Celebrity
This was the most grievous loss, the most heartfelt tragedy, I encountered on my weekend quest to see the Star Wars Episode 1 preview in a movie theater. Granted, it doesn't rate up there with, say, having to face a ticked off dragon guarding the castle with the damsel in distress, but every quest has its hazards and horrors, or you'd just be able to pick up the, uh, quested object down at the Kwik-E-Mart.
Basically, in a mild fit of mania on Friday, I wandered to some neighborhood movie theaters, asking whether they were showing the Preview, and, if so, with what movie. Most of the answers were disappointing. The first place I went to said they were showing it with "Celebrity." At that point in the day, I actually wanted to see that movie, but the show wouldn't start for three hours. Subsequent theaters had it with that Brad Pitt in a tux movie, or with "Enemy of the State", which I'd seen in an earlier Preview sighting attempt. One theater said they were showing it, but they weren't sure with which movie. At the end of this long, arduous road, one theater's ticket taker said, yeah, we're showing it, try "Celebrity" at 3:30. This smarmy ticket taker, looking a lot like Jon Lovitz with a goatee and less hair, lied to me. In this age of the Net, with free-floating campaigns and vendettas to cause material and psychological damage to any number of random entities, from the deserving Circuit City/Divx to Bob, the convenience store clerk who ticked off an 3l33t3 d00d because the Slurpee just didn't have enough syrup, I'm going to show restraint and not -- repeat, not -- call down a fatwa against this movie theater in the East Village that's not the one next to Webster Hall, but a couple of blocks away. Except for this incident, I've had good movie-going experiences there.
Digression aside, "Celebrity" was awful. Well, it's not as bad as "Shadows and Fog", so it doesn't qualify as the Worst Woody Allen Movie Of All Time, but it's up there. This is basically supposed to be Woody's meditation on the idea of celebrity. It plays somewhat more like a cross between "Annie Hall" and "Husbands and Wives" with a number of celebrity cameos, but with all the old-fashioned movie-goodness leached out along with the color.
The main characters are Woody Allen, played by Kenneth Branaugh, and his ex-wife, played by Judy Davis. The movie has a self-referencing moment in it, when there's a film premiere from a pretentious director who always shoots in black and white, but a more interesting self-reference may be to have Branaugh give his Woody Allen character some sort of Hamlet spin, but that'd hark too much back to those early, funny films. Branaugh does such a shockingly good job being Woody Allen, there's really no need for Woody to step in front of the camera again.
In any case, there was this divorce that takes place before the movie starts, with the Woody Allen character wanting to sow his oats and the Judy Davis character trying to recover. Various hijinks ensue, as the Woody Allen character, in this incarnation, is a movie industry reporter, chasing after various starlets and aspiring starlets. The exploration of celebrity is touched on briefly in his various encounters with actors and actresses, perhaps most prominently when he meets Leonardo DiCaprio playing, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio. There's also Charlize Theron as a supermodel, which made me realize that either Branaugh is really short or Theron is really tall. Oh, and Winona Ryder is using a Wonderbra nowadays. You can learn more about celebrity by reading the back cover of the historian Daniel Boorstin's book, "The Image" (which is where celebrity is first defined as being famous for being famous).
Anyway, the fates of the Woody Allen and Judy Davis characters take their expected trajectories, with one expected happiness on the road to loneliness, and vice versa. There's nothing much to see here. The story of divergent was better told in "Annie Hall", the one about separation in "Husbands and Wives".
Oh, I finally did see the Star Wars preview the next day, unfortunately not in a movie theater, but as an mpeg. And, you know, this little window showing two minutes of grainy video was far more worthwhile than "Celebrity."
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