woody allen

Soon-Yi Previn was the adopted daughter of Farrow and her former husband, composer André Previn. Soon-Yi, who was born in Korea, was a child when her mother abandoned her by leaving her on a street in the slums of Seoul. Farrow and Previn adopted her in 1978, when a bone scan determined she was between 5 and 7 years old.[141][142]

woody allen began dating mia farrow in 1980, which means that soon yi was between 7 and 9 years old at the time.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/03/showbiz/gallery/allen-farrow-family-tree/

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/140203115133-restricted-05-allen-farrow-horizontal-large-gallery.jpg

treezy that makes it even more disgusting

it's really grotesque.

like beyond the fact that he knew her as a child, it is still fucked up to have an affiar with your girlfriend's daughter even if she is an adult. if i had a friend who was dating a 40 year old with a 20 year old daughter, and that friend began secretly seeing that 20 year old daughter, i would tell my friend he was behaving like a scumbag by wantonly destroying a parent-child relationship. so beyond the disgusting factor of it all, it was just beyond immoral.

frederik was right that i sometimes tend too far in the "judge not lest ye be judged" direction, but in this case i am pretty comfortable condemning woody allen. personally, i still see his movies bc they are mildly enjoyable cinematic junk food but i don't know if i can defend that decision morally. this is not even taking into account dylan's allegations.

frederik was right that i sometimes tend too far in the "judge not lest ye be judged" direction

(I think you're fine fwiw.)

America happy to be entertained by murderers, child abusers, wifebeaters, racists etc. why would they stop now

lol Alfred, I did actually sweat the wording of that a little

xp

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 24, 2014 4:25 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yeah none of that is exactly out of character

― Οὖτις, Monday, May 9, 2016 1:12 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poll: any of you reading the James Brown wifebeating book?

lol exactly

on the scale of great-artist-does-terrible-things, which goes from, say, convicted murderer on one end to unsubstantiated accusation on the other, Allen's much closer to the latter camp imo

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 3:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he fucked up her life if anything. she was totally cut off from her siblings and mother at the age of -- what? 20? -- and now is stuck with an elderly condescending narcissist for a husband.

lol now who's being patronizing

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 6:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for Allen to enter into this relationship, instigator or not, lol, was morally unconscionable by any reasonable standard

agreed

― Οὖτις, Thursday, May 12, 2016 12:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha you may be right I might have that backwards lol

― Οὖτις, Thursday, May 12, 2016 1:12 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh snaps

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, May 11, 2016 6:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

child brides really bring the lolz for u shakey! v droll situation all around XD!

she's not his child bride

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdlmgoFJQJ1qcoaf4o1_500.jpg

it will never be over, sadly

i've always read the record-store reunion in hannah as implying that dianne wiest has renounced the evils of punk for the '40s pop that is, as always, the only music, but i suppose the sections could just be close together.

i suddenly remembered the obvious tho backgrounded example of the ur-woodylationship in this movie: max von sydow/barbara hershey. she leaves of course but she also delivers the usual reassurances about how much he's given her. btw i can prob still do mvs' long nihilistic monologue ("you missed a very dull t.v. program about auschwitz") verbatim so part of my sensitivity to this stuff is prob about being harsh on some version of myself.

i really don't mind at all if every thread on the site undergoes treeship's autodialectic but then i also think "racists" is an incomplete explanation of trumpism so i may be another sniveling apologist.

If he'd meet Soon-Yi on OKCupid when she was 28 and she'd never been Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, it doesn't change the fact that he's writing and directing dogshit movies.

list at the end of manhattan is kind of a prototype okc profile

as I"ve learned

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VTneZM0iFxQ/Uoqt_7IZaNI/AAAAAAAAIuM/bBUfemdau3U/s640/tumblr_mai3boHVco1qcga5ro1_500.gif

If he'd meet Soon-Yi on OKCupid when she was 28 and she'd never been Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, it doesn't change the fact that he's writing and directing dogshit movies.

This x1000. I clicked on an essay yesterday that started with the sentence "I believe Woody Allen is one of the great American filmmakers." and said to myself, "OK, we're all done here." Close tab.

he is one of the great American filmmakers

and he hasn't made a decent film in 15 years

that he still has some inexplicable audience to fawn over him in his dotage is weird and gross

allen is one of the great american humorists, no way he's one of the great filmmakers imo

i'd call Annie Hall, Zelig and maaaybe Sleeper great comedies.

He got better at directing for much of the '80s, but the last 20 years the scripts have been mostly recycled or just bad.

I agree w that, altho I think Purple Rose of Cairo and Manhattan are way up there with those three

I expect Alfred to chime in w Husbands and Wives but I don't like that one much

"Humorist" is what they call comedians who aren't actually funny.

is that from personal experience or

the funniest one to me is love and death. zelig always feels unbelievably long for 81 minutes or whatever it is but i do sometimes enjoy contemplating its joke. i think his new yorker pieces have always been bad, even the klugelmass episode.

list at the end of manhattan is kind of a prototype okc profile

― le Histoire du Edgy Miley (difficult listening hour), Thursday, May 12, 2016 2:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmaoooooo

his old stuff is very funny and he's made at least a couple great films, but imo it's a stretch to rank him w/ welles, chaplin, keaton, ford, et al

he's always denied anything but competence at best in cinematic chops

...giving credit to Ralph Rosenblum, Gordon Willis etc

as compensation for his wizardly sexual technique

he hasn't made a decent film in 15 years

Match Point is remarkable

remarkably stilted

oh here we go

which is funnier:

Extreme close up of ball hitting net in Match Point?

Cate Blanchett taking "computer classes" in Blue Jasmine?

his old stuff is very funny and he's made at least a couple great films, but imo it's a stretch to rank him w/ welles, chaplin, keaton, ford, et al

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, May 12, 2016 10:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true. if i had to pick a great film by him it would only be annie hall

but i wouldn't rewatch any of them

He got better at directing for much of the '80s ... he's always denied anything but competence at best in cinematic chops

i like that thing he started doing in the 80s (actually first instance is prob during the "that's a healthy piece of towel paper" scene in manhattan) where everyone would leave the frame but the camera would remain static, and you'd just stare at a wall for a while while people psychoanalyzed themselves offscreen, and eventually they'd come back. a vaguely godardian flourish. very cinema. he still does it. last time i saw it i heckled the screen, but i do like it.

the ones i used to think were great, at least, were annie hall and crimes and misdemeanors, but haven't rewatched either in a long time. annie hall seems like it would hold up well.

otm, love that lil trick

oddly I noticed they did this exact schtick in an episode of "Cheers" I was watching from '83.

xp

Annie Hall holds up very well, it's expertly paced/edited

just watch louie, y'all, you get all the NYC love letter shit and neuroses with more jokes and no qualms about whether or not the artist did something sexually heino- oh, shit.

annie hall is a great movie. crimes and misdemeanors is what spock would call fascinating.

which is funnier:

Extreme close up of ball hitting net in Match Point?

Cate Blanchett taking "computer classes" in Blue Jasmine?

Not sure what the angle is on this question, but I remember the theater I was in gasping/laughing when the ring hit the rail near the end of Match Point. There's definitely more entertainment value in that movie than anything he's done since.

not intentionally

i like that thing he started doing in the 80s (actually first instance is prob during the "that's a healthy piece of towel paper" scene in manhattan) where everyone would leave the frame but the camera would remain static, and you'd just stare at a wall for a while while people psychoanalyzed themselves offscreen, and eventually they'd come back. a vaguely godardian flourish. very cinema. he still does it. last time i saw it i heckled the screen, but i do like it.

― le Histoire du Edgy Miley (difficult listening hour),

I saw this first in Annie Hall and distrusted it -- too arch, too static, what a neophyte director thinks is suggestive or something. Form and content disconnect.

Annie Hall: that shot early in the picture of the Manhattan side street into which Alvy and Max enter discussing VAH-GNAH.

the formal gimmicks in annie hall (subtitles, splitscreen, snow white, mcluhan, passerby interviews, stoned ghost annie, fourth wall violations) are so terrific and natural you can understand why people talked about him a while like he was a Cinematic Voice. the movie feels really free; it keeps doing whatever will help it get itself across.

i can't remember where the staring-at-a-wall thing is in AH! feel like there might be something like it in annie's apartment but iirc the camera stays on keaton throughout her narcoleptic-uncle monologue (thank goodness). maybe we linger on the national review a moment in the spider scene. anyway of course it disconnects form and content.

xp oh right that. always thought they were in that from the beginning, just invisibly distant, but maybe not. it's kind of a different thing because instead of the characters exiting/re-entering you're just disoriented for a long time from the start of the scene. find the annie hall shot anxiety-provoking and the other thing just kind of calmingly dull. also lol i ripped off the annie hall shot once in a noir parody so yeah it is def the kind of thing a n00b thinks is cool

(there's no reason for you to be disoriented in that scene, no.)

always thought they were in that from the beginning, just invisibly distant, but maybe not. it's kind of a different thing because instead of the characters exiting/re-entering you're just disoriented for a long time from the start of the scene.

yeah this is different. they are in the shot from the beginning.

to be fair everything about woody screams neophyte, though. even as a human being, he doesn't know what to do with his thoughts, limbs, and penis

I don't mind the other formal play in AH at all, and because it was the first Woody I watched it raised my expectations about subsequent work. But the Great Cinematographer holding those shots is an annoying tic to me. Part of what I dislike about Manhattan is how Willis, the B&W, Gershwin, etc aim for romance while the script and one-note perfs by everyone except Hemingway and (in bits) Keaton bring the sourness.