From: nospam@nospam.net   
      
   This is a terrible, biased article. We study this sort of bad journalism in   
   college. Can the article be any more negative?   
      
   What legion of "critics" are begging Woody to leave the stage for good? And,   
   why should any director care what "critics" think?   
      
   "John Wesley Harding"  wrote in message   
   news:55e3e822.0407301153.756eae52@posting.google.com...   
   > The Guardian profile: Woody Allen   
   >   
   > If ever a film-maker represented a city, the Brooklyn boy Woody Allen   
   > represented New York. Now he's working in London. Can he achieve one   
   > more surprise and confound the legions of critics who are begging him   
   > to leave the stage for good?   
   >   
   > Xan Brooks   
   > Friday July 30, 2004   
   > The Guardian   
   >   
   > The 1979 film Manhattan opens with a breathless Woody Allen voiceover:   
   > "He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his   
   > black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat ...   
   > New York was his town, and it always would be." Cue a crash of   
   > Gershwin on the soundtrack, a blaze of fireworks over the Central Park   
   > skyline, and a rash of romantic misadventures on the Upper East Side.   
   >   
   > So far, so predictable. Through a 34-film career, Woody Allen has   
   > invariably cast the city as his chief supporting star. New York was   
   > his town. One assumed it always would be. And yet the director can   
   > currently be found at Ealing studios in west London, shooting a   
   > British romantic comedy with British money and a cast of homegrown   
   > talent.   
   >   
   > Allen's London visit can be seen as the latest in a series of   
   > increasingly desperate manoeuvres to safeguard an ailing career. Ever   
   > since Orion Pictures folded in 1991, he has found himself shuttled   
   > nervously between studios, from Columbia Tri-Star to Sweetland Films   
   > (a consortium of foreign investors) to DreamWorks to Fox, as the box   
   > office shrank, the audience dwindled and distribution grew spotty.   
   >   
   > Despite their modest budgets, many of his recent films (Sweet and   
   > Lowdown, Hollywood Ending, Curse of the Jade Scorpion) have struggled   
   > to break even.   
   >   
   > The latest production (snappily billed as "Woody Allen's Summer   
   > Project") comes bankrolled to the tune of £9m (peanuts in Hollywood   
   > terms, but a substantial sum for a British film). David Thompson, the   
   > head of BBC Films, admits that he is taking a gamble. "What we're   
   > doing is backing a hunch that the combination of Woody Allen and the   
   > UK might be a real treat," he says. "If you're going to take a punt on   
   > anything, it might as well be someone with the track record of Woody   
   > Allen."   
   >   
   >  Certainly Allen has earned his place in the pantheon of film-makers.   
   > Born Allen Konigsberg to a working-class Brooklyn family, he wrote   
   > gags for Bob Hope and Sid Caesar before becoming a standup on the   
   > 1960s comedy circuit, where he would fumble with his glasses, gulp in   
   > faux-terror and deliver devastating one-liners with a boxer's timing.   
   >   
   > Shifting into movies, he pioneered a new brand of romantic comedy,   
   > installing himself as an emblematic urban everyman; the nerd who gets   
   > the girl (and then usually loses her). He pursued a flighty Diane   
   > Keaton in the Oscar-winning Annie Hall, romanced a teenage Mariel   
   > Hemingway in Manhattan, and fell foul of the Mob in 1984's Broadway   
   > Danny Rose.   
   >   
   > The melancholic Hannah and Her Sisters was galvanised by his turn as a   
   > hypochondriac TV producer, while in 1989's peerless Crimes and   
   > Misdemeanours he played a luckless documentary maker who laments that   
   > "the last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of   
   > Liberty".   
   >   
   > Throughout his 1970s and 80s heyday, Allen's patented blend of   
   > borscht-belt comedy, psychoanalysis and the tenets of the European art   
   > film was an intoxicating brew.   
   >   
   > These days it seems to have lost its fizz. Critics say his films have   
   > grown complacent and overfamiliar, while a certain peevish quality has   
   > percolated his comic worldview. His public image, too, has taken a   
   > battering. Over the past decade Allen's films have sometimes played a   
   > distant second fiddle to the cacophonous noises off, be they from a   
   > protracted legal battle with his former producer and longtime friend   
   > Jean Doumanian, his messy break-up with Mia Farrow, or his eventual   
   > marriage to the actor's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.   
   >   
   > Anything Else, on general release from today, is widely viewed as   
   > another below-par effort. In the US (where it the was released a year   
   > ago) reviews ranged from the exasperated to the desolate.   
   >   
   > According to the Village Voice, Anything Else plays as "an infinitely   
   > running spool of Allenian repetitions that could serve as   
   > entertainment in a relatively mild circle of the Inferno". For Moira   
   > MacDonald of the Seattle Times, "the title seemed like a taunt. Is   
   > there anything else, Woody? Please?" Over at the New York Times, Elvis   
   > Mitchell claimed that the man once hailed as the voice of his   
   > generation was now "increasingly out of touch with contemporary   
   > America".   
   >   
   > Nick James, the editor of Sight and Sound magazine, would second that.   
   > "The last few films have been pretty disastrous," he says. "All the   
   > things we've come to expect just aren't there any more. The quality of   
   > the scripts is not as good. The comic timing is very rusty. My gut   
   > feeling is that he no longer has anyone around him who can be   
   > critical. In a way it's a King Lear moment. He's become so venerated   
   > and isolated by celebrity that he no longer connects with an audience.   
   > Perhaps it's a case of finding some new collaborators - or considering   
   > the dreaded word, retirement."   
   >   
   > For his part, David Thompson is hoping that a change of scene will do   
   > him good. "I think that everyone is hungry to see him do something in   
   > a different key or colour palette. He has a singular voice, and a   
   > consistent vision of the world and how people relate. What's   
   > interesting is to see how that works with British characters, who are   
   > perhaps less prone to psychoanalysis, less up their own navels and   
   > more buttoned-up. So I can't wait to see his approach to that   
   > buttoned-up British way of life."   
   >   
   > Uncharitable types, however, might suggest that BBC Films has snapped   
   > up a director who's past his prime - like buying up an ageing   
   > Premiership footballer and then shipping them overseas.   
   >   
   > "Yes, they might say that," Thompson concedes. "To be fair, a lot of   
   > people were quite critical of Robert Altman when he came to the UK to   
      
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