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DVD The Front
The Front is both a comic delight and perhaps the most graceful act of show business revenge in cinema history. Written by, directed by, and starring various talents blacklisted during the McCarthy-era witch hunts of the 1950s entertainment industry, the film stars Woody Allen as Howard, a cashier and bookie approached by blacklisted television-writer Alfred (Michael Murphy) to act as a "front," i.e., the alleged author of Alfred's works. The scam proves hugely successful. Soon Howard is fronting for several other banned writers, taking a cut from every sale to the networks, and basking in praise (and romantic attentions) for his prolific talent. It all unravels when congressional investigators dig into Howard's past for Communist ties and squeeze him to name others with supposed links to the Red Menace. The Front is charming, tragic, heroic, and briskly intelligent, featuring a heartbreaking performance by Zero Mostel and directed by Martin Ritt (Hud). --Tom Keogh
Woody Allen is a nobody whose friend is a blacklisted TV writer; Allen agrees to "front" for him (submit scripts written by his friend with his [Allen's] name on them). This is a very compelling look at what HUAC was up to during the early 1950's witch hunts in the entertainment field, and Allen gets laughs too as the schlemiel parading as a writer who enjoys the money and accolades he's getting from his role, but also suffers pangs of conscience at the end and tells the committee that's investigating him off. Zero Mostel is excellent as a blacklisted comic who befriends Allen. The principal actors, as well as the writer and director, were all blacklisted in real life, and they all bring to the movie a feeling of love and commitment. It's among my favorite Woody Allen movies. Definitely worth a watch.
Fantastic film
Having seen this film just once on TV I had to wait over a decade for the internet to enable me to buy it from the US (I live in the UK). It was worth the wait. The film is just so great and the ending is fantastic.
See it now, before this exciting moment passes
I had to see this movie because my real life was based on the idea that this kind of excitement is usually reserved for the experiences that money can't buy. I was surprised when the Secret Service was interested in having me sign a release to allow appropriate authorities to examine a photocopy of my 1989-1999 psychiatric files to determine if I needed to be on a list of dangerous persons that the government would be trying to prevent from flying or entering special safe zones for politicians who would like to stay far away from crazy people who could totally blow their cool. Since politics lately is like the idea that a Vietnam war hero is most likely to be treated like the oxymoron it always had the potential to become, I could even complain that this movie did not come close to the issues which make the current situation more like the movie `Fahrenheit 9/11.' But the people who made this movie knew what they were doing to protect their right to say whatever they wanted to say.
That Woody Allen and Zero Mostel managed to make a serious movie, `The Front,' which is based on the experiences of the blacklisted writers, actors, and the director that could give meaning to ideas like taking the fifth and naming names, still seems important, even though official investigation of subversive activities in the entertainment industry is hardly what it used to be. In the field of philosophy, Martin Heidegger retains a bad reputation among some people for terminating certain academic careers by calling certain people un-German or Jewish when that was his job and what his Fuhrer wanted, so some highly educated people are more sensitive to this kind of issue than others. Woody Allen has the ideal character from a modern American standpoint, able to play complete apathy, concerned that anyone should be in trouble, but hardly prone to accept the network's advice, `Name Hecky Brown. He's dead.' Sometimes death is more than just nature's way of telling certain people to slow down, and being an expert in this kind of death is not as comic as we keep pretending. In another context, Woody Allen said, `Intellectuals are like the mafia; they only kill their own.' This is one of the truer things he ever said, possibly the truest in my case. This film is like a layer of history in the crusade against godless Communism that the United States of America went through in the 1950's to get to the position it is in today, which is a different crusade in which comedy can hardly be faulted for failing to keep up with what is going on in reality.
Zero Mostel pretending to be a spy, knocking on a door saying, `Open up, this is the police!' is also the kind of behavior I observe in neighbors who are trying to participate in my form of paranoia. Anyone who has ever been to Harvard Law School should have some way to keep from sympathizing too much with the character that Zero Mostel plays in this movie, but I should save my sympathy for other people who already spent all the money they ever had. If comedy were an art form, I still wouldn't be funny, and that is what really hurts me, but this DVD is great either way.
Written for the stage and coherently opened up for the screen by veteran director Herbert Ross, Play It Again, Sam is closer to a conventional comedy than Woody Allen's more self-contained films, but his smart script and archetypal hero-nebbish achieve a special charm aimed squarely at movie buffs. Allen is Allan Felix, a film critic on the rebound after his wife's desertion trying to brave the choppy waters of born-again bachelorhood and struggling to reconcile his celluloid obsessions with the hazards of real-world dating. His apartment is a shrine to Humphrey Bogart, and it's none other than Bogey himself who materializes at strategic moments to counsel Allan on romantic strategy. He gets more corporeal aid from his married friends, Linda (Diane Keaton) and Dick (Tony Roberts),... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Woody Allen - Diane Keaton Director(s): Herbert Ross DVD Release Date: Released the 23 October 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Fans of Woody Allen's earlier, more purely comic movies will enjoy Don't Drink the Water, a film of his successful stage play about a hapless diplomat during the cold war. Michael J. Fox plays Axel McGee, the son of an ambassador to an unnamed Communist country. Though forced by family pressure to enter diplomacy, McGee has no talent for it whatsoever and has been kicked out of cities, countries, and even entire continents. When his father goes back to Washington to seek a higher position, he reluctantly leaves Axel in charge. For a few days, all goes well. But then the Hollanders arrive (Julie Kavner, Mayim Bialik, and Allen himself), a Jewish family from New Jersey who accidentally took pictures of a sensitive intersection. Accused of being spies, they seek asylum at the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Woody Allen - Julie Kavner Director(s): Woody Allen DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Woody Allen roared back at his detractors with Deconstructing Harry, a bitterly funny treatise about the creative process. Known to mine his often tumultuous personal life for his movies, the embattled writer-director-star didn't bother to make his alter ego likable in this movie: Harry Block (Allen) pops pills, frequents prostitutes, and cheats on the women in his life, then writes about their foibles in thinly disguised fiction. No wonder they're all furious with him. As Harry journeys to his alma mater with a hooker, ill pal, and kidnapped son, a series of flashbacks unravel, juxtaposing Harry's relationships with their "slightly exaggerated" fictional counterparts. There are amusing cameos throughout, including a humorous turn by Demi Moore as a fictitious ex-wife who "became... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Woody Allen Director(s): Woody Allen DVD Release Date: Released the 26 May 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Woody Allen's feature-film debut, Take the Money and Run, a mockumentary that combines sight gags, sketchlike scenes, and standup jokes at rat-a-tat speed, looks positively primitive compared to his mature work. Primitive, but awfully funny. Allen plays Virgil Starkwell, a music-loving nebbish who turns to a life of crime at an early age and, undaunted by his utter and complete failure to pull off a single successful robbery, continues his unbroken spree of bungled heists and prison breaks even after he marries and raises a family. Narrator Jackson Beck, whose stentorian voice of authority makes a perfect foil for Starkwell's absurd exploits, lobs one droll quip after another with deadpan seriousness. Though spotty, Allen tosses so many jokes into the mix that it hardly matters and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Woody Allen - Janet Margolin Director(s): Woody Allen DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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In 1992, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow--heretofore the Lunt and Fontanne of Hollywood on the Hudson--went public with a media-saturated battle over Allen's affair with Farrow's adopted daughter. Only a few months later, Allen released this film, starring himself and Farrow acting out a virtually identical plot line: an unhappy marriage begins to crumble when the husband strays with a much younger woman (in this case, one of his students, played by Juliette Lewis). It turned out to be one of Allen's most lacerating comedies, a story about the fragility of relationships and the foolishness of older men seeking to recapture their youth with younger women. It features strong performances by Judy Davis, Liam Neeson, and director Sydney Pollack, as a friend of Allen's who chucks his longtime wife... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Woody Allen - Mia Farrow - Judy Davis - Sydney Pollack Director(s): Woody Allen DVD Release Date: Released the 16 April 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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