Woody Allen

[AWA]

Does post 1990 still constitute "new" Woody Allen? If so, there are a lot of great films - starting with Husbands & Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Deconstructing Harry, Sweet & Lowdown, Match Point/Closer and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. And plenty of other good films inbetween, especially anything produced in the 1990s.

I suppose someone thinking 1990 is newer Woody would be like someone in 1990 wondering when is he going to get around to doing another stand-up comedy tour

[SamLowry]

But Match Point was awful: contrived plot, terrible acting, substitution of eye candy (European & bourgeois settings) for anything of substance. If any of the others are on par with Match Point, I'll pass.

[AWA]

Well at least you can explain why you don't like Match Point.

I personally consider all others listed as far more substantial and noteworthy efforts from Woody, but I would include Match Point amongst his better films. But don't deprive yourself of the others I listed, especially Husbands & Wives.

[matrixschmatrix]

I didn't much like Match Point either- Allen's young people felt poorly written, and the metaphysics seemed more like Melinda and Melinda than Crimes and Misdemeanors- but please don't deprive yourself of Sweet and Lowdown, which is in the running for my favorite Allen overall and which features some of the best character work he ever did.

[Roger Ryan]

If you didn't like MATCH POINT, perhaps you would prefer his follow-up SCOOP which was a comedy version of the previous film . Both films, of course, steal liberally from Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" which George Stevens filmed as A PLACE IN THE SUN.

I actually consider ANOTHER WOMAN to be Allen's best drama up until MATCH POINT, but some of the other comedic films mentioned by AWA are quite good - I'll throw in CELEBRITY as one I like as well.

[AWA]

I actually consider ANOTHER WOMAN to be Allen's best drama up until MATCH POINT, but some of the other comedic films mentioned by AWA are quite good - I'll throw in CELEBRITY as one I like as well.

I didn't mention Another Woman (or, obviously, Crimes & Misdemeanors) because of the poster asking for examples of 1990 and after films.... but Another Woman is amongst Woody's absolute best IMO, a vastly underrated film. And I should also note that when I first saw it some 8 years ago, I absolutely hated it and thought it was awful. Needless to say, subsequent viewings coupled with my own aging and maturity in that time span have revealed the film to be a poignant marvel on aging, regret and emotional loss. And September isn't so bad either, actually.

[domino harvey]

Allen to appear as himself in the interesting sounding Paris Manhattan

[domino harvey]

This awesome thing blew up on Tumblr today:

[AWA]

Somehow flying under the radar for the past 2.5 years is a bio documentary project on Woody for PBS' American Masters series, directed by Robert Weibe. Variety has the details.

Woody was interested in a bio doc back in the mid 90's after viewing Crumb - he specifically sought out director Terry Zwigoff to direct it. However, producer Jean Doumanian was not so interested in Zwigoff's approach and instead had Barbara Kopple film "Wild Man Blues" instead, which focused mainly on Woody and his relationship to the jazz music he loves while undertaking the first tour with his Monday night jazz band in Europe. Zwigoff never got further than being able to hang around the set of Everyone Says I Love You for a few weeks while holding preliminary conversations with Woody about ideas for the film, things he could touch upon, etc.

So, with Doumanian long out of the picture, it appears Woody has finally agreed to the original documentary he was open to making some 15 years ago for a 2 part PBS documentary special.

Weibe is is producer on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and great friends with Larry David (and the Whatever Works shooting looks to be about when this project got off the ground, so I'm guessing that Larry had something to do with putting the two together finally). And considering he's also delved into other comedian subjects for docs such as WC Fields, The Marx Bros, Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, Weibe is definitely the right man for the job.

Should be interesting. As I said elsewhere, hopefully the narrative arch of the film is Woody making a passable film in "...Tall Dark Stranger" and, in true Woody fashion, getting right back into the swing of things by immediately making a great film the following year - "Midnight In Paris". And I also hope having a camera in his face more often got him to think a little more critically during the making of Midnight In Paris. We'll see this fall.

[mfunk9786]

Zwigoff still would have been the right man for the job.

[Matt]

This awesome thing blew up on Tumblr today

That's from an '80s Muppets calendar. Each month had a different movie spoof. The title on this one was Posteriors.

[AWA]

Robert Weide Documentary project details from the Gaurdian include notes that Woody allowed them access to his writing process at home.

An IMDB page is online now for the film here. It lists appearances by, among others, Gordon Willis, Scorsese, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Louise Lasser... but no Mia Farrow. I certainly hope this doesn't apply to film clips, like the TCM doc had to do by cutting around Mia's appearances at her (extremely petty) request. For the sake of this project, which seems to aiming to be a definitive look at his career, I hope some lawyers took up the cause of making sure that would be not be tolerated.

[AWA]

If you've ever wondered what the Japanese commercials Woody has appeared in are like, well... be careful what you wish for!.

[chizbooga]

If you've ever wondered what the Japanese commercials Woody has appeared in are like, well... be careful what you wish for!.

Hey! i went to high school with the guy who posted that. It's a small, awful world.

[Markson]

Allen's next film to be set in Germany?

[domino harvey]

Hadn't heard about this 'til Ari Graynor talked about this on Huff Post, but Woody Allen has contributed a one-act play called "Honeymoon Motel" to the portmanteau Broadway play Relatively Speaking, directed by John Turturro. Elaine May and Ethan Coen wrote the other two one-acts. I believe it just opened. More info here

[Roger Ryan]

I'll be seeing RELATIVELY SPEAKING this coming Wednesday; I'll report back what I think.

[tavernier]

Elaine May interviews Woody Allen and Ethan Coen

[domino harvey]

[Roger Ryan]

I'll be seeing RELATIVELY SPEAKING this coming Wednesday; I'll report back what I think.

Allen's contribution to RELATIVELY SPEAKING feels like a jam-packed homage to himself as it incorporates nearly every trope and preoccupation we expect from the author. Before the curtain even rises, a romantic standard ("Till There Was You") plays through the speakers. Within seconds we recognize that the basic premise of the story involves a middle-aged man (Steve Guttenberg) romantically-involved with a much younger woman (Ari Graynor). The expected coterie of harping wives, flummoxed in-laws and others barge into the honeymoon suite set like it was the stateroom scene in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. Allen even manages to bring in a rabbi and psychiatrist to argue religion and science. Despite the predictability of it all, the resulting one-act is well-cast and often hilarious. The mid-week matinee audience I was a part of roared throughout as the ten actors involved breathlessly raced through dozens of one-liners. I suspect that John Turturro's direction allows for a more harried, manic approach than Allen would have allowed if he had directed the play himself, but HONEYMOON MOTEL is a charming farce that attempts nothing more than to get laughs from beginning to end.

Here are a couple of sample lines that went over well with the audience:

SpoilerShow

RABBI (speaking to the psychiatrist): "Actually, I think your Freud was some kind of genius; who else could make an hour out of 50 minutes?"

SpoilerShow

WIFE (speaking to husband's best friend): "You're the one who recommended he have sex in a jacuzzi!"

HUSBAND'S BEST FRIEND: "I never told him he should have sex in a jacuzzi."

WIFE: "Well, we did have sex in a jacuzzi and I ended up calling 9-1-1!"

HUSBAND: "She accused me of trying to 'waterboard' her."

RELATIVELY SPEAKING's other two one-acts are very enjoyable as well. May's contribution, GEORGE IS DEAD, works in some surprisingly darker dramatic elements and is a fine showcase for Marlo Thomas. Coen's opener, TALKING CURE, has an odd structure that seemed to be a bit off-putting for the audience. Not unlike what he does in some of the Coen Brothers' films, the one-act has an ambiguous, abrupt ending that does well in making the audience reflect on the meaning of what they've just seen, but makes for an awkward curtain call for the actors.

[AWA]

I haven't seen this posted here, so here it is - the first look at the PBS American Masters Woody Allen documentary by Robert Wiede. Looks to be extremely well done. It airs later this month in two parts (Nov20 & 21) on PBS.

While it looks terrific, there is still no sign of clips of Mia from the Mia films. That's an question mark since, somehow, Mia got them to remove any image of her from the TCM documentary on Woody. Which I'm not quite sure how that is even legally possible. But they complied, for whatever reason, and the documentary as aired suffered greatly for it (representations of one third of his films - and most of his best ones - were hampered by this). However, the "director's cut" leaked later and is a much better version. Still no word if this documentary is going to suffer the same fate, for whatever reason, even though Mia has since softened her stance on Woody, both in interviews and apparently having talked with him and Soon Yi once (after the death of one of her sons).

[AWA]

In response to my own query, this article on Weide's decades spanning quest to get the documentary made does offer up that Weide asked Mia to be interviewed but she "politely declined".

While it mentions the hefty amount of clips in the doc, no mention if the Mia rights were an issue as they were for TCM.

[Jeff]

Catching up with this now on DVR. It's amazing to see him allow a documentarian so much access. After dozens of featureless DVDs, who would guess that he'd participate in a 3-hour-plus documentary? It's a really solid portrait of the artist with every interviewee you could want (except Mia Farrow), and great interviews with the man himself. So cool to see him sitting at the little ancient typewriter that he wrote all of his films and New Yorker pieces on. Surely PBS will release this on a DVD of its own at some point. It's one for the collection.

[hearthesilence]

At least they were able to use clips of Mia Farrow's performances.

I was actually a little disappointed with the doc. It's not bad, it's an enjoyable clip show, but in terms of new information, it felt pretty thin. A nice intro to Allen though.

[dustybooks]

If anyone didn't catch the doc on TV or DVR, it's streaming at pbs.org. Halfway through part one now -- greatly enjoying the standup clips, most of which I've never seen..