Does it seem weird to anyone else that Woody Allen is going to be 70 this year?

pfft. Yeah, you and everybody else. You'll miss him when he's gone.

I was more freaked out when I found out Schwarzenegger was in his fifties though.

well except for what's up, tiger lily?

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does not quite compute

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Really? That's one of my favorite later films. Very angry, very ballsy, very nasty and mean and vulgar and FUNNY. It's painful as hell, too. "You think I enjoy getting a blowjob from a big-breasted 26-year old?"

The "August Strindberg award for emotional maturity"? How transparent can you get?! I mean, he may as well have referenced Madonna.

I don't think I could even compose a top 10, he's got such a wide and varied ouevre.

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i had a perversely satisfying experience following that one, when i friend and i left shaking our heads in sorrow and an older woman came up behind us and said, "that was a stinker, huh?"

I agree, I was just surprised that Hollywood felt the same way.

Yeah, I've said time and again that it's his best film of the last 10 years.

xpost: I totally forgot about that film. it was great.

It's because of that movie that I looked up who August Strindberg was.

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He just seems too formulaic now. I almost wish he'd make another "Interiors" just to mix it up a bit.

he has had an almost entirely new career divorced from what people consider his great stuff

That's not fair. He's entirely Woody no matter whether it's great or merely treading water, and I won't deny he's done a lot of that, esp. in the 90's. He makes so many movies, so cheaply and so (seemingly) on-the-fly, that he can afford to make a movie about nearly every idea that pops into his head. Some are better than others, but nothing is divorced from anything. It's him.

I'm still surprised at how much support he has after [the soon yi thing]

She's having his babies, is the thing. Young woman or no, it's pretty hard to deny at this point that she loves him. At this point if anyone's judgement is in question, it's hers.

....playing clarinet

no.

In theaters, that's about right. But he makes them for about $15 mil each -- unheard of. And they have a better life on video, so studios let him do whatever he wants.

The Rest
Anything Else (2003) (written by)
Hollywood Ending (2002) (written by)
Small Time Crooks (2000) (written by)
Deconstructing Harry (1997) (written by)
Bullets Over Broadway (1994) (written by)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) (written by)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) (written by)
Radio Days (1987) (written by)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (written by)
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) (written by)
Stardust Memories (1980) (written by)

& The Unmentioned:

Annie Hall (1977)
Manhattan (1979)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Love and Death (1975)
Husbands and Wives (1992)

The next five:

Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Sleeper (1973)
Stardust Memories (1980)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Five more:

Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Radio Days (1987)
Bananas (1971)
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Another Woman (1988)

Particularly like Husbands and Wives as well.

aw, i loved that one...

i think woody's film-making is betraying the ageing process pretty evenly, swinging from successful moents of abject whimsy ('everyone says i love you', 'sweet and lowdown', 'manhattan murder mystery') and some of his bleakest material ('celebrity', 'husbands & wives', 'deconstructing harry') - bleak, in that they present characters with *no redeeming factors, something he was working with towards in 'crimes & misdemeanours' - films about the essential injustices, the hopeless. woody in 'husbands & wives' is the one frozen out in all the relationship swapping, a hopeless case. 'celebrity' is about the branagh's character's essential hopelessness, his irredeemability, his refusal to learn the bitter lessons of his experience - the eternal and sorrowful fool. i find the bitter movies hard to swallow, but they seem very truthful. and the whimsy is all the sweeter. previous allen movies had weak and unlikeable characters at their centre, but now those dark characters are likely to lack vulnerability or regret, also.

Manhattan Murder Mystery
Husbands And Wives
Bananas
Sleeper
Annie Hall

you write this as though it were an incontrovertible fact and not itself a matter of taste.

Woody Allen is just one of those "love him" or "indifferent to him" filmmakers. I consider myself in the former category, but it's easy to see how he could be unappealing to some people. I've found that I've been able to convert Allen hatas by showing them films that Allen himself doesn't actually appear in. A lot of people are just put off by him, or the "Woody Allen" character, as he's not anything like the neurotic, whiny extrovert he plays in his films.

Probably his greatest misfortune as a filmmaker has been the fact that he so often writes, produces, casts and directs his films. When he's mediocre there's nobody to blame but himself. Hundreds of mediocre or worse films are made each year, but they are made by a gaggle of people and its hard to put your finger on the culprits to blame for those failures. Not so, Mr. Allen. He can't slink away anonymously or affix the blame on someone else. When he stinks, he stinks and it is obvious.

His second greatest misfortune was self-inflicted, too, but much, much more personal. I am not more moral than he is, but his actions verged on moral brain death, so it's hard not to feel he brought it on his own head and should have known better.

Oddly enough I've just finished off the collected prose this morning

Yeah, it's been on my beside table for the last week as well. I thought that's what Scott meant by "but he has had an almost entirely new career divorced from what people consider his great stuff". I mean, he makes some nice films and all, but he's not going to beat Death Knocks, or his stand-up album.

Similar thing crossed my mind over the week long Robert Crumb retrospective in the Guardian; you get used to the idea these geezers will be around forever, but . .

In theaters, that's about right. But he makes them for about $15 mil each -- unheard of. And they have a better life on video, so studios let him do whatever he wants.

This may be coming to an end soon. Woody Allen's next film (already finished shooting) is called Match Point and was shot entirely in London with English financing. The budget on the movie was so low that they couldn't afford to license music. The film ended up being scored with some cheaply acquired, newly recorded opera music.

btw Love & Death, which along with Sleeper is the best of the "early funny ones," is totally a primo Bob Hope movie filtered thru Russian novels. (cf Monsieur Beaucaire)

The thing that makes Allen seem older is he has always championed the pre-rock culture of his childhood and youth: Dixieland, Marx Bros, Gershwin, George S Kaufman, etc.

Ah yes. Events pre-Paul McCartney.

And the thing that makes him seem younger, I suppose, are the woman he surrounds himself with.