{"id":243911,"date":"2010-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/from-rich-doctors-to-witch-doctors-woody-allens-latest-begins-with-soothsaying\/"},"modified":"2010-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T07:00:00","slug":"from-rich-doctors-to-witch-doctors-woody-allens-latest-begins-with-soothsaying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/from-rich-doctors-to-witch-doctors-woody-allens-latest-begins-with-soothsaying\/","title":{"rendered":"From rich doctors to witch doctors: Woody Allen\u2019s latest begins with soothsaying"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Marks\/<\/strong>Cr\u00edtico de cine SDUN <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>
Director Woody Allen (left) with Anthony Hopkins in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger." (Photo by Keith Hamshere Courtesy Sony Pictures)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger\u201d<\/strong>
\nWritten and Directed by<\/strong>: Woody Allen
\nProtagonizada por:<\/strong> Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Gemma Jones and Lucy Punch
\nClasificaci\u00f3n:<\/strong> 2.5 stars<\/p>\n

After the deserved critical and box office drubbing \u201cWhatever Works\u201d took, Woody Allen opts for a more familiar approach. His forty-and-one-third theatrical release as a director finds Woody back in London (for the fourth time) and valiantly trying to concoct a Cockney correlative to \u201cHusbands and Wives.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many of Woody\u2019s early, funny alter egos underwent strict analysis, over the years his protagonists seem to have shifted their agents of psychic self-delusion from rich doctors to witch doctors. A medium predicts love for Tom Baxter in \u201cThe Purple Rose of Cairo.\u201d Danny Rose\u2019s flaky flame seeks solace in clairvoyance. Something tells me there was a fortune teller in \u201cThe Curse of the Jade Scorpion\u201d (I couldn\u2019t sit through it again to confirm), and the police dub the murderer in \u201cScoop\u201d the \u201cTarot Card Killer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger\u201d is Woody\u2019s definitive statement on soothsaying. Not that we needed cinematic confirmation. Woody recently told the New York Times, \u201cTo me there\u2019s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They\u2019re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The romantic roundelay commences with psychic advice dispensed by a quack (Pauline Collins). Her prognostications soon begin disrupting the lives of a bitter divorcee, Helena (Gemma Jones), and her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and son-in-law Roy (Josh Brolin). Alfie (Anthony Hopkins brilliantly standing in for WA without so much as a stammer) abandoned Helena in mid-mid-life crisis and married Charmaine (Lucy Punch), the first hooker\/retired porn star looking for a sugar daddy to come his way. A little Lechter (and a lot of Woody) emerges as Alvy\u2026I mean Alfie blames his ex for allowing herself to get old.<\/p>\n

Roy despises his mother-in-law with a near-Ralph Kramden intensity. The med school grad who became a one-hit novelist is deep in the throes of writer\u2019s block and Helena\u2019s constant unannounced appearances are driving him batty. In order to take the pressure off their marriage, Sally purposely sends mom to a psychic she knows is a fraud. Woody actually borrows a page from Bobcat Goldthwaite\u2019s \u201cWorld\u2019s Greatest Dad\u201d in order to help the struggling author\u2019s career. Roy decides to peddle a deceased friend\u2019s manuscript as his own.<\/p>\n

After years of aping Bergman and Fellini, Woody booked passage to England and entered his Hitchcock phase. \u201cCassandra\u2019s Dream,\u201d a Hitchcockian thriller about a pair of brothers and a crime gone wrong, turned out to be Woody\u2019s strongest directorial effort since \u201cCrimes and Misdemeanors.\u201d He still can\u2019t quite shake The Master\u2019s influence. Roy begins a voyeuristic rear-window romance with his beautiful, soon-to-be wed neighbor (Freida Pinto).<\/p>\n

Lucy Punch\u2019s Charmaine acts as a dual reference to characters past. Her exterior may be a lot more curvaceous, but Punch\u2019s brash, outgoing trophy gal basically serves the same function as Maureen Stapleton\u2019s Pearl in \u201cInteriors.\u201d Both characters add life (and in Stapleton\u2019s case, color) and upset the balance of the otherwise serious proceedings.<\/p>\n

Charmaine is the direct descendant of many a Woody bimbo. Remember Miss Blair, the conniver with the sugar cone bra in Woody\u2019s debut feature \u201cTake the Money and Run\u201d? Move over Countess Alexandrovna, Tina Vitale, Rain, Olive Neal, Erin Fleming and all the other mighty Aphrodites that populate Allenland. A mighty Punch now comes close to topping the list.<\/p>\n

The one character that fails to register is Josh Brolin\u2019s frustrated novelist. From a tousled, unbecoming shag cut to his beefy presence and sluggish line readings, Brolin\u2019s performance appears to have been grafted on from another film. Why didn\u2019t Woody cast Christian McKay (\u201cMe and Orson Welles\u201d) in the lead as opposed to assigning him a thankless role as one of Roy\u2019s chums?<\/p>\n

With the reprise of Leon Redbone\u2019s \u201cWhen You Wish Upon a Star\u201d it is abruptly made clear that our story is about to wrap. It appears the old boy\u2019s heart isn\u2019t in it. God bless prolific Woody for averaging a film a year since first stepping behind the camera in 1968. It\u2019s clear that quantity has never been one of his problems. Maybe the 74-year-old nebbish should slacken his pace to three films every four years and concentrate more on pulling together loose threads. \u201cYou Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger\u201d begins with an anonymous narrator quoting \u201cMacbeth.\u201d Regrettably, by the time Woody\u2019s sound and fury draws to a close he idiotically fails to signify anything.<\/p>\n

Please silence your guns and cell phones<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good thing they don\u2019t let people bring guns into movie theaters. If they did, the screen I saw \u201cHook\u201d on would have had more holes in it than the plot of a \u201cBourne\u201d sequel.<\/p>\n

While heading to the \u2018Bucks to get a cup of morning movie stimulant, I stopped at the ticket booth to see what else was showing at the AMC Fashion Valley. (I was hoping that \u201cDinner for Schmucks\u201d was being held over as an AMC Independent.) Being an old theater manager, I still feel an obligation to check out the artwork on the menu board mylars and any other offbeat signage.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s this??! A sign shouting \u201cNO WEAPONS\u201d complete with a drawing of a pistol surrounded by a circle with a line across it for illiterate gun-toters. Now I had to trudge all the way back to the parking lot, unlock my Electra 225 and stow my Walther PPK in the glove box.<\/p>\n

It makes all the sense in the world to post a \u201cNo Weapons\u201d sign at Horton Plaza (they sell\u00a0mace at the concession stand), but Fashion Valley? AMC\u2019s Fashion Valley 18 was built before its sister theater, Mission Valley 20. As soon as the bigger, newer theater was erected in 1995, FV basically became a receptacle for MV\u2019s spillover. It\u2019s your typical efficient, non-imposing mall theater. The only trouble I ever encountered at FV was when I threatened to set fire to some old honey\u2019s Depends\u00ae if she continued talking.<\/p>\n

Screening audiences are accustomed to being wanded down before entering\u00a0an auditorium to make sure they are not carrying any photographic devices. Are we soon going to have to walk through metal detectors in order to see Hollywood\u2019s latest offerings?\u00a0Looks like this new wave of 3D audience participation is\u00a0bound to be more exciting than anything on the screen. <\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Marks\/SDUN Film Critic \u201cYou Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger\u201d Written and Directed by: Woody Allen Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Gemma Jones and Lucy Punch Rating: 2.5 stars After the deserved critical and box office drubbing \u201cWhatever Works\u201d took, Woody Allen opts for a more familiar approach. His forty-and-one-third theatrical […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1292,"featured_media":243912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"From rich doctors to witch doctors: Woody Allen\u2019s latest begins with soothsaying","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}