Which leaves me curious about the extent to which The Film Critic *is* Mark Kermode.

In wake of recent events maybe Christian Bale is (welsh)American Psycho after all!

So... did Woody Allen REALLY wake up 200 years in the future or not ('Sleeper')?

I find Woody Allen very bland, yes he made a couple good films but he really isn't that funny...

I've not seen many Woody Allen films, but I really enjoyed Vicky Cristina Barcelona. A series of attractive people being seriously attractive, but dealing with some serious themes quite interestingly.



But believe me, it's not worth approaching women the same way Bardem does.



It's not Love And Death, but it's good.

Dave Cronenberg just rang and told me Max Renn's based entirely on him.



He sounded sincere.

Well Mark



I have never understood why people get confused with the actor and a character being the same person.





I can see people getting confused with the tabloid and the real.

A good example would be Howard Hughes who people thought at his peak was what America should inspire to. But of course in reality he suffered with severe OCD and never hardly left his office.



The only actor I can think of who just plays himself is Hugh Grant. But I would have to meet him to see if he is really like his characters. Maybe I'm clumsier than him.



But maybe it's like when you are a child to some people.

When you are playing cowboys and Indians and pretend to be in the Wild West.

But some kids take it too far and get to into it and forget the reality they are in and around them.



But in my view, an actor and a character are separate entities.

I have never thought to myself, Freddy Krugger and Robert Englund are the same person.

This makes perfect sense. His characters in Annie Hall and Manhatten are virtually identical.



In Annie Hall his discussions about Bergman and stopping time to complain about the idiot in the line talking bull****. I can pretty much picture Allen doing that in real life.

Allen's masterpiece is The Purple Rose of Cairo. I think it's possibly the only film that successfully (that is, almost invisibly) combined the comedian and the tragedian. What's sad about Allen is he seems to consider comedy frivolous, and his tragic dramas as automatically more meaningful. Saddest of all was watching Melinda and Melinda, where in the very fabric of the piece he creates an irreconcilable fissure between comedy and tragedy, to very little artistic gain.



Takeshi Kitano is probably the only similar figure in world cinema, being a comedian-turned-film-maker. But he has always had a surer sense of the close relationship between comedy and tragedy, combining the two often in the same moment, as witnessed in Sonatine. As an artist, he is able to blend and thus satisfy all aspects of his personality, the tragedian and the fool. As anyone who has laboured through Woody Allen's "return to comic writing" 'Mere Anarchy' will attest, he now seems to hold comedy in contempt, so keen is he to imbue it with lofty, impenetrable prose.



The Purple Rose of Cairo is at once a love note to cinema watching (note: not making), a comic fantasy and a poignant, tragic drama. If you are interested in guessing at the nature of the 'real' Woody Allen, you'll find more clues in this film than studying any of his onscreen performances.

Yes every new Woody film is "a return to form" nowadays! That said I do have high hopes for Vicky Christina Barcelona. I treasure my Woody Allen dvd collection, but its one of his lesser known films that I have a particular fondness for - Shadows and Fog. I love the whole atmosphere of that film, and I think its a real classic.

Talking about actors playing themselves....I'm pretty sure that Vincent Galo is playing himself in Buffalo 66/Arizona dream.



Is this all a big act?



or is he really that awkward and down right egocentric in real life?



Have you ever met him Mark?



Is he a nice guy really or is he the same horrible person he plays in his films

I suppose also if you are so strongly associated with the character you play or your persona on film then it must rub off on you in some fashion, as much as you may want to keep professional and private separate - especially in the modern era of gossip magazines and celebrity 'journalism' trying desperately to create their own interpretations of what a famous person is 'really' like (glad to find out that you detest Heat by the way!)



We should also add in the idea that people get cast in films or are allowed to make films by appealing to certain things others are looking for - just as beautiful women get cast as Woody's co-stars, so Woody himself comes with certain expectations he has to fulfil.



Whether that causes an acknowledgment of the similarities or alternatively a backlash response against being pigeonholed, both reactions show that there is an awareness of the effects of being famous and 'known'.

You must also get this Dr Kermode (but with other film makers), yet Woody's films simple don't do anything for me...

I don't see them as bad or half-assed films, they just don't apply to tastes that i myself don't really understand.

Maybe its the undertone of arty-farty'ness that seems kind of unnecessary and irritates me with many art house films that exist simply to be cliched art house films. A kind of generism that just CAN'T work as a slasher film would, as that kind of horror is FAR from the kind of art as art house.

if you get my drift sir...

Mark Kermode brought movie critics to the mainstream, and I'm soooooo happy that a celebrity like him is making people thinking when they watch a film. Could he make Woody Allen as popular in UK as in France? What's wrong with him in UK? Why scoop has never been released here? I know some previous films were not masterpieces, but still much better than Norbit's kind

And, as we all know, Woody Allen is no more 'Alvy Singer' or 'Harry Block' than Steve Coogan is 'Alan Partridge'.



A quote from the doctor himself!