North Rhone 2001 and pork at the TGJP

C'mon, Jeff, I'd just assumed that Jay is doing for pastry what others on this bored have previously done for Kant and Jean-Luc Godard. Must unbridled pedantry really come with footnotes?

M'k L'n
 
originally posted by MLipton:
C'mon, Jeff, I'd just assumed that Jay is doing for pastry what others on this bored have previously done for Kant and Jean-Luc Godard. Must unbridled pedantry really come with footnotes?
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I would also accept end notes.
 
Sorry; a frankly trollish drive-by comment, but I was moved by a fleeting impulse of nostalgia for his older movies. Anything that can make me laugh like that is worth a small pile of good Burgundy.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Sorry; a frankly trollish drive-by comment, but I was moved by a fleeting impulse of nostalgia for his older movies. Anything that can make me laugh like that is worth a small pile of good Burgundy.
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While Love and Death for various reasons is probably my favorite of his movies I have loved much of his later work, enjoyed others, and only outright disliked a few (S's and F'g comes immediately to mind there).
 
Ian,
I come from the camp that found most of his early movies almost unbearable to watch after a point. While I love the first 30 min of Sleeper, after that it went into a long, painful slide for me (it comes of not knowing how to end a joke, a problem that likewise plagued the Monty Python TV series and is also evident in Holy Grail). Love and Death had plenty of moments, but also some very awkward ones. Maybe this stems from my discomfort with Borscht Belt humor, or maybe it's just that Woody Allen's portrayals of characters within his films usually displayed too many neuroses for me to be comfortable. Whatever the reason, Annie Hall was the first of his comedies I could sit through without the urge to run out of the theater at some point. Later films, such as Hannah and Her Sisters, were too earnest and serious by half for me. I get bored with films that proclaim their Seriousness on every frame. Midnight in Paris was refreshing because it wasn't so fraught with Seriousness and Owen Wilson makes a much better Woody Allen than Woody himself does (IMO of course and YMMV in spades).

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:

I come from the camp that found most of his early movies almost unbearable to watch after a point. While I love the first 30 min of Sleeper, after that it went into a long, painful slide for me (it comes of not knowing how to end a joke, a problem that likewise plagued the Monty Python TV series and is also evident in Holy Grail). Love and Death had plenty of moments, but also some very awkward ones. ... Annie Hall was the first of his comedies I could sit through without the urge to run out of the theater at some point.
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Mark, I completely agree with this. Completely.

I should add Mel Brooks to that category; setups that overstay their welcome. The only thing of his I can watch is The Producers (and even then)—though I do have a childish fondness for Spaceballs.
 
Diversity of taste is no less a good thing in art than in wine, I suppose. To me, all of his serious films, beginning with Manhattan, seem too alike in some way, I can't lose myself in the story. They're too chatty, too self-consciously urbane, too composed and washed out with Allenism.

I have no beef at all with others who like this part of his work and will have to think about the interesting comparison with Trollope. Otoh, his command of silly, intellectual humor is about unparalleled, imho. Chacun, etc.
 
I am not saying they are the same style of humor. Neither is Monty Python, if you'll notice. But the three (in my case) or the two (Woody Allen and Monty Python) in Mark's suffer from the same issue of prolonging jokes past the point of funny; awkward craftsmanship.
 
Well, I guess that's where personal taste tips the scales one way or the other. Anyway, I completely respect your view, as well as Mark's, Jonathan's, and Jay's, and wish you much pleasure in repeated viewing of his later movies.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
... Midnight in Paris is a series of American stereotypes about Paris. And that's true, I guess. It's still a good movie.
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I was with you up to that point.

originally posted by Sharon:
I do have a childish fondness for Spaceballs....
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That opening scene makes it possible to understand the architecture of the BNF.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Fwiw, personally, I find no comparison between Allen's early humor and Brooks's. Scalpel and hatchet.
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I, OTOH, would take winegrrrrl's parallel even further, though the two had opposite trajectories for me: I love Brooks's early comedies up to Young Frankenstein, after which his films become less and less humorous to me. His humor is more juvenile than Allen's (and Blazing Saddles is considerably less funny to me today than it was when I saw its theatrical release at age 16), but both got their start as writers for Sid Caesar and it shows. Where Sharon and I do differ is on the subject of Spaceballs, one of the only films I've ever walked out on before its completion (to put this into perspective, I stayed to watch all of Sleeper and Take the Money and Run).

M'k L'n
 
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