Historic postcards of Hannibal, MO -- that's Mark Twain's hometown, y'know! -- discovered in the bottom drawer of a chipped n' rotting wardrobe at a junk store in Baldwin Park, CA. I paid $8 for the lot, which is entirely too much -- I try not to pay more than $.50 for my postcards, especially in little places like this. But the lady wouldn't budge, and I kind of had to have these.

Wonder if Huck knew when he lit out for the territories, this is where he'd end up:
 

Honestly, I often wonder the same thing.

Of course, it's entirely a nostalgia-act for me to invest a silly, mass-produced postcard with such meaning. However, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that, to me at least, there's something disquieting about finding vestiges of the "old America" tucked away like this. Punctures my notions of sanctity, I guess; the things I've held holy and that have shaped my life, relegated to a dustbin like this.

More on this later tonight, I think.

--I love Harris Savides, but I don't think he quite got the proper view on Woody's New York. As the man said in a panel discussion on the film:

My memories of New York are unrealistic. The New York that I grew up loving was, ironically enough, the New York of Hollywood movies, where people would live in the penthouses with the white telephones and come home at 5 in the morning with ermine draped over their shoulders. This was the New York that I knew.
 

I think A.O. Scott nailed it in his review for the Times:

...or, in summary, freeing up Woody's camera little gives the movie a turgid, lifeless feel.

--Location, location, location. Insularity is one thing, but restricting this story to some grubby Chinatown blocks and a pair of very cursory cutaways to Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty fails to give it the grandeur it deserves.

--Some of my favorite Woody moments involve incidental characters and slight side gags. (Think Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall or that great shot in Manhattan when Isaac, possessed of an odd romantic notion, runs his hand through the Central Park Reservoir and emerges with a fist full of mud.) Whatever Works was short on these throwaways, and the few that did make their way in failed to connect. Here's a "for example." Randy Jones, a young actor, hits on Boris's young wife, Melody, by telling her he lives on a houseboat and sits around thinking about "things" and playing his flute. To me, that's one of Woody's best slams against young pretty people in a while -- and God knows I loves my slams against young pretty people. But the line fails when delivered by actor Henry Cavill; he's so dreamy and earnest as to make this sound like a pretty appealing prospect. This should've been a great "put your foot on my heart" moment, but as played it's a shameful echo of Jonathan Rhys Myers's shameful performance in the shamefully overrated Match Point.

--There's a pretty clear line between what seems like work from the original 1970s script and new additions. The last scene, which I hope to God was written now, was really awful. Just bad, bad, bad.

--All in all, Whatever Works felt like a successful remake of a great Woody Allen picture from the 1970s. When it's on, baby, it's on. Boris's lectures are hilarious, as are Melody's manglings of his ideas; and Patricia Clarkson's plot was so good it could've been a movie of its own. General critical consensus seems to be, "Woody doing Woody -- again. Get back to Europe!" My problem is that if felt like Susan Stroman doing Woody.

There's a lot more to say, of course, but I feel this post has already gone way over for what was intended to be a brief gloss on the film. But it's really a perplexing little picture, a little bit like Ginger and Fred without the, you know, gusto.

I'm hung up on analyzing it for two reasons: 1) After four years of pretending to want to make and write movies, I'm actually doing it, and I need to dedicate as much time to analyzing film as I have to hacking apart literature; and 2) I've been missing New York a lot lately, and despite its flaws and woeful insularity, Whatever Works made me miss it even more. I'm interested in hearing what any of you had to say about it -- for some reason, I'm really compelled to figure this sucker out!

 

The king's daughter was delighted,
Taipei

[possible attack Web site withheld]

 

1. nguyenxuanvinh1981@yahoo.com omits a noun at the end of his title, causing confusion as to what the adjective "big" modifies. What do you think "big" could modify here? (Let's be mature, please.)

2.  Some may see nguyenxuanvinh1981@yahoo.com's seeming disregard for traditional forms as being inspired by post-structuralist linguistic and literary theorists. Considering your readings from Derrida's Glas for last week's class, please discuss the deconstructive aspects of nguyenxuanvinh1981@yahoo.com's poem.

3.  Do you think the charlatan Mark Z. Danielewski wishes he could have written this?