Woody Allen's BLUE JASMINE starring Cate Blanchett

worst film of 2013

this was not as horribly unwatchable as I expected

Way better than "To Rome With Love", that's for sure.

so many of his recent films have been so poorly constructed, sloppily underwritten, aimless, painful to sit through - I was surprised when this didn't put me to sleep, even with all of its wrong notes and weird idiosyncrasies.

can't help but lol at things like New Jersey accent = working class! "let's get sum CLAMS" indeed

there's a new woody out in a few weeks, hadn't heard a thing about it until I saw the movie poster in a theater.

thought this was quite compelling and pleasurable except (as other upthread have also noted) for the wildly off-base attempt to do "san francisco working class"- why they had these bizarrely off / cartoonish ways of speaking and acting complete with a weird Jersey-Shore-goes-to-North-Beach thing was just baffling to me- does Woody Allen not get out of Manhattan ever? does he just not know any actual, uh, poor peopl? but when that wasn't happening, this movie delivered some tough / strong stuff. Weirdly Tennessee Williams-ish, actually.

Did you learn about computers from a course

does he just not know any actual, uh, poor peopl?

I'd guess he almost certainly hasn't done for some decades.

Maybe part of the cartoonish disconnect is that Sally Hawkins is actually English

Did you learn about computers from a course

I took this to be a signal that it was hopeless for Blanchett, because I was feeling generous.

Yes, his cultural disconnect matches up nicely with this character.

All of Woody's working-class males match the "It's for my bruddah" autograph seeker inAnnie Hall.

Allen grew up in working class Brooklyn, but he has seemed to spare little thought for it since leaving. Manhattan always exuded the powerful gravitational pull for him that it often does for outer-borough aspiring artist types. New York in his movies is mostly synonymous with the Manhattan cultural elite.

In this interview I linked in the general WA thread, he says that "living in New York has got to be made practical for the middle class," but lays emphasis on Manhattan rather than Brooklyn, which in his standup routine 50 years ago he called "the very Heart of the Old World."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/18/woody-allen-on-magic-in-the-moonlight-the-crisis-in-gaza-new-york-city-and-those-allegations.html

This was disappointing. I was one of those people who said "Midnight in Paris" was the best Woody film since.... It had charm and a magic to it. Yes, it was fluffy but entertaining fluff nevertheless. I always commend anyone for trying to make an IMPORTANT FILM about the fallout from the recession but this never convinced me at all. The writing and characterization was pretty shaky. Did anyone else think it was ridiculous that Sarsgaard's character proposed to her after what seemed like a week? Allen has no idea how to write working-class characters either. They all looked and sounded like they stepped off of the set of Jersey Shore. Cate Blanchett was terrific though.

* drinks from glass of vodka clutched in shaking hand *

*pops a pill*