woody allen

the last one was shot digitally, i think? it's not like he had much of a choice, he doesn't do Nolan box office.

just googled it. looks like this is the first one to be shot digitally

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/woody-allen-digital-camera-movie-1201612893/

Lol at the philosophy class in irrational man. Every day a new philosopher is given the wikiquotes treatment.

I like joaquin phoenix in this, the beer belly and speech slurring and book about heidegger and fascism. Woody Allen movies could probably be written by a machine at this point.

"He's actually quite conservative, in a liberal way."

"I've never seen a de kooning in a private house"

"The truth was I was attracted to Abe despite, or was it because, he was a lost soul."

So much woody allen dialogue.

I noticed he directed it too.

"Despair is what Kierkegaard called the sickness unto death, Abe. And you suffer from despair."

It's just very mannered and shallow, even for him.

Last year, you seemed to regret embarking on a TV show. Do you still regret it?

It was much harder to do than I thought. I thought, "I'll sandwich this in between two films and knock it off. What's the big deal? It's tele­vision." But over the years, television has made enormous strides, and wonderful things are being done on television. And I found as soon as I started to get into the project, I couldn't bring myself to slough it off because this is not television of 50 years ago, where every silly thing was acceptable. You're working in a medium that has grown up and has got wonderful things being done in it, and, yes, you may prove to be an embarrassment, but you don't want to be a total embarrassment.

You don't watch those other great things on television? Mad Men, Breaking Bad?

I don't watch them. I'm not home. I don't have the incentive. I'm out having dinner with friends, and when I come home, I'm tired and I want to quickly see the last quarter of the Knick game or the last couple of innings of the Yankee game or the Mets game. I'm just not interested enough.

How about politics? Who are you supporting?

I'm a Hillary fan. I like Bernie very much. I think what he espouses is wonderful. But I think Hillary will get more done of what Bernie would like than Bernie could get done.

Have you met Hillary?

No. I've met Trump because he was in one of my movies, Celebrity. He's very affable, and I run into him at basketball games and at Lincoln Center. And he is always very nice and pleasant — [which is] hard to put together with many of the things he has said in his campaign.

I read that you once met Samuel Beckett.

I did. I chatted with him for five minutes at I think it was Les Deux Magots [a cafe in Paris]. I was there having coffee, and someone said: "Samuel Beckett is over there. Would you like to meet him?" And I said, "Sure," and I went over and we chatted for a little while. He was very nice. I was never a great Beckett fan. But I wanted to meet Jean-Paul Sartre. I wanted to do that, and someone connected with him said, "It can be arranged for a price."

You're joking!

No, no. I didn't follow up on that because the whole thing was too sinister for my psyche.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/woody-allen-interview-he-wont-889678

haha, hilarious stuff!

wish he'd write some dialogue along those lines

Was weirded out by the part of that interview where he justifies his relationship with Soon-Yi by essentially saying "I taught her about the world. She was eating out of garbage cans at seven years old".

Was weirded out by the part of that interview where he justifies his relationship with Soon-Yi by essentially saying "I taught her about the world. She was eating out of garbage cans at seven years old".

hard to be more haplessly in-character than this:

So the contributions I've made to her life have given me more pleasure than all my films.

You're saying how you changed her. How has she changed you?

(Allen pauses.) Well, she's given me a lot of pleasure.

nopetopus.gif x1000

Woody really has no clue, does he? From the Soon-Yi stuff to the Miley Cyrus "That kid's a STAH! Big Talent! " to no engagement with the modern world as we know it ... It's crazy.

probably for the best

"no engagement with the modern world as we know it" is increasingly defensible

lol yeah none of that is exactly out of character

Hahah. Woody Allen, Elaine May. And Miley Cyrus. Will still watch.

Will be disappointed if Miley and Woody don't get in some pansexuality zingers.

Interesting that he says he doesn't follow reviews, yet he buys into the media myth that Midnight in Paris is one of his best movies

Woody really has no clue, does he? From the Soon-Yi stuff to the Miley Cyrus "That kid's a STAH! Big Talent! " to no engagement with the modern world as we know it ... It's crazy.

― Acid Hose (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, May 9, 2016 1:39 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i support miley

Was weirded out by the part of that interview where he justifies his relationship with Soon-Yi by essentially saying "I taught her about the world. She was eating out of garbage cans at seven years old".

― Larry 'Leg' Smith (Tom D.), Monday, May 9, 2016 11:28 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that was gross. he also says he feels he influenced her a great deal but she didn't change him at all. damn dude

in his defense, he does admit to enjoying her vagina

At least he's being honest about something.

I didn't actually post that, in case anyone thinks I did. (xp)

Sorry should have credited captain jay vee

That interview gave me a hernia from cringing. What a colossally overrated and profoundly creepy schmuck. Was also reminded of this:

There's a very revealing statement from Allen in John Lahr's sycophantic profile in a recent New Yorker: "When I go for a walk, I get a topic to think about, I never just go out casually. If I get into an elevator and I'm gonna go up more than three flights, or something, I'll buy a newspaper. I can't stand the unstimulatedness, because the anxiety sets in very quickly." Of course if you take a look at the remarkable elevator sequence in Jerry Lewis's The Errand Boy it's immediately apparent that Lewis can't enter an elevator without becoming stimulated, and the same thing obviously applies to Albert Brooks when he walks through a grocery store or mall and to Jacques Tati when he simply walks down the street. But Woody Allen walking down the street desperately needs a topic to blot out whatever he might see or hear, and his practice as a filmmaker repeatedly proves it.

I'm like that too because I have ADD. Do you think it's a sign of a guilty conscience?

he also says he feels he influenced her a great deal but she didn't change him at all. damn dude

woody allen protagonists are constantly educating their girlfriends. annie learns who thomas mann is, and that she can sing, and about death (instead of cats). tracy is a kind of favorite student who is always being monologued at; juliette lewis in husbands+wives is literally that. anjelica huston in crimes+misdemeanors actually says "you'll have to teach me, i'm so ignorant" about schubert. (despite woody's misdirecting presence the woody character in crimes+misdemeanors is martin landau.) in all these movies he's much smarter about his cherishing of girlfriends' ignorance than he has become: tracy leaves; annie leaves and gets an obviously bad play written about her (which now plays exactly like late woody); anjelica huston is murdered to schubert. but in all these cases except huston i think we're also to understand that their lives have been enriched -- and compare them to more recent stuff like whatever works (a '70s script iirc, but meaningful that '70s woody and '00s woody came to different conclusions about it) in which the comically ignorant girl is contractually bound to redeem the woody-surrogate (with love) as he has redeemed her (with knowledge).

anyway then he married soon-yi and in return for a lot of pleasure turned her into a rich and sophisticated woman who's "visited all the great capitals of europe," the same ones he makes into perfunctory and hermetic postcard-movies. tracy could escape early-woody, nailed to nyc, by bailing for london, but late-woody's a cosmopolitan, so soon-yi can only "visit." and the movies don't seem any longer to know why it's gross or that it's gross.

good analysis. i was once a fan of woody allen because i fetishized neurotic new yorkers who peppered their conversations with references to kierkegaard and nietzsche. but now that i am one of those people i can hardly imagine watching one of his movies on purpose, even the classic ones.

One of the reasons why I love H&W is how it's obvious Rain is twirling Gabe around her finger. Allen doesn't even dignify Gabe's rejection of her.

but now that i am one of those people i can hardly imagine watching one of his movies on purpose, even the classic ones.

for me becoming un-sixteen and ceasing to look on woody allen as a spirit animal weirdly enabled a rediscovery of the classic ones, which i'd worn out, via a new and grisly lens

i.e. i haven't seen everybody says i love you since high school but that rosenbaum pice tarfumes linked just made me rly want to:

This creepy movie has got to be the best argument against becoming a millionaire I've ever seen, which makes it an interesting document about what part of the ruling class thinks about itself and the rest of us, but a far cry from the light souffle it was clearly intended to be. Like the separate episodes of Four Rooms, it unwittingly reveals so many dark and ugly facets of the filmmaker's cloistered mind that one emerges from it as if from a crypt. This isn't only a consequence of the fear and loathing with which Allen regards the poor, the elderly, the sick, the incarcerated, and the nonwhite in our society, or of how he feels about the ethics of privacy, or of what he assumes about the lives and attitudes of his rich Upper East Side neighbors. In this characterless world of Manhattan-Venice-Paris, where love consists only of self-validation and political convictions of any kind are attributable either to hypocrisy or to a brain condition, the me-first nihilism of Allen's worldview is finally given full exposure--and it's a grisly sight to behold. Yet when he's merely recalling the personal lift afforded by Hollywood musicals--especially in standards sung or danced by him, Edward Norton, and Goldie Hawn--he's wearing his heart on his sleeve as never before. In other words, in this movie the narcissistic self-glorification and self-pity that musicals specialize in are the only emotions, apart from fear and disgust, that seem authentic.

and compare them to more recent stuff like whatever works (a '70s script iirc, but meaningful that '70s woody and '00s woody came to different conclusions about it) in which the comically ignorant girl is contractually bound to redeem the woody-surrogate (with love) as he has redeemed her (with knowledge).

Whatever Works is a very bad film, but iirc correctly it ends pretty much like the earlier Woody films you mention, with Evan Rachel Wood leaving Larry David? the "he changes her but she doesn't change him" thing plays out in such a way that the knowledge and wisdom that Larry David imparts allows Evan Rachel Wood to realise that he is a misanthropic, dysfunctional jerk (who is incapable of developing or becoming anything else), and actually stop loving him (which she did when she was a naif) and leave him for someone better?

oh i'm misremembering it then. was thinking of this scene shakey quotes upthread but now yeah i see there is a "randy"--

Finally, Boris hosts a New Year's Eve party, at which everyone is seen in their new relationships: Marietta with Leo and Morgenstern, John with Howard, Melodie with Randy, and finally Boris with Helena. Melodie and her parents had, each one separately, completely shed their former southern conservative mindsets and wholeheartedly adopted the liberal New York way of life and values. (John tells that his former membership in the National Rifle Association had been but a sublimation of his repressed homosexuality). They are now all the best of friends, and at midnight heralding a new year they kiss and Boris tells the audience that you just have to find all the enjoyment that you can, that you have to find "whatever works."

--still tho i mean, the tone here is not the tone of the end of manhattan.

ha I'd forgotten that he ends up with Patricia Clarkson after Evan Rachel Wood dumps him.
the relationship between Evan Rachel Wood and Larry David's characters in Whatever Works is so bizarre and unconvincing, even by the standards of late period Woodly Allen, - I remember reading an interview with David at the time the film came out where he was talking about being anxious that his scenes with Wood not come across as pervy or creepy, so it's all curiously asexual

i should probably watch that movie again because the only thing i really remember about it is that it seemed disgusting, and crystallized for me some thoughts about woody (more so for being in a sense both an early and a late one)

jeez you ppl why would you watch WW, i never have

i'm no particular fan of E1SILY, but think J.Rosenbaum kinda needs a brain enema.

Woody really has no clue, does he? From the Soon-Yi stuff to the Miley Cyrus "That kid's a STAH! Big Talent! " to no engagement with the modern world as we know it ... It's crazy.

― Acid Hose (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, May 9, 2016 1:39 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i support miley

― Treeship, Monday, May 9, 2016 8:37 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what he says about miley rings true honestly; as hannah montana she was an obvious pro. and i can see woody allen being disconnected enough to not have followed along w Edgy Miley like everyone else. though idk of course; i suppose "precocity" can't not be involved. a weird and blandly malign guy.

oh heavens, he didn't follow Edgy Miley like everyone else... i think he has competition in the delusion decathlon.

at least when he talks about Clinton and Sanders he sounds like the guy from the Mt Goats.

I think he was Woody's model.

i myself have forgotten le Histoire du Edgy Miley, thank God my citizenship isn't up for renewal.

i think he has competition in the delusion decathlon.

this will have to do until i can get rex reed to insult me

One in a row!

http://www.notesontheroad.com/images/stories/yings_links/Today_In/JerryLewis/JerryLewis1.jpg

lol there is a lot of woody hating on this board

I prefer his earlier funnier relationships.

It just shows what you can achieve when you're a total psychotic!

I see Ronan is now comparing his "dad" to Bill Cosby

it's pretty striking how obvious the frank sinatra paternity is at this point.