| Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997) |
[Oct. 18th, 2009|02:30 am] |
I saw this in highschool. Not in the highschool, that would probably be forbidden, but when I was highschool aged, and when this was relatively current. This seemed to be a really great period for Allen, apart from the whole personal life meltdown that was happeneding, the films he made in this period were neat, daring, and fun. I only realized halfway through the re-watch that the film is a much more irreverent version of Bergman's Wild Strawberries but with some Dickens' A Christmas Carol thrown in there.
I love the boozy hedonism of the Allen character that always seems on the verge of meltdown. A terminal jerk. The play on depraved het-male sexuality. And the idea of characters going "out of focus". Amazing!
It's not as mindblowing as when I first saw it, but still holds up pretty darn good. Yup. |
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| Whatever Works (Woody Allen, 2009) |
[Sep. 12th, 2009|02:32 am] |
I wanted to write about direct address. I was talking to Megan about direct address in Woody Allen films. Like how in The Purple Rose of Cairo it's surreal and dreamy, or how in Annie Hall it's funny. And then there's other sort of acknowledging-the-fact-that-you-are-watching-a-film type moments like that one movie where he goes *out of focus*. So great.
There's some laughs, there's some fun, there's some other stuff. Anyway, it's not the point to judge if this is good or bad. I'm happy to just get out of the house on a worknight, ok? |
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| Anything Else (Woody Allen, 2003) |
[May. 30th, 2009|09:54 pm] |
Went shopping today. I don't like to shop. I don't enjoy it and I'm not too good at it. But I was feeling ambitious and wanted to take care of a bunch of things. So I went to the Dufferin Mall and dropped by the watch/shoe repair place and gave them my stopped watch. The dude put a new battery in and looked at it and said, "your watch has a problem" and handed it back to me. Then I went to the glasses place to get my glasses tightened. The first place wouldn't do it. The dude said, "these are very old and I'm afraid of breaking them." So I went to the Hakim on Bloor on the way back home and I gave them to the lady in the empty store. She said, "I won't be resposible if they break." Confused, I said, "Why would they break?" "The plastic is terribly old. Did you buy these as vintage glasses?" "Yes," I said, "they're from the 70s". "Well the plastic is old and dried out and I'm afriad of snapping them, but I'll give it a shot. These are very Woody Allenish" she said. I liked that. |
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| Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) |
[Feb. 3rd, 2009|11:00 am] |
A shot of Jameson and 10 cans of PBR resulted in video watching.
I always took the fact that Alan Alda is convincing as a total asshole in this as proof of Allen's ability as a director. |
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| Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) |
[Aug. 25th, 2008|11:23 am] |
Juan's Dad is this reclusive poet that Juan introduces to Vicky. After they have dinner Juan and Vicky are alone and she's asking him why his Dad writes these great poems but doesn't publish.
"Because that's his way of showing his contempt for the world. by writing this poetry and then witholding it from the world. His poems are about love and the world still hasn't learned how to love. He doesn't even want to learn Englsuih or any other language. As a poet, he doesn't want to pollute his work so he only speaks and writes only in Spanish."
Vicky is in Spain researching a thesis on Catalan identity. Juan, she says, is a Catalan painter. So maybe I'm wrong but wouldn't he be writing poems exclusively in Catalan and not Spanish?
I mean there are five spoken languages in Spain. |
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| Anything Else (Woody Allen, 2003) |
[Aug. 24th, 2008|04:10 am] |
Man, I just had a really messed up nightmare. Everyone I knew in it was sick, deformed and on drugs. Friends, family members. Everything resembled the sets of the most frightening film scnenes I can think of. And there was a rat.
Now it's 4:00am, and I'm awake with crazy alergies and the air is think and still, despite the fan.
I found and allergy pill and took it. I'm disappointed that it's non-drowsy.
Anyway, watching Anything Else again - the DVD was a gift from Mike and Megan, years ago - made me realize that I could really use a mentor. An old eccentric to teach me life's angles, urge me to be more assertive, and to have a loaded weapon at arms-reach in every single room of the house (actually I hate guns). This movie was not well-recieved, but I like the character of Dobel. Especially his witty little aphorisms like:
Never trust a guy who fumbles for the check, you know he who wants to get the check, gets it.
You think quantum physics has the answer? I mean, you know, what purpose does it serve for me that time and space are exactly the same thing? I mean I ask a guy what time it is, he tells me 6 miles? What the hell is that?
and
Since the beginning of time people have been, you know, frightened and, and unhappy, and they're scared of death, and they're scared of getting old, and there's always been priests around, and shamans, and now shrinks, to tell 'em, "Look, I know you're frightened, but I can help you. Of course, it is going to cost you a few bucks...” But they *can't* help you, Falk, because life is what it is. |
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| Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) |
[Aug. 18th, 2008|08:59 pm] |
I tried to catch Jeff Goldblum's part in this movie. If you blink you miss it. He's on a phone at the sleezy LA party, in a panic saying, "Hello? I forgot my Mantra."
He forgot his mantra!!
So excited from Vicky Cristina Barcelona this weekend. Casandra's Dream was a bit of a snooze, but something tells me that old Woody is bouncing back. |
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| Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) |
[Jul. 30th, 2008|11:40 am] |
I've been wanting to go to the US. I've been thinking about it a lot. And not New York City, but real America like, I don't know, Chicago, Boston, or some place in the South. Apart from a few weeks in New York City, a few days in North Carolina, and short glimpses of places like DC, various resorty places in Florida, Juneau and Anchorage Alaska, the inside of various airports, and basically most of the I-85 from NC to the border. I feel like I'm missing so much of the world here when I consider that the entire population of Canada is about equal to the population of California. |
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| Bananas (Woody Allen, 1971) |
[Jul. 22nd, 2008|07:18 pm] |
I feel like I've got some major Fielding Mellish-isms going on in my life right now. Except! I don't have reoccuring dreams of being parallel parked in a crucifix and I don't get accosted by Sylvester Stalone in the subway. But I do have troubles. And I do rule a small, Latin American country. |
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| Melinda and Melinda (Woody Allen, 2004) |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|11:09 am] |
Seeing Thee Silver Mount Zion was pretty decent. They were loud as hell in the hot and stuffy club. Afterwords we went to some bar to sit down and ended up closing the place, the three of us. The dj was Moe Berg from Pursuit of Happiness. Seriously. After we closed the place we made our way back to Bathhurst, a little tipsy, and ran into the boys and girls of SMZ who were hailing a cab. We chatted with them a minute and they were really nice.
Sunday I saw Ryan's band, Kingdom Shore. They were really really good. THey were experimental compositions, obviously a product of Mark Molnar's imagination. The format was 2xviolin, cello, double bass, and electronics/real time processing. They were playing Pedestrian Day on Markham Street and it was all outside and free. We hung about to see Sandro Perri (and friends) and lastly Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü. Grant Hart was a bit of a character. I didn't like it when he started to call on audience memebers to request songs. I don't like being put on the spot and I never really listened to Husker. They were too college rock for the angry, teenage me. The only tune I know is It's Not Funny Anymore. The clouds gathered while he played and when he finished I got on my bike and headed home. I barely missed the downpour. |
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| Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992) |
[May. 15th, 2008|10:48 am] |
I was still in highschool the last time I saw this. While still not as brilliant as I remember it, it's still damn good, and now I get all the literary references (though there aren't many). I wanted to see this one again because it was shot in a documentary/pre-steady cam french new wave style. There are longer takes, the camera whips around to get a reaction shot, rather than cutting, and there is extensive voice-over narration. This type of filmmaking has been spoiled now by TV shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development - it no longer seems novel or daring, but at the time it was quite a rush to see a 90s film done like a Michel Brault film of the 60s. He also includes interviews with the characters of the drama like Bergman did in The Passion of Anna.
When Gabe (Allen) and Judy (Farrow) are breaking up at the end it was this dramatic point in the film. Yet I couldn't stop laughing at some of the dialogue. From imdb:
Judy Roth: Don't tell me you don't flirt because I've seen you do it, at parties, you put on a whole other personality.
Gabe Roth: Oh you're crazy.
Judy Roth: Of course you do. You get all soulful and pretend to want things that you really can't stand.
Gabe Roth: Like what? What are you talking about?
Judy Roth: Like moving to Europe. That's just a flirting technique, you couldn't survive off the island of Manhattan for more than 48 hours.
I don't know why, but that killed me. |
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| Cassandra's Dream (Woody Allen, 2007) |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|02:35 pm] |
I'll always be the last person in the world to throw Woody Allen under the bus but I have to admit, this wasn't very good. The story was a little weak and the direction was lazy. There was visually nothing going on. It's surprising to see a veteran like Allen have such disregard for the image. The cinematography was boring with bad TV lighting. The cuts were predictable and ordinary. And to think of the great talent in this film: Tom Wilkinson who is great, music by Philip Glass who is immortal. Disappointing. Dang. |
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| Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986) |
[Mar. 24th, 2008|09:41 pm] |
The shitty VHS copy I bought back when I worked at now-defunct Alpha Video.
The scene in which Michael Cane tries to seduce Hanna in her boyfriend's apartment was really nice because the nudes of Hanna were all sitting on easels, Bach was playing on the record player and the movement was all in camera movement rather than cuts. So while he's overcome by desire he moves and the camera passes by these nude drawings. And when he moves in to kiss her she bumps into the record player making the record scratch. I never really noticed how much went into that scene.
I also like how many of the scenes are shot on New York streets. There all all these images of real locations, storefronts, books stores. I read on imdb that many of the scenes were shot in Mia Farrow's real life apartment. |
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| Hollywood Ending (Woody Allen, 2002) |
[Nov. 13th, 2006|11:22 pm] |
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| | Afrika Bambaataa - Planet Rock | ] |
vWhat the hell am I doing in Canada? Lori, they got moose up here. Moose. Are moose carnivorous?
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Pretty good band practice tonight. Almost makes up for the colossal letdown of the municipal election results. I don't even want to talk about it.
I feel like never voting for anything ever again. |
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| September (Woody Allen, 1987) |
[Oct. 4th, 2006|05:19 pm] |
The latest in Rekha’s Mia-Mania.
Mia is tragic, quiet and dresses “like a Polish Refugee.’ When she can’t hook up with a failed writer and she almost loses her parent's house that she was going to sell for revenue in order to move to the big city. When she’s so depressed and defeated she’s inconsolable. “But it’ll be okay, you’ll do some photography” “Oh if I haven’t made it as a photographer now, how will I ever?” And the day looks ugly and horrible and even New York seems to be devoid of possibility. I’ve had too many moods like that. I don’t have the energy. I think she played misery so well I can’t remember how it ended.
I detested this the first time I saw it: on crappy VHS, with badly rendered colour, and how was I to care about a bunch of rich people in an old house?
But it’s good to see in the Autumn. Especially one this gloomy. |
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| Stardust Memories (Woody Allen, 1980) |
[Sep. 10th, 2006|09:44 am] |
The latest in Rekha's goal to watch every WA film. I actually don't remember this from seeing it the first time around. There's a lot of cleaver stuff but the female characters aren't really fleshed out and it made me not really care about the protagonist's relationships nor his vague search of love and meaning. Maybe it's that this is supposed to be Allen's stab at making 8 1/2 and I've always hated hated hated 8 1/2. There. I've said it. |
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| Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994) |
[Sep. 10th, 2006|09:31 am] |
Last night Captain Foxy played a show for OPIRG which was fun. They gave us a two-four, which, I thought was excessive, but I went with it. It was cool to play with the Suicide Pilots who have a pretty cool sound. Al, the singer, is the one who originally got me into punk rock when I was 15 or whatever and at one point he said, "This next song is written, in part, by Bertolt Brecht and if he were here right now he would most certainly be dancing." And these circle-pitting activists were shouting "BRECHT!!!" How wonderful.
( My Interests Collage! ) |
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| Shadows and Fog (Woody Allen, 1992) |
[Aug. 26th, 2006|02:05 pm] |
Rekha has recently discovered that she loves Mia Farrow. What a great excuse to watch all these great old films. Farrow is like Woody Allen's Anna Karina (Diane Keaton is his Anne Wiazemsky). You can just see that his camera loves her. I noticed two things that I didn’t pick up the first time I watched it: that this film is simultaneously a tribute to Fritz Lang and Alain Resnais. It owes a lot to the former in the structure of the story: a vigilante group searches for a serial killer in the night. The city is old, small and European looking and the general feeling is 1930s. But the other moment I didn't notice was the scene in which the doctor/coroner is musing aloud about the nature of evil and wanting to know what makes the killer tick. The camera pans dramatically from left to right (the way that Resnais made famous in his films Night and Fog and Last Year at Marienbad.) on a bloodied corpse beneath a sheet. The specter of fascism looming over civilization and the whole time this is a comedy!!! |
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| A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (Woody Allen, 1982) |
[Aug. 21st, 2006|04:24 pm] |
It's a little-known fact that in eleventh-grade drama class I performed as the doctor in a production of Woody Allen's play, Death. which starred Graeme Beamish as Kleinman.
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Sorry for all the postings. I have a cold and have spent the weekend doing little else than watching videos. |
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| Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984) |
[Aug. 14th, 2006|06:54 pm] |
I've seen this movie three times now. This was one of those, rather than me renting Orson Welles' The Trial, let's get something we'll both enjoy kind of selections.
Mia Farrow is so funny in this. I wonder if the fact that her character's family are mobsters is in any way a reference to the fact that Mia used to date Frank Sinatra?
The thanksgiving scene at the end is so heartbreaking I was almost ready to leap from a tall building.
I love how he keeps saying, "-and I say that with all due respect!"
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Sometimes this blog has become more of an obligation than anything. Making an entry for every movie can be hard sometimes. But I'm a completist, dammit! I'll get every one. I did omit an obscure short I glanced at at a museum and also I didn't count watching parts of Bladerunner and Coming to America on TV at 4:00 a.m. because a: i was stoned, and b: I didn't watch the whole thing in either case. Other than that, I'm a purist. I'll list 'em all until the end of the year. The next film will be a little monumental: it's the 100th film! |
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