Word: allene
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time in a stairwell, wrecking more autos than in a NASCAR blooper reel, Bourne speeds from London to Berlin to Tangier to New York City. Meanwhile his itinerary is monitored by CIA types - the pompous, desperate, George Tenet-y David Strathairn, and the more sympathetic, Hillaryesque Joan Allen - on world-scanning computer screens. They might be watching a video game. Certainly they're trying to play Bourne like one: Grand Theft Ego. He's a weapon they created, but to their chagrin he's in control of the trigger; he keeps going off and killing the thugs they've assigned...
...Allen, Strathairn and the movie's other middle-age co-stars photograph about 20 years older than they did in their last films; Scott Glenn's face has the bas-relief road-map look of the aged W.H. Auden. That's partly to isolate the younger Damon generationally as well as geographically from his handlers, but mainly because Greengrass and cinematographer Oliver Wood are going for a verismo feel. The director, who last year did the excellent docudrama United 93, has defined his Bourne location work as guerrilla filmmaking - using concealed cameras in "wild" situations - and he overuses the hand...
...depreciating American comedian have in common? Plenty. Both created original scripts from their experiences and obsessions. Both worked fast - at least a movie a year for most of their long careers - and relatively cheap. Both forged long relationships with their sponsoring studios. And Bergman was a strong influence on Allen's work: from his New Yorker parody of The Seventh Seal, "Death Knocks" (in which the hero plays not chess with Death but gin rummy) to a cameo by a Grim Reaper in Love and Death and, more deeply, the inspiration for the theme and tone of Interiors and Another...
...Shooting his new film in Spain, Allen took time out to talk with me about Bergman. We began by remarking on the death, the same day as Bergman's, of Michelangelo Antonioni - the Italian director of L'Avventura, Eclipse, Blowup and The Passenger, and another prime depicter of modern alienation...
...WOODY ALLEN: Dreadful and astonishing. Two titanic film directors! Everyone here was shocked. Their work lives on, which just means their films are showing in a few places and sold on DVD. But the men are no longer with us, and that is tragic...