Green Door Content: Annie Hall

Note: By the time this posts, I will be on the roof of the new place with the chimney man getting things ready for the new woodstove. I had the flue inspected and that is fine, but the cap needs attention and I am having the flue cleaned just to be sure. The following is a post from behind the green door to hold everyone over until I return, assuming I do not fall off the roof. If there is no Friday post, it has been fun.


If I were tasked with writing a summary of the classic Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, I would be hard pressed to get past a paragraph. It is film starring a neurotic Jewish man, played by Woody Allen, and a mentally unstable woman, played by Diane Keeton, who wander around New York for ninety minutes speaking to one another as if they swallowed a 1970’s pop-psychology textbook.

The movie reminds me of the old quip about the James Joyce novel Ulysses. “A Jewish man who wanders around Dublin and nothing happens.” That is not a criticism. In fact, it is the best thing I can think of to say about the film. There is a chance that Allen was inspired by the Joyce novel and was attempting to recreate it for a New York audience, from an entirely Jewish perspective. Joyce is mentioned in this scene.

I did some digging around to see if maybe that was what Allen was doing with this film, but I found nothing to suggest it. Despite its status as a classic film and one of Allen’s best works, there is not much in the way of critical analysis. That is because there is not much to examine when it comes to things you expect in a story. It is just two neurotic Manhattanites wandering around for ninety minutes.

The film is classed as a romantic comedy, but it is probably better to call it a character study or perhaps an anthropological study. It is primarily about two people, presented as representative of the cultural elite of the time, as they struggle with their various insecurities and disconnectedness. Comedian Alvy Singer, (Allen) and Annie Hall (Keaton) are struggling with alienation in the modern age.

Alienation is the subtext of the film, but it is not entirely clear that Allen had the self-awareness to know this. Alvy Singer is the typical Jewish character struggling with his otherness in a world dominated by non-Jews. Allen hams it up quite a bit to the point where Alvy Singer is a satire of the Jewish guy who is sure that around every corner there could be a gang of Nazis ready to haul him away to the camps.

Once you get past the hyperbole, you get to the essential reality of the Jewish condition, at least as Jews see it, which is that they are always a people who dwell alone, regardless of where they find themselves. Who they are is defined by their outsider status so they must remain as outsiders or risk losing their identity. It is the essential contradiction at the heart of Jewish identity in the diaspora.

Alienation takes on a different form with Annie. She is presented as from a standard issue white middle-class family. At one point, Alvy jokes that she grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting. She is the modern atomized female, a creature of both feminism and the modern economy, who sees a therapist and spends most of her time dwelling on trivialities to escape from the loneliness of her life.

The two of them sort of fall in love, but their relationship does not work because of the self-absorption rooted in their alienation. Alvy only thinks about sex, while Annie has no interest in sex. In both cases, this leads to endless self-examination that is entirely superficial and pointless. These are two people who are alienated from themselves, so it is why they cannot have a normal human relationship.

Sadly, that analysis is far more interesting than the film version. Both characters are boring and self-indulgent. There is no reason to care about them because you have met these stock figures loads of times in film and real life. Annie is a neurotic dingbat who every man over thirty has met a thousand times. Allen is the classic Jewish guy who thinks his endless complaining makes him seem interesting.

That is the main problem with the film. It wants to be a social commentary, but it has nothing to say about the things featured in the film. You get some pithy commentary from Alvie who breaks the fourth wall throughout the film, but those are just gag lines that Allen used in his stand-up. Otherwise, you have no reason to care about the people, so you have no reason to think about their dilemma.

In this regard it is like other movies of this decade in that they were made by people who held themselves in high regard, so they just assumed anything they did or said was important by itself. They made films that were supposed to lead the horse to water, but it was hard to care about the horse, so the water never came into focus. Whatever Allen was trying to say about his time and place in this film remained unsaid.

That said, the film is visually interesting. Even after fifty years it feels like you are there in Manhattan with Alvy and Annie. You often think you can smell the stench of the urine-soaked hobos, which were a feature of the city at the time. This may be why the film shows up on the top-100 list, rather than other Woody Allen films which were graded higher at the time in terms of artistic merit.

In the end, Annie Hall feels like a professionally made film school project in that it is self-indulgent and the person doing the self-indulging is not that interesting. Woody Allen’s hang-ups and insecurities are interesting to no one but Woody Allen. A film about them, not matter how well done, is still just a film about a boring Jewish man who spends ninety minutes walking around Manhattan with an equally boring shiksa.


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Mencken Libertarian
Mencken Libertarian
11 months ago

“It’s OK. We can walk to the curb from here.”

joey jünger
joey jünger
11 months ago

Well, it’s Friday and there’s no new post, so it’s safe to assume Z slipped and fell off the roof. Sad, that his last post was a review of neurotic nebbish Woody Allen’s film. It reminds me of what Charles Bukowski once said about his own potential demise by slipping and cracking his head on the apron of his swimming pool. “That’s not even an ignoble ending. That’s just entirely being sh*t on by the gods.”

Mike
Mike
11 months ago

Am I the only one to think Keaton is a blot everywhere she is found?

No charm, no appeal, no subtlety, no looks.

What did Allen but especially Coppola see in her?

Intelligent Dasein
Intelligent Dasein
Member
Reply to  Mike
11 months ago

Well, since Coppola never intended for The Godfather to be anything more than an Italexploitation whinge, maybe making the white woman as bland and uppity as possible was part of the desired aesthetic.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
11 months ago

The Godfather: the film that cured my insomnia.

RDittmar
Member
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

Bah to the downvotes! I completely agree! I’ve only fallen asleep during two movies in my entire life. One of them was The Gods Must Be Crazy and the other one was The Godfather.

Anti-Gnostic
Anti-Gnostic
Reply to  RDittmar
11 months ago

I fell asleep trying to watch Eyes Wide Shut, twice. The third time I turned it off before I got sleepy.

Hun
Hun
Reply to  Mike
11 months ago

Almost everybody looks pretty good next to Allen.

Hun
Hun
11 months ago

“…assuming I do not fall off the roof. If there is no Friday post, it has been fun.”

Usually, there is a post out by this time. Hello?

mmack
mmack
Reply to  Hun
11 months ago

YOU try typing while in full body cast, hanging in traction. 🤕

In all seriousness, I hope it’s more “Oh CRAP! I HAVE to finish my Christmas Shopping!” and less Z getting hurt. 🤞

Apex Predator
Apex Predator
Reply to  Hun
11 months ago

I think that was a piss take to keep you guessing since he often doesn’t post before a holiday weekend.

If he doesn’t reappear by next week then we should probably put out an APB at that point.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Hun
11 months ago

See, this is why I paid someone else to do my drip edge.

Kevin
Kevin
11 months ago

I wonder what the Zman thinks about Taxi Driver from 1976. When describing New York from the 70s in this article, I kept being reminded of Taxi Driver.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Kevin
11 months ago

He reviewed Taxi Driver just a couple months ago. Not impressed.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Kevin
11 months ago

One of those “cult” films that everyone raves about. Then, when you finally get to see it, you think “WTF was all the fuss about?”

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

Like Blue Velvet. Take away the Dennis Hopper character who is on screen for maybe 15 minutes and it is downright awful.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
11 months ago

Dude, I like Blue Velvet a lot. Lynch is probably my favorite director, even though I cannot stand 1/2 of his output. But when he does nail it, he produces unparalled Romanticism.

Axeman
Axeman
11 months ago

Woodburning spergout incoming:
The powerdrill driven ‘Sooteater’ devices are the tits.
Woodsplitting in crisp late fall/winter air is excellent exercise and oddly mind settling but the wood won’t be good til Spring shoulder season, at the earliest.
If using a masonry chimney, an insulated metal chimney liner will draft better and maybe save your house in the case of a chimney fire. Almost nobody installs them that way.
The new hybrid stoves combine catalysts and re-burn chambers to make the most of your fuel. Very efficient . Much less acrid smoke. Not that WV gets all that cold.

Brandon Laskow
Brandon Laskow
11 months ago

A little sidelight: in the 90’s the Allman Brothers Band and side project Gov’t Mule had a bassist named Allen Woody. For years I assumed that was a stage name, a joke played by a Southern boy to parody the name of a famous New York Jew. In fact, it was his real name, full name Douglas Allen Woody. Unfortunately this Woody OD’d in 2000.

ChrisZ
ChrisZ
11 months ago

One observation by Z-man in this column stood out to me as probably anachronistic; namely that “Annie Hall feels like a professionally made film school project…” Closer to the truth, I suspect, is that film school projects are the way they are—indulgent, solipsistic, meaningless—because Woody Allen set the tone first. In other words, the thematic “nothingness” of today’s culture (in film and the arts generally) is an index of the *triumph* of the Woody Allen perspective over what had existed in America before. That even goes for today’s politics. What was the whole Covid fiasco if not a total capitulation… Read more »

Gideon
Gideon
Reply to  ChrisZ
11 months ago

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has had a practice of imposing quarantines of varying degrees whenever a new communicable disease emerged there. It’s part of a governing ideology that imagines it can solve any social problem that may attract their attention. COVID was unusual only insofar as Western countries (and eventually most of the world) decided they should emulate communist Chinese practices for some reason.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  ChrisZ
11 months ago

You may have something there. Jewish neurosis and feminine hysteria seem to pervade the very atmosphere we breathe in AINO.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

I tend to agree. Many dissidents assumed that the cov1d policies were primarily about advancing permanent totalitarian control. But as damaging and threatening as those policies were, they were not permanent.

I’m sure that there is some truth there. Elites like Bill Gates had written about how to exploit the next pandemic and Big Pharma always wants to secure permanent extraction schemes.

But my guess is that the most consequential factor was the hypochondria of our elites, chosen and female.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  LineInTheSand
11 months ago

Some folks separate that out to the real “elites” and their useful idiots. Of course the “elite” are powerless without their idiots.

SkepticMan
SkepticMan
11 months ago

Does anyone here get the deep irony of this blog post? The Zman goes to the store, buys some stuff, goes home, takes care of the cats, cooks some food, and repairs the house. Then the next day he blogs about it– what happened in the drive thru lane, what happened when he cancelled his online order, why the hardware store is better, which fast food is better, and so on. Do you get it yet? The Zman is Alvy Singer. The Zman is Leopold Bloom. Or maybe The Zman is the grown-up version of Stephen Dedalus – the anti-hero,… Read more »

Epaminondas
Member
Reply to  SkepticMan
11 months ago

Are you sure you’re at the right blogsite? Asking for a friend.

SkepticMan
SkepticMan
Reply to  Epaminondas
11 months ago

I may have blended some of The Zman’s Gab posts into my description of his daily routine, but the idea still holds. Blogging is generally a mind dump of someone’s inner monologue. James Joyce’s Ulysses is the archetype of this form. I just find it ironic when bloggers level the criticism that nothing happens in Ulysses when everything they do was invented by Joyce. Annie Hall is a 1970s’ version of the Joycean inner monologue without the depth. Allen is primarily a comedian, and the movie should only be seen as a series of comedy sketches on film. Some of… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  SkepticMan
11 months ago

What isn’t a mind dump? Columns, novels, poems, songs, symphonies, paintings, blogs–all, in a very real sense, are mind dumps. Not much of a criticism of Z, then.

Mr. Blank
Member
11 months ago

Well, I’ll have to dissent from Z-man here. I’m a huge Woody Allen fan, and I love Annie Hall. But I’m an art school weirdo, so… And no, I’m not Jewish or anything close to it. That’s the funny part. I’m an old-stock American whose ancestors fought in the Revolution. Woody Allen and his ilk probably think my people are trash. So why do I like his movies? I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason I liked reading articles about weird foreign tribes in National Geographic, back when it was still a good magazine. I find Jewish narcissism fascinating… Read more »

ChrisZ
ChrisZ
Reply to  Mr. Blank
11 months ago

I know what you mean, Mr. Blank. I’ve gotten a lot of genuine laughs out of Allen’s films over the years (though not so much since his turn to open perversity in the early 1990s). My youthful experience, as a Christian going to his movies with Jewish friends, was that we could all enjoy the given movie in the moment. But the difference in perspective showed itself when we left the theater. My friends would be going on about how Woody was so wise and “knows so much about relationships.” To me, on the other hand, his characters were a… Read more »

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  ChrisZ
11 months ago

Love and Death, Zelig, great comedy classics. As I mentioned earlier, Allen was the classic neurotic leftie Jew, but he also took the piss out of it too.

Frank
Frank
Reply to  Mr. Blank
11 months ago

Sorry state of affairs when guys feel like they have to supply a pedigree with their unpopular opinion.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Mr. Blank
11 months ago

It was eminently more foreign at the time of this movie, but now that Jewish neuroticism has became the foundation of our culture it’s not so funny anymore.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Mr. Blank
11 months ago

Ha. Good point. And I think my fascination mirrors your own.

Tangentially, have you ever noticed that Jewish filmmakers, when portraying white families, very frequently project Jewish familial dysfunctionality on them? White families are almost always portrayed as squabbling, obnoxious and shrewish. The classic example is the Neary family in Spielberg’s “Close Encounters.” Great film, BTW.

ChrisZ
ChrisZ
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

Yes Ostei, a solid insight. The other tactic is to portray gentile family life as emotionless, repressed, hypocritical, inhuman—with passions of hostility, sexuality, and violence simmering just below the placid surface. This was, IIRC, the case with Annie’s family in the film under examination. (It results in some memorable bits, though, like Woody being perceived as a Hasidic Jew by Annie’s grandma, or Christopher Walken as the brother driving a nervous Woody to the airport after confessing his death wish of ramming his car into oncoming traffic.) Allen does this in most of his other films too. But never, even… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  ChrisZ
11 months ago

Indeed.

And how ’bout Norman Lear’s Bunker family in All in the Family? A funny sitcom, but it’s also nothing more than 25-minute episodic shouting matches. Who could stand to live like that? Jews, I guess. And yet the family is white. Even Meathead Rob Reiner is a Polack rather than a Jew, IIRC.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  ChrisZ
11 months ago

Sounds a lot like American Beauty. Which was about when I tuned Hollywood out.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

Well, people who are “like that” don’t really believe that normal people can exist. So when they see a happy family they assume it’s some kind of American Beauty charade, and there must be all this seething hostility beneath the surface.

Just like how they think every upper middle class white man has a secret Nazi room behind the bookshelf in his office where he keeps his shrine to mustache guy.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ploppy
11 months ago

I’m more of a general Franco man, myself…

Ploppy
Ploppy
11 months ago

When you start stacking up that firewood, grab some of those pallets that warehouses leave out for scavengers to stack the wood on. The airflow underneath helps cure the wood faster and doesn’t give the termites a path from the ground to your wood.

Jay Fink
Jay Fink
11 months ago

I am Jewish but am rarely around other Jews so perhaps my impression is wrong. It seems there are less Woody Allen type Jewish men today than there were in the 70s, both in and out of Hollywood. Have Jewish men toughened up and become more like gentile men? If so this saddens me. When I saw (Jewish) Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine at a Superbowl half time show with his muscular, tattooed body it horrified me. Jewish men never used to look hypermasculine before. Hopefully he is an outlier.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Jay Fink
11 months ago

Try watching PBS there’s plenty.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Jay Fink
11 months ago

There’s more humor in this post than in Woody Allen’s collected works. Score one for the Gentiles.

cg2
cg2
Reply to  Jay Fink
11 months ago

I think you’re confusing hypermasculine with hyper narcissistic.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  cg2
11 months ago

Hyper gay, maybe. Not saying Levine is gay (I have no idea). Views of masculinity tend towards feminine caricature these days. Unsurprisingly.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

No idea about Levine, and I couldn’t care less about him. Unfortunately, his band–the Maroons, or whatever they’re called–have been inflicted upon me several times. Ghastly and dull. What a terrible band.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

Well at least from a google search I’d say he looks pretty gay with those tattoos. Doesn’t he sing in a falsetto too?

Penitent Man
Penitent Man
Reply to  Jay Fink
11 months ago

Possibly. They seem to have shed Allen’s lack of confidence and self-centered indecisiveness in their hellbent dash to subvert and pervert Our People and culture.

Filthie
Filthie
11 months ago

All I gotta say is that our otherwise esteemed blog host really shat the bed on this poast. Any discussion of culture that includes Woody is not going to go or end well.

In hopes of redeeming any cultural enrichMINT – let us turn instead to Z’s older brother – Corniglius Rye!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C03yOn4IITa/?igsh=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng%3D%3D

😂👍

Brandon Laskow
Brandon Laskow
Reply to  Filthie
11 months ago

Like Woody or not, he’s an important figure in late 20th century American culture and still on the scene, so he’s very much worth discussing.

Cinnaphile
Cinnaphile
Reply to  Filthie
11 months ago

I am not surprised this triggered many readers over here, don’t know about the Substack adult theater thing because I don’t pay for it… Allen has made so many random movies, that I can always remember a few terrible ones (“Deconstructing Harry”—so bad I wondered how he kept not only working after this, but still drawing big names) and a few eccentric enjoyable ones (“Sweet and Lowdown”—this switching from being an NYC Judaism nerd to olde timey jazz nerd). But I haven’t seen all his major-opus movies, such as this one, and at 44 I doubt I will get around… Read more »

Vince
Vince
11 months ago

For me the worst of Woody Allen’s films, and that in itself is saying something, is one called “The Front”. When I was 20 or 21 I would occasionally hang out with an avant garde crowd of hippy wannabies who would leave the safety of Delaware Co. Pa. and cruise into center city Philly for one of the bullshit offerings of Allen (and someone calling himself Fellini who just plain sucked) of the middle nineteen seventies. Even at the inexperienced age of 21 I remember coming out of the theater after viewing “The Front” and feeling the need for a… Read more »

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Vince
11 months ago

I don’t even think this is a particular thing to any given generation. As a Xennial I went to plenty of these sorts of films with pretentious liberal friends back in the 2000s. You had brokebutt mountain and that one film with Clooney and Dr. Bashir from Star Trek that was something about middle eastern politics. Shitlibs just go to those movies to look fashionable.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ploppy
11 months ago

You actually watched Brokeback Mountin’? Bloody hell. Talk about taking one for the team!

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

It’s one of those movies that’s really funny because it’s trying so hard not to be funny. But its gay cowboys so it’s intrinsically funny.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ploppy
11 months ago

Starring Butch Assidy and the Funpants Kid?

Vizzini
Member
Reply to  Ploppy
11 months ago

They were gay shepherds, not cowboys.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ploppy
11 months ago

You actually watched Brokeback Mountin’? Bloody hell. Talk about taking one for the team!

Pozymandias
Reply to  Vince
11 months ago

I’ve never seen that particular abomination but there are tons of these kinds of movies. It’s a whole genre to itself in fact. The basic plot is “wretched commie shitbag FINALLY gets arrested by the Gestapo, Franco’s men, Pinochet’s men, the Iranian religious police, or whatever local group is trying to keep their country from becoming part of the Glorious Purple Dildo Soviet Republics.” Thankfully, the arrest is usually in the first 5 minutes. Mournfully, the next 3 – 5 hours of the movie is all faggy-noir camera angles of our Hero Shitbagsky starting at the shadows on his cell… Read more »

Celt Darnell
Member
11 months ago

To be fair. James Joyce’s Ulysses has all the same problems. Except that it’s even more pretentious.

And it takes far longer than 90 minutes to wade through.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Celt Darnell
11 months ago

Ulysses might be the second or third most lied about book of all time, but Joyce himself never pretended it was anything that it isn’t. It’s unpretentious to a fault. Its refusal to explain itself—there aren’t even chapter titles!—is *textual* (if not authorial) humility. He left it too easy for academics, critics, and other non-readers to misrepresent. Allen’s films are often nothing like he claims them—or like sometimes they claim themselves, out loud in the middle of the damn movie—to be, because by inclination he’s a film critic/scholar/mocker, not a filmmaker. I love a few of his movies, but they’re… Read more »

fakeemail
fakeemail
11 months ago

CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS (1989) is Allen’s masterpiece. A great film, one of the best ever.

“Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Radio Days” are also quite excellent.

The man’s politics are of course what they are. But I’d be dishonest if I said he weren’t intelligent or wasn’t an artist (at least for a few flicks).

Snooze
Snooze
Reply to  fakeemail
11 months ago

Shiksa fetishizing.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Snooze
11 months ago

I think Z hit the nail on the head, right here: “Alvy jokes that she grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting”. Do not misunderestimate the seething loathing obsessive all-consuming hatred which the j00z unleashed [and, to this day, continue to unleash] upon Norman Rockwell’s White Christian America. The j00ish race was invented, by the Father of Lies, precisely for the purpose of incinerating Norman Rockwell’s White Christian America. Once the j00z succeed in destroying all of Christendom, the j00ish race will lack any purpose to continue existing, and the j00ish race will focus its core existential vengeance upon itself… Read more »

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Bourbon
11 months ago

You can see that in Israel prior to the second Shoah last October. The liberal and fascist Jews were gearing up for a good old one arm over the face slapfight with each other over whether or not Jewish Hitler is allowed to bypass their Supreme Court.

They always need an external enemy to hold themselves together.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Bourbon
11 months ago

Are the Jews in the room with you now?

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

Robbo: “Are the Jews in the room with you now?” Well you’re definitely on my computer screen right now, which, in turn, is sitting right here in my computer room. So, yeah, I guess your existential vengeance knows no bounds. And, no, you didn’t invent the internet; WHITE people invented the internet. Just like WHITE people invented electricity, trains, automobiles, airplanes, logic, mathematics, chemistry, physics, computers, painting, sculpture, music, indoor plumbing, toilet paper, wine, whiskey, bourbon, the telescope, the microscope, the moon landings, the X-Ray, sterile operating rooms, antibiotics, heat treatment of dairy products, and pretty much everything else which… Read more »

John Barrywhore
John Barrywhore
Reply to  fakeemail
11 months ago

The trouble with Woody Allen movies is that they star Woody Allen. If he was an occasionally seen background character watching might not be such a grind. I don’t want to hear that voice of look at that Phantom of the Opera face of his. Hire a decent looking goy to wander off in the sunset with a ln Asian girl at the end. Woody’s life in pictures. Might make a buck

Brandon Lasko
Brandon Lasko
Reply to  John Barrywhore
11 months ago

Woody has not appeared in most of his films from this century.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Brandon Lasko
11 months ago

Brandon Lasko: “Woody has not appeared in most of his films from this century.”

Well he got cuckolded by a septuagenarian Frank Sinatra.

[Frank, born December 12, 1915;
Ronan, born December 19, 1987]

That’s gotta hurt.

Jannie
Jannie
Reply to  fakeemail
11 months ago

“Zelig”, “Another Woman” and “Sweet and Lowdown” were also decent movies. Best Woody Allen rip-off was “When Harry Met Sally”: Billy Crystal doesn’t really cut it. Carrie Fisher always a star presence, though.

RasQball
RasQball
Reply to  fakeemail
11 months ago

Martin Landau as a Murderer, yeah:
Don’t let Dostoyevsky get in the way –
(I saw that one at the Parts Theater…)

RasQball
RasQball
Reply to  RasQball
11 months ago

Paris Theater, NYC…

Compsci
Compsci
11 months ago

“Anne Hall…..” Did someone reference the 70‘s version of Seinfeld? A comedy about nothing? Well, not nothing—just a show following the antics of a group of self-absorbed characters going about their selfish lives in the Big Apple. Oddly enough this show was also developed by a couple of Jews. I liked Anne Hall at the time, but times change as one grows up and understands how nihilistic the entire “plot” is. My youthful angst has been replaced by experiential understanding, aka “wisdom”. To support this point, I’d point out that Allen attempted to repeat his Anne Hall success a couple… Read more »

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Compsci
11 months ago

Seinfeld worked because the characters routinely screwed themselves over for their own selfishness, so the show actually did have a moral to it despite the complaints at the time from people used to those dull 80s sitcoms where Billy cheats on his algebra test and his dad gives him a stern talking to.

Crabe-tambour
Crabe-tambour
Reply to  Compsci
11 months ago

“Oddly enough!”

3g4me
3g4me
11 months ago

Congratulations on getting ready for your woodstove install, Zman. There is nothing like the warmth it puts out. Same for the feeling of security a well-filled woodshed inspires. I would be miserable without the a/c our mini-splits provide in the humid summers here, but I could survive without them. Whereas I know no matter the storm or interruption in electricity or lack of propane for the Generac (Heaven forfend), I need not worry about freezing.

cg2
cg2
Reply to  3g4me
11 months ago

That’s a dry heat, put a pot of water on top.
And a mini splits are very efficient.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  cg2
11 months ago

cg2: Yes, thanks, I do know to do that (excellent neighbors plus watching YT). And we are currently using our efficient mini splits for heat because it’s just not cold enough for the wood stove. But we did use it one night about 3-4 weeks ago and house/cabin was quickly up to an uncomfortable 72 degrees (I keep it in the 65-68 range and we don’t expect to walk around in t-shirts in the winter).

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  3g4me
11 months ago

I’d like to have one, but we’d need another chimney and…well houses around here seem to go up in smoke at a higher rate than in the city.
(The “fix” I know is an outside boiler, but I’m not doing that for a variety of very good reasons).

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
11 months ago

Evil Sandmich: Fire is my one big worry out here – yet another reason I want an ICF house if we win the lottery. But our house/cabin is solid and has stood here for 25 years – even through a tornado, and neither my husband nor I smoke. And we already plan to replace the current serviceable asphalt shingled roof, when funds are available, with standing seam metal.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  3g4me
11 months ago

Have you priced a roof there, 3g? I had an asphalt tile roof put on my upstate NY residence about 10 years ago and it was more than $10K. In 2019 I had a metal roof put on a rental property and it was $9K. Both jobs were done by Amish crews. 2019 was around the first time that a metal roof was no more expensive than tile, which is why I went with it. I have no idea what the breakdown is today, though.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  KGB
11 months ago

KGB: Not yet, no. I fully expect it to be costly. We thought everything was in pretty good condition per the inspection we had done, and the previous owners of one year provided receipts proving they had the wood stove flue cleaned, the septic tank pumped, painted the exterior, and sold us the almost new Speed Queen washer and dryer they had installed. But we had to immediately replace the main mini-split (unexpected), the water heater (expected) the toilet (unexpected) and the kitchen sink plumbing (partially expected). So since the roof is not leaking, it’s going to have to wait.… Read more »

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  KGB
11 months ago

The Amish around me all put in crazy roof bids (save one, whose work I wouldn’t trust on a bet). For the Englisher who put our roof on I think the metal came at a 20% premium of asphalt. The main motivator though was that our place stands alone on a wind tunnel and we knew shingles would inevitably be stripped at some point.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  KGB
11 months ago

When you say they put in “crazy” bids, do you mean they are below market rates? Here they tend to charge average rates, but I generally like their work and they knock out their jobs quickly. An Englisher or Hispanic is prone to leaving a half-finished job for a period of time as they work on other projects. The Amish finish what they start.

OrangeFrog
OrangeFrog
11 months ago

I must say I’ve never seen anything by Mr. Allen. Then again Z, from your analysis I trust I’m not missing much. There have been so many films and series that could have been more, but in the end are just vehicles for banality. Some of the most engrossing films/series I’ve ever watched include: Das Boot, The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, The Deer Hunter, Dad’s Army, and Downfall. They all give themselves full licence to develop certain characters, and have a reality about them that makes them interesting. They are a comment of the time in which they were made,… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Das Boot is even more interesting when one understands the fatality numbers for the u-boats and those who served on them. No more dangerous branch existed in the Wehrmacht—not to mention the claustrophobic nature of most of us. 😉

OrangeFrog
OrangeFrog
Reply to  Compsci
11 months ago

Compsci, any book recommendations re: U-Boats and their crews’ experiences?

I’ve suddenly had the urge to know more.

BerndV
BerndV
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Read the book by the same name that Das Boot was was based upon. It is a true story written by a German war journalist who accompanied the crew on several patrols.

compsci
compsci
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Sorry, none. I’m just an oldster who’s watched/read some of the statistical summaries of the war. Father was also in the army in the old country as well. Oddly, those “over there” in my family seem to care little about reminiscing over events in that conflict. Celebrating the conflict in the movies and writings seems an American thing–if not Western in general.

I believe their war experience taught them the *wrong* lesson.

mmack
mmack
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Iron Coffins: A Personal Account Of The German U-boat Battles Of World War II by Herbert A. Werner, which was used as a source for some of the movie Das Boat.

Operation Drumbeat: Germany’s U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II by Michael Gannon. It tells the story of U-Boat ops off the East Coast from right after Germany declared war on the US until late 1942. The featured U-Boat, U-123 actually did have a reporter on the submarine for one of their missions, like the U-Boat in Das Boat.

Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd
Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Sharks And Little Fish, by Wolfgang Ott.

The novel was written by a German submariner with firsthand experience. I believe Das Boot was written by a rider, a journalist who only spent a limited time on a U boat.

honky tonk hero
honky tonk hero
Reply to  Compsci
11 months ago

Many years ago I used to scuba dive on the wrecks of a couple U-boats off North Carolina, namely the U-352 and U-85. What struck me was how small they were and what it must have been like to cross the Atlantic in one.

compsci
compsci
Reply to  honky tonk hero
11 months ago

Back in the 60’s, the fleet would every so often dock in NYC. They then had an open house and we once went downtown and got to tour the boats. Those days the fleet *still* had the diesel driven American sub’s. I got to go through one. Amazing experience even for a young boy. Forward were the torpedoes and each one had crew bunks along the side. Just like the movies. I remember being amazed at “hot bunking”. 😉 The instrument panels were the most complex I’ve ever seen. Imagine a round pillar in the middle of the path with… Read more »

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Compsci
11 months ago

75% fatalities.

RasQball
RasQball
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

I was discussing Sopranos with a friend (in public) just the other day when a semi-rando Karen interrupted us with “That was 20 years ago! Can’t you guys talk about something more relevant…!” The point I was making at the time was that the show, the storyline, the arc, and especially the characters were a “swan song” for a “thing” – a colorful cross section of twentieth century Mosaic-Americana – that was sun-downing then, and has since become extinct (to all intents). And I’m not taking about criminality, I’m talking about a “way,” a “method.” That world was real –… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

I don’t think I have ever seen a single Woody Allen movie. If the YouTube trailer and the opening monologue are anything to go by, I’m not missing anything. It was made by and for a different audience.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
11 months ago

Chim-chimeny/
Chim-chimeny/
Chim-chim-cheroo!

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
11 months ago

My own viewing of old movies continues, most recently The Mission (1986). Directed by Roland Joffe, who also gave us The Killing Fields and the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter. So perhaps I should have known it would be disappointing relative to the billing. Of course any movie produced in the 1980s about colonials and natives…… Other than the parts filmed at the Iguazu Falls there was little point in filming on location in South America, as the rest of it could have been done on a Hollywood backlot. But I did manage to learn a little history,… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
11 months ago

Although my interest in Woody Allen in young adulthood was almost entirely detrimental, which I spent the next decade unlearning, I still say that: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” is profound in its juxtaposition of the psychology of the wicked and the ethical. The tragedy that the wicked so often prosper. “Shadows and Fog” has stunning visuals that recall the classic early gothic horror films and has an entertaining Kafkaesque plot. As with most of his films, it hyperventilates with fear of the goyim. “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” is a fun exploration of the conflict between materialism and mysticism. The… Read more »

Marko
Marko
Reply to  LineInTheSand
11 months ago

High Crimes and Misdemeanors is (or was) my favorite Allen film.

His best work when was he was aping Ingmar Bergman while keeping his films grounded in that fart-sniffing NYC world of white people. Like Hannah and Her Sisters.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Marko
11 months ago

fart-sniffing NYC world of (((white))) people.

There… Fixed it for you.

I don’t know if it’s a NYC thing or a wealthy thing though. I know a lot of Jews. None of them, even ones I don’t like behave like the stereotypical Jew as reflected in films like this.

Isaac Hakkabut (Off on a Comet, Jules Verne) is a better and more accurate negative representation.

Given the popularity of Allen among Jews, they must see something they like and think it is accurate.

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

Allen wasn’t just representing (((white))) people. There were always main characters, especially women, who were Gentiles. My take on his oeuvre is he was trying to capture the fart-sniffing world of midwit Manhattan, where Jews and whites comingled regularly.

Allen himself was popular with Jews and fart-sniffing whites because he was the everyman fantasy for the midwit demographic. Here was a character who, despite his looks and neuroses, could charm women and be successful.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

The majority of his fans are gentiles.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
11 months ago

My mom–something of a Judeophile, I must say–loved Woody Allen, and I somewhat followed suit. Elsewhere, I’ve mentioned Love and Death, which is an absolute scream. Mighty Aphrodite is very good, although ridiculously vulgar. Bullets over Broadway is an interesting film. September and Interiors are both good albeit extremely depressing.

FAFO
FAFO
11 months ago

Funny you should mention it. Just a few weeks ago I completed the digital transcription of all the VHS tapes I had in a box sitting in the garage for over twenty years. Annie Hall was on one of them, and I watched it the other night for the first time in at least that long. You’re right about good portrayal of mid-70s New York. The film holds up pretty well. Don’t forget it won the Best Picture Oscar that year as well.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  FAFO
11 months ago

Woody’s body of work is patchy: some great films, but some clunkers too. I must admit that he has grown on me since that awful hag tried to frame him for child abuse.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  FAFO
11 months ago

Won it over Star Wars. The other nominees were pretty forgettable: The Goodbye Girl, Julia, and and The Turning Point. 1977 wasn’t AINO’s cultural zenith.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  FAFO
11 months ago

And it got every white woman in America wearing a big, floppy brown hat and oversized tortoiseshell shades.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

Hey, I’m a guy, and I wore those too! 🙂

TomA
TomA
11 months ago

After reading today’s post, I found myself asking “what did I learn from this review of a nominally useless film?” The easy quick answer is . . . stay away, its a waste of time. But upon reflection, the popularity of the film (and its acclaim on the Top 100 list) reveals a much more important lesson about our society. Surviving art from the ancient Greeks (statuary, architecture, pottery etc) is a window into the aesthetic of that age and its people. It says that they valued greatness and accomplishment and aspiration for perfection of the human soul and mind.… Read more »

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  TomA
11 months ago

I get your general point, but it might be a bit hard on Woody Allen. Sure, he was indulging his neurosis in public, but he was also taking the mickey out of it all too.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  TomA
11 months ago

I agree with your general point, but I think you are being a bit hard on old Woody. Sure, he indulged his neuroses on the silver screen, but he also took the mickey out of it all too.

Brandon Lasko
Brandon Lasko
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

I may be a little slow but I don’t understand the phrase “took the mickey out of it.”

OrangeFrog
OrangeFrog
Reply to  Brandon Lasko
11 months ago

The phrase means “to make fun of something”.

He took the mickey out of me = He made fun of me.

Brandon Laskow
Brandon Laskow
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Thanks for clarifying. I’ve never heard this phrase before and I’m no kid. Is it more of a British English idiom?

OrangeFrog
OrangeFrog
Reply to  OrangeFrog
11 months ago

Brandon,

Yes, I believe it is an English thing. I can’t ever recall having seen the phrase used in print by an American. Nor spoken in American film.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Brandon Lasko
11 months ago

Sorry, Brandon. You’re not slow, but probably American (no insult intended!!). It’s a Brit idiom. It means making fun of someone/something

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  TomA
11 months ago

It makes me wonder if the ancients had so much bad “art” as we do, only the bad art was never preserved by anyone and so we aren’t aware of it.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

More in our own time, the “classic” oldies that are still played can induce one to forget about the large amount of awful music from not long past decades.

Ancient Mason
Ancient Mason
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
11 months ago

YouTube has recordings from Top 40 radio stations in the 60s that prove your point. We don’t remember the schlock.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

It seems at least some of it would have slipped through the cracks.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

The Greeks made plenty of crude porn jugs. Most of the good stuff came after they shrugged off the Persians, not coincidentally.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

“Crude porn jugs”. That creates an image in my mind that will keep me warm on many a winter night.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

I actually saw the Crude Porn Jugs open for Smashing Pumpkins in Glasgow back in ’92…

TomA
TomA
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

Is there any indication that the ancient Greeks glorified their “bad” art by putting on a top 100 list? My point is not that bad art is absent from other cultures, but that glorifying it is most definitely a symptom of a sick society.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  TomA
11 months ago

Nobody ever had the consumer culture that AINO does. Making lists is very much an American phenomenon, Americans love lists, and the “best of” lists are just a way for “experts” on “culture” to define what is best to consume, which is a form of status signaling, since in consumer culture you will be judged by what you consume more than by what you produce.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

My favorite take-off on Keats’ famed “Ode to a Grecian Urn” – this one by British poet Desmond Skirrow:

Gods chase
Round vase.
What say?
What play?
Don’t know.
Nice, though.

Zaphod
Zaphod
Reply to  3g4me
11 months ago

That’s just so wrong!

Now doing it to The Eve of St. Agnes…

ray
ray
11 months ago

In 1977, the hard-charging don’t need no man feminist was still very much a work in Progress. Women were not in leadership everywhere, as they are now. Girlbosses and lone wandering females were relatively rare. I remember Annie Hall. It was an influential film and certainly had a purpose, which apparently was to further draw attention to the ‘exciting’ life of the pre-Sex In The City single empowered female. I mean, NYC is as noxiously feminine a city as that manjaw-faced female idol in the Harbor. Musta been Gretch (the Wretch) Whitmer’s great-great granny. The movie isn’t titled ‘Alvy Singer’,… Read more »

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  ray
11 months ago

I’m not convinced that women are in charge today. They might fill a lot of impressive sounding positions, but, from the way the world is going, they don’t seem to be in control much. To be fair to women, the same goes for the Beta boys who lord it over us.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

Even management goes down to cheap labor.

Bill Jones
Member
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

The main feminine intellectual drive is to be the same as everybody else. The main male drive (or at least once was) to be right.
We live in a world of confomity uber alles.
Women rule.

ray
ray
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

Didn’t say they were in control. Said they were in charge.

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  ray
11 months ago

Point taken, Ray. Now I’m off to make my wife’s hot water bottle. 🙂

LFMayor
LFMayor
11 months ago

Once upon a time, trash similar to this got pitched in a fire. My hope is I live to see it happen again, so I can help.

Neville Chamberlain Review
Neville Chamberlain Review
Member
11 months ago

Annie’s grandmother did nothing wrong
She was absolutely right in her perception of Alvy

Filthie
Filthie
11 months ago

Sorry, Z… gonna pass on this one. Nothing personal, I just hate Woody Allen. The guy isn’t funny and he bores me to tears.

Good luck with the new house. 👍

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  Filthie
11 months ago

Mel Brooks was peak Jewish humor film directing.

Reviewer
Reviewer
Reply to  ProZNoV
11 months ago

Brooks and Allen have dialogs to interpret on two levels.
One is for the bulk of the audience.
The other is for the knowing insiders who smirk at the rubes, idiots and cattle or sheep.
When you see that you grow to despise both of them.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  ProZNoV
11 months ago

His movies were actually funny, if you’re into that kind of humor.

Bilejones
Member
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
11 months ago

And some are amused by the three stooges.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Bilejones
11 months ago

I never saw what people saw in the 3 Stooges.

Outdoorspro
Outdoorspro
11 months ago

Woody Allen’s only redeeming factor is his eye for the camera. If you watch AH in mute (really, the only acceptable way) you can really see it; every single frame of that film could stand by itself as great documentary photography.

Spike Lee has the same talent. Both make exceptionally beautiful films, but that’s all. It’s sad, as they could have had great careers as cinematographers, but they are each thoroughly obnoxious representatives of their races, so of course they must write and direct!

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Outdoorspro
11 months ago

“ Spike Lee has the same talent. Both make exceptionally beautiful films, …”

Jungle Fever is an exceptionally beautiful film? Spike Lee is another Black man making a (anti-White) statement in all his films. To watch his body of work is to poison your mind. That he has cinematic training and some talent in application thereof only makes him more dangerous to Whites. Sigh….

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
11 months ago

If I’m right that modernity is the loss of religion, then Jews simply had a 1500-year head start on the rest of us. Hence their over representation: they’ve had more practice— they’re better at it. Some JQ guys think we’re living in the world they created, but it could simply be that we’re catching up, becoming more like them. Fwiw.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

“the essential reality of the Jewish condition, at least as Jews see it, which is that they are always a people who dwell alone, regardless of where they find themselves.”

“These are two people who are alienated from themselves, so it is why they cannot have a normal human relationship.”

If postmodernity is the loss of identity following from the loss of religion. Again, fwiw. It’s not that Jews haven’t tried to integrate from time to time. Perhaps they can’t, and so they slam hard back into their Jewishness, which turns out to be alienation.

(( smallhat ))
(( smallhat ))
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

This type is only manhattanite. A small subset of Jews. And as to the Hollywood ,they are Brooklyn and Mannhattan transplants. Not the types where I was raised.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  (( smallhat ))
11 months ago

There’s always a remnant, but those Manhattanites are the bulk of what we got.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  (( smallhat ))
11 months ago

My old army boss, as well as a girl I grew up with are both jewish and both from NY. Neither of them are anything like this.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  (( smallhat ))
11 months ago

About 40% of Jews in America reside in NY and California – I would hardly call over 3 million people a “small subset.”

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

My old army boss and a girl I went to high school with are both jewish and nothing like any of these people. Both are born and raised in NY.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Steve
11 months ago

Apologies for the duplicate post.

Intelligent Dasein
Intelligent Dasein
Member
Reply to  Paintersforms
11 months ago

You should read Oswald Spengler on that subject. He held exactly the same view and you both are right.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
11 months ago

Interesting. You’re right, I should. Guy casts a long shadow.

Moe Gibbs
Moe Gibbs
11 months ago

Annie Hall, hmmm? Sounds stultifyingly boring from Z’s synopsis. I did not appreciate Bananas or Sleeper, and I’ve always thought of Allen as the penultimate self-absorbed twat. A whiny, meek schmuck with an irresistibly punchable face. I am quite certain that I would loathe the fellow in person. Just to polish my anti-semitic bona fides a little, I find jews in toto to be uniquely uninteresting people, so wholly wrapped up in themselves and their self-imposed “struggle” (You think it’s easy being annoying enough to get thrown out of 109 countries?) that they scarcely have time to notice the greater… Read more »

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Moe Gibbs
11 months ago

“I find jews in toto to be uniquely uninteresting people, so wholly wrapped up in themselves and their self-imposed “struggle””. I find that these adjectives fit none of the Jews I know. Most of them are well integrated and don’t give a damn about Israel, except to feel that something is not right in the way that Netanyahoo is handling things.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

Race realists always struggle with broad demographic truth and the personal truth that comes from interaction with individual members of the demographic in question. It’s the NAXALT phenomenon. With Jews, it is quite clear that, as a people, they are hostile toward the white race and use their considerable money, power and influence to harm us, even to the point of undermining our civilization. On the other hand, my personal dealings with Jews have been almost uniformly positive. Jews were instrumental, for instance, in getting me and my wife jobs on a couple of different occasions, and my current best… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

Your observation is not restricted to Jews. I happens with other races as well. Indeed, I think the phenomena of IKAGO is the greatest impediment we have to solidarity within the White race as compared to others.

Thread that needle and future generations will erect statues in your honor. 😉

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

I draw the opposite lesson, Ostei. I know all about the malign influence of scum like Soros. However, the Jews I know are nearly all conservative (I’m in Europe) and feel the same way about the way the world is going. Meanwhile, most of the Whites around me all bent over backwards to get themselves vaxxed and go all Nazi with people like me who weren’t. I’ll put the individual before the ideology if that’s okay with you.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

In that case, Euro Jews are ideologically the opposite of American Jews, which strikes me as highly unlikely. On this side of the pond, they vote Leftist about 75 percent of the time, and this is when voting Republican doesn’t even signal one is on the Right.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Robbo
11 months ago

“ I’ll put the individual before the ideology if that’s okay with you.”

Sure, I try to do so as well. However, societal decisions are made on the typical—or group—average. We build cars for average height people. Four foot 3” or six foot 4” people are in a bind for leg room and head clearance. And so we decide whom to avoid or watch out for as sometimes the stakes are just too high if we are wrong.

(( smallhat))
(( smallhat))
Reply to  Moe Gibbs
11 months ago

we just had Hannukah where we celebrated wictory over Grecosyrians and the God’s miracle.

Maxda
Maxda
Reply to  Moe Gibbs
11 months ago

I thought Sleeper was kind of funny and like Idiocracy, had some good predictions on how stupid things will get.

FNC1A1
Member
11 months ago

The best part of Annie Hall is where he brings in Marshall McLuhan

https://youtu.be/vTSmbMm7MDg?si=XdWfjAsBLbIIWn7x

cg2
cg2
Reply to  FNC1A1
11 months ago

That’s the best part?

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
11 months ago

My slightly older acquaintances “ooh” and “ahh” over the ’70s era Allen stuff (that I was much to young to see first-hand) and whenever they see my grimace when I’m sitting through his stuff, and really, their lack of any reaction, there’s an implication of “you had to be there”. It’s as if, that’s the type of stuff that passed for “funny” in the 70s so they took what they could get.

Hoagie
Hoagie
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
11 months ago

I was there and it was crap then trust me.

3 Pipe Problem
3 Pipe Problem
Reply to  Hoagie
11 months ago

Suffered through them with the girl-who-would-not be [my] Queen. Horrific.

Forever Templar
Forever Templar
Reply to  Hoagie
11 months ago

Yeah, the ’70s sucked the big one. Nobody even wants to emulate it or even make fun of it seems.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Forever Templar
11 months ago

As a kid growing up in the 70s, I loved that decade. Yes, I know the economy from 1973 through 1979 was terrible, and that the clothing and cars were hideous. What’s more, it was the first full decade in which America was in steep decline. But I would go back to the 70s in a New York minute, if I could. Compared to today, it was Xanadu.

RDittmar
Member
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

Ostei: I’ll take the ’80s over the ’70s any day, and twice on Sundays. No warm and fuzzy memories of the ’70s aesthetics or ‘culture’ or politics.

steve w
steve w
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
11 months ago

As far as growing up in a decade, I’d rate the 70s just behind the 50s and the 60s, and well ahead of the 80s, 90s, and whatever the featureless decades after 2000 are called.

My rating:

1 – the 1950s
2 – the 1960s
3 – the 1970s
4- the 1980s
5 – the 1990s
6-8 the 2000s, 2010s, and the current decade.

Do you notice that after the 1980s, or at the latest the 1990s, decades cease to have “personalities”. 2000 on is just a gray goo, from my perspective.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  Hoagie
11 months ago

Just like leisure suits and disco? I give the children of the 70s a mulligan because, outside looking in, it all looks like garbage to me.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
11 months ago

Disco lyrics were inane, but the music itself was actually quite good by pop standards. The guitar and percussion work couldn’t compare with rock, of course, but the rhythmic and vocal aspects were excellent.

Götterdamn-it-all
Götterdamn-it-all
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
11 months ago

It’s all relative. In that urban hellscape, it was considered hilarious. Sort of like making macabre jokes in wartime.

(( smallhat))
(( smallhat))
Reply to  Götterdamn-it-all
11 months ago

AND, It was a satire. Repit after me—A satire.

Carl B.
Carl B.
11 months ago

WASP couple on the street:

She: “I’m shallow and empty, I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.”

He: “I’m exactly the same.”.

The End.

Bigtoni
Bigtoni
Reply to  Carl B.
11 months ago

At least they were good looking

Epaminondas
Member
11 months ago

The whole damn film reeks of Northeastern urban, neurotic smugness. If you lived in Manhattan in the seventies (I did), you remember the creeping sordidness, the changing cityscape that was becoming increasingly ugly (the newly built Javits center). It’s all so painful to recall. And these peoples’ self-absorption seems to exemplify the post WWII triumphalism that masked the newly emerging silent panic that was engulfing the goyim. They didn’t want to think about what was happening. They just quietly tramped on down those increasingly ugly streets and dirty sidewalks to meet that friend over a drink at the latest trendy… Read more »

Forever Templar
Forever Templar
Reply to  Epaminondas
11 months ago

Yeah, it’s a Woody Allen film. The guy’s a douche and it comes through in his movies.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Epaminondas
11 months ago

Epaminondas: I have visited New York twice in my life. Once during college to see “Same Time Next Year” on Broadway (I think in 1977) and once to visit a friend for a few days in 1983. I found the place filthy, crowded, depressing, and frightening. No desire to ever visit again, and no movie or commercial attempting to dress up the dross as gold will ever change my mind.

Diversity Heretic
Member
Reply to  Epaminondas
11 months ago

A movie that really made New York look bad was the 1974 Death Wish with Charles Bronson. The city scenes exuded a sense of menace.

In fairness, New York City improved dramatically under Guilani and Bloomberg, before declining again under Deblasio.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Epaminondas
11 months ago

A comparison of Annie Hall and Taxi Driver could make for an interesting article.

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
11 months ago

Allen is nothing save superficial and fake. The anxious and neurotic pseudo-intellectual with absolutely nothing to say. If he’s considered part of the “cultural elite” I shudder for the soul of the USA. Watched “Annie Hall” and “Interiors” in the late ’70s. Utter tripe masquerading as cultural products. Problem for the USA is that unlike France and Germany it has never had a high culture. If it did it would have a yardstick to measure how utterly wanting this Woody Allen crud is.

3 Pipe Problem
3 Pipe Problem
Reply to  Arshad Ali
11 months ago

Spot-on comment!

imbroglio
imbroglio
11 months ago

After Woody got tired of his alienated Jewish nebbish shtick, his devoir to Ingmar Bergman, Anna And Her Sisters (based on Cries And Whispers,) was pretty decent, and Midnight In Paris is worth seeing and reviewing.

The change happened when Woody jilted Mia Farrow for their stepdaughter, and the progressive media made him persona non grata for allegedly being a pedophile. The two of them, stepdad and stepdaughter, are still together. Quietly out of sight of the media.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  imbroglio
11 months ago

My, how times change. Allen’s pedophilia and perversion would be celebrated today and have boosted his career. It would be doubly so if the Korean trophy child announced a transition so she could top her stepfather.

Severian
11 months ago

Your summary reminds me of Lisa Simpson’s take on that other 1970s “classic,” Love Story: “She’s wooden and unpleasant, and no matter what he does, he’s still Ryan O’Neal.”

mikeski
Member
Reply to  Severian
11 months ago

“That Ali McGraw had an a** that wouldn’t quit and could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Who cares whether she could act?”

– Robert Evans, probably

Ahab's Discount Harpoons
Ahab's Discount Harpoons
11 months ago

As someone who lived in Manhattan in the bad old Ed Koch years, I found myself deeply immersed in the nebbish culture you describe. Every day at work I would watch as a schlimazel dropped his soup into the lab of some poor schlemiel, and cluck my tongue, calling to mind what John Murray Cuddihy had written in ‘The Ordeal of Civility:’ “the ordeal is the unconsummated social courtship of Gentile and Jew.” Framed through bizarro pedo “Woody Allen’s” (Allan Konigsberg) neurotic lens, you get the vapid ‘Annie Hall,’ and it’s innumerable imitations that continue to echo through the ghost… Read more »

Frank
Frank
11 months ago

I didn’t know much about Dianne Keaton, so I looked her up and got an article with excerpts of her memoir. It really goes to show how unpleasant and crazy you seem if you let your insecurities become your personality. I don’t get why these people are held in such high esteem and it’s depressing that they’re held up as examples to women.

Frank
Frank
Reply to  Frank
11 months ago

Edit: Actually, I think it’s “wrong” that they’re held up as examples. I think it’s “depressing” that anyone finds it relatable.

Götterdamn-it-all
Götterdamn-it-all
Reply to  Frank
11 months ago

Keaton slept with almost every leading man she appeared with. She’s a whore. I’m being generous.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  Götterdamn-it-all
11 months ago

My go-to theory to “whatever happened to Actress X” in the 90’s, 00’s, and 10’s that the up and comers who left the screen right before they went major starlet is that they wouldn’t pay the Weinstein Casting Couch toll.

(Ashely Judd comes to mind)

The corollary of this is that women who DID make it big in these years were, well, open to going the “extra mile”, with Big W or some other(s).

Hollywood is gross, and the Zman is right that actors should be considered carny trash.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  ProZNoV
11 months ago

There are several well known actresses of that era I’ve heard stories about but I try not to repeat gossip. Anyway, you can figure it out.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
11 months ago

I thought that’s what the site, Crazy Days and Nights is for?

mmack
mmack
11 months ago

Annie is a neurotic dingbat who every man over thirty has met a thousand times. Over thirty Z? I was meeting them in my twenties. Then again, they don’t fully ripen until their thirties, do they? 😏 Woody Allen’s hang-ups and insecurities are interesting to no one but Woody Allen. I apologize for not subscribing to your reviews, but if you haven’t reviewed it already, take a gander at Stardust Memories. It was at the point where Woody decided he had to be a “Serious Director” and move away from comedy, but I’ve heard tell the movie comes across as… Read more »

RDittmar
Member
Reply to  mmack
11 months ago

You’re totally correct about Stardust Memories. I was actually a fan of Allen’s earlier, funny movies. I enjoyed his stand-up too. I actually enjoyed Annie Hall a lot too. Since it’s actually funny, I’d argue that it too is one of his earlier, funny movies. I think it all went south with Manhattan. Given subsequent events, it’s particularly creepy with his relationship with a teen-aged girl. Even setting that aside, it’s not the least bit funny. All the aspects of Annie Hall that the Z-man criticizes are ten thousand times more galling in Manhattan. While I watched a few of… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  mmack
11 months ago

I would never do for Z to fiddle around up on the roof…

Moran ya Simba
Moran ya Simba
11 months ago

Don’t fall off the damn roof now. All the conspiracy theories it would inspire lol

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Moran ya Simba
11 months ago

Was it the conservative establishment? The neocons? “Liberal democracy” itself?

I say that he orchestrated it all himself to go live with Elvis and Ad0lph in the hollow of the moon. Tell them that I said hello and will visit again soon.

cg2
cg2
11 months ago

flu
flue
I thought you used to hvac?

Moran ya Simba
Moran ya Simba
Reply to  cg2
11 months ago

I can only assume a “flu” is part of a chimney (???)

cg2
cg2
Reply to  thezman
11 months ago

Well I have one them. Nowadays you have to read a new service manual every other day. I had a helper once told me “Oh I don’t like to read.” He’s doing something else now.

By the way wasn’t it awesome being up on the roof?

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  cg2
11 months ago

I’m guessing that he’s joking about the roof. As an acquittance once told me: get someone who knows that they’re doing, don’t put the well being of your family at risk by getting on that ladder.

TroperA
TroperA
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
11 months ago

My Dad decided to put a wood stove in our three story Victorian house to save money. I have pictures of him standing at a dizzying height on the steep roof cleaning the chimney in the coldest part of February. It’s a miracle that he didn’t fall off and break his neck. A lot of wood had to be gathered and stored to last us throughout the winter and that’s what we kids spent a lot of our summer doing.

If you can hire people to do these kinds of things for you, I’d recommend it.