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King Kamala

Teach Me TSM

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OK, so I've recently decided to delve into the films of Woody Allen after attending a showing of Annie Hall about two weeks ago. For the first twenty and a half years of my life, like 90% of Americans, I've avoided his movies like the plague. It didn't help that my father and brother dismissed him as that little neurotic nerd who plays the same character in every movie. They're sort of right but I found that I actually enjoy that character.

 

So tell me TSM, which of his movies are good for a newb like myself? Some hidden gems? Which ones should I avoid like the plague? So far besides Annie Hall, I've seen Take The Money and Run, Bananas, and Broadway Danny Rose. The last one was probably my favorite while I thought Annie Hall was quite obviously the best. I liked the slapstick comedies quite a bit too.

 

And yes I did read The AV Club Primer on Woody Allen, I just wanted to hear the vaunted opinions of TSM regulars.

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Oh man, Kamala. You read my mind.

 

I love Woody Allen and am so excited that my local arts theatre is showing Annie Hall next week.

 

Woody Allen movies I love:

 

Annie Hall

Purple Rose of Cairo

Everyone Says I Love You

Match Point

 

I haven't seen everything, but pretty much mid 70s-late 80s, he was on fire. There's a really good look at his films at EW where he gives his opinion.

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Guest Tzar Lysergic

Manhattan. That one's terrific, and arguably his best.

I kind of like him the most when he's being corny or silly, like in Play it Again Sam or Small Time Crooks.

 

 

If you're entertained by him being fidgety and shit, you basically can't go wrong. Dive in head first.

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Guest Tzar Lysergic

How the hell can he hate Manhattan? I know nothing about the man outside of his movies and that he was involved in some kind of sex scandal of which I know no details.

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MANHATTAN (1979)

A wistfully romantic ode to Allen's hometown and an indelible portrait of angsty urbanites in search of love, this gorgeously shot, Gershwin-drenched comic drama grossed nearly $40 million, Allen's biggest hit up to this point, and was hailed as another triumph — by everyone but Allen himself.

 

I was so disappointed when I saw my final cut, I thought, If this is as good as I can do at this point, I shouldn't be making films. I went to United Artists and said, ''Look, don't put this out. I'll make another film, no charge.'' They thought I was nuts. And it was a very, very big hit. Audiences don't have the same criteria I do. They say, Okay, you had some grandiose idea and maybe you failed, but we like this film. So once again, I shut up and just felt I got away with it. I got off with my life.

 

ew.com

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Sleeper, Love & Death, Manhattan and Crimes & Misdemeanors are all fantastic. I think Hannah & Her Sisters is supposed to be really good too but I've never seen it. If you're looking for slapsticky stuff then start with the first two as Manhattan, C&M and Hannah... are all from his more "serious" period (they're still great though and you should def. watch them at some point).

 

EDIT: Also artists are sometimes the absolute worst judges of their own work so don't pay attention to that thing bob quoted up there.

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Sleeper, Love & Death, Manhattan and Crimes & Misdemeanors are all fantastic. I think Hannah & Her Sisters is supposed to be really good too but I've never seen it. If you're looking for slapsticky stuff then start with the first two as Manhattan, C&M and Hannah... are all from his more "serious" period (they're still great though and you should def. watch them at some point).

 

EDIT: Also artists are sometimes the absolute worst judges of their own work so don't pay attention to that thing bob quoted up there.

 

I'm not saying he shouldn't see Manhattan because of it, I was just saying how it's interesting to hear Allen have such a negative opinion on one of his most revered works.

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Guest Vitamin X

I think I agree with Woody on Manhattan. I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I could see the appeal of it for some people. I liked Husbands and Wives as well as Bananas! in addition to some of the other films mentioned up above.

 

Mighty Aphrodite was a pretty good film as well.

 

One of the things I liked most about Allen, especially as someone getting into film, is the sheer magnitude of his filmography first of all, and the fact that he's independently produced, directed, written, and starred in so many of his films, even his best ones.

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Anything Else sucks, but I've jerked off to it a couple times.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, I really like Deconstructing Harry, so that's one of his better later ones.

 

Oh, and nevermind that sex scandal. Even though there was something of a scandal at the time, he didn't do anything wrong.

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Guest Vitamin X

I forgot I was thinking of another film, and edited it to say Mighty Aphrodite instead, since that's a pretty good one as well. I just like Anything Else because of Christina Ricci, but yeah it kinda sucked.

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Perhaps surprisingly, I really like Deconstructing Harry, so that's one of his better later ones.

So did I. I mean, Billy Crystal as Satan. C'mon.

 

A couple neat ones not mentioned so far:

 

Zelig. Woody here kinda did the same thing as Forrest Gump, inserting a fictional character into real historical footage... but did it fourteen years before Gump.

 

What's Up, Tiger Lily. Not really an Allen film per se, but I found it priceless. He re-edited and re-dubbed a shitty Japanese spy movie. The results had to have been an influence on everything from MST3K to Kung Pow.

 

Bullets Over Broadway. A fun backstage theater spoof with a psychotic mobster who turns out to be a good playwright. Kinda like Noises Off meets Get Shorty.

 

Wild Man Blues. Once again, not really Woody's own work, but it's interesting to see a behind the scenes look at how the man operates in real life.

 

More admiration for Crimes and Misdemeanors and Purple Rose of Cairo, too.

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there's 2 woody allens: there's "funny" woody allen, and there's "cliffs notes of great european filmmakers" woody allen. the first i can still enjoy a lot, in the way that i enjoy early beatles material: it's unselfconscious, he knows what he's doing, and his goals are modest.

 

the second woody allen emerges after 'annie hall', and i thought was brilliant when i was in high school. then after a couple years of watching more movies, i realized how much of a shallow poser pseudo-intellectual he is. his characters are all shallow twits, and they rarely get beyond his own narrow upper-east-side-aristocrats-with-no-real-occupations mentality. (this is the main reason why i hate 'manhattan': shallow boring people who think they have important problems.) he's not nearly as deep a thinker as he believes himself to be, and this gets him into trouble a lot. see: 'crimes & misdemeanors', 'interiors', 'another woman', 'match point' (which is the same movie as 'crimes and misdemeanors', but with shitty actors).

 

funny woody allen is good stuff. i love 'sleepers' and 'bullets over broadway', and i remember enjoying 'everyone says i love you'.

 

occasionally he'll be able to successfully mix the 2 personalities into something original and funny. 'annie hall' and 'the purple rose of cairo' are probably the best examples of this.

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Now that Bob mentions it, I saw Celebrity on one of the premium movie channels during my adolescent phase where I watched any and all R rated movies in the hopes to see some nekkid ladies. I think the crappiness of that one was another reason I steered clear of Woody Allen for a while. Though I guess there's a small chance I'd like it more now that I'm a bit older and a lot wiser.

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask is an underrated movie from him. It's not his best, but there's some great skits in that movie.

 

"Fabrizio, go easy on my hymen."

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Guest Vitamin X

Oh shit! How could I forget that!

 

"Can we please have an erection?! What the hell is going on down there?"

"... I'm not getting shot out of that thing. What if he's masturbating? I'm liable to end up on the ceiling. " (Woody Allen as a Sperm)

also,

"Be on the look out for a large female breast. It's about a 4000 with an X-cup. "

 

 

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Yeah, I'm more of a fan of the broader stuff he did like Bananas, Sleeper and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask.

 

Zelig is another one I enjoy.

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I like Hannah and Her Sisters more than Crimes and Misdemeanors. Crimes and Misdemeanors lacks memorable performances or tension-- the scene taking place during the thunderstorm feels so out of place in such a mundane film. I'm not sure what I'm missing but I definitely don't see it as one of his best. Hannah and Her Sisters sometimes approaches melodrama but Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest did a great job with the material. A lot of Woody Allen's scenes were quite funny-- particularly the short bit where Woody Allen's character considers becoming a Catholic. The only part of the film I had a real problem with was Max Von Sydow, who was totally miscast.

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