Went on a bit of a binge of Woody over the 4 day weekend. Caught up on several more recent films I hadn't seen yet (Small Time Crooks, Anything Else, etc.) and went back to the well to see some of the classics. Anyone else a fan? And does Woody's nuerotic Jewish New Yorker translate well overseas?
No order:
Interiors
Bullets Over Broadway
Manhatten
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Sweet and Lowdown
Honorable:
Hannah and Her Sisters
Annie Hall
Broadway Danny Rose
Everyone Says I Love You
Small Time Crooks was great for about half of it, then lost the plot.
Top 5 Woody Allen
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Who Shot Sam?
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- Contact:
Manhattan
Sleeper
Love And Death
Crimes And Misdemeanors
Annie Hall
Others I've enjoyed:
Purple Rose Of Cairo
Sweet And Lowdown
Bananas
Mighty Aphrodite
Bullets Over Broadway
Hannah And Her Sisters
...and probably a bunch of others I've forgotten. I like most of the Wood Man's work.
A few that have been painful to watch:
September
Interiors
Everyone Says I Love You
Sleeper
Love And Death
Crimes And Misdemeanors
Annie Hall
Others I've enjoyed:
Purple Rose Of Cairo
Sweet And Lowdown
Bananas
Mighty Aphrodite
Bullets Over Broadway
Hannah And Her Sisters
...and probably a bunch of others I've forgotten. I like most of the Wood Man's work.
A few that have been painful to watch:
September
Interiors
Everyone Says I Love You
Mother, Moose-Hunter, Maverick
In no special order:
Zelig
Take The Money & Run
Purple Rose of Cairo
Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex
Radio Days
I love the schtick in 'Bananas' where Woody and the band of guerrillas are being instructed about sucking the poison out of a fallen comrade and in the next scene you see a beautiful, buxom female with her hand over one of her naked breast running through the bushes with the rest of the guerrillas chasing her.
Zelig
Take The Money & Run
Purple Rose of Cairo
Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex
Radio Days
I love the schtick in 'Bananas' where Woody and the band of guerrillas are being instructed about sucking the poison out of a fallen comrade and in the next scene you see a beautiful, buxom female with her hand over one of her naked breast running through the bushes with the rest of the guerrillas chasing her.
Last edited by ice nine on Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think that you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt
- M. Twain
- M. Twain
Manhattan (a pattern beginning to emerge!)
Broadway Danny Rose
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Annie Hall
Zelig
Honorable --
Sleeper
Bullets Over Broadway
Hannah and her Sisters
Take the Money and Run
Bananas
Broadway Danny Rose
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Annie Hall
Zelig
Honorable --
Sleeper
Bullets Over Broadway
Hannah and her Sisters
Take the Money and Run
Bananas
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
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Boy With A Problem
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Crimes and Misdemeanors
Love And Death
Take The Money And Run
Bananas
Sweet And Lowdown
and a shout out to Play It Again Sam - though not directed by Allen - it still counts as a Woody Allen film as it was adapted from his play.
Love And Death
Take The Money And Run
Bananas
Sweet And Lowdown
and a shout out to Play It Again Sam - though not directed by Allen - it still counts as a Woody Allen film as it was adapted from his play.
Everyone just needs to fuckin’ relax. Smoke more weed, the world is ending.
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Goody2Shoes
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Annie Hall
Manhattan
Take the Money and Run
Love and Death
Play it Again Sam
Can I go into a Woody rant here? Woody Allen is one of those artists for whom time has done a major disservice. Back in the 70s and early 80s, for me and my friends his every movie was a major event. We lined up around the block in NYC theaters to see his movies when they opened. His movies were funny and smart, and sophisticated. Annie Hall and Manhattan, in particular, were groundbreaking movies. And their version (or vision) of New York was our version. Woody may have been living in the Upper East Side and hanging out at Elaine's with the swells, but the New York of his movies seemed to be our New York.
That all changed for me starting with Hannah and Her Sisters (an otherwise terrific Woody movie). I remember telling friends that the dialogue in the movie seemed phony and wooden. People in the East Side and Soho (even the sophisticated people the movie centered on) did not talk like that. The movie's vision of Manhattan was also phony. Not one homeless person; everyone with huge apartments (and maids!! (in fact the only two black people in Hannah were the maid and one of Mia's adopted kids)); the Chrysler Building, Lincoln Center trotted out as exemplars of the beauty of the City (formulaic). And to top it all off, Bobby Short (RIP) presented as the preferable alternative to CBGS as far as music was concerned. I have nothing against lounge singers, but in the 80s in Manhattan the music that mattered was not being played at the Carlyle.
From that movie on, the New York City that Allen presented in his movies seemed to me to be an unrealistic, conservative, stilted version of our great City. Shot in black and white, with acceptable jazz as background, with no homeless people (this was the 80s), and with characters speaking dialogue right out of a Chekov short story, his movies for me became irrelevant and boring.
And then as we got to know more about his personal life than we wanted, some of the oddities which in the past didn't hit me, became more disturbing. In Manhattan, his dalliance with a high school girl didn't offend for some reason (it was the 70s and he was younger), but as the years passed and Woddy got older his teenage girlfriends never aged. Elizabeth Shue, Mira Sorvino, that girl with the tics whose name escapes me in Crimes, all make cameos as Lolita-like objects of the old man's affection. And they weren't there to show what a fool the character was; they were there to celebrate his attractiveness as an older male, and to contrast with the relentlessly bitchy "mature" females whose role in life was to torture the Woody character.
And once Mia steps out of the picture we get portrayals of mature women that are plain mysoginistic. I can't get the image out of my mind of that great comic actress Julia Louise Dreyfuss giving head to some Woody stand in at the beginning of one of his recent movies. Or Mira Sorvino (one of our smarter young actresses) playing some dumb hooker for Woody to put down (and fuck). To top it all off, the man has the ability to pull in every great actor in Hollywood and beyond to appear in his movies. So it's not just women who get debased: we get treated to Kenneth Branagh, John Cusack and now Will Ferrell doing embarrassing imitations of Woody on film.
Anyway, enough of the rant. I used to really like Woody; I don't anymore.
Manhattan
Take the Money and Run
Love and Death
Play it Again Sam
Can I go into a Woody rant here? Woody Allen is one of those artists for whom time has done a major disservice. Back in the 70s and early 80s, for me and my friends his every movie was a major event. We lined up around the block in NYC theaters to see his movies when they opened. His movies were funny and smart, and sophisticated. Annie Hall and Manhattan, in particular, were groundbreaking movies. And their version (or vision) of New York was our version. Woody may have been living in the Upper East Side and hanging out at Elaine's with the swells, but the New York of his movies seemed to be our New York.
That all changed for me starting with Hannah and Her Sisters (an otherwise terrific Woody movie). I remember telling friends that the dialogue in the movie seemed phony and wooden. People in the East Side and Soho (even the sophisticated people the movie centered on) did not talk like that. The movie's vision of Manhattan was also phony. Not one homeless person; everyone with huge apartments (and maids!! (in fact the only two black people in Hannah were the maid and one of Mia's adopted kids)); the Chrysler Building, Lincoln Center trotted out as exemplars of the beauty of the City (formulaic). And to top it all off, Bobby Short (RIP) presented as the preferable alternative to CBGS as far as music was concerned. I have nothing against lounge singers, but in the 80s in Manhattan the music that mattered was not being played at the Carlyle.
From that movie on, the New York City that Allen presented in his movies seemed to me to be an unrealistic, conservative, stilted version of our great City. Shot in black and white, with acceptable jazz as background, with no homeless people (this was the 80s), and with characters speaking dialogue right out of a Chekov short story, his movies for me became irrelevant and boring.
And then as we got to know more about his personal life than we wanted, some of the oddities which in the past didn't hit me, became more disturbing. In Manhattan, his dalliance with a high school girl didn't offend for some reason (it was the 70s and he was younger), but as the years passed and Woddy got older his teenage girlfriends never aged. Elizabeth Shue, Mira Sorvino, that girl with the tics whose name escapes me in Crimes, all make cameos as Lolita-like objects of the old man's affection. And they weren't there to show what a fool the character was; they were there to celebrate his attractiveness as an older male, and to contrast with the relentlessly bitchy "mature" females whose role in life was to torture the Woody character.
And once Mia steps out of the picture we get portrayals of mature women that are plain mysoginistic. I can't get the image out of my mind of that great comic actress Julia Louise Dreyfuss giving head to some Woody stand in at the beginning of one of his recent movies. Or Mira Sorvino (one of our smarter young actresses) playing some dumb hooker for Woody to put down (and fuck). To top it all off, the man has the ability to pull in every great actor in Hollywood and beyond to appear in his movies. So it's not just women who get debased: we get treated to Kenneth Branagh, John Cusack and now Will Ferrell doing embarrassing imitations of Woody on film.
Anyway, enough of the rant. I used to really like Woody; I don't anymore.
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ReadyToHearTheWorst
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Alexv makes some good points. Certainly Woody's later films in particular suffer from a certain airlessness. And, while I am loathe to throw around the overused "M" word, I can even see that, maybe.
On the other hand, I would defend him on the music charge. The guy simply hates all post-jazz popular music. Movies should reflect a filmmakers tastes and personality -- however wrongheaded.
(Tracey Ullman says she was astonished to find that Woody had never even really listened to a Beatles song when she did "Small Time Crooks." She says she tried to get him to listen in the Beatles and Elvis C., but he just wasn't interested. I could have told her it was pointless. The man is a rock hater!)
On the other hand, I would defend him on the music charge. The guy simply hates all post-jazz popular music. Movies should reflect a filmmakers tastes and personality -- however wrongheaded.
(Tracey Ullman says she was astonished to find that Woody had never even really listened to a Beatles song when she did "Small Time Crooks." She says she tried to get him to listen in the Beatles and Elvis C., but he just wasn't interested. I could have told her it was pointless. The man is a rock hater!)
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
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invisible Pole
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Manhattan
Hannah And Her Sisters
Annie Hall
Love And Death
Crimes And Misdemeanours
with Bananas, Zelig, Deconstructing Harry, and Sweet & Lowdown close behind.
In fact I'd say that in one way or another I enjoyed almost every film he's made.
Hannah And Her Sisters
Annie Hall
Love And Death
Crimes And Misdemeanours
with Bananas, Zelig, Deconstructing Harry, and Sweet & Lowdown close behind.
In fact I'd say that in one way or another I enjoyed almost every film he's made.
If you don't know what is wrong with me
Then you don't know what you've missed
Then you don't know what you've missed
Great comments everyone- this is why I love the board. Alex, thanks for the thoughtful posting. I know lots of folks who share your opinion. I have never lived in NYC, so the vision of the city thing was really interesting to read. I certainly know how I feel about the portrayal of Seattle and New Orleans in films and TV, so I think I understand.
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King Hoarse
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I love the scenes in Woody's film where he is confronted with rock 'n' roll. The scene in Annie Hall with Shelley Duvall and his "worst date ever" with Dianne Weist in Hannah And Her Sisters.bobster wrote: (Tracey Ullman says she was astonished to find that Woody had never even really listened to a Beatles song when she did "Small Time Crooks." She says she tried to get him to listen in the Beatles and Elvis C., but he just wasn't interested. I could have told her it was pointless. The man is a rock hater!)
This morning you've got time for a hot, home-cooked breakfast! Delicious and piping hot in only 3 microwave minutes.
Woody is a guy who definitely likes what he knows. The man's been using the same font on all his credits since "Sleeper" -- that's about 30 years and almost as many films (or more?)
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
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VonOfterdingen
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selfmademug
Alex V, I'm with you. Self-portrayal can be a huge source of legit art (look at Rembrandt) but when it becomes schtick, well, feh. I think he's brilliant but so increasingly self-serving as to diminish his own talents as time goes on.
The funny thing about BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, which I love, is that it portrays him (well, John Cusak playing him) as the utter schmuck he is, both as a person and as an artist (it'd make a fun double feature with BARTON FINK, another massive fave) and it gave me hope that his humility might allow some more interesting issues to take center stage. If he'd shut up or developed after that he'd have a dynamic career now; as it stands, I don't think so. Put a fork in him. His films still have their little perfect moments, but anything attempting to resemble ideas rings of hollow bombast.
As for his taste in music and his Upper East Side view of the world, he's simply a reactionary. I seem to recall that in the beginning of MANHATTAN he admits to this (I'm sure someone here can quote the opening narration from memory?) more or less saying that to him, Manhattan is a black and white city or something like that, just as Evelyn Waugh does in the beginning of BRIDESHEAD when he says that to him, Oxford will always be "a city of watercolor". In both cases they're admitting that their vision is a personal one, rooted in a mythological past. Such an admission can float narrowness of vision for one work, but over an entire career it starts to sink unless you're addressing a damn broad set of issues, which Waugh did but Woody does not. Boy, those two will have a fine time duking it out in heaven.
I think ANNIE HALL is something of a masterpiece- the characters, the dialogue, the structure, all of it is fantastic. MANHATTAN is gorgeous, just stunning visually, and what a soundtrack. A stylized ode to New York as Atget or Steiglitz would have shot it. And it has a lot of the same brilliance as ANNIE HALL. But it's also where he starts to get mannerist, you can see the seeds of selfish ridiculousness (Mariel Hemingway?!? Steel cables could not suspend my disbelief!).
Thank you for providing this topic so I could get all that reviewerly bullshit outta my system, and save me from posting about Terry S and the Pope!
The funny thing about BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, which I love, is that it portrays him (well, John Cusak playing him) as the utter schmuck he is, both as a person and as an artist (it'd make a fun double feature with BARTON FINK, another massive fave) and it gave me hope that his humility might allow some more interesting issues to take center stage. If he'd shut up or developed after that he'd have a dynamic career now; as it stands, I don't think so. Put a fork in him. His films still have their little perfect moments, but anything attempting to resemble ideas rings of hollow bombast.
As for his taste in music and his Upper East Side view of the world, he's simply a reactionary. I seem to recall that in the beginning of MANHATTAN he admits to this (I'm sure someone here can quote the opening narration from memory?) more or less saying that to him, Manhattan is a black and white city or something like that, just as Evelyn Waugh does in the beginning of BRIDESHEAD when he says that to him, Oxford will always be "a city of watercolor". In both cases they're admitting that their vision is a personal one, rooted in a mythological past. Such an admission can float narrowness of vision for one work, but over an entire career it starts to sink unless you're addressing a damn broad set of issues, which Waugh did but Woody does not. Boy, those two will have a fine time duking it out in heaven.
I think ANNIE HALL is something of a masterpiece- the characters, the dialogue, the structure, all of it is fantastic. MANHATTAN is gorgeous, just stunning visually, and what a soundtrack. A stylized ode to New York as Atget or Steiglitz would have shot it. And it has a lot of the same brilliance as ANNIE HALL. But it's also where he starts to get mannerist, you can see the seeds of selfish ridiculousness (Mariel Hemingway?!? Steel cables could not suspend my disbelief!).
Thank you for providing this topic so I could get all that reviewerly bullshit outta my system, and save me from posting about Terry S and the Pope!
Trenchant analysis, Ms. SMM....
Yes, but what Woody Allen were in a persistent vegetative state, and expected to die shortly as Fox News covers every step of the march toward death?
And what about the Allenian succession. Will the next Woody be from Africa, perhaps?
And will congress intervene to force Woody to make one movie, with its special Woody Allen Mandatory Semi-Decent Film Act of 2005?
It also occurs to me that if, when Woody dies, I were to write, "I hope the fucker burns in hell," I probably wouldn't get all that much of a reaction. Though, actually, the only currently living person who should burn in hell for all eternity is the fucker in telephony who first wrote "our menu has changed, please listen to the entire menu before selecting an item."
We decide. You listen.
Yes, but what Woody Allen were in a persistent vegetative state, and expected to die shortly as Fox News covers every step of the march toward death?
And what about the Allenian succession. Will the next Woody be from Africa, perhaps?
And will congress intervene to force Woody to make one movie, with its special Woody Allen Mandatory Semi-Decent Film Act of 2005?
It also occurs to me that if, when Woody dies, I were to write, "I hope the fucker burns in hell," I probably wouldn't get all that much of a reaction. Though, actually, the only currently living person who should burn in hell for all eternity is the fucker in telephony who first wrote "our menu has changed, please listen to the entire menu before selecting an item."
We decide. You listen.
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
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selfmademug
Just watched Sleeper for the first time. Loved it!
It's really neat seeing Woody Allen incorporate some clear Chaplin/sci-fi influences at the same time. And the soundtrack is awesome.
It's really neat seeing Woody Allen incorporate some clear Chaplin/sci-fi influences at the same time. And the soundtrack is awesome.
This morning you've got time for a hot, home-cooked breakfast! Delicious and piping hot in only 3 microwave minutes.
Sleeper has always been my favorite of "the early, funny movies." When I was 12, it completely changed the face of reality as I then saw it. But, then again, it might have been all that glue I was sniffing.
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!