Network Awesome - Sun, Jul 22

Woody Allen - Live on Granada TV

Woody back when he did standup!

Curated by Jason Forrest

Total Runtime: 0:27:27

ComedySubs augura felice 75esimo compleanno a Woody Allen proponendovi questa traduzione di una sua (più unica che rara) apparizione televisiva come stand-up comedian.

Art - Sounds From A Town I Love (Woody Allen, 2001)

onsists purely of cell-phone conversation snippets of twenty-two random people walking through the streets of New York City

Curated by Jason Forrest

Total Runtime: 0:03:51

Art2000snycwoody allen

"If you hate it, I'll try to make it up to you somehow in the future"

Sounds from a Town I Love (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Sounds from the Town I Love)^[3]^[4]^[5] is a 2001 comedy film of approximately three minutes, written and directed by Woody Allen. The film was first shown during The Concert for New York City.^[6] The film consists purely of cell-phone conversation snippets of twenty-two random people walking through the streets of New York City.^[6] Ranging from complainers to neurotic worriers conversing about bizarre or amusing situations, they and their comments are unrelated to one another. The film ends with a message from Woody Allen: "I love this town."

John Cusack introduced the film with a message from Woody Allen: "I apologize in advance for my short movie. The cause was so worthwhile that I could not say no when approached to contribute something to this wonderful show. I did the best I could. If you hate it, I will try to make it up to you somehow in the future." In addition to longtime Allen collaborators Marshall Brickman and Tony Roberts, among the people seen in the film are Austin Pendleton, Griffin Dunne, Michael Emerson, Bebe Neuwirth, and Celia Weston.^[7]

Talk Show - Woody Allen on Cavett

Dick and Woody talk about Whales, Particle Physics, and Jazz.

Curated by Joe DeMartino

Total Runtime: 0:50:23

Talk Show

Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright.

Allen's films, ranging from tragedies to screwball comedies, have made him a notable American director. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work.^[1] Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema, among a wealth of other fields of interest.

Allen developed a passion for music early on and is a jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his hometown of Manhattan, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and performed in a rare European tour in 1996, which became the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.

Movie - Love And Death (Woody Allen, 1975)

one of the last of his movies that tries to get as many laughs as possible, but contains a lot of commentary on philosophy, a balance that Allen feels makes it one of his best & most personal films.

Curated by Markus Fiedler

Total Runtime: 1:25:01

Movie

Love and Death is a 1975 comedy film by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Love and Death is a satirical take on Russian epic novels. Coming in between Sleeper and Annie Hall, Love and Death is in many respects an artistic transition between the two. It is one of the last of Allen's movies that tries to get as many laughs as possible, but contains a lot of commentary on philosophy, a balance that Allen feels makes it one of his best and most personal films.^{[citation needed]} Keaton and Allen, as Sonja and Boris, Russians living during the Napoleonic Era, engage in mock-serious philosophical debates.

[edit]Plot

When Napoleon invades the Russian Empire during the Napoleonic wars, Boris Grushenko (Allen), a coward and pacifist scholar, is forced to enlist in the Russian Army, desperate and disappointed hearing the news that his cousin Sonja (Keaton) is to wed a herring merchant. He inadvertently captures a group of enemy soldiers, but to no avail, as the French army reaches Moscow immediately afterward. He returns and marries the recently-widowed Sonja (who really does not want to marry Boris, but promises him she will when she thinks he is about to be killed in a duel), a marriage filled with philosophical debates, and no money. Boris thinks that the French invasion of Moscow should put an end to the war. Hisnarcissistic wife, angered that the invasion will interfere with their plans to start a family that year, conceives a plot to assassinate Napoleon at his quarters. Boris and Sonja debate the matter with some degree of philosophical double-talk, and Boris reluctantly goes along with it. Sonja escapes arrest while Boris is executed despite being told by a vision that he will manage to escape.

[edit]Cast

Woody Allen – Boris Grushenko
Diane Keaton – Sonja
James Tolkan – Napoleon Bonaparte
Harold Gould – Anton lvanovich Lebedokov
Olga Georges-Picot – Countess Alexandrovna
Zvee Scooler – Father
Jessica Harper – Natasha
Féodor Atkine – Mikhail Grushenko (as Feodor Atkine)
Yves Barsacq – Rimsky (as Yves Barsaco)
Brian Coburn – Dimitri
Tony Jay – Vladimir Maximovitch
Howard Vernon – Gen. Leveque
Aubrey Morris – Soldier 4
Alfred Lutter – Young Boris
Georges Adet – Old Nehamkin
Sol Frieder – Voskovec
Lloyd Battista – Don Francisco
Frank Adu – Drill sergeant

[edit]Style

Mikhail Nesterov's painting The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew (1890) might have served as influence for young Boris' own encounter with Death.

The dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoyevsky andTolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace. This includes a dialogue between Boris and his father with each line alluding to or being composed entirely of Dostoevsky titles. The use of Prokofievfor the soundtrack adds to the Russian flavor of the film. Prokofiev's "Troika" from theLieutenant Kijé Suite is featured prominently, for the film's opening and closing credits, and in selected scenes in the film when a "bouncy" theme is required. The battle scene is accompanied with the music from Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky.

Some of the humour is straightforward; other jokes rely on the viewer's awareness of classic literature or contemporary European cinema. For example, the final shot of Keaton is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the sequence with the stone lions is a parody of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and the plotline involving the Countess, her jealous lover and his duel-gone-awry with Allen's character is an homage to Bergman'sSmiles of a Summer Night. Bergman's The Seventh Seal is quoted all throughout, and theTotentanz at the end is lifted entirely.

Allen pays tribute to the humor of The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin throughout this film. In one scene of the movie, Allen and Diane Keaton parody a scene taken from Animal Crackers, a Marx Brothers film, which itself was a parody of a Eugene O'Neill play.

[edit]Reception

The film has grossed $20 million in North America^{[citation needed]} and holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[1]

Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars, writing:

Miss Keaton (Diane Keaton) is very good in Love and Death, perhaps because here she gets to establish and develop a character, instead of just providing a foil, as she's often done in other Allen films ... There are dozens of little moments when their looks have to be exactly right, and they almost always are. There are shadings of comic meaning that could have gotten lost if all we had were the words, and there are whole scenes that play off facial expressions. It's a good movie to watch just for that reason, because it's been done with such care, love and lunacy.^[2]

At the 25th Berlin International Film Festival in 1975, the film won the Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic contribution.^[3]

In September 2008, in a poll held by Empire magazine, the film was voted as the 301st greatest film out of a list of 500.^[4]

[edit]Anachronisms

The film is full of deliberate humorous anachronisms:

In a brief interlude, Boris works as a struggling poet, reading from a poem he eventually wads up and throws out he says, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas," a quote lifted from T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. ("Too sentimental," Boris decides as he throws out the poem.)
Boris (Allen) retains his trademark glasses despite their anachronistic absurdity; at one point Boris says to Sonja after a diatribe filled with exasperation and self-loathing, "Do you think God wears glasses?" and she replies, "Not with those frames!"
In the war front against the French there are cheerleader girls wearing "Russia" t-shirts.
A vendor, complete with New York accent and attired as if he were at a ballpark, is selling "red hots" to soldiers during a battle. Allen's character apparently offers him a large-denomination currency, and he remarks, "Hey, you got anything smaller? I just started!"
A black Drill Instructor puts Boris through his paces. "You love Russia, don't you?" "Yes sir!" "I can't hear you!" "Yes sir!"
In the era in which the film is set, the motion picture had not been invented yet, so the Russian Army stages a short "Hygiene Play" on the dangers of venereal disease, after which Boris "reviews" the 30-second play in the verbiage of a modern theater critic.
Boris speaks to the audience: "There are some things worse than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, I'm sure you know what I mean."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Death

Movie - Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984)

In his attempts to reconcile a lounge singer with his mistress, a hapless talent agent is mistaken as her lover by a jealous gangster.

Total Runtime: 1:21:10

Moviecomedy

Danny Rose is a manager of artists, and although he's not very successful, he nevertheless goes out of his way to help his acts. So when Lou Canova, a singer who has a chance of making a come-back, asks Danny to help him with a problem, Danny helps him. This problem is Lou's mistress Tina. Lou wants Tina to be at his concerts, otherwise he can't perform, but he's married, so Danny has to take her along as if she was his girlfriend. Danny however gets more than he has bargained for when two mobsters come looking for the guy who has hurt their brother by stealing the heart of Tina, the girl he loves.

Movie - Sleeper (Woody Allen, 1973)

"you dont believe in science, you dont believe in political systems, you dont believe in religion.... what do you believe in?" "sex and death.. 2 things that come once in a lifetime."

Curated by Jason Forrest

Total Runtime: 1:27:18

(1973)

Movie70scomedysci-fiwoody allen

Sleeper is a 1973 futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, and directed by Allen. The plot involves the adventures of the owner of a Greenwich Village, NY health food store played by Woody Allen who is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and defrosted 200 years later in an inept totalitarian state. The film contains many elements which parody notable works of science fiction.