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Sexual Assault and Harassment in Hollywood


John from Cincinnati

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I saw some of the "classic" Woody Allens like Manhattan, Annie Hall,  Bullets Over Broadway, and Crimes and Misdemeanors and a good portion of his recent stuff like Blue Jasmine, Midnight in Paris, and Cafe Society. However, I don't think I was ever blown away by any particular film. Then again, the shadow of what I know of Woody Allen is cast over his films for me.

I still haven't seen too many Roman Polanski films. I've seen Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, Repulsion, and bits and pieces of The Ghost Writer because it was on IFC one time and I didn't turn the channel.  That's about it.

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The only one I've seen any part of was Annie Hall and I haven't a clue why. It was just randomly on cable when I was a kid and I watched some of it. 

Polanski and Stallone are the ones that piss me off the most, probably. First Blood is one of my favorite movies. Repulsion is on my top horror list. I feel dirty watching them now. Oh and by the way, whether that Stallone shit sticks or not, you know they're gonna keep having Rambo marathons on TV. And regular airings of Chinatown, too. 

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5 hours ago, Execproducer said:

Match Point is the only Woody Allen film I have seen this century. Before that, Sweet and Lowdown and Crimes and Misdemeanors, so I am far from a die-hard.  The whole Soon-Yi thing is pretty damn creepy but they have been married a long time so that is their business. The child abuse allegations are murky as hell and aren't going to stop me from watching a Penelope Cruz film.

 

The only thing that is going to stop me from watching a Penelope Cruz film is if Tom Cruise is in it, 'acting'. Tom Cruise is 10x creepier than Woody Allen.

Match Point is actually one of my favorite movies. I remember I got dragged to it by my ex and I thought it was going to be some lame rom com or something like that. Boy, that movie took a dark turn. I didn't know it was a Woody Allen movie until after I'd seen it.

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I saw the Pianist. I think that's it for Polanski.

"Marge: Did anyone see that new Woodsy Allen movie?
Flanders: You know, I like his films except for that nervous fellow that's always in them."

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3 hours ago, EVA said:

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS was made this century (2011) and was the highest grossing movie of his career.  It was also pretty good! Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway was magic.

Corey Stoll, Allison Pill (Zelda Fitzgerald) and the Dali/Man Ray scenes are the only reasons to see that movie, and it's all on Youtube anyways.

 

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3 hours ago, Ryan said:

Same. Don't care.

Yeah, the interest has just never been there for me. I was about to say the same for Roman Polanski, but I noticed the Ninth Gate in his filmography. I saw it long ago on tv and have no real memory of it save that Johnny Depp was in it.

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5 hours ago, Ryan said:

I saw the Pianist. I think that's it for Polanski.

"Marge: Did anyone see that new Woodsy Allen movie?
Flanders: You know, I like his films except for that nervous fellow that's always in them."

I was going to do this Friday. I guess if Bill Cosby taught us anything, if you snooze you lose. 

Happy 2017 everyone. 

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Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby,and Chinatown essential works of art                                          Roman Polanski is a dirt- bag who should have gone to prison and hopefully karma has plans for him.                                            Both of these truths can co-exist.

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59 minutes ago, Victator said:

I was going to do this Friday. I guess if Bill Cosby taught us anything, if you snooze you lose. 

Happy 2017 everyone. 

Boooo.

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I can't imagine going through what Polanski did with Tate and their unborn child's murders but of course that does not excuse his later acts.

Saying that, Repulsion may be one of the best suspense/horror movies I've ever seen. Rosemary's Baby is incredible too. I'd like to see Chinatown again because my initial viewing of it didn't blow me away though I could appreciate both Jack's performance and the cinematography.

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This isn't a popular opinion maybe anywhere, but I like The Two Jakes more than Chinatown. And like Matt said, there's actual vintage film noir like The Maltese Falcon. There are also better 70s noir meditations/deconstructions like Altman's The Long Goodbye. Polanski's actually easy for me to write off, but I'm finished with Allen too, and some of Allen's work I've enjoyed quite a bit. I think the older I get the less precious I am about the "importance" of art and it's easier for me to just be done with someone's work if they're a piece of shit. 

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A lot of what I liked about Woodiy Allan's movies when I was younger I now see a kind of shallow intellectual tourism.  A Kafka reference here, and A McCluhan cameo there. A quick riff on the most basic stereotypes about French cinema. But never exploring these things at any level beyond a New Yorker cartoon caption level. It's not that there was nothing ever deeper there.  I think there is in the basic story structure.  But it's also very basic. I can see that as a selling point in something like Stardust Memories that it makes a very basic point about writing in a long, slow way.  But it's still a pretty basic point.

 

Midnight in Paris is the worst in that sense. As much as the movie makes fun of the shallow tourists in France, it is essentially a kind of historical tourism for people who want to visit a display about "Modernism" without actually reading any novels or poetry or looking at any art.

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I don't know how they hold up now, but I loved his stand up albums the first time i heard them in college. 

Maybe it's the same as Cosby. "the Moose" is probably still as funny in a vacuum as "Chicken Heart" but don't know about how often I would listen to them .

 

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