—Diane Keaton as Sonja in Woody Allen’s Love and Death (1975)

“If you don’t take the money, they can’t tell you what to do. That’s the key to the whole thing.”

—Bill Cunningham

(Via.)

In Part 1 of Woody Allen: A Documentary, which aired last night on PBS (Part 2 airs tonight), documentary maker Robert Weide tells Allen that Sleeper was the first time he ever heard the term “cloning.” Allen nods and says that’s why he felt the need to include a scene explaining it; no one at the time knew what cloning was. Now, of course, Allen jokes, everybody clones.

This exchange reminded me of Harlan Ellison’s argument that Woody Allen is partly, maybe even primarily, a science fiction filmmaker:

Can I be the only reader of fantastic literature to perceive that Woody Allen has been, and continues to be, one of our best filmic interpreters of the je ne sais quoi we call “the sense of wonder”? Surely not. Surely some other observer of the flickering screen image has stumbled on this obvious truth! But I search in vain through all the treatises on Woody, and I find no support for my theory. Nowhere outside the specialist semiotics of cinema lucubration (do I speak their language or don’t I!?) analyzing The Terminator till one could retch; nowhere in the totality of non-fantasy incunabula. They talk of his ambivalence between roots as a Brooklyn Jew and foliage as an adult who wants to make it with the goyishe cheerleaders. They prate of his influences; from Wittgenstein to Ingmar Bergman. They totemize him as the germinal influence in raising the nerd to hunk status. But nowhere does anyone simply say, “This guy has a for-real science-fictional-fantasy outlook.”

Ellison calls Sleeper and Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo “pure SF,” and contends that many of Allen’s other films have science fiction and/or fantasy elements: the sperm segment of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, the aliens at the end of Stardust Memories, the subtext of a Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. Even the sense of wonder that pervades Radio Days is, to Ellison, indicative of a science fiction sensibility.

Ellison famously hates the term “science fiction,” preferring instead the more highfalutin term “speculative fiction,” but his basic point remains.

Though it’s not an interpretation advanced by Weide’s documentary, and it remains an unsung view, I’m sympathetic to Ellison’s argument. Indeed, since Ellison wrote the above words in 1987, Allen has made Deconstructing Harry, Melinda and Melinda, and Midnight in Paris – all movies that, when you think about it, are essentially science fiction films. Hell, one might even argue that Woody Allen is one of the premier science fiction filmmakers of the last fifty years.

Woody Allen: A Documentary premieres nationally Sunday, November 20 from 9-11 p.m. (ET/PT) and Monday, November 21 from 9-10:30 p.m. (ET/PT) on PBS (check local listings) as part of the 25th anniversary season of American Masters.

From Ibraheem Youssef’s Martin Scorsese Tribute Film Posters collection.

Previously: Ibraheem Youssef’s Quentin Tarantino Posters

Actually, as http://www.goodfellaspainting.com/ (perhaps my favorite single-serving site ever) points out, it’s a painting by  Nicholas Pileggi’s mom based on a photograph from the November 1978 issue of National Geographic.

I am, of course, not the first person to point this out, but this strikes me as one of those things that’s so utterly delightful it can’t be pointed out too many times.

Tommy’s (Joe Pesci’s) analysis of the painting is particularly delicious:

“One dog goes one way and the other dog goes the other way. And this guy’s saying, ‘Whaddya want from me?’”

Indeed.

(Via Minimalissimo.)

From Olly Moss’s clever and charming “Paper Cuts” series.

Previously: Olly Moss’s Movie Poster Remakes.

Before sharing his thoughts on Twenty Cigarettes, film scholar David Bordwell pauses to “reflect for a moment on the powerful role played by the cigarette in twentieth-century photographic portraiture.”

Related posts: Cigarettes are Sublime and The Cigarette Abides.

This video reminds me of Uncredited: Graphic Design and Opening Titles in Movies, a book I reviewed for Film & History in 2008. The veritable explosion of love for  movies titles online since then (in addition to Art of the Title, there’s The Movie Titles Stills Collection and Steven Hill’s Movie Title Screens Page) warms my heart.

Number fourteen on Where Danger Lives’ marvelous “100 Greatest Posters of Film Noir” list.

More must-watch material at http://www.everythingisaremix.info/.

—Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock, by François Truffaut

—Cary Grant, To Catch a Thief

(Via Walker Lamond.)

Even better is the trailer, which, though only 2 minutes and 11 seconds long, might actually be the best movie of 2010. Go watch. Now.

Over at Clothes on Film, Matt Spaiser analyzes Sean Connery’s clothing in Dr. No:

Throughout Dr. No, Sean Connery wears five unique tailored ensembles. Each outfit is simple, classic and worthy of imitation. The idea was to put Bond in suits that were distinctly British, but keep things simple because a secret agent should never stand out. Yet because of this simplicity, the clothes still look fresh today.

Now I want to read Spaiser, who runs the blog The Suits of James Bond, on Connery’s clothing in From Russia With Love, my favorite, and arguably the best, Bond film.

Related post: “Cary Grant’s Suit.”

Elizabeth Tamny argues that Jeff Bridges is the best smoker in movie history:

“There has never been a smoker like Bridges in films, and when I say that I am thinking of all film smokers and all smoking movies, from Bogie to Now, Voyager. Bridges’ relationship with things he lights on fire and sticks in his mouth creates a parallel world of expression in film that he uses to great advantage and it deserves some recognition beyond the tiny gold cigarette that must be dangling from the mouth of his Oscar.”

What’s weird is that I’ve never really thought of Bridges as a smoker par excellence before, but after reading Tamny’s piece, yes, of course, duh. I love criticism like this.

(Via Roger Ebert.)

Related post: “Cigarettes Are Sublime.”

(Via Boing Boing.)

Harmonica (Charles Bronson), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

Via If We Don’t, Remember Me, home of the subtlest, and the best, cinematic animated GIFs I’ve ever seen.

Related reading: “The Glorious GIF Renaissance.”

More. Trailer.

(Via Kottke.)

Two of my three personal recommendations to Syracuse were written by Woody Allen and Gore Vidal. Woody hand wrote in Venice, on Hotel Gritti Palace stationary, ‘Peter Weller is my friend, a fellow actor, writer, director, musician and a credit to his race.’ Gore Vidal was less oblique: Vidal, typing on a an old Remington wrote, ‘I’ve known Weller a long time. He is an extraordinary student … of exactly what I have no idea.’ My third recommendation was written by the ex-Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles.

That’s right, Peter Weller’s in grad school.

The film has been criticized for poorly portraying women, which is true, but this misses how the film poorly portrays everyone. Nearly every character is an embarrassment in some significant way, and the movie is largely criticizing the shallowness of elites (Harvard, Silicon valley, lawyers, VCs, the upper class, etc.). The movie is a critique of the kinds of people who would choose to profit from changing the world based on the model of “facebooks” (e.g. yearbooks), relationship status and friending people. The point is: it’s a 19 or 20 year old view of the universe, for better and, as the movie emphasizes, for worse.

Exactly.

Previously: Is It Safe?, Ibraheem Youssef’s Quentin Tarantino Posters, Jamie Bolton’s Minimalist Movie Posters, Minimalist TV Show Posters, and Olly Moss’s Movie Poster Remakes.

Typographic poster for Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece. The famous quote is not included in the final version of the film but appears in Arthur C. Clarke’s original book. The em dash that breaks the phrase represents the ever present monolith. The poster is set in Futura Extra Bold, (Kubrick’s typeface of choice) and printed with glow in the dark ink, so the star field only becomes visual in the darkness of space.

(Via.)