On their way out onto the shelves today are over twenty Woody Allen titles, six seasons of Wings (four of them brand new and unopened), two seasons of Friends (also brand new and unopened) and one of my all-time favorite films of all time, ever.
Starting with this ginormous pile of Woody, we have way more than one shelf’s worth of stuff here. In fact, it’s almost enough to fill three shelves on the Wall O’ Cool, but after careful deliberation I’ve decided to just put them out chronologically. As with other residents of the Wall O’ Cool, we’ll rotate in new stuff as the other stuff goes home with happy customers. So here’s what we have:
Take The Money And Run: Woody Allen’s first original film as writer/director/star. Here, he plays Virgil Starkwell, a bumbling criminal trying to go straight after falling in love.
Bananas: In his second outing as writer/director/star, Woody is Fielding Mellish, a jilted lover (a common role for Woody in his films) who travels to San Marcos to get over his girlfriend. While there, he’s caught up in a revolution and eventually becomes the rebels’ leader, finally ending up captured by the FBI and put on trial for subversion.
Play It Again Sam: In his first film with Diane Keaton, Woody is Allen, a movie buff who receives romance advice from a recurring hallucination of Humphrey Bogart, while his best friends try to fix him up with a string of women with whom he completely fails to click.
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask): Woody Allen takes on the subject of sex with his zany sense of humor and absurdity in this series of hysterical vignettes.
Sleeper: Woody is Miles Monroe, awakened from a 200 cryogenic sleep, finds that in the future “…all women are frigid, all men are impotent and the world is ruled by an evil dictator… A disembodied nose!” Zaniness ensues.
Love And Death: In this historical comedy, Woody is Boris Grushenko who becomes a soldier in the Russian Army during the Napoleonic Wars when his true love Sonja (Diane Keaton) plans to marry a herring merchant. Upon his return, Sonja agrees to marry him and they live in poverty until French troops invade Russia and Sonja hatches a plan to assassinate Napoleon.
Interiors: Once again working with Diane Keaton, this was Woody Allen’s first drama, exploring the dynamics of a family in crisis and proving that Woody Allen wasn’t just a comic actor/director.
Manhattan: Filmed in black and white, Woody is Issac Davis, a 42-year-old Manhattanite who “…has a job he hates, a seventeen-year-old girlfriend he doesn’t love, and a lesbian ex-wife who’s writing a tell-all book about their marriage…and whom he’d like to strangle.” Considered by many to be one of Woody Allen’s most enduring films.
That’s it for Mr. Allen and his induction into the Wall O’ Cool. We also have Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Hannah And Her Sisters, Radio Days, Crimes And Misdemeanors, Alice, Bullets Over Broadway, Small Time Crooks, Melinda and Melinda, Scoop and Match Point. Whew!
Onward… We have two brand new and unopened seasons of Friends: season 1 and season 9. And then we also have the first six seasons of Wings! Seasons 3 through 6 are brand new and unopened, too!
And now we come to a movie that I simply love: Start The Revolution Without Me stars Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland as two pairs of mixed-up-at-birth twins in the early days of the French Revolution. One pair is peasant, and a bit dumb, the other pair part of the aristocracy, and really not much smarter… Filled with sight gags and witty dialogue, this movie has never failed to entertain me over the many dozens of times I’ve seen it and shared it with friends. Plus, it’s got narration by Orson Welles!
“Paris, France, 1789. Thirty years later, under the reign of Louis XVI, longstanding grievances between aristocrat and peasant were about to boil over. The pot in which these troubles boiled was kindled with the firewood of oppression and injustice and heated by the flames that sucked the air from gasping peasants. Would the pot cool off, would it merely simmer, or would it boil over in the kitchen of France– to stain the floor of history forever?”
So here are a few of my faves that I would take with me to the Island mentioned in my fellow staff member’s posts..Enjoy.
1. Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls- Russ Meyer’s 1970’s camp-classic. This was his first Major-Studio release. It has it all…Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll…the story of an all girl-band getting lost in the strange world of California in the late 1960’s. Beheadings, Transgenders, Rock Bands &, of course, boobies. Written with Film critic Roger Ebert, this one includes an apperance by The Strawberry Alarm Clock!
2. Man Bites Dog- A quite disturbing “mockumenatry” from Belgium. A film crew follows around a serial killer who shares with them his views on life, love & his profession. Extremly dark comedy…not for everyone. But everyone should see it.
3. The Kentucky Fried Movie. One of my favourites as a teen. The first Zucker Brothers (AIRPLANE!) This one featuring parodies of feature films, commrecials other such foolishness. Worth it for “Catholic Highschool Girls In Trouble” alone. Oh…and boobies.
4. Goodfellas- An obvious choice. But what can be said about this Scorsese classic? Wall to wall violence, great dialogue & amazing music. It’s over two hour length flies by. Can still watch it from begining to end at any given time.
5. National Lampoon’s Animal House- Another obvious classic. I think this may be a perfect comedy. A precursor to the well-written AND raunchy comedies of people like Judd Apatow, this is another I can watch again & again. Based on a bunch of short stories from the National Lampoon magazine’s golden years, it chronicles the early 1960’s frat life of a bunch of slackers. Oh…and boobies.
I tried to balance out a few more undgerground picks with the mainstream here…so this list may not be entirely honest….I think I might just wind up watching Freddy Got Fingered over and over again and then wind up being mauled to death by a wild boar whilst picking berries.
GRR