Word: allen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM centers on Woody Allen's latest kooky hero (played by himself), a woefully unconfident guy with so many hang-ups that he makes theatergoers feel positively healthy...
PUBLIC criticism of newspapers is the shrillest and most widespread I have seen in 18 years. The public mood is uneasy, querulous, fearful." The words are those of Wallace Allen, managing editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, but the view is shared by many reporters, writers and editors. Television is also a target. After last summer's Chicago convention, the U.S. was plunged into debate over TV coverage of the riots. Did the cameramen and commentators deliberately distort their reportage in favor of the protesters and against the police? In a postmortem, NBC News Chief Reuven Frank wrote that...
When Woody Allen takes a brave, unhesitating step forward, it is only to tumble through one of life's trap doors. He is a clown who pummels himself with his own pig bladder, an incarnation of the schlemiel, a born super-stupe...
...Allen's comic sense operates on the principle of disparity. His heroes are flies intent on building spiderwebs. In Take the Money and Run, he portrays Virgil Starkwell, a man who would get flustered crossing the street, and imbues him with the delusion that he can master the split-second timing, minute detail and cool bravado needed to become a successful bank robber. Result: a criminal so consistently inept that he fails even to make the Ten Most Wanted list...
Since the film consists of one damnable bungle after another, it tends to lose its comic momentum, but there are enough insanely funny moments to sustain the picture. One bank robbery goes excruciatingly awry when Allen and the bank teller get into a testy debate about whether the piece of paper Allen has shoved through the teller's window does or does not read: "I have a gub." Allen's gub is forthwith confiscated, and he begins one of several jail sentences...