woody allen

Eh, there's a charming moment or two, but for the most part it struck me as boilerplate at best.

how is it boilerplate?? its a musical!!

Yeah, ghosts doing a song'n'dance number to 'enjoy yourself' in an undertaker's is pretty far from boilerplate to me!

That's the problem: Woody seemed to think just doing a musical -- regardless of quality or intent -- would somehow force himself out of his cliches. It didn't.

I mean, Albert Brooks?! What is he even doing in the discussion?

bcz Lost in America is one of the great comedies of the last 30 years?

one hot film every 30 year average

as opposed to Woody's average of six cold films for every lukewarm one

i hope ppl make fun of you guys when you are really old Jews.

Modern Romance is great you fucking savages

and if you're gonna mention bad Woody, mention Hollywood Ending which is an all-time piece of shit

It has some funny blindness gags. (yeah, i know) The last film was as bad as any i've seen.

still haven't forced myself to watch that one, looked too similar to Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

whatever works was also terrible -- larry david & evan rachel wood should be very ashamed of themselves for appearing in it.

vicky cristina barcelona was little more than an 70-something's dirty dream of directing softcore lesbian porn featuring Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz.

i.e. it was very good

bcz Lost in America is one of the great comedies of the last 30 years?

for a great comedy it's not very funny. i remember like modern love a lot, though.

whatever works, yes, that is an egregiously terrible film now i think of it.

liking modern love

Original poster:
http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/Modern-Romance-Poster.jpg

New poster for Blockbuster era:
http://www.movieposterdb.com/posters/09_10/1981/82764/l_82764_694d11b4.jpg

you mean this one?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OXNdGwoZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

lol

hahahahahaha

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0e/RealLifeposter.jpg

Love this movie

I think I own that shirt.

whatever works was actually the worst movie i have ever seen

lost in america is a total classic tho. "in that movie, santy claus came, and he fixed everything. we don't have santy claus."

there was macy's, gimbles -- but santy claus.

A bird lives in a round stick.

Woody Allen made at least a handful of films that are better than anything either Brooks ever did, and he can piss on celluloid and call it comedy for the rest of his life for all I care.

so I got a couple chuckles outta this, but relying on "Fox News" as a punchline... he's writing for elderly Democrats and ILXors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/opinion/sunday/hypochondria-an-inside-look.html

Gothamist grossed out by "hickey" riff.

every time I catch "Manhattan" it looks like Mariel Hemingway has gotten even younger than the last time I saw it. Some sick Dorian Gray black magic curse or something.

http://i.imgur.com/CPeahRf.gif
i made a gif

http://www.theonion.com/articles/woody-allen-extremely-busy-updating-woodyallencom,32352/

One of the things Allen is shrewdest about is money. His films typically cost about $18 million to make, which is next to nothing these days. Most of them go on to make a modest profit—if not in the United States, then when they're shown worldwide—and once in a while he has a hit on the order of Midnight in Paris. It's a fairly foolproof formula, even if it seems to have little appeal to the studios now, who would rather make bigger bets in hopes of bigger payouts. Allen's modest budgets enable him to retain total control of his films, something that's seldom granted to directors anymore, and to be flexible when it comes to probably his greatest strength as a director: casting memorable actors in memorable parts. "I'm not in the hit-flop business," he explained. "I make a film and if it's a big hit it's not going to do anything special for me. If it's a disaster it won't ruin anything, because I'll already be working on the next. The people who play the hit-flop game suffer a lot when they have the flops. I don't, but then I don't get the highs either."

..."You know in a mental institution they sometimes give a person some clay or some basket weaving?" he said. "It's the therapy of moviemaking that has been good in my life. If you don't work, it's unhealthy—for me, particularly unhealthy. I could sit here suffering from morbid introspection, ruing my mortality, being anxious. But it's very therapeutic to get up and think, Can I get this actor; does my third act work? All these solvable problems that are delightful puzzles, as opposed to the great puzzles of life that are unsolvable, or that have very bad solutions. So I get pleasure from doing this. It's my version of basket weaving."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323469804578523611076250442.html

i've always identified w/ that aspect of woody's worldview/personality.

Me too.

"there is no such thing as a really bad Woody Allen movie"

o rlly

kinda curious about the Great Recession angle on the new one, vs my better judgment.

looks like he's really nailed that down-and-out, working class, living-on-the-cheap feel of San Francisco in 2013

yeah, no one not rich lives anywhere in san francisco anymore

it looks a bit less farcical, more substantive, than his most recent films. whether this is a good thing, idk. the working class tuffs seem embarrassingly hackneyed and i am afraid that they are a bad omen.

yeah I agree it looks a little like he went with outdated, stock working class characters. Hoping maybe that's a deliberate choice?

Like does anyone even use phony as a noun anymore?

idk. in "to rome with love" he proved that he cannot write convincing dialogue for educated millenials. they were all obsessed with psychoanalytic buzzwords like "repression" and basically sounded like twentysomething intellectuals from the 70s and i don't think this was deliberate.

still, i am going to see this as soon as it comes out. i am loyal to the woody allen brand and unlike alfred and a few others on this board i did find midnight in paris enjoyable.

I don't care so much about generational veracity in his films -- he seems to have stopped finding out about "new stuff" in 1972 (earlier for music) -- but the reheated concepts and dialogue have been mostly deadly.

I would see this one. The plot/concept actually appeals to me. I like when he writes against Hollywood redemption cliches in human relationships (e.g. Crimes and Misdemeanors) and it seems like that's where this one is going.

when I saw the trailer I kinda figured "huh, so it's san francisco from the 70s"
of course I'll see it, cuz I wish I lived in sf in the 70s

"who will see this" roll call

I don't think there was Virgin Airlines in the 70s.

Watched Stardust Memories again the other night - I imagine it to be one of the more maligned movies of his classic era, but I still love it. It's a great mess.

it's still sf in the 70s
xpost