woody allen

actually September was his first shit film, and it's a diamond compared to stuff like VCB

no one who likes showbiz can dislike Broadway Danny Rose

I thought Vicky Cristina Barcelona was almost great. Would have been a lot better if both stories were combined for the Vicky character imo.

― Matt Armstrong,

and if the voice-over wasn't of the "She walked into the room and sat down and drank wine" variety.

possibly his biggest piece of misogynist tripe

and if the voice-over wasn't of the "She walked into the room and sat down and drank wine" variety.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, July 26, 2014 2:38 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I could never figure out what he was thinking with that extremely obnoxious voiceover, but I thought it worked in a strange way. Very odd movie.

re: smug condescension in Whatever Works plot, maybe the irony doesn't translate well in a wiki summary but as I recall "John tells that his former membership in the National Rifle Association had been but a sublimation of his repressed homosexuality" was delivered with a lot of self-mockery - it's an outrageous caricature!

I don't get why anyone would dislike Blue Jasmine. It's a good story, well plotted and told, it's funny and sad, relevant too, all actors give great performances, it looks good. I can see why it wouldn't be your favorite movie, but I don't see why you'd bother hating it.

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

Agree that VCB would have been better without voice over, goes for almost every voice over in history imo

i haven't seen vcb since the theater but that voiceover was so spectacularly weird it's easily the most interesting thing in a woody allen movie since kenneth branagh made himself a living uncanny valley.

i have also only seen whatever works once but i'd literally never had such a bad reaction to a movie; iirc it's 90 minutes of a woody-infested larry david viciously insulting dumb girly hick evan rachel wood, who responds by calling him a genius over and over again until his arc concludes. (evidence for protag's genius even thinner here than usual: he knows the word "physics" but unless i have forgotten does not demonstrate knowledge of the premise of even one dostoevsky novel.) the upsetting part is how totally continuous its badness is with woody's prior goodness: he's spent decades reading cliff's notes to (increasingly) younger women in exchange for permission to feed on their adoring vivacity. (the scene in crimes and misdemeanors where he's pressing the coffee-table book about "old new york" on his little niece, holding it open in front of her, turning the pages for her, talking over her even tho the only thing the script is allowing her to say is "that's great uncle cliff", has the quality for me now of when tarantino cuts to someone's foot, only, you know, monstrous.) even the best woody actresses (keaton, davis, weist) are transcending, a little bit through writing but mostly through performance, misogynistic cliches as brittle psychobitches or tasteless bobbleheads. when he is (by is i mean was) at his best as a writer he does have the gallantry not to imagine a blissful future for his teacher-student relationships, and to recognize his own solipsism: no way tracy's coming back from london, and there will never be a more vicious or accurate parody of Late Woody than the play at the end of annie hall. but his characters these days are so desiccated that i don't think scarjo and evan rachel wood could unshrivel them even if they had judy davis' chops.

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

if your idea of a great female lede is a crazy talking to herself and slurping a vodka martini as if she learned it watching other movies. To be a Great Female Lede in a Woody Allen movie is to be insane.

Yup, there's stupid male fantasies in Woody's movies - but does that equal misogyny? Brittle psychobitches and tasteless bobbleheads are not the words I'd use to describe the two types of female leads in Woody movies, but I know what you mean. I didn't see it as an issue and don't they correspond well enough to the neurotic pseudo-intellectual (Woody) and the easy going jock friend (Tony Roberts)?

It's also sad that the intelligent characters don't get to engage in a lot of intellectually stimulating dialogue - but then again maybe the intellectual cliche was more of a 70s/80s thing in Woody's films? In BJ there's some pretty good dialogue imo, not because it's cool but because it's direct and deals with good questions without being to black/white on them:

Jasmine: Oh, for chrissake. What's wrong with your self-esteem? There's men who'd never think about ripping the phone out of the wall.
Ginger: Hey, leave him alone. You're always picking on him.
Jasmine: No, you choose losers, okay? Because that's what you think you deserve. That's why you're living like this and that's why you'll never have a better life.
Ginger: I'm- I'm living- I'm living like this because you married the biggest loser of all...and went your own sweet way... while he pissed away my one big chance to make a better life.
Chili: Come on, let's not ruin our celebration, okay?

Sure, it's a bit obvious but I think it works.

It's been too long since I saw WW for me to really comment on it, but I saw it several times and found it nice and funny, even a bit clever, and so did the different people I saw it with. I think the movie is pretty self-aware in its use of cliches, but could be wrong.

By that definition to be a great male lead in a Woody picture would also mean to be "insane", but I'm not sure that's a fair way of characterizing, say, Mia Farrow in Purple Rose.

Oh sorry, I guess you were only referring to Cate Blanchett in BJ. I thought her depiction of Jasmine was great - very loyal to a character that's not that likeable or sympathetic, she had me emotionally involved. Don't you think it's a good idea to write leads with mental disorders?

It's not a good idea for Woody Allen to write leads with mental disorders.

Okay, I guess you really didn't like it. I thought it seemed pretty honest, but maybe it's not a point that can be argued.

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)