Ann Of A Thousand Movies

For some reason, the name Ann or Anne (or Anna, or Annie) keeps coming up as one of the most popular girl’s name in movies. Here are the ones I’ve gathered so far.

There are dozens of film versions of Anna Karenina, and a few of Anna And The King Of Siam. There is Annie Hall and The Diary Of Anne Frank and (Little Orphan) Annie. as well as Anne (Bolyn) Of The Thousand Days.

So why, huh? All these Annes seem to have one trait in common: spunk. Whether she survives or not, she’s got strength as well as a certain presence that the name somehow embodies for writers and audiences.

In fact, Ann is a popular name for regal characters or the actresses who have that name.

Audrey Hepburn was Princess Ann in Roman Holiday. Julia Roberts was Anna in Notting Hill. Mandy Moore was Anna, the president’s daughter in Chasing Liberty. Nicole Kidman was Anna in Birth. Naomi Watts was Ann Darrow in King Kong.

I’m not counting Anne Hathaway who starred as The Princess Bride. Or Anne Bancroft, Anne Baxter, Ann Sheridan, but they all had spunk.

And what about Annie Savoy (Bull Durham). She had almost everything.

Voice Of Her Generation: Sofia Coppola

In just three films - The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost In Translation (2003), and last year's Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola has carved a niche for herself as the voice of her generation in the same way F.Scott Fitzgerald was of his.

Both generations are "lost," and for many of the same reasons.

Well, let me amend that. Coppola is at least the voice of her generation of girls while Quentin Tarantino is the voice of his generation of boys - which explains why Coppola's females feel so depressed.

Ms. Coppola's girls no longer live in the movie world of boy meets girl. They are confused - alienated from the old conventions but as yet without new rules. They are intelligent young women, but their intelligence makes them sadly aware of their predicament.

To rebel against the rules set for them by society (i.e., by their parents' male-centric generation) and therefore risk destruction; or to tolerate them, assuring a life of stultifying boredom? Other choices seem to be beyond them.

They can't decide what to do with sex, with love, with boys or men. And they have not much ambition to be useful or productive.

What they clearly get is style as an expression of self, and willingly indulge and overindulge ... until something important might come along. Their lives lack drama and they strive to create some. That drive is the center of the universe of pop culture.

If Coppola's social philosophy can be labeled as post-feminist (or as one critic wrote, post post-feminist), her story-telling style is anti-narrative post-modern.

She eschews plot, seems only faintly interested in dialogue as a vehicle to carry ideas. She prefers to slow the pace of her scenes to linger until the viewer is as bored as her characters - seemingly a way to create the sludgy mood of ennui and indecision that she is mostly interested in.

It is that mood that her audience most identifies with - the time of life when time wasting is a full time pre-occupation.

The girls in The Virgin Suicides are trapped in their suburban home in the 1970's with unsatisfactory parents and not much hope.

Coppola is not much interested in the question of why the five girls choose death, but rather wants to create a surrealistic comedic mood that seems to ask why not - why don't all girls, of that age at least, say fuck it and die.

Kirsten Dunst played the sister, Lux, who is the center of the tale, and other sisters are named Marie and Therese. Coppola chose Dunst to portray Marie Antoinette, who incidentally had a mother and daughter named Marie Therese. She chose Marianne Faithfull, an icon of 60's pop indulgence, to portray Marie's mother, who advises her daughter on the perils of fame.

Marie Antoinette's dilemma, as Ms. Coppola sees it, is not much different from Paris Hilton or any celebutante today.

Marie's lap dogs mirror any photo of Paris with her purse pups. The shoe montage, anachronistic teenage girlish conversations, and pop soundtrack choices make her point with a wink.

Today’s girl identifies easily with Coppola's Marie. She expresses herself by creating an image — in fashion and shopping, partying with cool friends. Her palaces were like our college campuses, dance clubs, dorms. She has style and as much independence as her position in society — i.e., her celebrity — allows.

Today’s girl accepts celebrity indulgence and extravagance as leadership qualities. The language of social responsibility is off her radar (or ipod) screen. She finds nothing wrong with spending on Manolos while African children go barefoot; binge eating and drinking despite starvation rampant on the other side of the palace moat. Modish charitable causes are merely effective PR excuses for red carpet exposure and parties till dawn.

Charlotte of Lost In Translation might as well be stranded in Versailles as in Tokyo. Her husband (played by Giovanni Ribisi) is close in type to Louis Auguste (played by Jason Schwartzman), both boys who are not quite satisfactory men, more interested in their toys and pals than in being lover or companion to their girls.

Bored, lonely, depressed, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) meets Bob (Bill Murray), who is in a similar state if not the same stage of life. Charlotte, like Bob, is too smart for the room, looking for something to be passionate about. She is instantly attracted to Bob, who is the opposite of all the young, attractive, aimless and humorless people she knows. He is old, weatherbeaten, aimless - but funny. The fact that Bob is a minor celebrity doesn't hurt her interest in him either.

I think what the audience latched onto was the sense of apartness that these two misfits share. They are aliens in a strange world (as are Marie and the Lisbon sisters) in which rituals and conventions are confusing, communication by articulated speech is laughably ineffective.

Charlotte is too mature for her age group, and Bill wants to still be silly and happy, instead of slowing down in his practical, settling-for-mediocrity middle age. They meet each other half way into their terrifying spins and hold hands for the time it takes for the movie to play, then very reluctantly part.

Coppola is less interested in what they say to each other than the mood they let themselves indulge - a sleepless but dreamy half-conscious state of faint amusement about their lives.

Except for one scene in which the couple try to sleep side by side barely touching each other and talk vaguely about life, the scenes and dialogue are pointedly pointless.

She allows Murray to riff in his usual anarchic way, gently funning all the quaint Japanese thingies, while Johansson chuckles appreciatively at his liberating wit.

In the end, the experience seems to help Charlotte a little bit, though none of her problems are solved.

And that's okay with the audience. They've got nothing but time to kill.

Deconstructing Woody

Woody Allen's latest efforts, "Match Point" and "Scoop" were disappointing but his work is always worth thinking about. He made his masterpiece, "Annie Hall" in 1977, and in the 1980's seemed to have gotten stuck in a rut of his own obsessions which limited his audiences. But in the 1990's, he made a lot of films that demand a second look.


Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Woody addresses the dilemma of a writer whose life is his subject matter. It is Allen’s wry explanation and apology for the subjectivity and self-consciousness of his work.

He explains how his many faults -- his ego, his self-deception, his prejudices -- affect his work and his life. He reveals his awareness of his selfishness, his irrational obsessiveness, manipulativeness, immaturity, his cruelty and disloyalty to people who love him, his inability to love and allow himself to be loved. Pretty funny stuff.

Like much of his work, there is an uncomfortable nastiness about his “lessers” that permeates this film. His acerbic wit spits out biting gags and spiteful caricatures at the expense of his usual foils: psychiatrists, fans, actors, women, children, parents, Jews, Gentiles, God, marriage, religion, trendy popular movements of any kind.

But, surprisingly, in the end there is a sense of backing off, a questioning of his harsh judgments, a confrontation with the reality that his whiny complaints about everyone else in his life are, just possibly, an unjustified reflection of his own fears and neuroses.

The point is masked in some talk about his “art” and “creations” and his “love” of his characters which Allen would skewer as pretentious if spoken by one of the “arty” characters in his other films.

Allen seems to say to us, in his whiny voice: “Yes, I know I am not a nice person, but at least I have talent and a willingness to lay myself, with all my faults, open in my work to you. Judge me by my art, not by my faults.”

The problem, Woody, is that your life is your “art,” so both are fair for judgment. An another thing: because you are self-deceiving, how can we trust the “truth” of your “art?”

Celebrity (1998)

Typical Woody in several respects. It is shot in black and white — by Sven Nykvist, Bergman’s cinematographer. It is about New York chic and, of course, the absurdity of celebrity.

Like other Allen films, the visual style and structure is derivative of another director. In the past he has emulated Fellini and Bergman. Now, he tries Robert Altman’s ensemble technique, splicing interlocking, overlapping stories with a notable cast, while the mood takes some from "La Dolce Vita."

Woody has enticed many stars and “famous” people to appear in small roles and cameos, including Bebe Neuwirth as a hooker looking for a book deal; Charlize Theron as a super model; Leonardo DiCaprio as a coked up, abusive film star (and Gretchen Mol as his moll); Melanie Griffith as a star; Winona Ryder as an aspiring actress. Donald Trump and the Buttafuccos, among others, are seen.

The story tracks Kenneth Branagh as a magazine writer who interviews celebrities and aspires to be one, and Judy Davis as his ex-wife, who becomes a celebrity while aspiring to be “real.” The very British Branagh adopted a New York accent and mouths Woody’s familiar speech pattern of stammering, self-deceiving, selfish, pseudo-sensitive lines with an impressionist’s master timing. He shares Woody’s fear of being naked, and spouts some of his favorite lines, especially about sex: “I’m polymorphously perverse.”

As all Woody’s message films, this one can be a bit heavy handed, though he thankfully eschews drama and keeps some good gags. We are shown the silliness of our obsession with celebrity in all its manifestations.

There is a scene in a pop plastic surgeon’s office. There is a film premiere, scenes at parties, clubs, book previews. There is a “reality” TV show, including episodes about “overweight achievers,” another with a confrontation between a rabbi, a skinhead, Klansmen, mobsters, and Black Muslims, all of whom share donuts and agents. There is a corrupt senator, a real estate agent to the stars, and show biz peripherals galore.

There are laughs about scripts to remake Birth of A Nation with an all black cast. Neuwirth chokes on a banana while showing Davis how to give a blow job. A cop asks DiCaprio for his autograph while arresting him for domestic violence. There is enthusiastic talk of a film which is “an adaptation of a sequel of a remake.”

Woody’s ear and eye for the lies, the polite insincerity of social intercourse, the concealment and self-deception that flows like white wine at all social gatherings with celebrities and celebrity sniffers; for the superficial bullshit that reeks in society, is unerringly true. Underlying all, is the aura of sadness about the fact that in our values, failure is defined as not being famous and fame delineates success.

Everyone Says I Love You (1996)

Cinema is the province of fantasy. Woody Allen has always used his films to let us in on his imaginative and self-indulgent longings. He has pictured himself as witty, charming, sexy, all of which requires a suspension of disbelief. He is a romantic at heart. Underneath the whining wisecracks, he has a sentimental streak a mile wide.

He has always indulged his loves in his films: New York, tall young girls and vulnerable women who need someone to teach them to laugh. He loves jazz, the Marx Brothers anti-pomposity gags, and romantic American standards (note the paean to Gershwin in "Manhattan"). He also loves nostalgia, especially the 1930's and 40's: tough guys ("Play It Again, Sam," "Curse of The Jade Scorpion"), radio ("Radio Days"), gangsters ("Bullets Over Broadway"). And he loves films and the romantic illusions they indulge.

He has also tried his hand at making films in the style of the film stylists he admires: Fellini, Bergman, Altman, Bob Hope, The Marx Brothers. It should therefore have been no surprise that he should tackle the movie musical to tell one of his tales of ensemble romantic neurotic foolishness, or that he should have chosen an imaginative and movie magic style to present his story through song and dance on the streets of New York, Venice, and Paris.

It is also never a surprise that many worthy actors are willing to expose themselves to the risk of falling on their faces working in his films. Here we have a basically non-singing and dancing cast trying their best with standards by Cole Porter, Kalmar and Ruby, and others. Ed Norton, Julia Roberts, Alan Alda, Tim Roth, Drew Barrymore, and Woody himself, all possess thin voices and none of the skill, talent, training, polish, or magic of Astaire, Kelly or Garland. None look or sound completely at ease while tiptoeing through the lyrics and melodies of these mostly familiar songs.

Only Goldie Hawn, who has training and a modicum of musical talent, shows confidence with the music. The rest are sometimes merely adequate (Barrymore, Roth, Alda), occasionally somewhat charming (Norton), sometimes embarrassingly off key (Roberts), sometimes amateurish (all).

A few of the numbers are performed by real “dancers,” in fantasy sequences: in a hospital — with staff and pregnant patients singing and dancing “Makin’ Whoopee;” and ghosts in a funeral parlor doing “It’s Later Than You Think.” Woody allows himself a turn with Goldie on a Paris quay in which she floats and flies gracefully around him. The thought occurs that Goldie was born a generation too late; she would have been a worthy understudy to Shirley MacLaine.

About 20 years ago, Bogdanavich tried an homage / send up of Cole Porter screwball 30's musicals with "At Long Last Love," which foundered on the humiliating self-conscious attempts by Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepard in the elaborately staged numbers (though in retrospect, Shepard showed she could have handled the stuff if Minnelli or Donen had been there to guide her).

This film’s failure at the box office may be ascribable to a similar discomfort, the audience not quite “getting” whether this is an homage or a satire of the genre.

Or it may be due to something more sinister. A girl I knew despised musicals because, she said, she could not “get” why people suddenly began singing and dancing in the midst of dialogue. Compare that attitude with Bijou, who was of my generation. When we were in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, sipping tea on a chill sunny afternoon, watching the elegant strollers amongst the pigeons and listening to the orchestra playing, Bijou said she had a recurring wish that all the strollers would suddenly couple up and begin waltzing around the plaza.

That is the sentimental imagination needed to appreciate it when Woody begins to croon, “I’m Through With Love.” It is what impelled me to splash around in puddles while dating Bijou, after watching "Singin’ In The Rain" at the Encore Theater.

Only the recent "Moulin Rouge" and "Chicago" have risked reviving the mood of unreality that musicals require. Whether this generation can deal with it is yet to be seen.

Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

I recently watched this 1994 Woody Allen film again on cable and laughed more than I had the first time. I think that it is at least equal to Annie Hall among Allen’s work and maybe better for a number of reasons.

Like measures of baseball skills, movie making contains many elements. A ballplayer is measured on 5 skills: hitting for average, power, throwing, fielding, running. The unspoken 6th skill is “heart” which manifests in clutch performance in big situations, baseball smarts and guts.

I measure films by their scope, atmosphere, writing, editing, cinematography, acting. The intangibles I value include powerful imagery, surprise. I ask whether I am moved to strong emotions: laughter, tears, hate, fear; have I been caught up in the characters, story. The film need not “teach me something” but if it does, I want to know what the point is, and how well it has been made.

Allen has always been a film maker with a limited number of skills, but what skills he possesses are prodigious. He has always been able to make us laugh, maybe to laugh as hard as any film maker ever. He has created a character which when created was original, funny, and identifiably human, the “Woody Allen” character which was so perfectly realized in "Annie Hall."

This persona is as vivid and memorable in film history as Chaplin’s tramp, Lemmon’s schnook. His films created a genre, the New York minded intelligent romantic neurotic love story. Without him there would be no Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Sara Jessica Parker, Ben Stiller or any number of independent comedy films, including the Coens’ and Farellys’ work. Jon Favreau wouldn’t exist without Woody as a guide.

But over the years that character has aged without much change and has become tiresome to us. In some, "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" and "Happy Ending," his character’s idiosyncrasies became unbearable. His trademark whining, which had been tolerable from a New York Jewish intellectual guy in his thirties who was trying to deal with the inadequacy of his life, is too much from a 65 year old man. As a possible love interest for Helen Hunt, Charlize Theron, and Tèa Leoni, he is absurdly miscast.

The scope of Allen’s films has always been “small” except for "Love and Death," which satirizes big thoughts like war and the meaning of life, philosophizing that cowardice is a virtue except in sex. He has always ridiculed pretense and “deep depth” as he called it, as well as trendy psycho-babble, but he has too often fallen prey to these.

He has always had awkward footing; rooted in Brooklyn, the Catskills, 30's movies and radio, 50's television and standup comedy, but drawn to the seriousness of Bergman and Fellini. Like all satirists, Allen has a mean spirited side to his wit. Unlike most, he often doesn’t restrain his (one of the defects of “auteurism”). His dramas fall flat, the characters wooden, the serious doings seem drab and forced.

Writing very funny and insightful gags has always been his strength. As he himself admits, gag writing comes easy to him, like drawing to an artist. But like all “artists” he strives to prove to himself that his talents are deeper. So he tries to write “serious.” Like his clarinet playing, his intelligence, diligence, and ability to learn the notes makes his serious films faintly interesting, more interesting than if done by lessers, but without the spark of genius which his gags have.

That is the theme of "Bullets Over Broadway." John Cusak is a playwright, a deep thinker and a conscientious and self-conscious “artist” who can talk for hours about “reality,” “truth,” and “integrity” in his writing. Chazz Parmentieri is a mob hit man who kills without remorse. Yet, Chazz has the talent, the gift of understanding and articulation required for great playwriting, and the integrity to insist on uncompromising adherence to his work. Irony and hypocrisy have always been concepts for which Allen’s wit are well designed.

Cusak represents Allen in the story. He is the whiney, muddled, striving artist with skill but limited talent. Without Woody in the lead, the film flies. It is perfectly cast and performed, with Diane Wiest and Jennifer Tilly chewing scenery and getting most of the laughs.

The intellectual theme is reminiscent of "Amadeus" in which Salieri has the passion and skill and Mozart the careless genius. But "Bullets" is a lot funnier.

Woody's work in the decade also included "Mighty Aphrodite" and "Sweet And Lowdown," both of which merit encores.

"The Black Dahlia" ... they shoot horses, don't they?

Movie making is like betting on horses. Breeding and track record don’t insure a winner.

This one is by Brian DePalma out of James Ellroy .

It includes all the requisite elements of LA Noir that worked so well in "Chinatown" "LA. Confidential" "True Confessions" and "Mulholland Falls": dark period post-war streets and night clubs, aura of illicit sex, Hollywood glamour, the smell of perversion and palms, corruption run amok among the police and the wealthy, sadism, blood, gore, complicated motives, a convoluted plot, femmes fatales, fedoras, rain, Packards, and coupes.

Its cast includes popular current stars Hillary Swank, Scarlett Johanssen, Mia Kershner, Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett who seem enthused by the project.

Yet it runs a dreadful race and finishes way out of the money.

The 1947 murder case was the springboard for John Gregory Dunne’s novel on which a much better movie, “True Confessions,” was launched. There a mutilation murder of a stag film actress is investigated by the detective brother (Robert Duvall) of a monsigneur (Robert De Niro) of the local Catholic diocese. When the detective finds an influential Catholic layman (Charles Durning) is responsible, he has to choose between his duty and his brother’s career.

Here, the idea was going to be the friction between two friends who are detectives, one who is corrupt but obsessed with solving the murder, the other who is honest but obsessed with protecting his friend. The one gets murdered and the other solves the crime and in the process also solves the Black Dahlia murder. Along the way he falls for his friend’s sexy wife, suspects her of complicity in his friend’s murder, and gets sidetracked by a sexy, rich dame and her wealthy and powerful Chandleresque family with dirty secrets.

Somehow, neither the script nor the direction clarifies any of the above, filling in with mood stultifying exposition-filled voice overs. The film is heavily burdened by the conventions of the genre including sub-plots and seemingly disconnected plots that are supposed to weave together in a satisfying ironic conclusion, but somehow don’t.

As the original noir crime films showed, even an impenetrable mystery plot doesn't preclude success in the genre (the famous “The Big Sleep” paradox for example), if the director skillfully sets his mood, the script contains sufficient amusing dialogue and action, and the actors keep your interest. This one fails on all counts.

De Palma has always derived his style by stealing from his betters, Hitchcock, Hawks, and others. Here, he simply turned to Vilmos Zsigmond, his cameraman, said “noir” and began filming as if channeling Hawks, Nicholas Ray, and John Huston.

He shoots scenes from below, through window slats, curtained windows, rain spattered windows. There are shadows and slanting light. De Palma’s M.O. is to stint on coherence in favor of style. Here he forgot to include any style. His plants of clues and red herrings are so lazily transparent that we cease to care very early. Other plot turns are so obscure that there is no involvement in the mystery.

De Palma cares about none of it. Nor does he care about pace. There is no rhythm to the scenes; one merely follows another without concern for any affect. The film just keeps plodding along, like a dull shark.

De Palma even "quotes" his own film, "Scarface," with a bloody fall into a fountain, as if to remind us that he once had an idea of his own. However, this scene is preceded by a climb up a staircase by the detective who freezes and is unable to prevent a murder, a blatant theft from "Vertigo."

He has no new ideas for his actors either. Scarlett comes off as a too young version of Kim Basinger’s character in L.A. Confidential, Hartnett and Eckhart as weak versions of Crowe and Pearce. Hillary Swank is stranded as an almost laughable femme fatale. The four leads all appear to be pretending to be grown-ups, never for a moment convincing in their grandparents' clothes or adopting their hard boiled attitudes.

Mia Kirshner, who plays the victim in black and white film footage meant to be auditions and a stag film, manages to suggest vulnerability, reminiscent of Jennifer Connolly in a similar role in “Mulholland Falls,” but is never on for long enough. She should be a bigger star, which I first anticipated in Atom Egoyan's "Exotica" (1994).

The worst miscalculation is the campy playing of the wealthy family the detective falls into. Fiona Shaw (best known as the mean Aunt in the Harry Potter series), is awful as Swank’s dotty alcoholic mother, and Scottish actor John Kavannagh is almost as bad as the dad. The final expository mystery solution belongs more to a satire on the genre like Neil Simon’s “The Cheap Detective” or Steve Martin’s “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” It includes the much overused flashbacks with the reveal of the face of the killer which had been hidden from us in previous shots --- with a contrived gender switch from the previously misleading scene.

Just terrible. Send this nag to the glue factory.