woody allen

oh, oh, you thought that when I called him a child molester I was referring to the fact that he married Soon-Yi! Sorry, I should have mentioned that he also molested a child.

glad we cleared that up

and I vote!

just ran the irrational man trailer (imagine the dogears these days on that 1975 copy of crime and punishment's cliff's notes) right after a trailer for a documentary on hiroshima; you can cut the bathos in here with a knife

Saw Irrational Man yesterday, it was fine - if you like Woody Allen I imagine you will like it. It's one of the Crime&Punishment plots, but the main character's arc is somewhat opposite Raskolnikov's which serves as variation. Joaquin Phoenix is good as disillusioned/cynical professor and Parker Posey was a pleasant surprise.

I saw it with a friend who's a programmer, after the film he asked me: "So how does all that philosophy and literature stuff hold up? 'Cause whenever I see depictions of coding in movies it's basically ridiculous". I told him I find it enjoyable even if it's all very superficial, and I think it works in Woody's movies.

If you're looking for nuanced conversation on Russian literature (or even just Dostojevski) or continental philosophy (or even just existentialism) you'll of course be disappointed - but I don't think Woody was ever very clever on those topics, and I don't think he's ever pretended to be, on the contrary I find his movies very unpretentious.

We were only five people in the theater, one was an old woman who after the movie struck up conversation - she was deeply moved by the ethical dilemmas and remembered having read C&P when she was young. I guess I was surprised anyone would take a movie like that so seriously, but we had a nice little conversation and I recommended she find a copy of Crimes & Misdemeanors.

I think Crimes & Misdemeanors is worth taking seriously, fwiw. I actually think that movie had a big effect on my thinking about a lot of things relating to my self-conception as a nice/good person.

Yeah, Allen does that. If you like even one of his films, you should probably reevaluate your niceness.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/woody-allen-might-have-fired-bruce-willis.html

man alive, I agree it's worth taking seriously, it made a pretty big impression on me the first time I saw it, but it's also miles from Irrational Man, which is - pardon the phrase - Woody "light".

But what makes C&D a good movie imo is not that it deals with a lot of clever theory, but that it's a good psychological drama with esp Landau and Huston delivering great performances

Can anyone recommend a Woody biography?

24 years old, but the last one i read

http://www.ericlax.net/books/woodyallen_bio.htm

cool, I'll check it out!

yeah, really enjoyed that - read it when I was a teenager, though it had the misfortune to be published at the exact moment that the soon-yi stuff surfaced iirc

I liked Marion Meade's 'The Unruly Life of Woody Allen', the focus is more on muckraking than analysis of his work, though it's not a total hatchet job.

there's an LRB article about the book here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n09/michael-wood/a-kind-of-slither

yeah my stomach couldnt take the unruly life

Meade makes no secret of the fact that she doesn't like the man, but the section on the split with Mia/Soon-Yi relationship/child abuse allegations was pretty diligently 'balanced', or that's how I remember it anyway. If anything she seems to dislike Mia Farrow even more, which maybe explains it.

this is excellent IMO; a Q+A type oral-history-and-chronological-interview-for-each-film deal, again more than a decade old

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Woody-Allen-Conversation-Stig-Bjorkman/dp/0571223176

this one has the longest interview with him about Manhattan i'd ever read. in light of him never doing Director's Commentary or same, i think it'll remain so.

looks very good! ordered it from the library

yeah, that woody allen on woody allen is a treat for fans

2 new ones reviewed

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/28/woody-allen-retrospective-film-by-film-tom-shone-jason-solomons-review

I guess because it's his 80th bday this year there will be a lot of media

80 today

a career overview (i disagree with the label for his current period)

http://brightlightsfilm.com/a-much-more-thoughtful-and-is-it-possible-more-mature-director-woody-allen-at-eighty/#.Vl3BI3arR9M

the relative critical and commercial success of his post-2000 output is baffling

old buildings and prostitutes etc

Unless that's the title of his next movie, I ain't queueing.

Blue Jasmine (2013) features brilliant performances from an outstanding cast.

this reads like a good essay for a college film class

i would've settled for 'features brilliant performances by Sally Hawkins and Andrew Dice Clay.'

possible finest standup moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SkZA0FKmAw

Starrying Miley & May:

http://deadline.com/2016/01/woody-allen-miley-cyrus-elaine-may-amazon-series-1201690130/

*starring

ugh

barf

can't wait

i had no idea Elaine was still open to acting offers

Casting Miley Cyrus almost reads like trolling. But my guess is it isn't intentional.

i suspect he doesn't really know who she is, kinda like me

also i don't give a fuck, that teen queen who was in Altman's final film seemed to work out OK

yeah, putting a hypersexualized childlike star (and former child star) is definitely a total accident, I'm sure.

she was just hanging around the studio lot

yeah Woody has a "studio lot."

forgot the lynch mob was so large

that was a joke, son

wait are you actually anticipating this Morbz? cuz iirc you're just as harsh (actually maybe moreso) on Woody's post-2000 output as I am. Like, what is promising about this.

i was also semi-joking, but i do love Elaine May (and she was funny in Small Time Crooks), so i'd be curious to see if she's "got it" at 83.

you know, Ms Cyrus is 23. Did you think WA is going to fill his entire cast with octogenarians? Ellen Page was about 23 when she did that horrendous Rome movie with him, but i guess that's ok bcz she is a non-"hypersexualized" lesbian.

I don't get people being upset with Woody over this. 23 is pretty old for him, so it's an improvement considering the average age between him and his ideal sex partner is 44.

actually it's 63

I wonder if you left a kid to cool on a windowsill, would Woody Allen pick up the scent and float in the air towards it like in an old Hanna Barbera cartoon? I think so.

D-

Eh, that grade really belongs to Robert Smigel.