The Screengrab : whatever works

Trailer Review: Whatever Works

Paul Clark — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Throughout my college years, I was a fairly rabid Woody Allen fan, watching his movies on video two or three in a row, much to the consternation of my roommates. Since then, his more inconsistent recent output has tempered my enthusiasm somewhat, but I still make sure to watch all of his new films in theatres, partly out of my long-established loyalty, partly out of hope that he’s got another masterpiece in him. Based on this trailer, Whatever Works probably won’t be that masterpiece, seeing as how it’s full of the sorts of easy potshots (particularly at Southern Christians) that mar most of his latter-day movies. Yet at the same time, it’s nice to see him back in New York after his years abroad- one hopes that his European sojourn has awakened a new creativity in him. And like a lot of people, I’m excited to see him working with Larry David, who is possessed of a similarly neurotic and cosmopolitan comic sensibility. If nothing else, David should be one of the better straight-up Allen surrogates to come around in ages. Miles better than Kenneth Branagh, that’s for sure.

The Rep Report (April 22 -- April 29)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: An unnamed but prominent runner-up in our recent list of notably unexpected movie reunions, Luis Bunuel's Viridiana (1961) marked the director's homecoming to the country of his birth, Spain, from which he had exiled himself before beginning his movie career rather than live under the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Bunuel was invited to return and launch his first production made on Spanish soil at a time when Franco, or somebody, was apparently feeling sore about the Generalissimo's international reputation as a stifler of creativity who presided over a country that his regime had sucked dry of all life and spirit. The Spanish Film Board duly okayed the script and sent the finished product off to the Cannes Film Festival, cheerfully oblivious not just to its sacrilegious content but also to the possibility that there just might be a hint of a rebuke to Franco in such details as the title heroine's line, "The weeds have taken over the past 20 years... And beyond the second floor, the house is overrun with spiders."

The movie won the Palm d'Or at Cannes that year, but it was also denounced by the Vatican as an affront to the church. In response, Bunuel shrugged, "I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am." Franco dismissed all the members of his Film Board and burned every print of the movie that he could get his hands on, and Bunuel had to get along as best he could, making his movies somewhere else on the planet, for the rest of his career. Viridiana wasn't shown again in Spain until 1977, two years after Franco's death, and if you'd been living there, you too would have wanted to give it a while to make sure that the silver bullets really worked. I saw it several years ago in New Orleans, in a theater that was full of Jesuit priests, and all the way through it, those guys laughed their heads off at stuff that I'm guessing I didn't have a thorough enough religious education to appreciate. Then the movie ended and the lights came on, and they scuttled out of there as if were afraid of being caught by their mothers at a porno flick. Starting this Friday, Film Forum brings Viridiana back for one week to see if it still has the power to spook the pious. Buneul's last word on the subject was to declare, famously, that he was "still an atheist, thank God"; Franco, his total life achievements accurately summed up in the words of Chevy Chase, is still dead.

For five days starting tonight, Anthology Film Archives hosts a retrospective of the work of Shirley Clarke, a maverick independent filmmaker whose work dates back to that moment when "independent cinema" in America seemed to be an offshoot of the Beat movement. Clarke's first film, the 1961 The Connection, was based on the Living Theater's production of Jack Gelber's New York play about junk and jazz, with a cast that includes Warren Finnerty, Carl Lee, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Garry Goodrow, as well as an onscreen musical combo that includes Jackie McLean. Clarke followed that up with the j.d. drama The Cool World (1964), doubly valuable today as a time capsule of Harlem, and the verite monologue documentary Portrait of Jason (1967). Anthology is showing them all, as well as some of her lesser-known work, including her final film, a 1985 portrait of Ornette Coleman.

The 8th annual Tribeca Film Festival runs from tonight through May 3. In its earliest years, Tribeca was a sprawling mix of international and indie films and big, glossy Hollywood fare that commanded a lot of attention but seemed in no immediate danger of developing its own coherent identity. Last year they scaled way back and were rewarded for it with a minor breakthrough: the top prize winner, Let the Right One In, emerged as a cult hit and counts as the closest that Tribeca has come to putting its stamp on a emerging success, which is seen by many as the mark of a major festival. This year Tribeca has scaled back even further, which people are hoping will result in a tighter focus. The opening night selection is Woody Allen's Whatever Works.

SAN FRANCICSO: The The San Francisco International Film Festival runs from April 23 to May 7.

Woody Allen, Larry David, and the Blackness of Eternity

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I think we’re all in agreement that the casting of Larry David in the lead of Woody Allen’s latest film Whatever Works is pure gold, Jerry. Well, maybe everyone aside from Larry David. “I’d always been a fan. … I asked him to do it, and he said, ‘But I can’t act! I can only do what I do, I’m not an actor, you’ll be disappointed,’” Allen told Sara Vilkomerson of the New York Observer. “You know, those are the ones who can always do it. The ones that tell you how great they are can never do it. Larry is all, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it,’ but when it came time to do it, right out of the box, he did it.”

It’s not that David leapt at the chance. “I gave him every opportunity to get someone else. I was kind of uncomfortable. I was out of my comfort zone,” he said. Then he laughed. “Of course, the comfort zone is not very big! I take one step to the right and I’m out of my comfort zone.”

As Vilkomerson notes in her lengthy but thoroughly entertaining piece The Unshine Boys, Allen and David are responsible for two of the most indelibly neurotic portraits of New York City in pop culture history – Allen through dozens of movies over the past few decades, most notably Annie Hall and Manhattan, and David through the classic sitcom of the ‘90s he co-created, Seinfeld. (Unlike Allen, who has always loathed the place, David has moved on to skewering Los Angeles in his current HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm.) The similarities between the two aren’t hard to spot, but David reluctantly admits he may have a slightly less bleak view of the world. “I think [Woody’s] probably more of a pessimist about the big picture,” Mr. David said. “The hopelessness, meaninglessness of it all—the blackness of eternity—those questions. Whereas I suspect I’m probably more pessimistic about the smaller things: The relationship won’t work out, Obama will lose, the Yankees will lose, the movie will bomb—things like that. People won’t watch ball games with me because I’m so pessimistic. I’m no fun to be around.”

As for Allen, he insists he’s not “cynical and misanthropic and nihilistic,” just realistic. And there’s not much chance he’ll be seeing this post anytime soon. “It’s gone past me,” he said, of the Internet age. “I don’t have a computer, I don’t have a word processor or any of that stuff… I know I’m missing something. I know when friends Google instant information or things”—he keeps a Webster’s dictionary close by—“it just seems so futuristic to me! I’m still plodding and doing it the other way. I don’t say that proudly, or like it’s a good thing. I don’t think it’s a good thing. I’ve just never been able to make the transition.” Hey, whatever works.

Related:
Take Five: Woody
Woody Allen Doesn't Care What YouThink

Woody Allen Comes to Tribeca

Phil Nugent — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The complete schedule for the Tribeca Film Festival, being held from April 22 through may 3, has been announced. The opening night attraction is Woody Allen's Whatever Works, which marks Allen's return to the city that figures so prominently in approximately 98.9% of his oeuvre, after a four-film tour of Europe. ""A lovely idea of showing my film in a film festival in my own city," gushed Allen. "It's very exciting." For longtime Allen watchers, much of the excitement comes from the news that, after seeing him try to palm younger actors ranging from John Cusack to Kenneth Branagh in what amounted to the Woody Allen role in some of his earlier pictures, he's using Larry David as the lead in this one. (Granted, it's set in a universe where David is married to Evan Rachel Wood.) Other notable features on the schedule include The Girlfriend Experience, Steven Soderbergh's new film starring the adult-film actress Sasha Grey; Serious Moonlight, directed by Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Cheryl Hines from a screenplay written by the late Adrienne Shelly; The Englishman in New York, in which John Hurt plays the aged Quentin Crisp, a role he played more than thirty years ago in The Naked Civil Servant; films that have already stirred up some buzz at this year's Sundance Film Festival, including Duncan Jones's sci-fi movie Moon, the political satire In the Loop, and the neo-blaxploitation thriller Black Dynamite; and Love of the Beast, Eric Bana's documentary about his car.

Tribeca made headlines last month when it was reported that Geoff Gilmore had agreed to come aboard as Chief Creative Officer of Tribeca Enterprises, the company that runs the festival, after nineteen years at the head of the Sundance Film Festival. Gilmore is generally credited with having helped to shape Sundance's distinctive identity over the years, so there's been plenty of speculation about what kind of impact his hiring may have on the future shape of Tribeca, which after seven years is still seen as a festival that is in search of a clear identity. This year's Festival includes 85 features and 46 short films, down from last year's lineup of 120 features. Last year's relatively concentrated lineup marked a deliberate effort to wrangle the festival into a manageable shape after the crosstown sprawl of earlier years. This year's further reduced slate reflects that plus the effects of the shattered economy. Tickets become available to the general public starting Monday, March 16.

Morning Deal Report: The Squeakquel

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I wish I could tell you there won’t be an Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel. Furthermore, I wish I could tell you it won’t be titled Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. But I cannot tell you these things. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Betty Thomas will direct the squeakquel, in which “Zachary Levi, star of the NBC action comedy series Chuck, has been cast opposite the computer-generated singing rodents.”

Woody Allen is going back to London. After a brief return to his New York stomping grounds for the upcoming Whatever Works starring Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, Allen will shoot his latest project across the pond with Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins. “As usual, Allen is keeping title and plot under wraps,” Variety reports.

The Departed screenwriter William Monahan has another crime up his sleeve. Monahan will direct an adaptation of “The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Thief, Rock-and-Roller and Prodigal Son, the forthcoming memoirs of career criminal Myles Connor. Connor became an art connoisseur and a rock musician whose band, Myles and the Wild Ones, backed Roy Orbison. He was also an accomplished art and antiques thief who was involved in a series of museum robberies that grabbed headlines in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s,” per Variety.