woody allen

whatever works is pretty funny. criticisms of it sorta lay in its lack of depth iirc. i know it's a seventies script etc etc etc but it's all his.

my criticism of it was that I didn't laugh. in fact, I fell asleep about halfway through iirc

it was one of those things that looked great on paper and then in execution was just argggh why

I have skipped a whole bunch of '00s Woody, incl Larry David and some of the ScarJos

the new one is not bad, pretty black-hearted as usual

are there joeks

not a lot.

his "cynicism" is so facile though

Last one I love is Sweet & Lowdown

Alfred, I believe he calls it "realism"

which in his rendering is really just sentimentality.

meh, sometimes.

his "cynicism" is so facile though

otmfm. His cynicism used to resonate, or at least raise more questions than it squelched. He was facile (this is another great word with opposite meanings) with romantic futility. Now at best it's Bergman without the courage of its own premise, and at worst it tries to be funny and painfully fails.

Poor bastard. At some point everyone's best work is behind them, and you never know when that's going to be.

at this point life is behind him.

that's not fair -- life as he saw it was always behind him. He used to better at it, though.

"If I was speaking to the people who are protesting legitimately, I would try to convince them, if I could, that building the mosque takes a step toward eliminating this kind of thing from happening again. Preventing the mosque from being built is not a step in the right direction."

DiGiacomo asked Allen asked Allen if he has a bucket list of things he'd like to do before he dies. "Yes, and one of them is [to] live longer," the director responded. "That's at the head of the list."

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/09/earned_opinion.php

75th today for the altecocker

still only 75 wow, that means another 50 films before going out Manoel de Oliveira style.

really weird to me that he's "only" 75, he seems like he's in his 90s... I mean wasnt he writing for tv in the 50s? jesus...

i thought vicky christina barcelona was great - mainly because of penelope cruz (who i definitely didn't expect to like that much)

I mean wasnt he writing for tv in the 50s?

When he was about 19.

i thought vicky christina barcelona was great - mainly because of penelope cruz (who i definitely didn't expect to like that much)

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 8:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

]and rebecca hall yall

here's two woody allen bday links:

great 1985-circa interview with michiko kakutani:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1550/the-art-of-humor-no-1-woody-allen

amazing overview of his pre-movie career (tv writing, standup etc):

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/02/the-early-woody-allen-.html

<3 HB

I say this with no false modesty—that I feel I have done no really significant work, whatsoever, in any medium. I feel that unequivocally. I feel that what I have done so far in my life is sort of the ballast that is waiting to be uplifted by two or three really fine works that may hopefully come. We’ve been sitting and talking about Faulkner, say, and Updike and Bergman—I mean, I obviously can’t talk about myself in the same way at all. I feel that what I’ve done so far is the . . . the bed of lettuce the hamburger must rest on. I feel that if I could do, in the rest of my life, two or three really fine works—perhaps make a terrific film or write a fine play or something—then everything prior to that point would be interesting as developmental works. I feel that’s the status of my works—they’re a setting waiting for a jewel. But there’s no jewel there at the moment.

I dunno if I buy that as "sincere" but I love the desire to keep going.

nah, rephrase, if he means that then I think he's barking up an imaginary tree that sucks

He's pretty much always said this. He used to sit around with Sid Caesar going "If I could just write you one decent skit, I would be happy".

He's whined like this for years. However, classic lol: "I feel that what I’ve done so far is the . . . the bed of lettuce the hamburger must rest on."

The college dropout intellectual in him is never going to be satisfied that he's made more good films than, say, the Marx Brothers did. (or Chaplin, at least when it comes to features)

yeah but it's a (false) fanboy point of view. It's great if it works as a motor for him but it doesn't mean anything beyond that.

what is it supposed to "mean"? it's just the way he thinks.

Happy Birthday! Let's hope he has a Fanny & Alexander in him..

tons of Mubi links, incl audio analysis from Judd Apatow :o

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2593

a jewish american writer-director of relationship comedies, talking about his fondness for woody allen?

:o indeed

yeah, w/ the aspirations to high culture flipped.

I had such bad stomach flu today it reminded me of watching Knocked Up

I say this with no false modesty—that I feel I have done no really significant work, whatsoever, in any medium. I feel that unequivocally. I feel that what I have done so far in my life is sort of the ballast that is waiting to be uplifted by two or three really fine works that may hopefully come. We’ve been sitting and talking about Faulkner, say, and Updike and Bergman—I mean, I obviously can’t talk about myself in the same way at all. I feel that what I’ve done so far is the . . . the bed of lettuce the hamburger must rest on. I feel that if I could do, in the rest of my life, two or three really fine works—perhaps make a terrific film or write a fine play or something—then everything prior to that point would be interesting as developmental works. I feel that’s the status of my works—they’re a setting waiting for a jewel. But there’s no jewel there at the moment.

― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 7:18 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

is this from the paris review interview? crazy. you know groucho marx said of allen that allen was better than the marx brothers. what other american comedian of the last fifty years could make films that are respected by jean luc godard? he's just a genius, there's no other comedian like that really.

he was good quite a long time ago

which is fine, most artists go off the boil, but they usually disappear and don't get to be continually indulged and work with the best actors etc

Maybe 20 years of quite tremendous work, plus the same again of perfectly decent work, it's not a bad run.

He's so very erratic now. I thought VCB was mostly great, and I found Whatever Works to be mostly so offensively dreadful.

I'd still see his next movie though.

I'm showing something to my class this morning (couldn't get to it yesterday). I usually show the universe-is-expanding scene from Annie Hall, which kills me, but 12-year-olds just don't get it. So instead I found the Gershwin opening to Manhattan on YouTube--not particularly funny, but it looks and sounds great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaj2P-dSi8

it's pretty funny

Yeah...Manhattan had such a huge effect on me when I saw it in '79 as an 18-year-old. My opinion of it has changed drastically over time--I find parts of it unwatchable now. My biggest problem is this yin and yang (which shows up in the opening monologue) between a) wanting to be a blow against pretension of all variety, and b) being very pretentious itself. But that's just me; I know that a lot people continue to count it among their favourite films ever.

see i love that anxiety

The blow-against-pretension half does produce one joke I always love: the merger between Commentary and Dissent.

"comsent"

"baseball bats work with Nazis"