Annie Hall

One of the funniest movies i have seen in a long time! The humor is so different then the humor in movies today. Is it because I am Jewish and the character is also Jewish, and his character i actually see his whinny sense of character as amusing because I have grown up to humor this. OR... is this another genre of comedy in itself? Annie Hall I do not think was necessarily written as a documentary of her life but of Alvy's life looking at hers. I liked seeing Annie Hall from this point of view because the story did not turn into her complaining or her frustration with her relationship but a point of view from Alvy's eye on what she was feeling.

Favorite scene and perfect representation of the kind of humor (I enjoyed) in Annie Hall:

The scene where Alvy and Annie are in the movie theatre line and this annoying guy is behind him spitting down his neck talking about his opinions of movies. And there Alvy is getting rained on and he gets so fed up that he walks to the camera and yells at the audience in frustration. This is awesome! Out of no where he breaks the story line and talks to the audience. The the best thing still come when he pulls out the director the spitting guy was analyzing out from the right side of the screen and proves the spitting guy wrong to get him to shut up. And there Alvy goes, "Don't you just wish life was like this," so honest and blunt.

- Jennifer K

Purple Rose of Cairo is a Treasure for All

“Life’s too short to waste time thinking about life. Let’s just live it.”

Truer words have never been spoken. These are the words Tom Baxter used to try to woo his fan Cecilia in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo. Tom Baxter is a movie character who leaves his film partway through a movie (crazy, I know) to learn about the real world. He falls in love with a down on her luck woman who’s come to see his film five times. The quote above was from when Tom tried to persuade Cecilia that it’s ok to love him even though he’s imaginary. In the context of the movie it’s a bit of a stretch, but in the real world the quote is quite applicable. Too often do we get caught up in what we’re doing that we forget to enjoy ourselves while we’re doing it. It’s easy in life to stop paying attention to the little things that make life such a joy. In the Purple Rose of Cairo Allen makes you think. This is just one quote of many from a very thought provoking movie. It’s the type of movie that after the credits roll you wonder just how much was real and just how much was imaginary. To me I think it’s certainly worth a second viewing.

Alfred Hitchcock

Over dramatized characters? ... Ah who isn’t in that business?

If it weren’t for the TIMELY stunning BLONDE women in these films I don’t know how else Hitchcock would have gotten away with such portrayal of a woman. Kidding (Sorta!), Alfred had some pretty interesting ideas of what role women played in a relationship but just a curious question? What did Alfred really see or expect from women…Did he have bad obsessive women all over him or did he just fantasize about women who would change for the man or were these his ideals of the perfect woman? Maybe not intended, but, the characters in Rear Window and Vertigo were a bit pathetic! Not that they were perfectly pathetic (not in the bad way entirely). I believe these films would not be as enjoyable today if it weren’t for lines like:

Judy: If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me?
Scottie: Yes. Yes.
Judy: All right. All right then, I'll do it. I don't care anymore about me.

I mean is she not on her knees or what! But I guess I’m not from times like those so who am I to talk about the norms and expectations/pressures women were under then.

I also have another suspicion… what kind of drug influence did Alfred Hitchcock experience while/prior to making Vertigo. Seriously! I mean my best guess- he was apart of the California crowd (considering Vertigo did premiere in San Francisco). We are entering the early 60’s where marijuana hasn’t quiet yet hit the masses like they did during Woodstock. And cocaine, heroin was very popular during the break of the 60’s. When you look at other famous people in California, during that time, you will notice a definite drug influence. For instance look at Ray Charles: definite drug community. Just my thought that possibly Vertigo was ‘another’ little experiment that Alfred had that influenced his visual presentation in this specific film! No disrespect, just maybe this is the origin of some of the scenes from Vertigo.

-Jennifer

Hitchcock: the beginning of the end of an original idea

As I watched through the three Hitchcock films and the various clips from his other movies, I couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu. I felt as though I had seen many of the same story lines and plot devices used before. Lady stabbed in the shower…that one looks familiar. Birds attack… I’ve seen that one before in cartoons. Then it occurred to me that my timeline was incorrect and Hitchcock was the one who came up with these ideas in the first place. I never made the connection before, but now that I’ve seen some of his movies, I’m starting to notice how great an influence Alfred Hitchcock had on the film world. His mark can be seen in many modern day cartoons, TV shows, and movies (some of which are just remakes of his films). Hitchcock was the master of suspense and those techniques he invented to tell his stories are still being used today.

So how do you like your eggs?

I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist
and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the
doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I
need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about
relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and...
but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the
eggs.

These are the parting thoughts from Alvy Singer, the main character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Alvy is a New York comedian who falls in love with a girl named Annie Hall. The movie works as a narrative to all of Alvy’s relationships and his feelings towards love in general. If the quote above is any indication, he’s witty, funny, but a bit of a pessimist.

After having not really enjoyed watching Allen in Mighty Aphrodite, I must concede that I now can understand how great an actor he truly was/is. Annie Hall won best picture at the Oscars in 1977 (note: this is a Woody Allen about 20 years younger than his character in Mighty Aphrodite) and it’s easy to see why when you have such believable characters. Allen knows what kind of characters he is and he casts himself perfectly in Annie Hall (short, angry, witty, and Jewish).

But the thing that’s best about Annie Hall is how Allen depicts modern relationships and the crazy, memorable events we take out of them. The film ends with a montage of all the greatest scenes from Alvy and Annie’s life together. We see the first time the met at the tennis court, we see them struggle to make lobster for dinner after the lobsters break out of the bag, we see them try cocaine (which Alvy sneezes everywhere), and many other memories. Allen makes a valid point that relationships are irrational, crazy, and absurd, but he forgets that they’re also exciting, adventurous, and happy. And that’s why we need the eggs.

Mighty Aprhodite

Where in science is human intelligence connected with family genes? Lenny, the father of a brilliant adopted son Max, is out on a search for his assumed ‘brilliant’ mother. Lenny meets the mother finding that she is a not so bright prostate. Now I don’t mean to be awful and say this for all adopted children, but, if the parents were genesis just like Max wouldn’t you think that such brilliant parents wouldn’t put their child up for adoption. And now that I look into this topic, it says on a couple adoption information websites that most children who are put up for adoption come from a troubled and/or unplanned parent/s. So what I am wondering is… Was Lenny really expecting to find these brilliant parents at the other end of the rope? Because I know how much we all like the saying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree but that doesn’t mean the tree isn’t sitting on a hill and the apple did fall near the tree and thus rolled far down the hill away from that tree.
Though this movie is quiet uplifting and I would agree that Woody Allen made this subject very interesting on many levels. The character choice is much in my favor. Generally Woody Allen hires his characters to be played by people who can become or are that part, that he isn’t just hiring another actor/ actress. I believe movies are much more enjoyable when characters are

cast by talent rather then by name.

-Jennifer

Now I ain't sayin' she's a golddigger, but that dude's really old!

Sex sells. Romance is what drives many of our favorite movies and TV shows. It’s the story that every writer and director can turn to because we the viewers like to see our own romantic troubles mirrored on the silver screen. Mighty Aphrodite (1995), directed by Woody Allen, is a film about a New York sportswriter, Lenny, and his search for the birth parents of his adopted son Max. But the movie takes a dramatic turn when we learn that Max’s birth mom is a prostitute/porn star (whose lack of intelligence begs the question why is Max so brilliant?).
Up to this point I think anybody can see the comedy in this film and find it humorous, but the drawback that makes this movie a pinch too disgusting for my taste is that the leading actor is PLAYED BY Woody Allen himself. The film introduces the viewer to a romance between the 60-something year old Woody Allen and the less-than-half-that age Mira Sorvino. Perhaps what makes this more distasteful is that any informed viewer can see how Allen might have thought up this storyline from his own life and the publicized relationship he had with his “stepdaughter”. Even without the back story, these types of relationships are not things people pay to see at the movies. Kenneth Turan sums this up in his review perfectly saying,

And though Allen's fascination with older men/younger women relationships has
yielded successes like "Manhattan" and "Husbands and Wives," the older he gets
the more uncomfortable these liaisons are to watch. And throwing in the
venerable male fantasy of getting involved with an attractive prostitute adds to
the off-putting taste that not even a finely tuned sense of humor can totally
erase.

Woody Allen straddles a fine line in this movie and unfortunately the film is slightly more vulgar than it is funny.