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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Woody Allen

All Acting Regiment

10:26 / 11.09.08

I watched Annie Hall the other night. Super, loved it, the speed of it and the quick editing and the constant breaking of the fourth wall.

Brooklyn is not expanding!

I need a large polo mallet

Who else here likes him? Who doesn't? Why?

01:31 / 01.10.08

As with any director who's made as many films as he has, Allen has some great stuff, and a lot of solid, mid-tier work, as well as a few clunkers. I love Sleeper, his wacky take on the future, as well as Annie Hall and Manhattan. The opening sequence of Manhattan is one of the most perfect film openings of all time.

On the lower side of things are a lot of his more recent work. Deconstructing Harry starts out pretty promising, then descends into a mix of self indulgence and weak plotting. A recent work that I did really like was Everyone Says I Love You, his reality based musical that features an amazing cast, and some magical movie moments.

Ultimately, like Robert Altman or Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the sheer volume of Allen's work makes it difficult to really evaluate him. Obviously he's going to have some bad films, but I kind of like the fact that he just keeps making movies. If I had the chance to make a movie a year for the rest of my life, I'd be pretty happy.

19:33 / 02.10.08

I love Stardust Memories. Just the right balance of comedy and weirdness and feeling. Nobody seems to remember this one, but I do, so there.

I'm waiting to see Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona only because I live in Barcelona. My butcher told me it was shit. Apparently even though it stars Spanish actors Javier Bardem and Pen, they have opted to use two other Spanish actors to dub the dialog into Spanish. Weird. So, I haven't got my hopes up but I will watch it. Maybe Saturday afternoon with the hangover I am already planning.

17:38 / 05.10.08

I saw Vicky/Christina Barcelona. Allen did well to provide Johanssen with reaction shots while people acted around her (but enough with the Johanssen bashing). Really very enjoyable very much more so better than Matchpoint, Bardem and Cruz were great, and the narration really worked.

01:37 / 15.10.08

I haven't seen as many of his films as I'd like to - maybe only Annie Hall and Manhattan, and a comedy about a revolution or something? Manhattan is great, although I'm not sure if I liked it more just because I saw it first. It's pretty similar to Annie Hall in tone, etc.

What are the essential films in the Allen canon? What should I see?

04:50 / 15.10.08

The canon depends on how you view Allen's body of work, I think. Are the films that are composed primarily of sketches and high parody more or less important, mroe or less Woody Allen, than the more narrative studies of morality or humanity? The ones that fit between?

I'm a big fan of Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Zelig, and Annie Hall kind of foremost, but I'm also a fan of the Bullets Over Broadway, Don't Drink the Water, Manhattan Murder Mystery period and the loose, fairly light stuff he was doing around 2000.

I had seen some of his films as a kid, because my mom had it around, but I didn't put him together as a director immediately. Woody Allen wrote the stuff in Without Feathers. He was a writer, to me, foremost, and I understood him as a writer of short fiction before anything else. Not a long period between that and understanding he also made movies, and was in them, and so on, but long enough for the feeling, the bias, to form in me.

20:51 / 15.10.08

Play It Again, Sam is my personal favourite, tightly written and an excellent balance between funny and poignant.

Husbands and Wives is my favourite of the later ones, along with Manhattan Murder Mystery, which was actually the original script of Annie Hall (true fact!). Both of these are great portrayals of older couples. I haven't really liked anything since Deconstructing Harry.