Word: allens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...gets bigger and bigger, and people lose their jobs if they don't publish. Every field becomes fair prey for new books. But the academic jargon doesn't fit everything--there's something especially out of place in the sort of analytic attention which Maurice Yacowar gives to Woody Allen in his new book, Loser Takes All: The Comic Art of Woody Allen. The cult of Woody Allen would be inexplicable if he didn't touch on some particular mood special to his times--the anxious defeated mood of the likeable losing neurotic. And the extent of his success would...
...what we get is the Allen persona of all his films, at least up to Annie Hall--ingratiatingly awkward and insecure, morbid, conscientious; intellectual and only saved from pseudo-intellectualism because his sidekicks are transparently far more pompous and shallow. Above all, he's acutely aware of all these things about himself, and, therefore, by an easy step, somehow above all his failings because he knows about them, After all he wrote the film--A Woody Allen Film...
...flatteringly allows the viewer to place between his real and everyday persons. It licenses us to believe that our everyday behavior doesn't truly reflect our character, which is altogether deeper, more astute, suffering and sensitive. The procedure is increasingly cosy and conspiratorial-we go to a Woody Allen film knowing exactly what to expect, and sure enough there it is, a flabby shapeless dish, occasionally spicy, but altogether sagging and apologetic...
...films are all but indistinguishable-we come away with a memory of one or two good jokes, but people don't remember Woody Allen jokes. Because Monty Python, like anything surrealistic, depends on the realism it parodies; it takes not of the world outside and (ab)uses it. Whereas Woody operates in a vacuum, surrounding himself with flimsy satirical types who recur in each film he makes, and his humor vanishes once his personality isn't on screen...
...first overtime, the Crimson came from four points back to force the final session. Bob Allen hit a ten-footer with 2:53 left, and Tom Mannix, his shooting touch returned after a one-night sabbatical at Wagner, nailed a pretty 20-ft. jump shot with just over two minutes left, knotting the game...