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Tommy Chong recommended Annie Hall (1977) in Movies (curated)

 
Annie Hall (1977)
Annie Hall (1977)
1977 | Comedy, Romance

"Diane Keaton was amazing."

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Ellen DeGeneres recommended House in Books (curated)

 
House
House
Diane Keaton | 2012 | Architecture & Design, Home & Garden
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"Diane Keaton is equally obsessive about architecture and design – in this book, she presents the work of some of her favorites. It’s all beautiful."

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Elizabeth Olsen recommended Manhattan (1979) in Movies (curated)

 
Manhattan (1979)
Manhattan (1979)
1979 | Comedy, Drama, Romance
8.7 (3 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Also, Manhattan. I can watch Diane Keaton in a Woody Allen movie over and over and over again. Any time I’m on location somewhere foreign, I watch those two movies ’cause they remind me of New York and being happy. I have them on my computer."

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Anna Kendrick recommended Love and Death (1975) in Movies (curated)

 
Love and Death (1975)
Love and Death (1975)
1975 | Classics, Comedy, Drama

"I know this is not the best Woody Allen film I’ve ever seen, but it’s still my personal favorite. Only Woody Allen could mix highbrow Bergman homages and Marx Brothers-esque slapstick. I also love how much fun he seems to be having with the great Diane Keaton. If only there were a blooper reel."

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Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
1989 | Comedy, Drama

"I like Woody Allen. Crime and Misdemeanors I liked a lot. I think it’s just wonderful. I also enjoy many of those — I like Hannah and Her Sisters, and Husbands and Wives; I like Broadway Danny Rose. This morning I was watching Love and Death, with Diane Keaton which I like a lot. But Crimes and Misdemeanors is maybe the best one of those."

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Elizabeth Olsen recommended Annie Hall (1977) in Movies (curated)

 
Annie Hall (1977)
Annie Hall (1977)
1977 | Comedy, Romance

"Woody Allen — namely the Diane Keaton collaborative days — those movies were really important to me when I was like 15, 16 years old, because it was when I discovered watching them and went through the canon. I, for the first time, had seen a woman that I was like, “Oh, I can be that kind of a woman. I’m not really the nerd, I’m not really the charactery person. I’m not really the sexy one, but I am a neurotic, nervous, but semi-intelligent one, but I also say stupid things.” It felt comforting to know that that was an example of a kind of woman I could be when I grew up and when I was going through that transition in teenagehood."

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Griffin Dunne recommended Reds (1981) in Movies (curated)

 
Reds (1981)
Reds (1981)
1981 | Classics, Drama, Romance
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"I always see this every couple of years to remind myself how difficult movie making can be and how much hard work and vision can be rewarded. What Warren Beatty did in that to star, produce, write, and direct was just one of the most colossal achievements in moviemaking. And how he was able to offer such an incredibly strong performance and direct himself and create one of the most heart-wrenching scenes at the train station with Diane Keaton, I look at that and wonder how the hell did he do that? How does any human pull that off, let alone get the tens of millions of dollars for a movie about an American communist at the turn of the 20th century? On so many levels, that movie leaves me in awe."

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Book Club (2018)
Book Club (2018)
2018 | Comedy
A book club without a spine.
Let’s be clear before we start; I am NOT in the demographic that this film is aimed at. And judging from the general reactions of the cinema audience I shared this with – 90%+ of who were women aged over 50 – my views are NOT going to necessarily reflect the general view, since there seemed to be quite a few satisfied customers in the audience. But my personal view would be, if you’re going to make a light-hearted comedy aimed at the lucrative silver pound, then at least make it a good one. For this – for me – felt like 50 shades of lame.

The action – if we can stretch the use of English that far – revolves around the four middle-class white ladies (this film challenges neither class nor racial divides) who meet periodically with copious quantities of wine and goat-cheese stuffed tomatoes to discuss a book. Hotel owner Vivian (Jane Fonda, “Klute”, “On Golden Pond”) is making lots of love but is reluctant to commit to it herself; Diane (Diane Keaton, “”Annie Hall”, “Something’s Gotta Give”) is recently widowed and struggling against being pigeon-holed as an ‘old duffer’ by her two daughters; Sharon (Candice Bergen, “Soldier Blue”, “Miss Congeniality”) has devoted her life to her career as a high court judge at the expense of a physical relationship (“What happens to a vagina that hasn’t been used in 18 years?!”); and Carol (Mary Steenburgen (“Back to the Future Part III”) is in a sexless marriage with her recently retired husband Bruce (Craig T Nelson, “Get Hard“, “Poltergeist”).

Vivian introduces the book club to “50 Shades of Grey” and the book influences everyone’s lives in different ways.

What ensues is 100 minutes of double entendres (“You have a lethargic pussy” says a veterinarian… you get the level) as the four separate stories (bump and) grind towards their separate conclusions. There are one or too laugh-out-loud moments but the majority of the screenplay is merely smile-worthy: “Mostly harmless” as Douglas Adams would have said.

What IS good, which is the reason my rating won’t have a “1” in it, is that it does give a reason to see some of our more senior actors and actresses strut their stuff again on the main stage.

In terms of the lead performances, while Steenburgen is good, it is Candice Bergen who impresses most as a fine comic actress. More please! Fonda and Don Johnson (“Miami Vice”) were supposed to be a hot couple, but their acting to me appeared false and their chemistry non-existent: did they have a fight outside the trailer every morning? And Diane Keaton was… well… Diane Keaton: the ditzy old hippy shtick wore a bit thin for me by the end.

We also have appearances from the great Andy Garcia (“The Godfather Part III”, “Oceans 11”), Wallace Shawn (just SOOooo good as the sleazy mob lawyer in “The Good Wife/Fight”) and (best of all) Richard Dreyfuss (“Jaws”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”). Dreyfuss has merely a cameo, but I was just longing for more of his character.

Alicia Silverstone (“Clueless”, “Batman & Robin”) even turns up, but her character (together with her sister played by Katie Aselton) is so annoying and vacuous that it’s not easy to warm to her.

A standout – but not in a good way – is the special effects, with some of the dodgiest green screen work I’ve seen in many a year. Think “North by Northwest” quality….. but that’s nearly 60 years old!

So, it’s not a film I would run to see again, but I’m not going to pan it completely, since if you are of the demographic that enjoys such films, you may really enjoy this one. It reminds me somewhat of “It’s Complicated” – and that’s one of my wife’s personal favourites! It also addresses some key topics that will be of relevance to a senior audience, not normally addressed by movies: male impotence resulting from self-doubt; the need to keep a young and ever-inquiring mind; and the good times to be had by getting out and back in the game again after bereavement (yes, you know who you are and you know I’m addressing YOU here!).
  
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Simon Pegg recommended Annie Hall (1977) in Movies (curated)

 
Annie Hall (1977)
Annie Hall (1977)
1977 | Comedy, Romance

"Let me try and think of a comedy. At university, I wrote about Annie Hall. I know Woody Allen is currently a contentious issue, but that film as a comedy, if we can separate the art from the person for whatever reason, is such a clever, poetic film, but it’s written in the same way that a poem is… When you read a piece of prose, it’s very formal and everything follows one after the other. It’s very conventional. Poetry is different because it draws attention to itself as writing, and it rhymes and does different things, and it uses rhythm. Annie Hall in the same way does that cinematically. It’s kind of like a cinematic poem, and it’s just really, really smartly made. It’s one of the few comedies that ever got nominated or actually won any Oscars. Comedy, I think, is one of the most underrated art forms that there is, particularly in terms of material rewards. There is no Oscar for best comedy. There is no Oscar for best comic performance. I think that’s a shame, and I think if there was, then Jim Carrey would be laden down with scones. It’s not something everybody can do. You might dismiss Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as a ridiculous, goofy, throwaway movie, but it is a virtuoso performance from Jim Carrey, as often is with his work. You see a lot of so-called straight actors, serious actors, trying to do comedy, and they cannot do it. I think comedy is something which is underestimated because it is literally not serious. It’s like people think that seriousness equals serious, if you know what I mean. But Annie Hall, I think, it’s such a well-crafted film. It says a lot. Diane Keaton is just unbelievable in that movie. I got to meet her at CinemaCon. She was there promoting Book Club, and I said to the people I was with at CinemaCon, I said, “I have to meet Diane Keaton. Please, can you introduce me to her? I just need to tell her how much I love her. I won’t bother her too much.” I found a moment and I went over and I just told her I had written a thesis about her at university. She said, “Oh, I’d love to read that.” And I said, “No, you wouldn’t. It’s boring and dense.” But she was delightful. For her performance alone, that film, as controversial as it might be, would definitely be on my list."

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Gareth von Kallenbach (965 KP) rated Morning Glory (2010) in Movies

Aug 8, 2019 (Updated Aug 8, 2019)  
Morning Glory (2010)
Morning Glory (2010)
2010 | Comedy
7
7.6 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Suddenly fired from a job she worked incredibly hard at, Becky finds herself hitting the mean streets of New York to continue to pursue her dream of producing a television show. The odds are stacked against her when she finds herself producing a failing morning show with challenging anchors, a boss who doubts her skills, and a new romance threatening to distract her already splintered focus.

Diane Keaton brightens the screen looking great while completely selling her role as the eager morning television show anchorwomen, Colleen Peck. The unexpected Harrison Ford adds a rough edge as the once great journalist and now subpar anchorman, Mike Pomeroy. However, it is rising actress, Rachel Adams, as the determined Becky, who stole the show.

Morning Glory offers exactly the amount of oddness one might expect from a film with action star Harrison Ford as a news guy. Yet somehow the story is sweet and mildly uplifting and, on occasion, laugh out loud funny.
The plot is not brilliant, new, or even all that imaginative, still the film is unique. Morning Glory oddly brings to mind “Little Black Book” all be it in a much lighter and less romantically driven tone. In fact the romance element is so light in this film that it is much more likely to fall in the drama/comedy category, with romance taking a backseat to the real focus of the film: the challenges of work-obsessed Becky.

Mashed firmly between an decent episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show and the Dolly Parton classic “9 to 5”, Morning Glory is a one-of-a-kind take on a story that is increasingly all too familiar. Without the unnecessary bells and whistles so often thrown in to modern cinema, Morning Glory keeps the audience watching and sometimes even laughing.