Melinda And Melinda

[SiliasRuby]

This sounds like the film which Will will start to stretch himself, even just a little bit.

[grand theft sparrow]

cowboykurtis...

It's really only that one sentence in the last paragraph that you take offense to, right?  Besides the "dead shark" comment, that is.  

Instead of making the movies we expect him to, he stubbornly makes the movies he wants to make, gathering his A-list casts for minor exercises in whimsy and bile that tend not to be appreciated when they arrive in theaters.

If he was serious, that's a dumbass comment, especially for Scott, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was voicing the popular opinion rather than his own.  Because the rest of the article seems to (mostly) implicate the audience in the decline of Woody's popularity.

What if we - and by "we" I mean the legions (or at least dozens) of young (or at least gracefully middle-aged) intellectuals (or at least newspaper readers) with battered used-bookstore copies of "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers" at their bedside and long passages of dialogue from "Sleeper" and "Love and Death" in their heads - go to the new Woody Allen movie because we want to feel let down, abandoned, betrayed? We are all aware that the man has problems of his own, but what if the dissatisfaction we feel with his work is, at bottom, our problem?

Mr. Allen will never again be his younger self, and his audience, as long as we refuse to acknowledge that fact, will never grow up, guaranteeing our further disappointment.

I'm not so sure that article is slamming Woody as much as you might think.  He's saying the "dead shark" is a result of us not meeting Woody halfway.

He's the closest this country has to Kubrick from a artistic control standpoint.

He's the only American director to get consistently wide releases that still maintains near-complete autonomy over his films, with the possible exception of Spike Lee.  But these days, what with the casting of the likes of Jason Biggs, Jimmy Fallon, and Will Ferrell, I wonder if these are his casting choices or if the studios are influencing him.  If you look at his films from even the mid-80s – when Scott implies that his talent started to wane – he was casting people like Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, etc.  None of them back then had the same kind of popularity as some of the actors he is casting now, except for Diane Keaton, whom he made a star.  This might be the compromise he has made with the studios in order to hold onto final cut.

[pete]

I think Scott was serious when you were hoping he wasn't.  but I don't think Scott meant it as a condescending thing.  It's true, Woody doesn't care about what anyone wants and he makes movies almost therapeutically.

[cowboykurtis]

Regarding Woody's recent casting choices:

It is my understanding that Woody's film are not financed by studios. He has a long standing relationship with a group of equity investors, and a working realtionship/understanding with companies that just distribute his film. He has final cut, he has 100% casting control.

I have always credited his current casting choices to his desire to work with actors of our generation, so to speak. I think he probably casts actors like farrell and fallon becuase he finds them funny/talented. He's a comedic performer in his own regard that can go from slapstick to melodrama. I don't think he sees things as: "this ferrel guy means the young one's will pack the theater". Like you said, he's old and makes films for himself. I think he probably thinks by casting these young bloods, it might give him some insight or expereince that he hasn't had working with actor's of his generation. I applaud allen for making the film HE wants. At least someone is doing so, regardless of the results.

As far as A O SCOTT:

The editorial does comment on US as audience members unable to meet Allen halfway or vice-versa. But that last comment resonates. "Woody Allen is a dead shark." Thats a finite comment. HIS opinion as the writer.

I  feel that it's the audience that has become dull and impatient and uninspired. If he didn't mean to discredit Allen he would've had ended it by writing "We, as an audience, have become a dead shark." I think he meant what he said.

With that said, I believe there is a more gracious and tactful way to bash a man who deserves teh utmost respect. One doesn't have to like him, one doesn't have to pay 10 bucks to see his movie, but I do feel he deserves one's respect. Especially from a snot nose editor, half his age.

To paraphrase William Holden's character in Network: "It's called basic human decency."

[cowboykurtis]

if you now read today review by A O SCOTT of Melinda & Melinda. He seems to contradict his previous opinion of Allen. This guy's a peice of work.

[SoNowThen]

I agree with what you've been saying, cowboy. It's shameful how little respect Woody Allen is given nowadays. There was an article here in the Sunday Times awhile back, and it started out as this big career-spanning thing on Woody, a decent interview and pics and everything, and then the interviewer just ends up sounding like one of the idiots from Stardust Memories, saying he finds Allen's work pretentious, and he only ever liked the "early, funny films". Ugh.


Anyway, has M&M not opened for you guys in the states yet? We get it here on the 25th. Looking forward to seeing it.

[MacGuffin]

Allen Offers Comic and Tragic in 'Melinda'

Woody Allen doesn't give many interviews. But when he does, he'll talk about anything.

His pessimism. Why he keeps making films. The many ways a movie can go wrong. The Soon-Yi "scandal" years ago. Even how lucky he feels with the way his life turned out, personally and professionally although gloom looms over him continually.

There were no limits to a recent conversation with Allen, indicating just how self-possessed the three-time Academy Award winner is. He's not "on" or displaying that Woody Persona so many of his fans love, but he's still funny and self-deprecating starting with the revelation that he thought he'd learn something from making his latest film, "Melinda and Melinda," as both comedy AND tragedy.

"But I learned nothing," he says with a chuckle. "I say the same thing now as I said when I began ... the cliche that there's a thin line between comedy and tragedy. And it's true. And I guess that's why it's a cliche."

He had hoped to discover a greater insight than that.

Reviewers who dislike his newest production, which stars Radha Mitchell as a troubled woman whose woes affect the people around her, complain that it lacks polarity the humorous rendition of the story isn't that hilarious, and the serious version isn't that tragic.

That's OK with Allen, who says he doesn't pay attention to critics. And while he maintains comedy and tragedy are separated by just a couple degrees either side of a psycho-emotional equator, most of the time it falls heavily on one side for him.

"There are some laughs you have in life, provided by comedians and provided by fortuitous moments with your family or friends or something," he says. "But most of life is tragic. You're born, you don't why. You're here, you don't know why. You go, you die. Your family dies. Your friends die. People suffer. People live in constant terror. The world is full of poverty and corruption and war and Nazis and tsunamis. ... The net result, the final count is, you lose you don't beat the house.

And yet, the 69-year-old writer-director says he was "lucky from the start."

"But even for the luckiest people, the really luckiest, luckiest you know, you carve out a little oasis for yourself for a short period of time, but then," he says, snapping his fingers, "that's it."

With an impish grin, he asks: "Am I depressing you?"

Some of his devotees sound depressed when they talk about his recent movies. For them, a Woody Allen film was an event, something to look forward to. A romantic, compelling letter from Manhattan, since the city often towered like a main character. A dispatch from smart, sophisticated people.

But no longer.

"Life has a malicious way of dealing with great potential," says a character in "Melinda and Melinda."

It can be mean with fully realized potential, too, although some critics have used the word "comeback" in warmly discussing his new film.

The filmmaker, whose career dates back to 1965's "What's New, Pussycat?," won Oscars for writing and directing 1977's "Annie Hall" and writing 1987's "Hannah and Her Sisters" and has collected 17 other Oscar nominations for such films as "Interiors," "Manhattan," "Broadway Danny Rose," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," "Radio Days," "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Bullets Over Broadway" and "Mighty Aphrodite" but none since 1998's "Deconstructing Harry."

Since 2000, he's made "Small Time Crooks," "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion," "Hollywood Ending" and "Anything Else" mostly critical and box-office disappointments.

For his part, Allen claims not to suffer from highs and lows. "I'm not crushed if a film of mine does no business or is not well-received."

He even jokes about the empty seats at the cineplex.

"I have a small audience," he says, laughing and attributing that to his being a comedy writer whose work can be suffused with melancholy. "And I've always had a small audience. I know how to keep 'em out."

To him, a movie is a success if he can shepherd what was in his mind to the screen.

"If I have an idea at home, and I think it's a good idea, and I execute it I write it, and then I film it and edit it and put it out and I executed my idea, and I say, `Yes, this is what I had in my living room or my bedroom' ... then I feel successful about it," he says.

"But that's a much rarer experience for me," he says. "Usually I ruin them."

He keeps making movies "only because it's what I do" he doesn't know what he would do otherwise. He also makes them inexpensively (and quickly).

"It serves me therapeutically when I do it. I like writing. It keeps my mind off grim subjects," he says. "It's therapeutic in the same way a patient in an institution is given fingerpaints."

Allen sometimes has been criticized for depicting a world that's an unreal, effete aerie (often Manhattan's Upper East Side) with few blacks and few contented people and those who express contentment typically are superficial/stupid.

But Allen sounds content with the insularity of his life.

It's something that saved him 13 years ago from feeling damaged by the falling out with longtime companion Mia Farrow over his falling in love with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi and related allegations of child molestation.

That Ick Factor, as some see it, has altered perceptions of his work. Some moviegoers can't watch a couple of his films quite the same way again: "Manhattan," in which Allen played a 42-year-old writer who has an affair with a 17-year-old prep school student, and "Husbands and Wives," in which he plays a professor hooked up with a college-age student.

While life seemingly was imitating art in 1992 with tawdry tales played up in tabloids, Allen says he wasn't paying attention.

"At the time that all that was going on, you know, I was doing my movies and put out a play and was playing with my jazz band," he says. "That was something that was much more in the press than in my own personal life. I was isolated from the whole thing as I've lived my whole life, isolated and working."

Of course he would have preferred not being pilloried. But, he says: "Everything I did, I did. I've lived my life exactly the way I wanted to live it, and never had any regrets. ...

"I have my own little world that I live in, and it's pleasurable for me to the degree that anything can be pleasurable in this world."

[Ravi]

Before the movie opened, A.O. Scott wrote a provocative article in the New York Times concluding: "Instead of making the movies we expect him to, [Allen] stubbornly makes the movies he wants to make, gathering his A-list casts for minor exercises in whimsy and bile that tend not to be appreciated when they arrive in theaters. How could they be? Mr. Allen will never again be his younger self, and his audience, as long as we refuse to acknowledge that fact, will never grow up, guaranteeing our further disappointment. Maybe what we have on our hands is a dead shark."

That's a reference to "Annie Hall," which won the best picture Oscar and was the high point of America's relationship with Woody Allen ("A relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.") With Scott's words, I have some sympathy. Woody Allen made members of my generation laugh when we were young, and now he doesn't make us feel young anymore. Scott argues that by refusing to repeat himself, Allen has left himself open to the charge of repeating himself: There he goes again, doing something different.

I cannot escape the suspicion that if Woody had never made a previous film, if each new one was Woody's Sundance debut, it would get a better reception. His reputation is not a dead shark but an albatross, which with admirable economy Allen has arranged for the critics to carry around their own necks.

[cine]

i'm praying that this will be great. seriously, i just prayed.

your prayers have been answered. saw this earlier this afternoon and i loved it.

thank you, woody.  

[Alethia]

ill be seein it april 8, day after my b-day
pumped?  yes i am pumped

[modage]

i'm praying that this will be great. seriously, i just prayed.

your prayers have been answered. saw this earlier this afternoon and i loved it.

thank you, woody.  

i had planned to see it this afternoon but couldnt muster any enthusiasm after a handful of mediocre reviews.  i'll probably see it this weekend if there is hope.

[Gabe]

Woody Allen is such a cool, nice sweet old man when you read those interviews. He's awesome. These old men, theyre so sweet.    
I love how he writes in bed, that old man. I wish I could but i'm left handed so its kind of hard, plus i got a bad back. And don't you hate when you read an interview and forget the guy's accent? I kept thinking scorcese in my head.

eward, my sister was born on your birthday too  

[Kal]

I loved it... Woody is a genius really... and Will Ferrel is great

I love how he made Jason Biggs and Will Ferrel act like him... and they pulled it off... Radha Mitchell was great too

[modage]

i liked it about 10000 times better than Anything Else, but not as much as anything else.  no, it was pretty good and enjoyable but it didnt seem to rise above.  i really liked radha mitchell and will ferrell was great, actually everyone was good but.. you know, there was so little of it.  take two hours cut it in half, and then cut out a few more minutes for the storytellers, you've basically got an 2 episodes of tv show length, which i just wish there were more time to explore these characters who i liked.  woody should do something different, like REALLY different.  make a movie with only kids, or make like 4 or 5 movies about the same characters that can stretch over a longer period of time.  i feel like its just sort of a comfort in the predictability of his movies, like they're enjoyable (barring any disasters like Anything Else) and always have a handful of great all-time lines and usually some good performances/actors but you know, c'mon.  whether its comedy or tragedy its usually the same group of upper class new yorkers cheating and talking.  it was still pretty good though, like a B-/C+.

[MacGuffin]

A character so nice she plays her twice
Radha Mitchell is Melinda -- and Melinda -- in Woody Allen's intricate new movie. Source: Los Angeles Times

With her leading roles, so to speak, in "Melinda and Melinda," Radha Mitchell has joined a select sorority that includes Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Judy Davis and Mira Sorvino — actresses chosen by Woody Allen to bring his complex and funny female characters to life.

Mitchell had never met the Oscar-winning auteur when he called to ask if she would play Melinda, the woman around whom he'd woven an intricate, twice-told tale. Startled, the Australian actress thought the call was a prank.

"But it wasn't a joke," recalls the lithe Mitchell, nursing a tea at Shutters in Santa Monica on a recent rainy afternoon. "He said, 'You have an hour to read the script.' And they sent it over. And then there was somebody who came to pick it up."

Though Allen rarely allows any of his actors to read an entire script, Mitchell, 31, received the complete screenplay because of the magnitude of her part. "Most of the other actors didn't know who was who or what was what in the scene, or what they represented in the story or anything."

Once she'd agreed to take the role, Mitchell says, Allen didn't change the script to fit her. "The script was very similar to what you see," she says. "Obviously it is an intellectual exercise, and you wondered how it was going to translate. Woody told me he edited it in two weeks, which is really fast, so obviously he had it very clear in his mind."

Allen, she says, had seen her in "Ten Tiny Love Stories," an intimate 2001 indie drama that features actresses speaking to the camera about love. Though it saw limited theatrical release overseas, "Love Stories" made its debut in the U.S. on video.

"My story was running into an ex-boyfriend at the cinema and knowing that you are going to go back home with somebody else that night, and the memory it triggers," she says. "The guy had a hairy back and hairy hands. It was a funny little anecdote."

Though Mitchell talked to Allen by phone before production began, she didn't meet him until the day before cameras began to roll. "It was a unique experience," she says with a smile. "And I played the two characters on the first day. In the morning I was one Melinda, and in the afternoon I was another Melinda, so by the evening I was just freaking out!"

Marc Forster, who directed Mitchell in 2000's "Everything Put Together" and in the hit "Finding Neverland," in which she played the unhappy wife of playwright James Barrie, says directors gravitate toward the actress for a number of reasons.

"She has an incredible power of saying things without saying them with words," says Forster. "It is a pure emotional communication. She has that skill really down — that she can communicate with an audience without using any words, and you know exactly how she feels and what she feels.

"It is amazing, the radiance she has. So many actresses can be beautiful, but they can't capture your attention. She really has this power, not only from her body language and looks but also from her soul and mind."

The conceit of "Melinda and Melinda," which opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, is that two playwrights — one (Wallace Shawn) who pens comedies and the other (Larry Pine) who specializes in dramas — meet over dinner one night and tell the same story, filtered through their iconoclastic views of life, about a woman named Melinda.

In the dramatic version of Melinda's story, she's a frazzled, suicidal divorcée who causes havoc in the life of a former school friend (Chloë Sevigny) and her struggling actor husband (Jonny Lee Miller).

In the comedic tale, the sweetly scattered Melinda changes the lives of an Allenesque actor (Will Ferrell) and his successful documentary-filmmaker wife (Amanda Peet).

Though most actors say that drama is easy and comedy is hard, Mitchell found the opposite to be true because the dramatic side of the film verges on melodrama.

"I think the dramatic side was an interesting time," she muses. "My initial idea is that she should be less realistic, but he was all about making her real. 'Make it real; if anyone laughs we are ruined,' " she recalls Allen saying.

But audiences have found a lot of the dramatic view of Melinda's life absurdly comic. "Obviously it has a cynical, twisted sense of humor," Mitchell explains. "The film is about attitude and the effects of attitude on your life."

Allen was initially distant, she says, but warmed up to the cast during the filming. "He was different as the movie progressed," she says. "At first he didn't talk very much, and by the end, we had a dialogue and we would discuss what we were doing."

And though working with Allen was "intimidating," Mitchell adds that she learned to put more trust in her instincts as an actress.

Mitchell reports that the casts of both stories met for lunch before production began in New York. "We started at some cafe uptown and we progressed [downtown], so at 3 in the morning we were in Alphabet City getting drunk. That's how we got to know each other!"