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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

#TCMparty: Annie Hall

This is a type of post I've never attempted here before, so bear with me if it doesn't work quite right. I've written before about live-tweeting movies and TV shows, as well as about the Twitter hashtag #TCMparty and my experience with it. Since I've committed to spending 2015 exploring classic movies in greater depth than usual, it seemed appropriate to spend some time live-tweeting a movie with the TCM fans on Twitter, but this is the first post I've devoted exclusively to the experience.

In the past, I've found live-tweeting a bit awkward because I don't like the idea of dividing my time between the movie and my cellphone, so I knew if I were to do this again, I'd have to pick a movie I was already well familiar with, and I did: Annie Hall. I'm gonna attempt to summarize my experience live-tweeting the movie last night, as part of #TCMparty.



It began for me with the perhaps to-be-expected condemnation of Woody Allen the man, as opposed to the artist. I didn't re-tweet whoever tweeted that. It's all been said and discussed plenty of times by now. I think we can all agree that Woody may be a scumbag, but he's still an excellent filmmaker.
This was towards the beginning, where Woody's character makes a crack about Los Angeles. I remember biking in the Columbus streets and coming to a stop light and wondering why the cars behind me were honking, even though I was in the far right lane. It confused me at first, then it pissed me off, until I realized why they were honking. Woody's contempt for driving is something I can totally relate to.

The hilarious Marshal McCluhan scene on line at the movie theater. Here's a fun fact I re-tweeted:
...and naturally I related to this:
I wished I could've recognized more of the movie theaters seen in Annie Hall, but I suspect they're all gone by now, and at any rate, they were before my time anyway.

Here's a particularly clever observation:


Tony Roberts! A Music & Art graduate.


She totally does. I've made her the favorite actress of the female lead in my novel, who even says "La di da" a couple of times. 

For years, I used to think that Vija looked like her, which is funny because she's a big Woody fan and she often seems to me like a Woody character, so sometimes, in my mind, I conflate her with Keaton, or at least, a Keaton character in a Woody film. (Now I'm convinced Vija looks more like Sissy Spacek.) 

Keaton has aged quite gracefully over the years. I like to think she has at least one more great comedic role left in her. What would a director like, say, Alexander Payne do with her?

Also:
I believe it.
Anyone who lives in New York will understand this line.
This is what I was thinking of...



...but I don't know if I made that clear. When I typed on my cellphone, I was going as quick as I could so I could tweet it while the scene was still fresh in people's minds. One person got it, at least.

Fairly sure this has been scientifically proven.
Agreed. He'll never make another Sleeper or Bananas again. That said, someone also tweeted that she couldn't decide whether Annie Hall or Hannah and Her Sisters was better. I was gonna tweet in favor of Hannah (which I also love) but the more I thought about it, the less sure I was. One day I'll have to re-watch Hannah.
Especially when all she's doing is just sitting there!
Gordon Willis! Queens native.

At the end, and a little bit afterwards, I had a brief exchange with a couple of others about where this shot is (Lincoln Center) and about movies in New York in general. If I had been tweeting on my laptop, I could've sent them this link.

Overall, I'd have to say that it was easier to get into live-tweeting this time, but I was familiar with the movie, so that wasn't difficult. Pretty sure I'll do this again this year.

2 comments:

  1. I can't wait to be back to livetweeting with the TCMParty gang. Since we were on summertime savings here, the schedule became useless to me, since the movie would start at 11pm for me. But now I can be back!
    And... what can I talk about Diane Keaton? She is one of my favorites! Oh, what a great comparison between the scenes of Annie Hall and Manhattan.
    Cheers!

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  2. Yeah, that was something that just jumped out at me as I watched. As many times as I've seen ANNIE HALL before, I had never thought of that before. Glad I brought it up.

    ReplyDelete

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