Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Interlude.

Now I do hope you're enjoying the latest mini-blogbuster. I appreciate that some of you might not be Woody Allen fans and the kind of not Woody Allen fans who'll remain unconvinced by my meanderings. Now that I've built up some momentum I'll try to offer some variety. But I do tend to write about the kinds of things which are happening to me at a given moment and at the given moment I'm watching Woody Allen films. A lot. Though I don't think I'm going to make my artificial Easter deadline.

For those of you who are trying to follow along, there are a couple of things I wanted to mention which may be getting away from me but wouldn't fit into one of the review posts.

(1) These aren't reviews in the traditional sense. They're reactions, the first thing which comes into my head moments after I finish watching one of the films and sit at the keyboard. I'm never entirely happy with what I've written, but I'm slowly coming to realise that like the Hitchcock posts there seems little point in simply replicating the volumes of material and excellent reviews already online. If you want something more coherent, can I recommend Roger Ebert? Try search under in the advanced options.

(2) Somehow they always seem to average at about seven hundred and fifty words. I have no idea why. And like a Woody Allen film that goes over ninety minutes, anything longer always feels slightly ponderous.

(3) I was inspired by this article from Joe Queenan about watching everything Ingmar Bergman directed. The original plan was to watch everything then write a parody of Queenan's article, the joke being that I'd been inspired by someone watching Bergman's films to watch Allen's films just as Woody was inspired by watching Ingmar's films to make his films more like Ingmar's. But then I thought, why write one blog post when I can write sixty?

(4) For those of you reading through RSS: I've updated the title bar on the blog for the first time in half a decade. See if you can guess who it is.

(5) I mentioned them in the Stardust Memories post, but my main guides on this j-word are:

Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In conversation with Stig Bjorkman

and

The Woody Allen Companion by Stephen Spignesi

Both are early nineties editions, horrendously out of date, but often very insightful which is why they're forever cropping up in this text. I am looking at Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking by Eric Lax to help cover the nineties and noughties.

I'll certainly need the moral support.