Woody has still got it

I have been disappointed to see Woody Allen's recent outings, especially Scoop, and I really don't understand why does he need to have Scarlett in every film that he directs (maybe that's why all his recent films are such duds). After watching films like Scoop, I thought the guy had lost his mojo.

Woody's last film that I had enjoyed watching was Bullets Over Broadway. And then recently when I was in Sydney I could get hold of a Manhattan DVD. I watched it in my hotel room. And man, you have to respect this guy.

Then I read this piece "Excerpts from Spanish Diary" in the NYT a few days ago and enjoyed it so much that I thought I should share it with you here on my blog. This guy is 72 and he says his pants caught fire when he interviewed Penelope Cruz for his new film, 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', which also has Javier Bardem in it (David Denby of The New Yorker calls him criminally attractive, read Denby's review of this movie here):

Once again I had to help Javier with the lovemaking scenes. The sequence requires him to grab Penélope Cruz, tear off her clothes and ravish her in the bedroom. Oscar winner that he is, the man still needs me to show him how to play passion. I grabbed Penélope and with one motion tore her clothes off. As fate would have it she had not yet changed into costume, so it was her own expensive dress I mutilated. Undaunted I flung her down before the fireplace and dove on top of her. Minx that she is, she rolled away a split second before I landed causing me to fracture certain key teeth on the tile floor. Fine day’s work, and I should be able to eat solids by August.

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Three cheers for Bardem and the Coens

In Sunday's Oscars, Javier Bardem's win was a certainty. I had seen the film, No Country for Old men, only last Friday and everything was fresh in my mind: I could not stop thinking about the character played by Javier Bardem in that twisted western. I kept wondering about the scenes that I had seen with near apnea, how the Coens had worked out every minor detail (the shot where the crumpled piece of a polybag unwinds itself, and nothing else moves in the mis en scene) in the film, how the sheriff was being outfoxed by this mysterious and ghostly criminal in a changing world. I was enthralled by the nihilistic vision of the directors. I will never forget the humourless dignified baddie (Bardem) in this film, who is even better than the Bill in Kill Bill.
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Update: The New Yorker's David Denby describes the work as "lethal cool." Yes, that's the right expression I guess. Read the first two paras of his article on the Coen brothers and their works, and he says, in precise words, the words and images that I wanted to capture as my own reaction to No Country for Old Men.

The Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” casts an ominous and mournful spell from the first shot. Over scenes of a desolate West Texas landscape, an aging sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), ruminating on the new viciousness of crime, says that he’s not afraid of dying. But, he adds, “I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard.” Without transition, we see Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), an odd-looking man in a modified Prince Valiant haircut, murder first a deputy sheriff, then a stranger whose car he needs. (He strangles the deputy and shoots the stranger with some sort of gun attached to what looks like an oxygen tank.) The movie jumps again, to Llewelyn, an early-morning hunter (Josh Brolin) who’s out in the desert tracking antelope. In the distance, he sees five pickup trucks arrayed in a rough circle and some dead bodies lying on the ground. He moves in slowly, rifle held low. His attentiveness is so acute that it sharpens our senses, too.

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