, it's fleshed out in realistic characters having realistic arguments).

I think the failed socialite is also beautifully and tragically depicted in Jasmine's final iteration of her life story, the words (to "Blue Moon" and to the monologue of Jasmine's story) no longer refer to anything:
I used to know the words.
I knew the words.

I don't get the criticism of Woody not writing academically correct philosophical dialogues. There's bits of that in Love & Death (as parody) but really what's the use? If I want to read a book on philosophy, usually that's what I do. Not sure how well it works when done in earnest (Dinner with Andre? Waking Life? Godart?). Maybe it stems from an idea that the characters are supposed to seem really clever when they philosophize? I'd think that's a bit misguided but who knows. The real philosophy in Woody's films seems more connected with the overarching plots and less with the philosophical references in funny/silly dialogues.

Damn, I don't want to be a Woody apologist but I sure got caught up in this one.

lol i misspelled godard

Misogynist tripe? Come ooooooon Woody's been writing great female leads for decades

namely, the 70s and 80s decades. Let me quote myself:

"his reputation as someone who created lively comedic and dramatic characters for Keaton, Mia Farrow, and even Gena Rowlands is hard to square with the flagging auteur who extravagantly wastes the talents of (actresses).... Women in his films are now mere bystanders when they aren't basket-case man-eaters or Mediterranean whores.... Allen no longer seems able or willing to surprise and challenge his audience. Not only does the late-career renaissance of a Huston or Buñuel seem beyond him, but movies like this (To Rome with Love) put him in danger of comparisons with Chaplin's final, disastrous film, A Countess from Hong Kong, or Bob Hope robotically reading jokes for decades of his dotage. Basta, Woody, basta."

Bob hope line hittin him where it hurts there morbz

Yes. His penchant for hiring actresses and giving them nothing to do puts the lie to his I-deliver-my-movies-on-a-tight-budget schtick. If anyone could have played the Claire Bloom, Helena Bonham Carter, and Patricia Clarkson characters, why hire them when nobodies would be cheaper?

don't big name actors pretty much do these Woody movies for peanuts?

scale

kenneth branagh made himself a living uncanny valley.

thank you for this fantastic description of an unwatchable performance

yeah alfred that is a bizarre criticism

what is?

Yes. His penchant for hiring actresses and giving them nothing to do puts the lie to his I-deliver-my-movies-on-a-tight-budget schtick. If anyone could have played the Claire Bloom, Helena Bonham Carter, and Patricia Clarkson characters, why hire them when nobodies would be cheaper?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, July 26, 2014 9:48 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Those women contributed more to their resumés than Allen allowed them to for their roles.

they're also why his movies make money

i mean, with his casts, they're almost certainly profitable before they even start to shoot.

Alfred forgot about the box-office staying power of Claire Bloom

why of course that's why Philip Roth married her.

Will use this as a first-day intro for the six art classes I'm teaching this year; I should have started using it years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o

I'm starting to feel like Woody Allen has raised the terrible male fantasy happy ending to its own artform: the way it happens at the end of Magic In The Moonlight is almost an abstraction.

I think it's my favourite film of his this century.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/woody-allen-to-write-and-direct-his-first-tv-series-at-amazon-20150113?utm_campaign=woody-allen-to-write-and-direct-his-first-tv-series-at-amazon-20150113&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=woody-allen-to-write-and-direct-his-first-tv-series-at-amazon-20150113

Sounds great

for me to barf on

maybe he should do a show where he drives around with bill cosby, roman polanski, etc. looking for prostitutes and it'll be like that comics getting coffee in cars seinfeld thing

this is going to be bad

"I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin."

I actually find a wisp of hope there, if true.

I always got the impression that Woody Allen didn't even watch TV?

the whit stillman show was awful

"I always got the impression that Woody Allen didn't even watch TV?"

I've had the impression that his daughter wife tries to keep him up to date on new actors/tv shows/trends.

or his casting people, who aren't his daughter either.

someone is hopeful

http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/why-woody-allen-is-perfect-for-amazon-prime.html

classy post-script there

"it would take, hm, yes... 15 accusers to convince me someone is a rapist. seems like a good round number."

...or not in the Farrow family

classy commenters from the Ellen James Society

Finally saw Cassandra's Dream last night (OK, not great), so I can rank the last 10 films now:

Match Point
Blue Jasmine
Scoop
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Magic in the Moonlight
Cassandra’s Dream
Midnight in Paris
To Rome With Love
Whatever Works

(First two of those are classics; second two are among his most underrated; the final three are kind of bad.)

Blue Jasmine is the only one of those I'd ever not warn people away from.

seen five, three meh and two loathsome (VCB and To Rome With Love)

Blue Jasmine is the only one of those I'd ever not warn people away from.

Yikes, you are a glutton for punishment if you watch all 10 of these films and only could tolerate one of them.

I think most Woody Allen recommendations these days come with the implied caveat that you have to be able to stomach Woody Allen movies into order to enjoy them—Match Point and Blue Jasmine would be the only ones I'd recommend to people who don't care for Allen. I do think Scoop was a delightful trifle, though, and Tall Dark Stranger (which I seriously think a lot of people avoided because of its dreadful poster art) had something genuinely new/interesting insights into the nature of happiness.

Midnight in Paris is the one that confounds me. It's essentially the same disposable movie Allen makes most years, yet for some reason the world really rallied around it.

it was p stupid. I liked the conceit of everyone longing for a past age, including the people in the age the protagonist is longing for, but beyond that ... no joeks, no characters, aimless = ie his usual problems these days

https://jackieohohoh.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/midnight-in-paris-dalc3ad.gif

In that (really good) documentary Allen explains that he just makes movies, and essentially doesn't know which will be good ones or which will be bad and which will be liked or not. And I feel like Midnight in Paris is one he might have done differently if he'd known people would take to it so much, since the jokes were thin and the women characters were soooooo bad. Just a quick rewrite or two could have fixed those problems, but I don't think Allen's process usually involves sweating details

you're assuming he can still spot thin jokes or shallow female characters anymore!

^^^

he dgaf. at this point his output is more like a tic or a pathology than a genuinely creative act.

xxp I think he can, but film making has become such a rote exercise for him that he just doesn't always hit the target.

Jokes are hard, because comedy is subjective and sometimes the muse doesn't strike and all that, but the guy has been a screenwriter for decades. One collaborator saying "hey Woody, the female lead here exists only to be a drag on Owen Wilson and to stand in the way of his dreams; think you could maybe flesh her out and give her redeeming qualities and goals and ambitions of her own?" is all it would have took to fix the Rachel McAdams character

his Beat Generation jokes were shorter and sharper in 1964

Watching Magic In The Moonlight...Emma Stone's hats are walking away with this thing.

kind of bummed he'll likely die making some shitty tv show rather than cranking out a movie every year