woody allen

I mean he's Hiller now.

... changing the name to Arthur was wise too.

Cate Blanchett taking "computer classes" in Blue Jasmine?

lol @ this

I recall thinking Vicky Christina Barcelona was good but after midnight in paris I just 100% ignore when he puts out a movie now

Mr. Hilter

THE CHARACTER WOULD SAY "COMPUTER CLASSES" JUST LIKE WOODY

The contrast btwn the lush look/sound of Manhattan and the characters' baseness seems like an obviously intentional irony.

I'll take that as criticism.

I enjoyed "Midnight in Paris". His last decent one since "Sweet & Lowdown"

he hasn't been anywhere as formally interesting as

okay, but that's only one of the 10 interestings

one-note perfs by everyone except Hemingway and (in bits) Keaton

well this just leaves woody allen and michael murphy, unless you're talking about dennis the genius, or bella abzug

oh i'd forgotten streep was in it. more like one-scene perfs

i think it's pretty sharply etched and the ppl are inherently one-note; don't forget Marshall Brickman cowrote it.

The scene between Murphy and Allen in the classroom epitomizes how crabbed this thing is: Murphy hurls psychobabble at Woody, Woody responds with curdled one liner. Get new material, guys.

i think woody allen would probably be the first to agree that he’s not much of a visual stylist.

to the extent that some of his films have style, i think we can credit it largely to the great cinematographers he works with. his partnership with gordon willis is probably the best example. in fact i think woody allowed willis to go even farther in the direction of the moody static long shot than other directors were prepared to go. (too far, IMO, see e.g. Interiors).

maybe that’s just b/c woody is kind of laissez-faire about such stuff. certainly these days he seems to be 'barely there' as a director, allowinhg his actors to do whatever they feel like doing. which sometimes works out, often does not.

i mean style in a narrow sense-- visual style. obviously there's a comic style to allen's films that's nobody's but his. and i guess allen does seem to really like walk 'n' talks. and he has always liked slightly longer takes than has been fashionable for the past few decades. but i've noticed that his films in the past 10 years look increasingly conventional in their staging/cutting. again, i get the sense he's just leaving a lot of that stuff to his cinematographers and editors, not imposing a strong will on how the films are made.

I wouldn't rank him with Welles or Ford or Chaplin, he's not a titan of American cinema but he's good enough to qualify as "great" imo (which is a p long list imo)

agree w amateurist that whatever visual "style" his films have is not really a result of his direction or input

yeah he never rehearses with his actors and i think he doesn't really direct them either. not quite sure what he's bringin to the table director-wise. tbrr.

brand name and shitty scripts

casting

old records

oscar nominations

allen has definite brand/ethos at this point, if you're buying into it.

it's amazing how humorless he seems in interviews over the past 20 years.

he claims he's too old to cover up his real opinions with comedy these days

It's an NYC thing - see also Paul Simon.

Woody's next 50

https://twitter.com/timheidecker/status/745053520013975554

If he'd retired in the early 2000s when he was at his critical nadir and would've been mourned less profoundly. Funny how after Match Point, Vicki Christina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris, and Blue Jasmine his new bad movies are forgiven.

there are so many of them, who can keep track

all those I named run from eh to terrible

no argument there

are those the best movies he's made since his 'comeback'? i was able to get some enjoyment out of midnight in paris and vicki christina barcelona but purely in the most superficial way - hot babes in two of the most beautiful cities in the world - the movies were fairly terrible. i don't think i've seen any of the others. i think the last one that actually laugh (as opposed to just mutter 'heh' once or twice) was small time crooks and that was purely cuz of elaine may. it's kind of surprising cuz even though i don't think he was ever a great filmmaker his 90s wasn't a particular falloff, if someone said they preferred it to his 80s i wouldn't think they're crazy. when this kind of falloff w/ artists happens alot of times it's due to them finally exhausting some reservoir of material they had filled years before (to an extent i've kind of wondered if this happened w/ prince after i found out how much of the material on graffiti bridge, his last pre-jughead album, dated to years earlier). it could also just be due to old age, onset of dementia meaning he loses a certain sharpness. maybe a loss of certain collaborators too? this was a factor in hitchcock's decline and seems to be an obvious explanation for what has happened to tarantino.

The new one is a nothing.

And, let us note, several of his all time box office champs have been released in the last decade.

like, 1992-2005 was a long drought compared to how well he's done

it's kind of amazing considering how often some of his movies barely get theatrical releases now. he does serve an under served market though, generally if you're of the age where the idea of going to a movie based on a comic book or that's a remake of some thing you were too old to be interested in the first time around is patently absurd then he's yr guy. this was true to an extent during the 90s also (will never forget the old ladies walking out of the showing of deconstructing harry i went to after one too many cunts) but he had more competition, now really his only competition are those movies where helen mirren or maggie smith engage w/ the service industry some place where it's sunny.

re box office, meh, inflation

ppl have said for years he films his first drafts now (or dusts off a decades-old script like the Larry David one)

e box office, meh, inflation

the inflation's only noticeable with MIP. Compare their budges w/their American and European returns and you can see he's making at worst a modest profit.

His output has always been uneven; it's inevitable when you make a movie a year. I kinda like the gamble aspect of seeing a Woody Allen movie. There's a comfort to seeing them, because ~60% of them are perfectly fine and pleasant to watch, but there's still that added thrill because there's a a 10% chance you'll see something truly great and surprising (and also a 30% chance you'll see something pretty awful).

That's more math than my brain likes to do during and after a Woody Allen film.

I've always heard that Woody Allen films on a very small budget, and most of the actors that work with him do so at a greatly reduced fee, just for the prestige of working with him. It's easy to believe he's making a profit, because tickets cost more, and his fan base hasn't really gotten smaller. Older maybe, but not smaller -- and I feel like a lot of younger people are still discovering him, and watching his movies. (At least the ones who aren't posting about how he's a pedophile on the internet)

At some point, probably years after he dies, his movies are going to get a reappraisal, and I wouldn't be surprised to see several of the late works held up as minor classics (if only due to the odds per above). The last one I saw that I can really get behind was Sweet & Lowdown, and before that Deconstructing Harry, and before that Husbands & Wives. The most recent one I actually saw was the Larry David one, and it wasn't good.

Having seen everything through Melinda and Melinda (and never any further, for reasons I couldn't explain), they were all at least watchable with the exception of maybe Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (which was boring) and September (which I don't remember a thing about).

Totally agree about Sweet & Lowdown. Probably in my top five.

Having seen everything through Melinda and Melinda (and never any further, for reasons I couldn't explain

Melinda and Melinda was truly awful, which could explain it. That and the Jason Biggs one were the absolute nadir.

Jason Biggs one is so painfully shitty. Tarantino loved it lol

I honestly don't remember a whole lot about that one, either. Wasn't it called Christina Ricci Wears That One Thing In That One Scene So Who Even Cares About The Rest Of The Film? Something like that?

That's it.

Sweet & Lowdown was another old script fwiw

...and it's kinda-sorta 'inspired' by La strada.

what does she wear? just tell me so I don't have to watch the film

Seems like she spends alotta time in just panties and a camisole arguing w/Jason Biggs about one thing or another.

...or maybe it was a tanktop.