Woody Allen

[kid-glove]

BDR'lam arpudham-nga..

[Nerd]

Rangar review pOttirukkaar:
http://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/...-love-3465578/

[P_R]

OhO, idhai vidavum mokkai padamellaam eduthirukkaaRaa indhaaL?!

Err...mokkai padam eduththirukkaar.
idhai 'mokkai' enRu suggest seivadhai kaNdikkiREn.

And this better than midnightimbaris? Yougottabekidding

Yaar sonnadhu?
As of now I am reserving judgement. MiP was lovely in its own way. Comfare paNNa vENdaamnu dhaan mention paNNavE illai

I may watch it again this weekend.

Formaldehyde ellAm ippo ninaichAlum chippu peerikittu varudhu

[kid-glove]

Can we also agree Bdr is WA's best performance

[P_R]

Haven't watched it. He's a limited actor. ennaththa best, ennaththa performance.

[P_R]

Someone in brangan's space was complaining about the repetitive themes, ideas, moments. naNbar B(K) kooda appadi solluvaar.
True. But that's not a complaint for me.

Baldwin as the 'wiser' counsel is comparable to Woody's in the severely underrated 'Anything Else'. In fact the Page-Eisenberg track had many parts which felt comparable to the initial phases in the Christina Ricci- Jason Biggs relationship in 'Anything Else'.

The theme of 'famous for being famous' in the Benigni track was elaborated much earlier in Celebrity with the selfsame Judy Davis.Of course, he has changed the tone completely here to suit Benigni (or picked Benigni to suit the role) and the effect is excellent.

The shower-singing is the kind of absurdity that we see in his prose - delightful to see it on screen.

Brangan invokes Stardust Memories - which indeed is a great film. But he had kinda made the same film again even more flippantly and less subtly (although arguably no less poignantly)when he made 'Deconstructing Harry'. For all its segues into his stories, the central theme was still 'an artist going to a function that is honoring him and is constantly assessing his life, which is in disarray'.
(Of course this itself is his take on Bergman's Wild Strawberries'nu @kid-glova maadhiri periyavanga sollakkELvi)

In DH, the focus is on the creativity and how life feeds it (and is therefore bound to be ruined). "Black magician who turns others' misery into gold" as Judy Davis puts in the wonderful opening scene. In SM, the last moment directs attention to the evanescent beauty of a 'moment' in life, which one captures and cherishes on revisit. OTOH in DH, he is accompanied by his characters and concludes (happily and sadly!) that he realizes he 'can't function in real life but only in art'. It is the same but it is resaid because it is another take of it!

And he even kinda broke it down (possibly for the ppl who complain) "All people know the same truth: our lives consist of how we choose to distort it". So he IS making multiple distortions.

Heck, the provincial couple returning from Rome (the audience knowing more about them than they know about each other) is reminiscent of so many movies, even Rebecca Hall's ending in VCB.

And the four tracks in TRWL are on their own trip. Heck, there isn't even a 'meanwhile'. One of the tracks is just one day long! One has got absurb surreal stuff happening - Baldwin is reacted to sometimes and invisible most of the times - he doesn't even bother to explain.

And not surreal being part of central-idea like Purple Rose, but kinda surreal happening in a matter-of-fact manner embedded in a plausible, realistic film like - Alice.(Baldwin in that one too!)

I can understand if people called 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger' tired. But this one, naah..

appadiyE..Zurich,Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm-nu kalakku thala!

[kid-glove]

Bdr - he's off his base and does really well.

[Nerd]

P_R, Sid hinted that its better than MiP. I read your post but since I have not seen almost all the movies you compared this with (save for VCB) it did not make sense to me.

Really liked Allen's initial scenes which is well, so typical Allen. And Judy made a very good wife. And saw Allen in almost all the characters (Eisenberg in particular) and I only mean this as a compliment. But I had numerous problems with the film:

- The shower singing, wild/wacky etc., but too long and boring.
- Benigni's story, least imaginative of all. I got the point in a couple of scenes, but thirumba thirumba pEsura nee. And his final outburst to reiterate the same thing, bah. Choosing one of the most abused topics all over the world to make a satire was a mistake.
-Page/Heisenberg, nice. Again typical Woody so it worked well. But the ending was dramatic unlike most Allen romances. And Page wasn't as deep as some of Allen's lead ladies.
-Milli/Cruz story, very ordinary. I mean the 'intention' was good (that so many wild things, things they always wanted to do, the larger than life-ness) but was shoddily executed. And the mistaken identity jokes were very sabbaa for me.
-And since he had 4 stories and even subplots within them, he could not go beyond the surface. Spends very little time (well obviously) investing on the characters.

More importantly it did not even work as a comedy. I did LOL at a few places but overall it was a crushing bore.

[Nerd]

On BDR, yes Allen was terrific. I usually don't find faults with his acting at all. He is limited / one-dimensional but does very well. I thought Farrow's character was mediocre. I mean you don't see the usual complexities associated with Allen's female characters. And her turning away from Lou and turning into Allen was kind of contrived. And Allen was the only normal/sane/good person in the entire film which was kind of uninteresting for me. But thinking of it, it was celebration of a 'loser' which was neatly done. Though there were some jokes, the usual Allen wit, the intelligent humour was missing I thought. But yeah, certainly a film which I won't hesitate to revisit.

[Sid_316]

And this better than midnightimbaris? Yougottabekidding

.

No tensan Enaku dhan othu varala.. mel ottama patha nalla irukura madhiri thonudhu but it was very slow and sleep inducing for me . Maybe should give a revisit