Customer Reviews (202)

One of the all time greats, now shockingly out of print!
Just to add my voice to the choir: Quite simply one of the best films
about romantic relationships ever made. Brilliantly written.
Brilliantly acted -- Diane Keaton is tremendous, the supporting cast is
full of gems and Allen himself takes the leap to present himself as a
real (if funny) human being and not a walking joke. And brilliantly
photographed by the great Gordon Willis of 'The Godfather' and many of
most important films of the 70s and 80s.

Wildly funny and ultimately heartbreaking. It's hard to imagine anyone
who has ever been in love, or struggled through grown-up relationships
NOT identifying with a lot of this film. I loved it in my late teens
when it first came out, and I love it even more 32 years later. Every
time I see it I notice different details, depending on my own current
life experiences. A film of enormous wit, humor, invention, and
understanding of the human heart. Its completely unique, playful and
idiosyncratic in style and approach, but that experimentation somehow
only makes it more accessible and universal. If you haven't seen it,
you owe yourself a try, even if you're not a Woody Allen 'fan'. And if
you saw it long ago, it may be time for another look.

Shockingly this all time great Oscar winner has been out of print for a while, along
with a number of Allen's other films.I can only imagine there's a major re-release
on the way, perhaps in Blu-Ray as well, but with titles falling off the market due to
ownership battles and other problems, it may be worth grabbing these
films now, while you can.

Last, for some insane reason, the US disk is not enhanced for 16x9 TVs,
whereas the UK disc is, so if you have a region free player, I recommend
getting a copy of that.

Woody Allen's Annie Hall explores new dimensions of the persona Allen has constructed in movies, on the stage, and even in a
...comic strip. We're all familiar by now with "Woody," the overanxious, underachieving intellectual with the inept social life. We've watched him develop from bits in a stand-up comedy routine to a fully developed comic character in the tradition of Chaplin's tramp or Fields's drunk. We know how "Woody" will act in so many situations that we're already laughing before the punch line. Maybe nobody since Jack Benny has been so hilariously predictable.
And yet there's always the realization that "Woody" is a projection of a real Woody Allen. That beneath the comic character is a certain amount of painful truth. That just as W.C. Fields really was a drunk, so Woody Allen perhaps really is insecure about his height, shy around girls, routinely incompetent in the daily joust with life.
It's not that the "real" Woody Allen is as hapless as his fictional creation, but that the character draws from life by exaggerating it. Annie Hall is the closest Allen has come to dealing with that real material. It's not an autobiography, but we get the notion at times that scenes in the movie have been played before, slightly differently, for real.
Allen plays Alvy Singer, stand-up comic and incurable combination of neurotic and romantic. He's self-consciously a New Yorker, a liberal, a Jew, an intellectual, a seeker after the unattainable, and an expert at making it unattainable. One of Alvy Singer's problems is that he understands this all so well. He's not a victim of forces beyond his control, but their author.
And one of the problems he keeps providing for himself is the problem of love. He falls in love too easily, to girls who are right for him in all the little ways and incompatible in all the big ones. His girls tend to reflect the stages he's going through. When he's an Adlai Stevenson liberal in the late 1950s, he marries another one. When he's a romantic ten or fifteen years later, he finds another one, a kookier one. His only trouble is that women are people, not stages.
The movie dares to go into this material a little more seriously and cohesively than is usually the case in an Allen film. Annie Hall is a comedy, yes, and there are moments in it as funny as anything Woody has done, but the movie represents a growth on Allen's part. From a filmmaker who would do anything for a laugh, whose primary mission seemed to be to get through the next five minutes, Allen has developed in Sleeper, Love and Death, and this film into a much more thoughtful and (is it possible?) more mature director.
Maybe that's why Annie Hall is called a "nervous romance": because Allen himself is a little nervous about this frankly nostalgic, romantic, and sentimental material. He throws in a few gags (like the hilarious walk-on by Marshall McLuhan) almost to reassure his old fans that all's well at the laugh works. But he wants to do a lot more this time than just keep us laughing. By looking into some of his own relationships, some of his own patterns, he wants to examine how a personality works.
And so there are two Woody Allens here: Our old pal the original Woody, who's given to making asides directly into the camera, and a new Allen who creates Alvy Singer in his own image and then allows him to behave consistently, even sometimes at the cost of laughs. It's this new Woody who has the nervous romance, the complicated relationship with the would-be nightclub singer Annie Hall (played by Diane Keaton with an interesting mixture of maternal care, genuine love, and absolute craziness).
At the end of the affair, we've learned only two things for certain: That enduring relationships are very likely impossible in this time and place (i.e., New York City during Woody Allen's lifetime), and that life without the search for relationships is unthinkable. In the movie, Woody quotes Groucho Marx's statement that he'd never belong to any club that would accept someone like him as a member. Then Allen muses that maybe he should never get into a relationship in which one of the partners is himself. Tricky, isn't it? And in Annie Hall he makes it very funny, and sad, and tricky indeed.

A review of the product more than the film itself
...Because if you're interested in buying this video you surely have seen AH by now, and even if you haven't, there are plenty of other reviews on this page that discuss plot, jokes, etc.

I just want to comment on the DVD itself, and the packaging.For someone who is reportedly so particular about how his films are treated, it's amazing that Woody Allen has allowed such a shabby dub to pass through.This is a garden-variety print of AH with sections that look like they were dragged across the floor.Even those annoying little "dots" at the end of a scene that tells the projectionist of a reel change have been left in.This is the only DVD in my whole 100+ collection that has this ancient artifact.

This version of AH is *not* anamorphic!That's just mind-blowing to me, and it degrades the picture quality still further if you're watching on HD equipment.

As with Woody's DVDs, there is no commentary and no extras, aside from a trailer.Oddly, for such a short film, it's divided into FIFTY chapter stops!I have seen this sort of division with movies like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but this?!

Of course the movie itself is wonderful, though I'm not as convinced as others that it's the immortal classic it's billed as being.Time will tell, but there are along with some brilliantly-staged scenes, a lot of awkward bits.I don't mean to come off like the guy in line behind Woody at the movie theater, but certain parts feel like comic sketches linked together through the Alvy character rather than wholly-organic storytelling.Still, it's one of Woody's better films, warts and all, and should be in any Woody Allen collection.But this presentation is hardly ideal.I wonder what Criterion could do with this.

The movie, Annie Hall
I had been trying to find this movie, but it was on backorder everywhere.I was thrilled at the quick response I received.I had my movie within just a few days and it was in outstanding condition.What a great movie this is!

Best Actors & Best Screenplay
If I had to choose only one movie to be my all time favorite, this would be it. In fact, before I was married, I used to secretly "test" people I was dating and rent this movie and watch it with them. If they thouroughly enjoyed the film and also laughed at all the right moments, they "passed" the test. (Yes, my husband DID pass the test.) If they failed the test, they were a waste of my time.

In my opinion, the film is pure brilliance. It is witty and a wonderful characature of neurosis, men and women relationships, New York City, California, and the time it took place in. I love that Woody always has his character being with these very beautiful young women.

Everything about the movie cracks me up...from the waiting in line to see a film, the counseling visits, the subtitles for the male v. female thinking, the bug in the bathroom, the sprouts and mashed yeast, the children announcing what they will be when they grow up, the "universe is expanding" fear, the sneezing on the cocaine, the contemplating of the Kennedy assasination while in the bedroom...I could laugh every 30 seconds during this masterpiece.

Just please don't ask me to give Woody a grade for his personal life! That's another story!

... Read more

Customer Reviews (40)

Martian: "You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes!"
Released in late September '80, STARDUST MEMORIES was still playing theaters when a skulking sicko with a handgun murdered John Lennon on a NYC street. Was this total loser influenced toward homicide by viewing a similar celebrity killing which occurs here? It's a troubling possibility.

Putting the issue (and so many Fellini comparisons) aside, writer/director/star Allen uses this unique platform to fire an ascerbic blunderbuss, missing no one in the process. Not the critics who tore to shreds his recent work, or an inconsiderate public constantly importuning him for photo ops and autographs. Not the charity do-gooders begging for any spare time, nor the milling crowds of foghorn-voiced "New Yawkuhs" hovering near their golden calf.

The worst punishment was reserved for himself: Woody's failings, obsessions, neuroses, self-absorption and fears are laid bare here and mercilessly stomped upon. Even executive producer Jack Rollins gets in his licks in one scene, whileex-wife Lasser has an uncredited cameo as a pushy secretary. To this viewer, "Stardust" is not so much an attempt at "art" as it is a personal catharsis via the cinematic medium that makes for quite a movie-going experience.


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.

(7.2) Stardust Memories (1980) - Woody Allen/Charlotte Rampling/Jessica Harper/Marie-Christine Barrault/Tony Roberts/Daniel Stern/Sharon Stone/Jack Rollins/Judith Crist (uncredited: Louise Lasser/Laraine Newman)

Terribly underrated Allen film - one of his very best
I know -- I'm supposed to like 'Manhattan' more. I know -- this
straddles the line between homage and rip-off when it comes to
Fellini...

But it's so physically beautiful, and so full of unforgettable moments
of humor and heartbreak, that I can watch it over and over and just see
more and more in it. It's an odd, wonderful mix of sad, angry, surreal
and very funny. It's a chilling, hysterical look at the emptiness
of being famous, at what it means to not trust your own worth, what it
means to be scared of happiness.

The jump cut sequence with Charlotte Rampling is one of the best, most
incisive pieces of film-making I've ever seen. Period.

For me, it's a tragically underrated film. I'm thrilled to see it
getting support here. I guess it can be validly criticized, but my
emotional reaction to the nit-picking is 'who cares?' This is brave,
unique, special film-making in a world with far too little.

Horrifyingly, along with many other great Allen films (including Annie
Hall!) , it's currently out-of-print in the US on DVD. I can only hope
this means an upgraded re-release of these films is on the way, but
there's always a danger they're caught up in some kind of rights
battle. So if you want to own these classics, you might want to grab
some good used copies while you can.It is still availablenew from
Amazon UK if you have a region free player,

Derivative, nicely shot, has moments.
Aficionados tend to use Stardust Memories as a fulcrum to measure your astuteness of Woody Allen's work.On that heady basis, it's a film you're supposed to like, even if in your bones you endure a decided tedium.After all, you don't want your lot to be cast in with those petty uppity critics who panned this film upon its initiial release -DO YOU?

This is a great looking film. I give Woody Allen credit for being a good collector of things to imitate and pilfer from.That's pretty inevitable when making a decent film in any case.Only here the indebtedness to others' work is too transparent, as if to provide the *feeling* of a more substantial film to distract you from realizing that Stardust Memories doesn't have much more to say than Sleeper or... any of Woody's "early funny pictures" (I loved Sleeper, actually).

Stardust Memories was a worthy exercise to break from a pattern.Allen understudied Federico Fellini's parading choreography of the human circus over a landscape very well, however I wasn't convinced that he advanced that much new in the result, excepting a context for some well-applied cosmic questioning. But almost in spite of himself, the more memorable moments always come from what Woody Allen seems most wanting to dispossessing himself of here --i.e., his effortless comic sensibility.

American audiences will be slightly challenged out of their usual linear storytelling expectations.But, if you're impressed with the "greatness and genius" of the conception, why not just watch "8 1/2", cut to the chase and watch the real thing?

Stardust Memories
I love this film from beginning to end.I have watched it many times and never fail to love it even more each time.Woody Allen is a genius that is able to make an everyday occurence into an hysterical event, by allowing you to experience what we all think but never say. His brand of paranoia, anxiety and pessimism reflects my own warped sense of humor. I was finally able to add this to my all time favorites. I will pull it out and watch it everytime I have a depressing day, as it never fails to cheer me up.

Wonderful to discover this after three decades
Others have done masterful jobs in summarizing and reviewing the details of this film. I would only add that I am actually glad I waited until now, nearly three decades after its release, to discover "Stardust Memories."

If I had watched it when it first came out, I would have dissed it as "another unfunny Woody Allen movie." Watching it today, I find Woody Allen's take on the perils of fame subtly hilarious.

What could be worse than an artistic life where audiences laugh forcibly and long at one's most mundane observations? Where fans don't want to change one bit?

Where every stranger (most filmed here as grotesques, which is how they must look to a sensitive creative type who becomes famous) announces like a robot either, "I'm your biggest fan!" "Can you sign an autograph?" or "We're having a cancer benefit next month, can you come?"

I won't give away other moments of wryly observed comedy. Suffice to say, if you've never seen "Stardust Memories," you may find now the ideal time to discover its merits -- much better than rushing to see it in 1980, when someone like me would have shook my head (then) and said, much like the so-called fans shown here, " ' Bananas' and 'Take the Money and Run'were funnier!" ... Read more

Product Description
En este unico volumen reunimos los tres libros de cuentos -Como acabar de una vez por todas con la cultura, Sin plumas y Perfiles- del gran cineasta, guionista y actor comico Woody Allen, publicados ya en otra coleccion. Considerados asi, como obra unitaria, estos escritos satiricos reflejan, con la habitual sabiduria de su inteligente humor, la esencia misma de las preocupaciones que acostumbran a obsesionarle : Dios, la muerte, el amor y el sexo. Sigue sorprendiendo la enorme capacidad de Woody Allen para reirse, y hacernos reir, de nuestra propia torpeza en el momento de enfrentarnos precisamente con aquellos problemas que mas hondamente nos afectan. Y comprobamos, una vez mas, cuan gratificante es recobrar un poco, en este acelerado mundo nuestro, la serenidad que tan saludablemente nos insufla el infrecuente ejercicio del humor./Here they are--some of the funniest tales and ruminations ever put into print, by one of the great comic minds of our time. From THE WHORE OF MENSA, to GOD (A Play), to NO KADDISH FOR WEINSTEIN, old and new Woody Allen fans will laugh themselves hysterical over these sparkling gems. ... Read more

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Sam Girgus argues that Allen has consistently been on the cutting edge of contemporary critical and cultural consciousness.Allen continues to challenge notions of authorship, narrative, perspective, character, theme, ideology, gender and sexuality.This revised and updated edition includes two new chapters that examine Allen's work since 1992. Girgus thoughtfully asserts that the scandal surrounding Allen's personal life in the early 1990s has altered his image in ways that reposition moral consciousness in his work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Save your time and money
Sam Girgus sounds like a college professor trying to impress some freshmen students. He has no idea how to make a interesting subject interesting to read about. Don't waste your money on this garbage.

Boring!
I expected an intelligent and interesting interpretation of Allen's major movies, but I got some highbrow gibberish instead. The author starts by talking about Allen's life (a short overview would in my opinion be enough) and then goes on to "interpret" his movies. In the first place, he quotes too much and commentates the statements that other critics have given about Allen's movies (he obviously lacks fresh and original ideas)... To make a long story short, it's an extremely boring book about an extremely funny and amusing subject. ... Read more

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In this pathbreaking new book, Mary P. Nichols challenges this, arguing that Allen's work, from Play It Again, Sam to Deconstructing Harry, is actually an attempt to explore and reconcile the tension between art and life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A good review of the artistry of Woody Allen
As a big Woody Allen fan I really enjoyed reading Mary P. Nicols "Reconstructing Woody". Nicols is a professor of political science at Fordham University, and this book is basically her in-depth study or "thesis" on the cinematic art of Woody Allen. She digs deeply into 12 of Allen's films, namely "Play It Again Sam", "Annie Hall", "Interiors", "Stardust Memories", "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy", "Zelig", "The Purple Rose of Cairo", "Another Woman", "Crimes and Misdemeanors", "Manhattan Murder Mystery", "Bullets Over Broadway" and "Mighty Aphrodite". She looks at the artisty and craftsmanship of Allen's works and gives her owninterperetations as to their deeper meanings, uses of symbolism, and Woody's obvious homages to classic art and literature. She also points out what I've told people all along...that whether he is using comedy or drama as his vehicle, Woody Allen is master storyteller who creates characters of great depth! The chapters on "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Stardust Memories" are especially intriguing and enlightening, so much so that Nicols has actually deepened my appreciation of those films. (Not that they wern't favorites already!) I would have liked to have seen what she had to say regarding "Manhattan" or "Broadway Danny Rose", but for some inexplicable reason they were not included. Now that four more Woody Allen fims have been released since the publication of this book, it would be nice to see Nicols do a follow-up which could cover "Deconstructing Harry", "Celebrity", "Sweet and Lowdown", "Small Time Crooks" and some of the older titles that were overlooked here. If Amazon ever offers such a book, I'll be the first here to buy it!

Thesis
Nichols has basically written the equivalent of a term paper on the films and life of Woody Allen.That is not to say that the book is dull or only a collection of non-emotive facts about Allen.It delves deep to examinethe many facets of his life and the films that he has created.For anyonewho really appreciates Woody Allen's films, this would be the book for you.

The Best Woody Ever
Nichols has made an exemplary contribution to film studies by integrating that mushy discipline with the rigor of political philosophy.She's surely smarter and better than Woody, but with her help we can see what is bestabout his art as moral and philosophical illumination.

A profound and provocative meditation on life and art.
Professor Mary Nichols's "Reconstructing Woody" is a profound and provocative meditation on life and art that gazes at these issues through the lens of Woody Allen's films.Nichols's treatment is unique forits insight and readability. Moreover, she succeeds in establishing threetruths in her book: 1.That film is as complex, philosophic and insightfula medium for reflecting uponlife as any other literary genre, combiningespecially the novel's ability to recreate a detailed world and drama'sability to have visual impact. 2.That the literary/dramatic reflection oflife in art is not simply "reflective" or "passive,"but instead represents the artist's ability to see the world through"a" world.If that artist is thoughtful and talented enough,then we do ourselves a service by trying to enter into his or her lens toview our own world.Nichols persuasively demonstrates that Allen is anartist of that rank. 3.That (and this is a very old issue in the Westernworld) the "sophisticated criticism" of certain intellectualsmay, in fact, be less profound than the art it tries to explain.Allenhimself has clearly and funnily portrayed this in his films, and Nichols,by presuming that Allen has something to teach her and us, has produced anintellectual commentary that does not distort or render shallow hisdramatic corpus. In short, in confronting Allen's art through Nichols'sbook, the reader will emerge with a greater ability to appreciate a worthyartist's work and the world that that work represents. ... Read more

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Three delightful one-act plays set in and around New York, in which sophisticated characters confound one another in ways only Woody Allen could imagine

Woody Allen’s first dramatic writing published in years, “Riverside Drive,” “Old Saybrook,” and “Central Park West” are humorous, insightful, and unusually readable plays about infidelity. The characters, archetypal New Yorkers all, start out talking innocently enough, but soon the most unexpected things arise—and the reader enjoys every minute of it (though not all the characters do).

These plays (successfully produced on the New York stage and in regional theaters on the East Coast) dramatize Allen’s continuing preoccupation with people who rationalize their actions, hide what they’re doing, and inevitably slip into sexual deception—all of it revealed in Allen’s quintessentially pell-mell dialogue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Adultery
These are not terrific comedies about infidelity. For the long-term Woody Allen fan, they will not reveal a desire on Allen's part to explore significantly new thematic material.

For whatever reason, Allen has in recent years revived his interest in theatrical writing (many years ago he had hits with "Don't Drink The Water" and "Play it Again, Sam"; the short plays "Death" and "God" were included in his collections of New Yorker pieces). There are other (dramatic) plays that have not yet appeared in print - "The Floating Lightbulb" (circa 1980) and "A Secondhand Memory" (2004).

"Central Park West" is the least interesting of the three newer plays included in this handsome paperback. It originally appeared in 1995 on a triple bill called DEATH DEFYING ACTS with one-acts by David Mamet and Elaine May. It anticipates a love-quadrangle scenario Allen would explore more effectively in his film "Deconstructing Harry" (1997) - that of a man leaving his wife not for his long-term mistress but for another, much younger, woman. Of course, the mistress initially thinks she is the one with whom the husband will be running away.

The play is, I guess, meant to be a kind of satire of rich New Yorkers. It doesn't really come off. One must resist temptation to seize upon this line and turn it against its creator -

"You're a failed writer, Howard - judging from the characters you create you shouldn't even be a writer - you should be in the cardboard business."

(For a laugh, and an insight into the pains of a director who must deal with the whims of three playwrights, check out the diary of the director that was published in the New Yorker in 1996.)

WRITER'S BLOCK was presented as a double-bill directed by Allen in 2003. "Riverside Drive", the best play in the book, focuses on a cheating writer who, while waiting to meet his soon-to-be ex-mistress in a secluded spot by the Hudson, is harrassed by a mentally unstable homeless writer. The action goes on to revisit shades of the Martin Landau plot of 'Crimes and Misdemeanors'.

"Old Saybrook" is similiar to "Central Park West" albeit with a post-modern twist. Halfway through this play about cheating couples in Connecticut, we discover these characters are actually characters from an abandoned play by a playwright named Max Krolian ("It's dark in the drawer," explains one character). Krolian joins in on the action to try to figure out an ending to the play. ... Read more

Product Description

For three decades, no American filmmaker has been as prolific -- or as paradoxical -- as Woody Allen. From Play It Again, Sam (1972) through Celebrity (1998) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999), Allen has produced an average of one film a year, yet in many of these films Allen reveals a progressively skeptical attitude toward both the value of art and the cultural contributions of artists. In examining Allen's filmmaking career, The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen demonstrates that his movies often question whether the projected illusions of magicians/artists benefit audience or artists. Other Allen films dramatize the opposed conviction that the consoling, life-redeeming illusions of art are the best solution humanity has devised to the existential dilemma of being a death-foreseeing animal. Peter Bailey demonstrates how Allen's films repeatedly revisit and reconfigure this tension between image and reality, art and life, fabrication and factuality, with each film reaching provisional resolutions that a subsequent movie will revise. Merging criticism and biography, Bailey identifies Allen's ambivalent views of the artistic enterprise as a key to understanding his entire filmmaking career. Because of its focus upon filmmaker Sandy Bates's conflict between entertaining audiences and confronting them with bleak human actualities, Stardust Memories is a central focus of the book. Bailey's examination of Allen's art/life dialectic also draws from the off screen drama of Allen's very public separation from Mia Farrow, and the book accordingly construes such post-scandal films as Bullets Over Broadway and Mighty Aphrodite as Allen's oblique cinematic responses to that tabloid tempest. By illuminating the thematic conflict at the heart of Allen's work, Bailey seeks not only to clarify the aesthetic designs of individual Allen films but to demonstrate how his oeuvre enacts an ongoing debate the screenwriter/director has been conducting with himself between creating cinematic narratives affirming the saving powers of the human imagination and making films acknowledging the irresolvably dark truths of the human condition.

Customer Reviews (3)

A must-have for Woody's fans
I have read several books on Woody Allen and this is the most brilliant so far. Those who are tired of hearing about his squabble with Mia Farrow will be relieved to find that the author concentrates on his work and only mentions facts of Woody Allen's life that are relevant to his films. The book painstakingly analyzes the psychological and philosophical undercurrents in Woody's work, and especially delves into the issue as to whether art cand lend coherence to an otherwise contingent and random life. It'll help you see Woody's films from a broader standpoint but also set you brooding over your life as well.

An interesting perspective on Allen's major films
Peter Baily establishes his thesis that a primary thread running through many of Allen's major films is an examination of the tension between art and life and the struggle of the artist to disengage from the real world to unleash the creative juices.Citing examples from many of my favorite Allen films and following through on his major premise Baily delivers a fine book that challenged me to look at this films from a new perspective. I highly recommend this to fans of Woody Allen. I am cueing up my DVD copy of Hannah and her Sisters as soon as I log off.

Deconstructing Woody
If you've ever wanted to reach right into the movie screen, shake one of Woody Allen's characters by the shirt collar, and say, "Snap out of it, bub," here's a book for you.Peter J. Bailey's The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen offers a fascinating, crystalline analysis of one of the most vexing questions to dog three generations of Woody Allen characters:Is the fictional world of art--especially film art--more a help or a hindrance in our difficult lives?

Bailey, an English professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., demonstrated his gift for making sense of challenging contemporary literary art with Reading Stanley Elkin in the mid-'80s.In The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen, he takes on a more readily accessible subject but does not hold back any of the tremendous critical insight at his command.The result is a book both for serious film buffs--that is, buffs of serious film (a subjective distinction taken up in this book)--and for film scholars alike.I was impressed by Bailey's scholarly precision, yet after reading the first couple of chapters I wanted to dash out and rent Stardust Memories, Manhattan, and several other signature Woody Allen flicks.This book has actually made watching his movies a more intellectually stimulating experience without killing the comic moments so abundant in them.

A college English instructor myself, I appreciate the challenge of leading a critical investigation of something fun and entertaining without making that subject, well, less fun and entertaining.Bailey succeeds admirably with this book, mainly because he never puts Allen on a pedestal.The author is a fan, to be sure, as indicated by his generous praise for what Allen does well--and has done well at a pace of roughly one film a year since 1972.This book's thesis, however, delves more deeply into a particularly compelling set of questions at the core of most of Allen's films:What do they say about the role of art in our lives?Is it a redeeming social force or merely a pleasant diversion from life's suffering?Are Woody Allen's films art or merely pleasant, entertaining diversions?

Bailey combines his own convincing interpretations of Allen's film work with previously reported comments from Allen on these questions to show not only how equivocal Woody Allen movies are on the matter of art's benefits and costs, but how central a theme this equivocating is in those movies.To his great credit--and unlike many scholarly investigations of film and literary art--Bailey avoids overbearing suggestions that HIS interpretations are REALLY what Allen's films are all about.Rather, the author has found a thread running through Allen's work that he holds up to the light--a light that has lingered too long on the personality of Woody Allen and the attending tabloid drama.This more illuminating thread--the vexed relationship of art to life and the difficulty of reconciling the two, both in art and in life--is of such enormous importance in the broader conversation of American popular culture that the absence of details on Allen's personal travails reads as a virtue in Bailey's book.

While Woody Allen fans will definitely find The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen most enjoyable and accessible, any moviegoer who has ever contemplated what distinguishes the cinematic good and bad from the ugly will find this book thought-provoking, perhaps at times profound.Ultimately, this is not a portrait of a filmmaker so much as the study of an intriguing film mind at work--and a snapshot of a possible film legend as a work-in-progress. ... Read more

Product Description
A pictorial survey of the filmmaker's career since Annie Hall provides a first-hand look at Allen on the set, on location, and behind and in front of the camera, in more than two hundred photographs and commentary. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A film career described in photos and an essay
This book is mainly a collection of photographer Brian Hamill's shots of Woody Allen at work. While many of the photos are simply photos taken directly from Woody Allen's films, twenty two of which are featured in this book - including Manhattan, Annie Hall, Stardust Memories, and Bullets Over Broadway - there are a large number which show how Woody Allen does his work. One scene from Manhattan, in which Woody Allen is conversing with his co-star Mariel Hemmingway in a café, shows a classic close-up of Hemmingway shot over Woody's right shoulder, with light aimed, controlled and diffused so as to give her eyes an attractive glow. Another photo of a scene from Stardust Memories shows how the special effects crew uses hoses and sprinklers placed outside the frame on either side in a "movie-within-the-movie" sequence in which Woody co-stars with Charlotte Rampling as they kiss in the rain.

Both photographer Ham ill and Woody Allen write mutually admiring and complementary pieces at the beginning of the book of each other. As does Charles Champlin when he reviews Woody Allen's career in an essay which precedes over 150 pages of photographs. This is thus not a critical book of the work of the film maker.

If you enjoy or have enjoyed Woody Allen's films, this book is a nice coffee table book which will remind you of some of your favorite scenes and how they were made.

A Must For Any Real Woody Allen Fan
Anyone who loves the work of Woody Allen will appreciate this book.The photography is gorgeous, with behind-the-scenes shots as well as stills from the films.In addition, Woody comments on the making of the films. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published by Random House in 1987, this collection of three of Allen's comedy screenplays includes "Zelig", "Broadway Danny Rose" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo", for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay. ... Read more

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The first independent investigation of Woody Allen, our era's most celebrated, distinctive, and confounding filmmaker, reveals the controversial private life behind the icon. Until now, there has been little scrutiny of that life. The reason: Woody viewed biographers as the Ebola plague, dangerous, uncontrollable contagions that might squish his public persona into mousse.

Allen's prolific achievements are all but unparalleled in cinematic history. To fans, his films have always represented an ongoing autobiography, through which he has bared his self-deprecating overanalytical soul to the world. It was not until 1992, when his stormy private life turned into sensational headlines, that the cracks in the familiar persona appeared. The lines separating art and fact, myth and reality, public and private life, became increasingly blurred.

Marion Meade has tracked down scores of people in Allen's life who have never before spoken to an Allen biographer: boyhood pals; Brooklyn neighbors and teachers; colleagues Buddy Hackett and Mel Brooks from his early career as a television writer and stand-up comic; actors Maureen Stapleton, Max von Sydow, and Bob Hope; director Sydney Pollack; and the film reviewers who have followed his career for decades -- Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert, Stanley Kauffmann, Andrew Sarris, and John Simon. She also details the numerous examples of art imitating life in Allen's films, particularly the extraordinary saga behind his marriage to the adopted daughter of his long-time lover, Mia Farrow.

In reconstructing Allen's life, Meade explores the cult of celebrity in America -- how it is our own infatuation with the rich and famous that has made it possible for this supremely talented man to shrewdly manipulate both the media and the moviegoing public.Amazon.com Review
Woody Allen once controlled the press like his actors--and as critic Andrew Sarris observed, Woody "is almost a ventriloquist and all his actors are marionettes. It's his nature. He has to be on top." The Soon-Yi scandal cost him $7 million and his protected reputation, and now we've got Marion Meade's unblinking look at his blighted life (superior to John Baxter's Woody Allen, not quite as good as Meade's Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?). The son of a loveless dad and mom who respectively ignored and beat him daily, Woody grew up mean, scarred, and scared: he slept with a night-light until his early 40s and considered suicide daily until at least age 51. His uncanny gift for comedy gave him no comfort, but movies did. His most autobiographical character is Cecilia in The Purple Rose of Cairo, who took refuge in theaters from "the ugly light" of real life.

Boy, does Meade cast ugly light on Woody and his work. His best role for a woman, Annie Hall, is "basically stupid," as Diane Keaton said. In life and art, Woody sought leading ladies he could dominate. He stalled Mia forever before granting her the right to keep her shampoo at his apartment "alongside toiletries belonging to Diane Keaton, preserved there like so many fossilized relics in King Tut's tomb for more than a decade." Mia was horrified that he spilled her family's nasty secrets in Hannah and Her Sisters, and fretted over his obsession with Keaton and her sisters, Mariel Hemingway's sister, and Mia's own sister Steffi--whose photos she discovered (shades of Soon-Yi!) in his apartment. Woody's lovable persona was as fake as his transplanted, dyed hair. And Mia's no sweetheart herself: having caught her scuzzy dad with Ava Gardner one night as a child, she married Ava's squeeze Frank Sinatra at 19, and then stole her friend Dory Previn's husband, André, saying, "You don't fight what feels good."

If Meade's sour, thorough tome is true, nobody in Hollywood fights what feels good, and they all come out looking pretty bad. --Tim Appelo ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Woody's Feminist Biographer.
It was my hope that Marion Meade's book would provide a critical and unvarnished examination of this controversial figure. Initially, I was quite sure that it had due its fact-filled, brisk, and concise narrative. Ms. Meade is a talented biographer and writer. She cites a plethora of primary sources who offer up unique and important observations about this cinematographic legend. Allen's enigmatic personality is dissected in full, and, after finishing it, his oeuvre makes considerably more sense as there seems to be little truly fictional about his storylines. Quite clearly, Allen is a man whose pathology cannot be denied. He is full of obsessions, compulsions, and neuroses in general. As if those demerits weren't enough, he also appears to be a snob and an elitist. Yet it is hard to fathom how one could find Farrow much healthier. At best, hers is a manipulative, passive-aggressive, and violent personality. Ms. Meade must see Farrow as being a Grade A societal victim which then cleanses her of guilt for every horrific behavior she commits.

The biographer is incredulous that anyone could find anything wrong with Farrow's single parent martyr act--which necessitated her adopting 11 children (to make for a total brood of 15). Well, let's consider the possible motivation for these habitual adoptions. We can rule out that she was a saint as nothing in her life seems to suggest that this is a possibility. A desire to spend every waking moment with children is not likely because she maintained a busy professional and social life the entire in which she cruised the international orphanage circuit. That her infant acquisition often corresponded with her entering some kind of personal crisis should give us pause. Could she have been using these children, and the enticing emotional bonds they offered, as a form of self-medication? The explanation is quite feasible. During her crackup with Allen, she readily turned the two children he loved against him, and alienated them from the person they once saw as their father. She also made a point of sharing details with them to ease her own pain while exponentially increasing theirs.

In a country where corrupt feminist statistics concerning domestic violence are actually believed by law enforcement agents, Meade makes no direct mention of the way in which Farrow the only physical aggressor in this particular relationship. She battered Allen repeatedly. During one of their arguments, she "punched him in the face" and "thwacked him hard across the back." These acts continued months after she first heard of his infidelity so no crime of passion defense is possible. Perhaps violence is a sign of health when it is directed towards a man. Farrow harassed Allen on the phone and threatened to kill him along with herself. She gave him a 1992 Valentine's Day card with a picture of her family inside. It was adorned with "steel turkey-roasting skewers" that pierced the hearts of her children. It's hard to imagine a person who wouldn't find the preponderance of the evidence to be quite damning regarding Farrow. If a man comported himself in the same fashion he would be quickly placed into a jail cell. Only a writer with a serious agenda could overlook Farrow's pathology.

In Allen's case, unruly is not equated with unaccomplished

I'm a big Woody Allen fan. But unlike many fans that I've encountered, I wasn't too terribly pleased with the widely-read Eric Lax biography entitled, Woody Allen: A Biography. It seemed to border on hagiography too much of the time.It's not that I was looking for a bio that dished a lot of hitherto unknowndirt. In fact, in Marion Meade's Woody Allen biography, there really isn't much in the way of hitherto unknown dirt. For the most part, Meade imparts to her readers what is already generally known, and then presentsmultiple viewpoints. For example, with the Soon-Yi scandal, the author gives you the story from many sides, including but not limited to Woody's, Mia's, and Soon-Yi's, and fairly much allows the readers to come to their own conclusions (something that many reviewers of this book have failed to see).

As for the title of this book, yes, Woody Allen has been difficult to control, but where did that lead him...?Has there been any filmmaker in the past 35 years that has consistently aimed higher than Allen...?In film after film, he has challenged himself and his audience to explore the most important question: Why are we here?Congratulations to the author for pointing this out and giving Allen the credit he deserves for having the highest aspirations.

Another item. Inspired by this book, I sought out recordings of Woody Allen's stand-up comedy routines from the 1960's.As it turned out, these recordings have some of his funniest material ever. The routines include bits on his first wife (he describes her as a "really weird woman" who underwent half a dozen sex change operations "but couldn't find anything that she liked") and also include "The Moose," which just might be his funniest stand-up routine ever (Woody goes hunting in upstate New York, bags a moose, ties it to his bumper, and while driving home through the Holland Tunnel, the moose wakes up and begins signaling for an illegal turn).

As for Allen's filmography, this book is fairly much right on target a lot of the time, but falls quite a bit short of providing a complete analysis.

This book is not a hagiography; and despite what its title and cover photo might lead you to believe, it is a far cry from being a scandal sheet.

Overall, a very informative and entertaining read.

An engrossing, entertaining read
After reading this book, I'm still not clear as to whether or not Woody Allen acted inappropriately with his young, adopted daughter, Dylan, but I do know this--it's one thing to be a fan of Woody Allen's work and an entirely different thing to be a fan of Woody Allen, the man.

Meade is thorough in detailing Allen's life, from his days as a child in Midwood, New York to his adulthood reign as King of New York Cinema. She adeptly guides the reader through major events in Allen's life and through each of Allen's movies, including insider reports from "key players" (childhood friends, teachers, actors, crew members, etc.).

Meade discusses the Farrow-Allen relationship in detail. She provides significant information re: the highly publicized end to the relationship, and concludes the book by describing where Allen is now, both professionally and personally.

If you're a diehard fan of Allen's, you might not want to read this book. While Meade attempts to report the information in an objective manner, the scales topple wildly in a direction unfavorable to Allen. The reader is left fascinated, wondering how a man considered by so many to be "brilliant," was able to build a career in which he openly exploited his relationships, communicated disdain for women, and wallowed in his own arrogance. This book is comprehensive (despite the author's inability to interview those closest to Allen, she seems to have utilized nearly all of the resources available to her, including books written by others, court transcripts, interviews, etc.) and engaging. It's fitting biography for a man who creates characters in most of his movies based upon himself, yet remains so intensely private--if you want an honest account of Allen's life, it's the best you're going to get.

Visionary vs. voyeur, contributor vs. parasite
What a great opportunity a Woody Allen biography represents.Here's one of the great masters of American cinema, an artist who has been producing prolifically for over thirty years.Before our eyes, he went through mastering various cinematic styles and then transcending them all, contributing as a philosopher, writer, comedian, actor, director, even musician. Along the way, Allen produced a body of work replete with a qualityall too rare in any, particularly American motion pictures: a thinking, interesting approach. The audiences and critics speak for themselves: here's a true visionary.

Unfortunately, those who make a name for themselves are destined to attract parasites. Enters Marion Meade, the voyeur. Unable to create worthwhile art or even advancing the cause of understanding it better or enjoying it more intelligently, she has nothing to offer that's pertinent to the art of Woody Allen. What she does offer is plenty of gossip and garbage. After having the Allen-Farrow "scandal" publicly dished out for too long, who needs more of this?Is it really a surprise to anyone after watching W.A. movies that the man should have character flaws, past pain and ongoing neuroses.Isn't the genius of his work to allow us to identify so readily with his character?

If you need gossip to make yourself feel superior to a man who has had something genuinely great to offer, then don't pass this one up.If you prefer some degree of integrity in your writing, and are desirous to learn about subjects worth remembering, avoid this one at all cost.

Trashy Biography With Contempt For Its Subject
Very rarely has an author of a biography shown such contempt for the subject than in this volume, written by Mariod Meade (who has authored “Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase”). “The Unruly Life of Woody Allen” mostly seems focused on portraying Woody as a not-very-nice man. While I doubt he is, Marion Mead never misses an attempt. In fact, a whopping one third of the books pages are devoted to the sex scandal of the early nineties, while “Deconstructing Harry,” “Everyone Says I Love You,” and “Celebrity” are all crammed into one chapter. Frankly, “The Unruly Life of Woody Allen” reads more like a National Enquirer expose than a biography of a great filmmaker. ... Read more

Product Description
Although Woody Allen is best known for his cult movies, he is also a writer of wit and skill. This collection offers 52 pieces of hilarity, deadpan weirdness and outlandish ideas. Do you want to hear about the time Hitler went for a haircut? Or why Woody reveres Socrates? Have you ever wondered what would have happened if the Impressionists had actually been dentists? You can learn much about history - the piece on the invention of sandwiches is eye-opening - or modern life in this selection of thoughts, observations, diaries and stories from one of the most original minds and wonderfully comic voices of our time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Nonsense & nonetheless hilarious
I am no critique, so I will just say I enjoyed the book.
The humor is rather chaotic at first, and yet brilliant. Woody develops his style gradually and toward the end of the collection manages to produce a few more organized and longer short stories. These are really a delight to read, unfortunately that is when the collection end.

The original Funny
Contains the books: Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects and more.Allen is absurd, satirical, brilliantly incisive although sometimes quite corny and sophomoric. (One must try to use big, academic, intellectual-sounding words when criticising Woody Allen.)Someone once suggested I read Dave Barry.I did and threw the magazine down in disgust at the pale, attempted imitation of prime Woody Allen. ... Read more

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Allen's sophisticated movie musical scores as well as his thoughtful studies of American character and life are analyzed by contemporary critics, such as William Hutchings, Tom Sahy and Kimball King himself. ... Read more

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"Finding one particular thing at one particular time, then letting a world accumulate around it, in rough contingency, nothing quite fitting or not fitting." This is how Dave Hickey describes the work of artist and singer-songwriter Terry Allen, who creates works that proliferate into a constellation of genres as he revisits and revises his original inspirations. A painting may lead to a sculpture, which morphs into a song that takes on many voices and becomes a theatre piece or video installation. Yet, in Allen's endlessly evolving art, "nothing that you might actually see in the world is depicted, nothing is even surreal, because surrealism infers a starting point in reality. The songs are sung by disembodied voices. The stories are told by voices with regional accents. The drawings are drawn because otherwise we could not see what they are about, so they are better read as heraldry, or glyphs, or typologies than anything like pictures."

Terry Allen is the first comprehensive retrospective of this prolific artist's work. It opens with a previously unpublished celebration of Allen by Dave Hickey, then covers his three largest and most important series--JUAREZ, with critical commentary by Dave Hickey; RING, with commentary by Marcia Tucker; and YOUTH IN ASIA, with an interview of Terry Allen and commentary by Dave Hickey. It also explores Allen's other significant visual works--installations, public works and bronzes, and sculpture and works on paper. Highlighting an equally important part of the artist's oeuvre, Michael Ventura provides an insightful discussion of Allen's music. More than two hundred color and black-and-white images flow in and around the texts, providing a sweeping visual gallery of Allen's work in which, as Hickey observes, "not only are there no happy endings. There are no endings."

Customer Reviews (1)

A one-of-a-kind collection
Illustrated with striking, full-color photography of Allen's creations, Terry Allen is a coffee-table artbook compendium of Terry Allen's diversity of artistic creations - from painting to sculpture to three-dimensional created scenes and more. The text delves into the story behind Allen's wonders in meticulous detail. A one-of-a-kind collection, Terry Allen is especially recommended to anyone with a keen interest in contemporary art, and is the absolute next best thing to witnessing Allen's evocative and memorable pieces in person.
... Read more

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He was born Allan Konigsberg in the Bronx, but his personal destiny and some of filmdom's most celebrated comedies - Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors - have made Woody Allen the quintessential New Yorker.

This telling, new biography - the first since the tabloids headlined his rift with his long-term mistress, Mia Farrow, and his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi - tells how a reclusive, melancholy kid achieved unparalleled success as a screenwriter, director, and star. It also explores the real Woody Allen, the critically acclaimed filmmaker from the Upper East Side, and his amusing movie persona of a neurotic and lovable loser.

Shrewdly and effectively deconstructing Woody, John Baxter's biography illuminates Allen's preoccupation with sex and mortality, his personal quirks and obsessions, his manipulation of celebrity, and his cinematic achievement as chronicler and court jester of Manhattan's intellectual elite. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Great learning tool
I read this because I had NO background information on Woody Allen and thought this would be a fun way to get to know him.Consequently, I am knee-deep in Woody Allen movies.I had never been exposed to him before and learned a great deal by reading this book.For the beginner, it's a nice way to be introduced.

A balanced biography
This is a very fair, even-handed look at the life of Woody Allen and his films. It is NOT critical of him, as several of the negative reviewers below seem to suggest. The author writes with candor and doesn't censor himself. Those are qualities I expect from a biography. Why read a bigraphy if you don't expect to come across a few warts? I've been a fan of Woody's for over 25 years. I like him. And, I like this book.

More than the Early Funny Ones
I enjoyed this book very much.I liked the author's tone, which was neither worshipful nor condemning.I thought his examination of the films was pretty interesting.His idea that Allen really owes more to Fellini than to Bergman sounded pretty convincing to me.

Face it, any book on Woody Allen becomes instantly obsolescent, because by the time it gets on the shelves, Allen has made at least one more movie that might move his career in a new direction.

I thought this book did a fine job of showing the many changes in Allen's career, from stand-up and TV (stuff that I really wasn't aware of - like Allen subbing for Johnny Carson) to movies and how the movies changed.Baxter's assessments of the many movies seemed mostly on the mark to me.

The definitive work on Woody Allen will only be written after he is dead and thus can no longer make any movies, but until that sad day, I think this book will do very nicely.

Sawdust Memories
I found this book disappointing, although there are some good things in it. Baxter is interesting on the evolution of the distinctive Woody persona, and on Allen's reluctance to acknowledge some of his artistic influences. The passages on the split with Mia Farrow deftly weave scenes of black comedy and harrowing domestic tragedy. A chapter on the fraught production of 'Casino Royale' is entertaining, and there are a few other good anecdotes I hadn't come across before. I didn't know, for example, that in the 60s Allen was taken to a court by a woman who claimed he was her runaway husband, despite the fact that he would have been 13 at the time of their marriage.

Unfortunately, after a fairly early point I found myself unable to trust Baxter's accuracy. Mistakes in the book range from the sophomoric to the libellous. Hibernia is Ireland, not Scotland as Baxter thinks on page 7. It was not Lenny Bruce's wife who performed the orgiastic act attributed to her on page 77, and it took place in LA, not Greenwich Village as Baxter suggests. Worse, he sometimes garbles Allen film plots and even jokes.

More annoying than the falsehoods are the superfluous facts. There is an excess of filler in the form of irrelevant background information. In 'Take The Money And Run' there's a sequence where the Allen character is sent to jail which consists of a lengthy 'March of Time' style newsreel montage depicting the 1950s, followed by the words, 'Virgil, in jail, misses all of it.' This book is often risibly like that. Baxter spends a page describing social upheavals caused by changes to the NYC transport systems, including a brief synopsis of the career of Robert Moses, and then concludes, 'Little of this impinged on Allen's world.' He notes Allen's appearance at a Eugene McCarthy fundraiser and then spends half a page describing the 1968 Chicago convention. One waits for the revelation that Allen was there, haplessly fleeing riot police like his character in 'Bananas'. But no: unable to attempt even a token connection to Allen's life and work, Baxter simply breaks the text at this point and resumes with something different.

A more serious flaw is that, racing non-stop from film to film (a pattern, admittedly, that much of Allen's life has shared), Baxter does not give enough space to considering the people in Allen's life, in particular the women. A partial exception is Mia Farrow, a character analysis of whom Baxter circles around but ultimately shies away from. Diane Keaton gets unaccountably short shrift and so too does Louise Lasser, arguably Woody's dark lady and the inspiration for several of the more interesting characters in his films. Surprisingly, this is one of the many areas on which Eric Lax's 1991 authorized biography is more interesting.

As for the films, Baxter is often curmudgeonly in his analysis of their merits. By quoting the lukewarm early critical reactions much of Allen's work has received unbalanced by more positive later assessments, or emphasizing that critical plaudits often went hand in hand with domestic box office indifference, Baxter comes close to presenting a picture of Allen as a man who has failed miserably at everything to which he has turned his hand.

Indeed, much of this book is dispiriting work. Baxter does not merely describe Allen's famously bleak outlook but manages to communicate it to the reader. It is de rigeur in modern biography, and a guarantor of sales, to suggest that your subject is either a bit of a heel and a creative magpie, or that they have not had much fun out of life; to suggest both at once is merely depressing.

Besides, all of Allen's fans know in our hearts that, a lot of impressive evidence notwithstanding, the hapless romantic clown of the early funny films is the real Woody. Whether you are a fan or not, I recommend Eric Lax's underrated official biography, or Stig Bjorkman's lengthy interview 'Woody Allen on Woody Allen' (1994), hagiographic though they are at times, as far more entertaining and informative than this book.

Overly critical of ol' Woody
I'm no intellectual elitist, but I do like a good Woody Allen film. Mr. Baxter, while delivering a fairly comprehensive look at Allen, inserts a whole lot of high-brow references that recall the snootiest of New Yorker pieces. Yet, at the same time, he seems to look down his nose at the New York intellectual elite (if that's possible). Note to Baxter: next book, leave out the French language phrases.

This book is just too tough on ol' Woody, and at times seems downright mean-sprited. His frequent descriptions of Allen's frumpy, old-man appearance is unduly harsh. Mr. Baxter will look old one day, too. On the other hand, Allen's reputation as tough to work for is certainly fair game.

I did like the organization of chapters/films, and enjoyed the behind-the-scenes information about each project. I noticed, however, that much of Baxter's work seems to be from secondary sources (previously published interviews and the like). Perhaps Mr. Allen caught wind of this project and prevented Baxter from getting the access he needed to close Woody associates. Or maybe they wouldn't talk to a (non-authorized) biographer anyway.

I found the many relevations of Allen's strange personal life both compelling and abhorant. The 'dirt', while quite juicy, at times seemed a little unfair. Many of the stories would be impossible to confirm, though I believe they're probably true.

With Woody Allen: A Biography, I learned a great deal about Woody Allen...perhaps more than I wanted to. ... Read more

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Woody Allen, as adored, repelled, lusted after, adulated, exposed and shared in the dreams of his fans. ... Read more