Who is Woody Allen ?(2&3/3)

Last time I wrote a little about his first movies , today will be about all the rest ;)

70's

In 1971 two years after finishing “Take the Money and Run” Allen directed “Bananas” - comedy about rebellion in fictional Latin American country. He played there w with his ex second wife Louise Lasser. Asked about why such title for the movie, he replied - “because there are no bananas in it”.

 
This movie has also one of my favorites TV commercial parody.




Year later he makes “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) “ - movie loosely inspired by Dr. David Reuben's book. It consist of seven stories, most of focusing on some sort of 'perversion'.



It was one of his early financial success. The film brought over $18 million dollars in the U.S. alone heaving a $2 million dollar budget.

He writes, directs and plays in his light slapstick comedies for ex. Sleeper - loosely based on the H. G. Wells novel The Sleeper Awakes and 1984 by George Orwell. Allen played there a man living in 1973, frozen and woken up over 200 years.

In 1977 he made romantic comedy “Annie Hall”. It won four Academy Awards. is considered to be among Allen's best movie.

 

In 1978 he departures from comedies for a moment( a short moment – “Manhatan” will be year later) with his “Interiors”. This drama about three sisters and their broken family was highly inspired by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. It is Allen's first film in the drama genre.

Despite of his own movies he plays main roles in “Play It Again Sam” by Herbert Ross and “The Front” by Martin Ritt.

80's

Begin of the 80’s brings comedies which have more somber and philosophical undertones. One of such is Stardust Memories which it parodies Fellini's 8½ , telling a story of film director and his feelings to three different womens.

He had begun to combine tragic and comic elements with the release of “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors”. He also produced s parody of documentary, titled “Zelig”.

He also took a subject of show business. In 1984 he made “Broadway Danny Rose” - comedy about a unlucky talent manager who gets dragged into a love triangle.

Year later in “Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985 ) Allen shows the importance of the cinema during the Depression (it was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time).


 

In 1987 Allen made “Radio Days” - a film about his childhood in Brooklyn inspired by Federico Fellini's “Amarcord”

He's lat two films before 90's are dramas inspired by Ingmar Bergman works - “September” and “Another Woman”.

90's

Nineties for Allen started with “Shadows and Fog” (1991) - a black and white homage to German expressionists, based on his one-act play “Death”.

Year later he created “Husbands and Wives” (1992) – a mix of drama romance and comedy, which received two Oscar nominations.



His next movie “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993) combined suspense with dark comedy. Allen was again starring with Diane Keaton. Movie was commercially unsuccessful, but get good critics reviews and had some awards nominations.


Next, he returned to lighter movies, such as “Bullets Over Broadway”, “Mighty Aphrodite”, a musical “Everyone Says I Love You” and a music comedy “Sweet and Lowdown”. After those he made heavier satiric movies - Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity (1998)



In 1998 Woody takes part in 3D animated film “Antz” as a main character voice.

2000's

In 2000 Allen returns to his well known slapstick comedy style with “Small Time Crooks “ and “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion”. The Curse was at his time most costly of Allen film with a budget of $26 million, however it didn't get much good reviews. His next movies - “Hollywood Ending”, “Anything Else”, and “Melinda and Melinda” were also given poor ratings.



Allen said in a 2004 interview. "The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films – if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million."

In 2005 he made one of his most successful films – a dramatic thriller “Match Point”. Taking place in London it tells a story of former tennis player, who needs to hide his romance. Allen stated this was the best film he has ever made.

Allen returned to London to film romantic comedy “Scoop”(2006) and another dramatic thriller “Cassandra's Dream”(2007) . Both received rather poor reviews from critics.

He goes to Spain to make “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008) - story about two American women, spending a summer in Barcelona where they meet an attractive artist and his ex-wife. Film got him best reviews Allen since “Match Point”

His last published movie was Whatever Works(2009) - dark comedy about a love triangle. It was his return to New York City, after four movies created in Europe.

So ... whats your favorite Woody's film? I like almost all, but my favorite is definitely "Bananas". 

Who is Woody Allen ?(1/3)

Stupid question, isn't it ? Most of us knows this person as a famous film director, probably even have seen at least one of his movies. What I would like to present here during my week would be a bit more information than complete list of his well known comedies (don't worry, there will be much about them to, but not today ;) ). Let's start from the beginning.

The beginning

Allen Stewart Konigsberg was born on December 1st, 1935 in Brooklyn New York. He is a son of Martin and Nettea Cherrie Konigsberg. His parents were both orthodox Jews, grandparents were Yiddish- and German-speaking immigrants. Father had many jobs over the years (waiter, driver, etc.), mother worked as as a book-keeper. Young Allen have got his first education in Hebrew school, which he attended for eight years. He lived in a lower-middle class section of Brooklyn. He very early started making up stories, even before started reading. Allen wasn't too good at school, only subject that really interested him was English Composition. There were many theaters in his neighborhood so he quickly become interested in movies. After watching “The Black Swan” age of 7 or 8 it occurred to him that he could make a film. In his teens he became very devoted to European cinema. As as adult he will create udner influence of European directors like Ingmar Bergman or Fredrico Fellini.

The show business

While still in school, Allen started to write jokes for a local paper. It was later when he was hired to write them for radio and television performers (The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, Caesar's Hour ). His first public performance was at the age of 16 doing magic tricks at a Catskills resort. Year later he changed his name to Woody Allen. He studied communication and film for one semester at New York University, but he was expelled after failing a film course. Feeling that his jokes were being wasted by other performers in early 60's Woody himself started to work as a stand-up comedian.

His screen-writing and acting debut was in 1965 in the film “What’s New, Pussycat?” After producers and rearranged his original script he was very unhappy. At that time that he realized that what he really need is a control over film production from a director chair.

In 1966 in New York, Woody made his first film “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?” Originally this was a Japanese movie which was dubbed into English. The story was completely changed and from 007 alike story he made a comedy about the search for the best egg salad recipe.

Three years later he directed and played in his first 'full' movie called “Take the Money and Run”. It's script was co-written with his childhood friend Mickey Rose. That year also Allen become popular enough to appear on the cover of “Life” magazine.

Today I won't write about rest of Woody's films, but it's worth to mention that with them he has won many awards – including three Academy Awards, Career Golden Lion and 82 other awards. He is also known from not attending to awards ceremonies.

The Private Life

His first wife was Harlene Rosen. The marriage was a complete mistake and lasted only five years from 1954 to 1959.

Second marriage with Louise Lasser started seven years later and was also short, ended in 1969. Probably it wasn't that bad as Louise starred in four Allen films after the divorce.

Between 1970 and 1971 Woody had a relationship with Diane Keaton whom he get to his Broadway play “Play It Again, Sam”. After broke up she continued to star in a number of his films. It is said that role in Allen's “Annie Hall” was written especially for her.

In 1980 Allen began a relationship with Mia Farrow - actress who had leading roles in several of his movies. Although they didn't married, they adopted two children together: Dylan Farrow and Moshe Farrow. They separated in 1992 after Farrow discovered that Allen had taken nude photographs of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi.

Allen continued his relationship with Soon-Yi. They married in 1997 and adopted two children.

Studying Abroad – earning your degree in USA vs. earning your degree in Poland - PART III

Universities and colleges in the United States and England offer tremendous opportunities when it comes to sports. If you are good at something, you can finish your school for free or you can accelerate yourself toward a great carrier as a sportsman. Many people are able to attend colleges and universities only because they were able to get into that specific college because they were very good at a sport. First of all – college sports in the United States are something huge and they attract an enormous audience. Starting with basketball, through soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, tennis and finally ending at the famous American football. Many people who come from different countries to these universities decide to try their best at different sports and many of them succeed big time. After getting out of college and being drafted to the NFL (National Football League) even as early as at second year in college, students who become professional players can earn anywhere from around $150,000 to $1.5 million. However, where there is sport and money – there has to be rivalry and envy. It’s not that easy to reach the top of the ladder, but if you are really good at something and if you really love what you do – it is highly possible you will achieve your goal.



One of the largest sport broadcasting stations – ESPN – pays millions of dollars every year for their broadcasting rights and get the advertisement money at the same time. Therefore the big money wheel keeps spinning without even noticing such things as the latest economic crisis.



Questions for Part III:

1. Remembering that a career of an athlete isn’t very long - what do you think about leaving school early for big money? Is it what we should be looking for in life?
2. Would you like to try your luck in such a foreign university team?
   

Studying Abroad – earning your degree in USA vs. earning your degree in Poland - PART II

Universities and colleges offer housing for students everywhere, but not all of them decide to stay on campus. This may be caused in some part by alienation, scare or prejudice. It is no doubt that student drink and party all the time on campuses – at least some percentage of them do. This brings up the subject of deciding whether to commute or stay close to school on campus. Studies show that even the strongest ones fail when it comes to relaxation and partying after tough examinations, which often leads to “binge drinking”. This widely known and highly popular phenomenon is the practice of consuming large quantities of alcoholic beverages in a single session. Binge drinking carries a serious risk of harm, including alcohol poisoning. It includes keg stands, tens of shots at a time etc. Center for Science in the Public Interest carried out a survey and study showing that 44% of students attending 4-year colleges drink alcohol at the binge level or greater and that 48% of college drinkers report that ‘drinking to get drunk’ is an important reason for drinking. This institution also found out that in 2007, about 10.8 million persons ages 12-20 (28.2% of this age group) reported drinking alcohol in the past month. Nearly 7.2 million (18.8%) were binge drinkers, and 2.3 million (6.0%) were heavy drinkers. Around 50 to 60 people aged 17-23 die each year because of binge drinking.

There have been hundreds of ads and reports flying around, trying to inform people about binge drinking, trying to prevent it and most of all, trying to make students think twice before they decide to do it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jftfU30xJg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwkL0tyeee4

Questions for Part II:

1. What do you think about staying on campus while attending a 4-year college? Or maybe you prefer commuting to school and staying home?
2. What is your opinion on binge drinking? Have you ever tried it? How did you feel after it? Maybe someone you know has tried it?

Studying Abroad – earning your degree in USA vs. earning your degree in Poland - PART I

Today’s market forces young people to aim higher and higher in search of their degree and when it comes to choosing a university. In times when computer skills and foreign language knowledge became a standard, young people have to look for different ways to make themselves more attractive to potential future employers. One of the possibilities is studying abroad, preferably, at one of the best universities in the entire world. Studying abroad gives you a number of benefits that are available out there for young people. Improving your foreign language, or even couple of them, getting to know cultures, traditions and habits of people in different country – are just few advantages of studying abroad. All those things create a very sophisticated personality and opens up the new world of possibilities career wise.




After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology or any of the top 15 US universities, your salary can be anywhere between $70,000 and $102,000 a year. After about 8 years in your field you easily get some $230,000. That is approximately $19,000 a month. Achieving the same goal in Poland would be incredibly difficult, unless you are a genius or have real good connections.

Knowledgeable, young and ambitious people returning to their native country with foreign diplomas can use their knowledge in practice, taking advantage of all the skills and abilities earned abroad. These people will then be able to open their own companies, invest, develop the market and allow Poland to climb up the ladder in the European Union.

From all the possible countries out there, United States and England are the two best options for Polish students. There are thousands of agencies, scholarship companies and funds that allow Polish students to attend universities even with no money in their pockets.

This website explains the most important concepts one should know before deciding to study in the USA:

http://www.polishnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=341:studia-w-usa-co-trzeba-wiedzie-o-amerykaskim-systemie-edukacji&catid=85:ciekawostki&Itemid=265

Your time in college is actually the best time to go abroad. First of all, there are hundreds of programs out there that can help you organizing your study abroad, intern abroad, and volunteer abroad or cultural immersion programs. This makes the organizing part much easier than later in your life, when going abroad will be harder to organize, because most of the time, you have to do it all yourself. Also, you are less tied down than after college, when you have a job, may be a family and all those other responsibilities. And third, you can use this short experience abroad to find out, whether you are actually made for an international career and test it out, whether you like it or not. Usually the study abroad programs during college are not that long, so you can see, if this is it for you, or if you prefer to stay within your comfort zone. Once you are done with college and your company wants to send you overseas as an expat, you have to stick with your long-term assignment. So why not try it out, before the pressure is on?

Questions for Part I:

1. What do you think about studying abroad overall? Do you like this idea? Which country would you like to study in?
2. Do you agree with the fact that bringing home a foreign diploma and experience opens up more possibilities for a young person?
3. What about the idea of “semester abroad”. If you don’t want to stay in USA or England for the entire 4 years, would you like to try one semester abroad (continuing your major/degree)?
4. Maybe you have completed a “semester abroad”? If you have tried any of these things before, please share your thoughts and impressions.
   

Vampire - part II

Hello again ;)

In my previous article I presented you, how vampires were presented in the past in the past. I familiarized you with the story about Dracula and "Nosferatu - Symphony of horror" the first horror movie in the history. Just a few years ago, ghosts presented in this way terrified the people.

Old vampire movies

Nowadays, with big advancement of special effects and fantasy of authors is very hard to surprise or scare the viewer or reader. Moreover, in the last century the world saw the magnitude of horror, such as the first and second World War, the atomic bomb and it's effects, or terrorist attacks, at which vampires can hide in their crypt with shame. The more that today's authors serve us innovative and grotesque creation of the vampire. Now, vampires are presented not only as evil characters, but mainly as good, happy and helpful. They don't drink human blood and don't kill others. At the beginning of the twentieth century, vampires looked often hideously in the human imagination. Generally presented as a bald figures with the terrible expression of their face, crooked fingers and long tusks. Now, in many films and books, vampires are presented as a very pretty women and handsome men. With one detail distinguishing them from others .... Canines ...

A perfect example is the musical "Dance of the Vampire", full of comic scenes, dialogue, characters - at led with the mad professor looking for vampires and a homosexual vampire - the son of Count, prince of vampires. In the musical, characterization of vampires is very realistic. Evidence of this may be the fact, that each of the actors, must visit the dentist to prepare individual canines as part of the preparations of the play. Vampires-actors look scary, they are high and mighty. During the presentation they are circling over the audience, they can scare viewers - which I experienced during the spectacle in the Roma theater. However, their behavior causes more laughter than fear. The main purpose of Roman Polanski, as well as director Cornelius Baltus, was to build a grotesque and miserable vampire world. "Dance of the Vampire" gives us a fun, but it’s also a higher form of entertainment in the age of massive flood of trash and daub. Roman Polanski said that this work servers only fun and doesn't have moral. But there are moral, which we can heard in the final dance scene. Released into the wild vampires stalk over the audience, singing that the today world belongs to those who haven't got a heart, that's to them. At the end they say's: "And you too will be ours".


Final


Lisa Jane Smith in one of her novel, "The Vampire Diaries",
describes the story about two vampire brothers - Stefano and Damon, who were transformed into bloodsuckers in the fifteenth century. Stefano is handsome young man, doesn't distinctive from the others, his brother is a vampire with dark nature, but he's able to show his feelings. Both brothers fall in love in 17 years old girl. In the book Lisa Smith show us two different sides of vampire: this good, loving and tired of life as a vampire and this bed, insolent, arrogant, dark, which sometimes can be charming



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KSwLCgyeyU


The Vampire Diaries Official Trailer 2009

As another example let us take a different presentation of the vampire, American writer Stephanie Meyer Fri and her series of novels "Twilight", the first of part which we could see in 2008 in cinemas. The main hero is a young, small, pretty girl with long blond hair, called Isabella. That she is presented to us after transformation to the vampire. Another hero of this novel is Edward, very handsome man with a copper-hair, muscled silhouette of the body, transformed into a vampire when he was 18. At the beginning, as soon as he became a vampire, Edward killed people, just like vampires in the works that I mentioned in the previous article. Edward differs only by the fact that he doesn't drink human blood. Vampires, presented by the author, were insensitive to day light and could walk during the day. At the screen adaptation of these vampires look like normal, good-looking young people with additional supernatural skills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2T7d8j6I5I
Twilight -
Official Trailer [HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2T7d8j6I5I


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyDdfVgqnQ
Twilight : New Moon - Official Trailer [HD])

Another example of a good vampire, who fought in defense of the people, is the character of Blade in the "Blade century hunter" movie. The title character stands out among ordinary vampires that he was insensitive to light, garlic and silver. He doesn't drink human blood and live eating specially prepared for him serum.

Blade Opening Scene

At the American horror "Dracula III: Legacy" we can see Dracula resembles that Dracula which we can see in the beginning of the twentieth century. But I don't write about this;) I encourage you to watch this movie.

A few words of the summary;) As I already mentioned, today's authors create the works changing the old evil into new good, creating contradictions to what people have seen and read in the past. Vampires are presented as young, beautiful, full of life, strong, yet ordinary people. And even the characters from the film "Nosferatu - Symphony of horror" nowadays are no longer frighting and don't lead the viewer to fear, at most they cause a major laughter attack. Perhaps this is due to greater technical capacity and rich imagination? Or maybe artists trying to diversify their work to encourage reading books or watching shows in this way? Who among us would read books and watched movies, knowing what would happen next? Who really are evil and who is good or continuously with the same subject?

CHRISTMAS part III - WORTH TO KNOW

Could you tell me what time is it...

Millions of people believe that Jesus Christ was born on December 25th and twelve nights after, January 6th, Three Magi (Wise Men) came to greet Him, the Messiah. (Twelve Night Holiday – Epiphany).
Unfortunately Christ was not born on December 25th. However, people claim that this day is as good as any other to celebrate the birth of Jesus, despite the fact that it was originally a pagan celebration called Saturnalia which commemorated the birth of the sun god. Also Three Wise Men didn’t come 12 days after birth. There is written that after Christ born, spending time on the desert they saw a shining star who leads them to Jerusalem. Maybe they saw a shining star just after the birth but they have almost 1500 km distance to cover.
The real data is still impossible to set. But the fact is the scientists are found a clue about the time of born. It is April 17th and the most surprising thing is the year: it is 6th year Before Christ. Now it sounds quit silly: “Jesus was born on April 17, 6 years Before Christ” – just like space-time continuum. But that is the newest conjectural date.

At the end I would like to add that Three Magi came to Jesus about 8 months after birth. Probably on that time Jesus could crawl on all fours also he probably didn’t have to lie in the manger.

Tied up loose ends – means QUESTIONS:

1) What do you thing about Christmas time? What is your way of spending it?
2) What is your opinion about promote Christmas Spirit (inside Shops, on the Street, etc.) just a few months before Christmas? Do you feel angry about that when the main Christmas comes?
3) Do you prefer real Christmas tree or rather artificial?
4) What kind of a present would satisfy you enough (would you like to receive)?

ONLY IF YOU REALLY WANT

5) According to a previous chart (Jesus vs. Santa - compare) please describe all graph fluctuation, take into consideration all falls and climbs, when is dramatically decreasing and why, and when rapidly and strongly rising? What is the cause of that chart behavior? What is your point of view?