Tag Archives: diane keaton

HOLLYWOOD’S “JEW WAVE”: ANNIE HALL

Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) and Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) don’t always see eye-to-eye in classic romantic comedy

ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, November 6, 9:00, and Tuesday, November 8, 1:45
Series continues through November 10
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

One of the funniest, most-quoted romantic comedies in film history, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall is a pure delight from start to finish. It’s ostensibly a luuuuuurve story about a nebbishy Jew (Allen as Alvy Singer) and the ultimate WASPy goy (Diane Keaton as the title character), but it’s really about so much more: large vibrating eggs, right turns on red lights, television, Existential Motifs in Russian Literature, California, slippery crustaceans, driving through Plutonium, dead sharks, Freud, Hitler, Leopold and Loeb, religion, cocaine, Shakespeare in the Park, Buick-size spiders, planet Earth, and, well, la-di-da, la-di-da, la la. Nominated for five Oscars and taking home four — for Best Original Screenplay (Allen and Marshall Brickman), Best Director (Allen), Best Actress (Keaton), and Best Film — Annie Hall is screening November 6 and 8 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Hollywood’s ‘Jew Wave’” series, where such scenes as Annie’s grandmother seeing Alvy as an Orthodox rabbi at the dinner table should take on added significance. The eleven-day festival features eighteen (chai!) movies by and/or about Jews made between 1968 and 1977, a period that saw the influx of such actors as Elliott Gold, George Segal, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Richard Dreyfuss, Zero Mostel, and other members of the tribe. Allen fans should also be interested in checking out Martin Ritt’s The Front, in which Woody plays a bookie who becomes a front for blacklisted writers (one of whom, screenwriter Walter Bernstein, will be on hand for a Q&A on November 7), and The Touch, an English-language film made by one of the Woodman’s biggest influences, Ingmar Bergman.

FREE 9/11 TRIBUTE SCREENINGS: WOODY ALLEN’S MANHATTAN

MANHATTAN will be screening for free all afternoon at BAM on September 11

MANHATTAN (Woody Allen, 1979)
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, September 11, free, 2:00, 4:30, 7, 9:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Woody Allen’s Manhattan opens with one of the most beautiful tributes ever made to the Big Apple, a lovingly filmed black-and-white architectural tour set to the beautiful sounds of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Once again collaborating with screenwriter Marshall Brickman, master cinematographer Gordon Willis, and Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton, Allen’s tale of a nebbishy forty-two-year-old two-time divorcee who takes up with a seventeen-year-old ingénue (Mariel Hemingway) is both hysterically funny and romantically poignant, filled with classic dialogue (Yale: “You think you’re God.” Isaac: “I gotta model myself after someone.”) and iconic shots of city landmarks. BAM will be holding four free screenings of Manhattan on September 11, paying tribute to the iconic landmark that perished ten years ago. As Isaac says at the beginning of the film, “He adored New York City, he idolized it all out of proportion — no, make that, he romanticized it all out of proportion.” On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, there will be a lot of romanticizing going on, solemn memories, and news reports that are likely to spin way out of proportion, so sitting down for a free screening of this New York City masterpiece is a great way to take the edge off and just laugh yourself silly.

EPIX MOVIE FREE FOR ALL: ANNIE HALL

Woody Allen impersonation contest will precede free screening of ANNIE HALL in Coney Island

ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)
Coney Island Beach
Boardwalk at West 12th St.
Monday, August 8, free, 7:00
www.epixhd.com

One of the funniest, most-quoted romantic comedies in film history, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall is a pure delight from start to finish. It’s ostensibly a luuuuuurve story about a nebbishy Jew (Allen as Alvy Singer) and the ultimate WASPy goy (Diane Keaton as the title character), but it’s really about so much more: large vibrating eggs, right turns on red lights, television, Existential Motifs in Russian Literature, California, slippery crustaceans, driving through Plutonium, dead sharks, Freud, Hitler, Leopold and Loeb, religion, cocaine, Shakespeare in the Park, Buick-size spiders, planet Earth, and, well, la-di-da, la-di-da, la la. One of the all-time great New York City movies, it’s partly set in Coney Island, where Alvy grew up under the old Thunderbolt roller coaster. Tonight, Epix, in conjunction with Rooftop Films, will be screening the multiple Oscar winner — for Best Original Screenplay (Allen and Marshall Brickman), Best Director (Allen), Best Actress (Keaton), and Best Film — not far from that site, on the boardwalk by West 12th St. It will be preceded by a live DJ at 7:00, followed by Kirsten Lepore’s charming beach-set short, Bottle, and, yes, a Woody Allen impersonation contest. You know you so want to participate. Which section would you quote from? We’re still deciding which scene is our favorite….