Match Point

[Tictacbk]

what "trick" was pulled with the shining marketing?

[I Don't Believe in Beatles]

what "trick" was pulled with the shining marketing?

http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=8148

[Pubrick]

seriously tho what's with the negativity, the trailer might not be LOL hilarious or even that original-looking, but did anyone see the shot with scarlett on the bed? or any close up of her for that matter? emily mortimer seems to be acting well also, as the cheated wife she could channel beatrice straight and a woody film may finally return to the oscars/acclaim.

[/hasn't lost hope]

[MacGuffin]

International Trailer

[modage]

happy birthday to me...

An Evening With Woody Allen
Monday November 28th 7:00pm
Alice Tully Hall 65th & Broadway

Please join Wendy Keys in a conversation with Woody Allen illustrated by select clips of his films with a special screening of the upcoming Match Point.

Tickets are $100, $50, $30 - Reserved Seating - Ticket requests will be filled in order of receipt.  The Tully box office opens on October 20 for sales to the general public.  For ticket information please call (212) 875-5050.

[Figure 8]

For some reason the international trailer seems a lot more like a Woody Allen film to me.

[Tictacbk]

For some reason the international trailer seems a lot more like a Woody Allen film to me.

My roommate said the same thing, but I still think it doesn't seem anything like what I interpret as a "Woody Allen" type film(none of the dialogue is witty nor does it go on at any length)...the only Woody Allen-ish thing in the trailer to me is the music.

Although maybe compared to the other trailer anything seems more like a Woody Allen film.

[matt35mm]

It does seem a lot more Woody Allen, but more in the vein of Crimes and Misdemeanors than his recent lighter stuff.  Especially in its portrayal of things like guilt and the metaphors and analogies with life and a tennis match.

[Kal]

I like it much better... the other one is also kinda Spiderman where they tell you the whole movie

[JG]

In Ebert's great movies review of Crimes and Misdemeanors, he says that this movie is among the top four Woody Allen movies.  I trust Ebert.

[modage]

i saw Match Point tonite. and they showed a few highlights from his prior films and Woody Allen was there to speak before the film.  it was good.  like the trailer, it is a very un-woody allen woody allen film.  there are a few really sexual scenes (blindfolds, oil) ha, that seem a little out of place but it's good he's stretching a bit outside his normal i think.  johansson doesnt have much to do in the film but look hot and jonathan seems like he might be more believable lusting after another man, but hey.  he kept saying scarlett and jonathan were 'hot'.  and there is a point 3/4'ths of the way through where you're almost like ALRIGHT ALREADY but maybe thats also intentional letting the guilt build and build in the sameness of it.  but the film did take me by surprise with a few great scenes that made it overall very enjoyable (though not quite a masterpiece).  and the ending is killer.  and thats okay.  with this and Melinda and Melinda he seems to be on an upswing (after the horrifying lows of Anything Else) so thats good news. 

[Pubrick]

3/4'ths 

"quarters"

i'm glad it's hot, that's all i wanted to hear. also that it's good. but mostly that scarlett's hotness is used to its full potential as the trailer suggests.

[samsong]

i saw Match Point tonite. and they showed a few highlights from his prior films and Woody Allen was there to speak before the film.  it was good.  like the trailer, it is a very un-woody allen woody allen film.  there are a few really sexual scenes (blindfolds, oil) ha, that seem a little out of place but it's good he's stretching a bit outside his normal i think.  johansson doesnt have much to do in the film but look hot and jonathan seems like he might be more believable lusting after another man, but hey.  he kept saying scarlett and jonathan were 'hot'.  and there is a point 3/4'ths of the way through where you're almost like ALRIGHT ALREADY but maybe thats also intentional letting the guilt build and build in the sameness of it.  but the film did take me by surprise with a few great scenes that made it overall very enjoyable (though not quite a masterpiece).  and the ending is killer.  and thats okay.  with this and Melinda and Melinda he seems to be on an upswing (after the horrifying lows of Anything Else) so thats good news. 

how the fuck did you see it and why didn't you call me?  you still need to make up for the time you invited me to Thumbsucker.

[©brad]

ok i did one of my first double headers today in the theater. first kong, then this-- and i'm still shaking.

woody scores, BIG. the trailer is so wonderfully misleading. this fucker is ballsy, rich, beautifully shot, and HOT as hell. and with lines so cold and witty they could break glass. most importantly, it side-steps the obvious cliches you would assume would accompany such a premise.

what a day. 

[MacGuffin]

The ball is in Woody's court
Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY

NEW YORK - Can it be true? At a time when the likes of Paris Hilton is capable of inspiring a Christmas shrine, Woody is hot again.

That's Woody Allen, of course, the bespectacled nerd with the ginger hair, pipsqueak physique and existential Borscht Belt humor who made films that mattered, such as 1977's still-sublime best-picture Oscar winner, Annie Hall.

Steadfast fans might have been able to forgive, or at least discount, the 70-year-old filmmaker's past indiscretions. (Perhaps you heard about the 1992 scandal that erupted when then-companion Mia Farrow discovered that the man in her life was secretly romancing her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, now his wife of eight years.)

But chances are even his staunchest loyalists skipped Melinda and Melinda, probably mistaking the March release for a redundant law firm instead of an over-reaching mix of comedy and tragedy. As Allen morosely notes, "I always felt that if my name wasn't on many of my movies, they would have made more money."

Yet, after a half-decade of barely making a dent in the cultural landscape, Allen has a film that is earning enough praise to merit leaving the house to see: Match Point, which begins its run on Dec. 28.

The hosannas began in May at Cannes. The once-mighty auteur of urban angst stunned festivalgoers with a deadly serious and class-conscious affair about infidelity, immorality and murder among the posh set in, of all places, London.

The story, with its echoes of Hitchcock, Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and Allen's own Crimes and Misdemeanors, goes something like this: Chris, a social-climbing, Irish-born tennis instructor (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers of Bend It Like Beckham), is taken on as a work in progress by a preppy young client, Tom (Michael Wilde), who introduces him to his sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer).

Soon, the upstart ingratiates himself with everyone in the family manor, including Nola, his rich pal's sultry American fiancée (Scarlett Johansson as perhaps the world's first slacker femme fatale).

When Rhys Meyers and Johansson face off at a ping-pong table and begin to swat double-entendres back and forth, it's clear no goodwill rise from the heat between these pretty pouters. Chris weds Chloe, revels in their cushy lifestyle and is pulled up the corporate ladder by her father. But he can't resist regular trysts with Nola, who becomes pregnant and threatens to spill the illicit beans.

No Manhattan. No Jewish intellectuals. No obvious Allen alter ego. No joke, either. In fact, the moody melodrama is so drained of obvious Woody-isms that audiences who view its somber trailer have been known to titter in disbelief when his name flashes by. For a generation that knows Allen only as that old guy who makes creaky comedies, this could be a revelation.

"A change of scenery does Woody Allen a world of good in Match Point," writes Variety critic Todd McCarthey. "(The) well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker's best in quite a long time." Others agree: Match Point picked up four Golden Globe nominations and is seen as having a shot at a couple of Oscar slots.

Just don't expect Allen to cough up much insight about the sudden career turnabout with this, his 36th film in almost as many years.

Lately, this very private public figure has been submitting to interviews, often in the green-velvet womb of a screening room at his office, located in a stately Park Avenue building. Still, he politely yet stubbornly refuses to admit his films have any conscious agendas.

The main motif of Match Point is luck, as symbolized by the image of a tennis ball teetering precariously on a net. In this case, the ball has definitely fallen to Allen's advantage, and he knows it.

"I had a good time doing it, and I don't know if I could do it again," he says. "I was very lucky with the film. Money fell right in for me. When I was shooting, if I needed a rainy day, I got a rainy day. If I needed it to be gray and no rain, I got that. It's like I couldn't screw it up, no matter how hard I tried."

But there must be more than luck involved. Why did he choose to do a straight melodrama after a run of mainly comedies?

"It just happened. All my films just happen. People always impute to them calculation of different types. There was never any calculation. This was just the idea that I had. And I did it."

A gift of a box of Nihilist Chewing Gum - whose motto is "We don't believe in flavor" - doesn't loosen his tongue any, though a grin does briefly flicker. "This is perfect for me," says the longtime believer in the meaninglessness of existence.

Whether or not he'll own up to a grand plan, he does possess a knack for picking just the right talent for the right part. His actors have been rewarded with a stellar 14 Oscar nominations, including five wins: Diane Keaton for Annie Hall, Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Wiest again for Bullets Over Broadway (1994) and Mira Sorvino for Mighty Aphrodite (1995).

"I've been lucky" - there's that word again - "in that no one tells me who to cast. I choose the very best person I can find for a role. The fact that no one heard of Samantha Morton when I put her in Sweet and Lowdown, that didn't matter to me." Her breakthrough as a mute waif in the 1999 film duly earned her an Oscar berth.

Allen also is able to snag performers, even star attractions such as Will Ferrell (Melinda and Melinda), at bargain prices - union minimum, to be exact. "I get them between lucrative jobs. I give them a good part to play, get out of their way, and they do it."

Just why do up-and-comers still regard being in a Woody Allen production to be a big deal?

"Getting a role in one of his movies is like getting a medal," says Rhys-Meyers, 28, who has been on the cusp since the 1998 glam-rock saga The Velvet Goldmine. "Someone who sees you in a Woody Allen film will take you more seriously."

Then there is the chance to hang with the enigmatic wonder himself. "He's a fabulous little mystery," Rhys-Meyers says of his director. "There's something magnetic and attractive about him."

As for the lack of money, Rhys-Meyers simply states, "Woody doesn't pay anybody. There is a reason why he doesn't, and I think it's right. The biggest detriment to a film set is ego. Eliminate the money and make it about work."

Mortimer, 34, who describes Allen as "a person who has a twinkle in his eye at all times," sounds like many other happy veterans of Allen's no-fuss filmmaking when she tries to explain why he is able to draw out the best in his actors.

"It has everything to do with how the film is made," she says. "It feels like nothing is happening, and you're not doing anything. He doesn't rehearse. He likes to go home early. There is something to be said for casting very appropriately for each role."

Then there is Johansson, who at 21 has been anointed as Allen's latest muse in the Keaton-Farrow tradition. She already has done a second film in London with him, a comedy called Scoop in which she plays a college journalist.

"I've been a fan of Woody's even before I was allowed to watch his movies," Johansson says. "One of the most wonderful things about Woody is that he's this pop culture icon, so intellectually smart and funny but without any ego. He always says when he's not working on a project, he goes crazy and gets riddled with anxiety. I guess it's lucky for us he is so anxious."

Before anyone concludes that Johansson is just the latest in the director's cradle-robbing fixations, a notion first planted with Mariel Hemingway's precocious schoolgirl in 1979's Manhattan, Rhys-Meyers has a different theory about what Allen sees in his Match Point co-star: "If Woody was a beautiful 20-year-old girl, he'd want to be Scarlett Johansson. He's living out part of his life through her."

Allen confirms that he is simpatico with the young actress, who inspired him to write Scoop. "Match Point is a very serious film, but she's a very funny girl. I thought, 'I should be really doing a comedy with her.' I was impressed with how amusing she was. How quick. Every time I'd say something funny, she would top me. As I used to do with Diane Keaton, I give myself all the jokes and funny stuff to do. Yet when the movie is finished, she comes out the funny one."

Since, as Allen points out, the outcome of his films is a matter of luck, it is difficult to say whether Match Point is a sign of more satisfying projects to come. But he won't leave such matters entirely to chance. He's not about to stop cutting his morning banana into seven pieces each day.

"I cut it in seven slices that first day 35 years ago or so, and nothing bad happened to me," he explains. "The next day I cut it in seven again, and nothing bad happened. The truth is, I've been pretty lucky in my life. And since you can't prove a negative or disprove a negative, who knows how much the seven slices is accounting for it."

As someone who once directed a film titled Bananas, perhaps Allen knows exactly what he is doing.