| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| randall |
Posted - 05/17/2011 : 02:33:54
Woody Allen�s new film is the best one I�ve seen from him in a long, long time. It�s a first cousin to THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO: a sweet, funny, enjoyable dream for artists of all kinds, but especially writers and painters. Owen Wilson plays a successful Hollywood hack who is struggling to get a novel out, and is visiting Paris with his Malibu-loving fianc�e and her insufferably snobbish/Republican parents. He loves the city: he rhapsodizes about what it must have been like in the Twenties. One night as he boozily walks to his hotel after a wine tasting, the clock strikes midnight and a spit-shined antique car full of people pulls up. �Get in!� And the next thing he knows, Owen is chatting up Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald while Cole Porter entertains on the piano with �Let�s Do It.� I don�t want to spoil the many surprises and delicious cameos � let the critics do that when it opens in the US on Friday � but the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which screened it for us Monday night for the first public performance outside of Cannes, actually held up distribution of the new issue of their mag FILM COMMENT because the cover story is this movie, and they feared spoilers before even fanatics had a chance to see it. Try not to read too much about this one beforehand, but try not to miss it. |
| 8 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| randall |
Posted - 10/17/2011 : 13:18:17
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
quote:
Originally posted by randall
That's not a still. That's a poster. Are you angry because you didn't notice a silhouetted pram after you saw ROSEMARY'S BABY?
I'm not angry at all ... I just had expectations. So like life, n'est-ce pas?
Shouldn't have said angry...I didn't get that from you at all. More like disappointed. It's just that in my experience the best poster designs [for me, the classic examples are ALIEN and, as I said upstairs, ROSEMARY'S BABY] go for a feeling rather than direct representation. STARRY NIGHT as the sky is definitely an arresting image, but there's no implied promise that you're going to see it in the film. Even Luke Skywalker never holds aloft his lightsaber in that almost laughably heroic pose. [Conversely, you can tell a lame romcom a mile away...the poster is very representational, and if you don't like the actors, you can safely skip 90% of the time.]
Valid point about Woody's honkycentrism, but that's always been there; his cinematic Grand Tour of Europe, like his great New York movies, are filtered through his own mind. New York doesn't actually look like MANHATTAN, either, unless you just love it and thus subconsciously edit your experience. |
| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 10/17/2011 : 08:16:53
No, I didn't see a scene like that, either, so it was probably done just for the movie poster.
I get what you're saying about his monochrome casts. It isn't terribly realistic, but then again, remember that at least with this film, we're following a group of "rich honky" tourists. Still, the last time I was in Paris (over 5 years ago) I couldn't help notice how extremely multi-cultural the city had become. Mind you, I didn't stay in (or even look at) any fancy, high-priced hotels, but I am convinced that they too wouldn't have had only Western European and Anglo-Saxon white patrons. One can only guess why Allen does this in his films, and we'd probably be wrong even if we came up with some very plausible answers. Maybe some interviewer will realize this and ask him so we can all find out.
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| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 10/16/2011 : 23:25:14
quote:
Originally posted by randall
That's not a still. That's a poster. Are you angry because you didn't notice a silhouetted pram after you saw ROSEMARY'S BABY?
I'm not angry at all ... I just had expectations. So like life, n'est-ce pas?
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| randall |
Posted - 10/16/2011 : 22:09:56
That's not a still. That's a poster. Are you angry because you didn't notice a silhouetted pram after you saw ROSEMARY'S BABY?
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| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 10/16/2011 : 14:22:08
randall, Chocky - a question
When you saw the film, did one of the shots feature Wilson walking along the Seine against a backdrop of a Van Gogh sky from Starry Night?
I'm asking because I have DEFINITELY seen a still of that ... in fact here it is.
So I saw the film last night and kept looking out for that particular shot, which I thought would be amazing. But it wasn't there. So, who knows why, but has the UK release been cut to exclude that shot, or did it not make it into the finished film at all?
Anyway - I liked the film a lot, and agree with randall it's a relative of Purple Rose of Cairo. But I must say the latter, for me, is a more enjoyable cine-experience purely on the basis of incorporating more laughs.
Don't get me wrong Woody's certainly fused some funny stuff with fascinating questions about the function of art and the nature of a dissatisfaction with the present giving rise to an idealization of the past. But, as CL says, he might have used his editing scissors more often to trim off the set-ups and whisk us more readily into the pay-offs.
The eventual fate of the detective is hilarious & wonderfully Woody-esque. Wilson's decisive topping of Sheen's misinformed art comments about a certain painting is not only satisfying, but very reminiscent of Woody's character in Annie Hall bringing out Marshall Macluhan to refute the pompous pronouncements of a man in the cinema queue.
But here's what niggles, at least for me. When Woody was writing for Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton, and Mia Farrow - all of whom he knew intimately and trusted to deliver his comedy intent - he not only put them in comic situations, but gave them some boffo dialogue.
The comedy in MiP primarily relies on situation and incongruity. Only Michael Sheen as pompous Mr Perfect in Every Way, and Adrien Brody in his controlled-flamboyant cameo as Salvador Dali have really caught the fusion of 'the truth moment' and 'the comedy moment' - which both Keaton and Farrow had mastered, especially Keaton.
Another bit of bother concerns the eyes through which Woody assesses cultures not his own. I think it really worked in Love & Death because he took literature as his foundation stone. But in Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and now MiP, he's airbrushed out whole swathes of the societies with which he's fuelling his parodies. Contemporary London, Barcelona, and Paris are unmissably multi-cultural, yet we see hardly any non-white faces - even in minor roles. The most recognizably black figure in MiP is a medium shot, face almost excluded, of sexy dancer Josephine Baker who shook her booty topless wearing only a mini-skirt of bananas. Mind you very few of his NY based films paint a realistic ethno-cultural picture either. But for a film like MiP whose very heart concerns an analysis of every-day culture, the relentless portrayal of rich honkies seems a churlish choice. Hell, it ain't even Woody's own spiritual home.
But, I don't want to put you off - it's an entertaining, if not earth-shattering film. And you will laugh - or at least smile loudly!
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| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 10/11/2011 : 14:55:27
Another one I caught on the plane and what a lovely time I had with it. Owen Wilson practically embodied Woody Allen in almost every aspect of his character with the exception being that his famous self-deprecation coming off as honest humility rather than taking nasty pokes at his own frailties. There's one scene when he walks out of the hotel at night and the light from the lobby behind him put his face in shadow just enough so that you couldn't see him properly. The way he shook his head so his hair bounced around his head and slightly flapped about before taking off was so Woody, I could have sworn it was Allen himself doing a cameo! Nothing wrong with that, but in Wilson you could truly see Allen's direction at almost every turn.
The whole magical-reality of the film combined with the concept that nostalgia is not only attractive but also relative to your own present works beautifully. Mind you, I think some of the parts before he steps into the past could have been slightly cut down so we could get to the fun faster, there were still enough things there to keep your interest until then. But the real ride happens when the clock strikes midnight. And the chemistry that Wilson shows with Marion Cotillard is so subtle and yet so powerful, it completely takes you by surprise and you realize he's a better actor than you originally thought (or at least I originally thought). Nothing insufferable about him here and the whole film is charming from start to finish.
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| randall |
Posted - 05/18/2011 : 21:25:36
The reviews are starting to trickle in, particularly from weeklies, and so far they are all spectacular: David Denby [New Yorker], David Edelstein [New York] and Rex Reed [NY Observer] all say it's the best Woody in years and years. I thoroughly agree!
EDIT: So do Tony Scott of the Times, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, and the two presenters on Ebert's new TV show. This is the best-received Woodman in decades, certainly in the 23 years I've been in New York. It is also leading a 2011 mini-trend reported today [5/22] by weekly Variety: indies being released in the summer blockbuster season as counterprogramming. There will be several more as the summer rolls on. |
| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 05/18/2011 : 13:45:02
Sounds kinda cute - although generally I find Owen Wilson to be mostly insufferable. Still, if it is that good... |
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