The Big Picture Magazine
Comedian and director Carl Reiner’s second directorial feature-length film, The Comic (1969), starred Dick Van Dyke as a fictitious silent film era comedian, Billy Bright. Bright, an over bearing, egocentric comic, never reached the level of fame he believed he should have, always falling victim to the behavior of others like his wife (and co-star) […]
Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) has just met Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) for a double match at a tennis club in Manhattan. She is getting ready to engage him in their first conversation. They’re back in street clothes, which, for Annie, means a white men’s shirt and loose wrinkled beige trousers, black vest and wide white […]
It was not until I saw Penélope Cruz in Volver that I fully understood why she is Pedro Almódovar’s muse. Her ability to convey a lot of depth with remarkable ease makes her a pleasure to see on screen. It took one great director to discover her real talent: “Pedro would push me to the limit. He […]
He’s the greatest jazz guitarist in the world except for a “gypsy in France”, declares Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), the subject of Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999), a fictitious docu-comedy about a talented musician forgotten by history. Emmet is not a likeable character. He is unfaithful, a kleptomaniac and an egomaniac. On the surface, […]
The lengths people go to when seeking fame and fortune has been a prime target for many comedians, not least Woody Allen. Celebrity (1998) gives a broad and characteristically cynical take on the lives of the rich and famous, as well as the not-yet-rich and the not-quite-famous-enough, undoubtedly drawing on the director’s own long Hollywood career. […]