Woody's New (Scarlett-less) Flick Has A Title

I've lost track of how many movies Woody Allen has made in his long, increasingly-less-interesting career. The last one he finished, Whatever Works, is currently wending its way to my residence courtesy of Netflix. His next to go before the lens will be entitled You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger will concern the "tangled love-lives" of a crazy family, and will star Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts. Even for Woody Allen, that's a wacky cast.

Note that, like Whatever Works, the new film will lack the presence of one Scarlett Johansson. Woody's former muse has not gotten any work from him since she went all diva and was left behind by the Vicky Cristina Barcelona Cannes contingent. Woody said then that he was "disappointed" in Scarlett. I guess the rift between them is permanent.

Aw darn.

Scarlett In No Hurry To Suckle

Scarlett Johansson won't be pressing an infant to either of her famous boobs in the near future, even though she is now married to Ryan Reynolds. "I'm not pregnant, and I'm not going to be anytime soon," the actress told Harper's Bazaar. Woody Allen hopes she waits until after he dies so he can be reincarnated as her breast pump.

Oh Crap, No

Is there some store where old half-senile Jews can just buy Oriental kids? Okay, I give - it's his daughter. That probably wouldn't stop him but, whatever...I should cease before it creeps into defamation. Oh screw that...he's got that kid on his lap even as we speak. Viagra's a curse I'm telling you. "All papas do this with their daughters in America sweetheart. It's in the Constitution right after the part about the Vice President breaking ties in the Senate." Vicky Cristina Barcelona was okay though. Javier Bardem. Yum.

Boobs Likes Helpin' Folk

Boobs went on Jay Leno last night to promote her dumb-ass new movie The Spirit. Somehow the conversation turned to the cold she claims she got from co-star Samuel L. Jackson (breathing on her boobs?). Overcome by a sneeze and the spirit of giving, Boobs blew her snot into a tissue then told Jay she was going to auction it off for charity, and proceeded to seal the snotty tissue in a ziplock to protect it from contamination. The snot rag has since been put on eBay and at last report the bidding was up to $2000. Boobs should've rubbed the tissue against her boobs instead - the bidding would be up to $3 billion by now, just from Woody Allen.

Jen Sucks Grandpa Breath

Jennifer Aniston went to dinner with Woody Allen and Soon Yi at Madeo yesterday. I'd be worried about Woody making a pass at Jen but she's way past the sell-by date as far as that old perv is concerned. Of course, a guy like Woody would probably be good for Jen right now. She needs an older man after that immature putz John Mayer. Hey, Ernest Borgnine! If she can tear him away from his fuck-mags and his roll of Bounty.

Scarlett Johansson Pulls a J-Lo, Gets Left Home from Cannes

Woody Allen's latest movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona premiered Saturday at Cannes to a standing ovation...but star Scarlett Johansson wasn't there to experience it.

Scarlett, it turns out, was back in New York while Woody and her co-stars Rebecca Hall and Penelope Cruz soaked up all the adulation at the world's most famous film festival. Did Scarlett have a cold? Was there a scheduling conflict?

No...in fact, Scarlett had every intention of being at Cannes with her doting director and fellow actors. Unfortunately, Ms. Johansson laid a load of absurd demands on the film studio, and rather than shell out the cash to keep Scarlett happy, the studio simply left her behind.

It wasn't that the studio was playing cheap either: They were already paying for flights, hotels, limos, clothes, hair and make-up. This wasn't good enough for Scarlett, who objected to having to share stylists with Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall, and demanded the studio pony up 20,000 additional Euros for her to have her own personal beauty staff for 4 days.

And then there was the hotel. Woody and the other actors were booked into a place in the center of Cannes to facilitate getting to events...but Scarlett apparently didn't want to deal with the paparazzi, and demanded to be put up in a place outside of town, an arrangement that would've thrown everyone else's schedules out-of-whack.

The troubles with Scarlett apparently didn't sit well with her drooling surrogate father Woody Allen. "...while Woody's terribly fond of Scarlett," a source said, "he was a little upset that she wasn't being a team player."

Of course, Woody's blind adoration of Scarlett is half the reason she has such a big head in the first place. Maybe one day he will wake up and realize she's only a mediocre actress, and will cease mindlessly adding to her over-validation issues.

By the way...it doesn't appear Scarlett was missed much in Cannes.

"Nobody cared she wasn't there," said one catty New York socialite in town for the festival. "The movie belonged to Penelope and Rebecca anyway with great help from Javier [Bardem]."

In fact, early reviews of the film speak highly of the comic rapport between Cruz and Bardem, who play a fiercely bickering couple, and apparently improvised most of their Spanish dialogue. Scarlett? Most critics agree that Woody and his movie would be better off without her.

Trailer for Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Trailer for Woody Allen's new movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I'm sure Woody didn't have any ulterior motives when shooting the Scarlett Johansson/Penelope Cruz lesbo stuff.

Evan Rachel Wood is a Sad Puppet

Poor Evan Rachel Wood. She just can't get away from controlling men who want to make her over after their own jerk-off fantasies.

The top picture shows Evan in Dita Von Teese mode. Marilyn Manson, Evan's boyfriend, just can't get over losing burlesque queen Dita...and with compliant little Evan around, he doesn't have to.

The bottom picture would seem to show Evan finally liberated from the clutches of wanky men...but alas, it isn't so. Yes she may look fresh-faced and pretty (if a tad pale), but that's only because she's filming a movie for Woody Allen...and Woody is clearly trying to make her look like Scarlett Johansson.

Can't these bastards just jack-off to dirty magazines like normal pervs?

Cassandra's Dream

Woody Allen has made another movie, the 510th of his career. This one's in the serious thriller vein of his Match Point, which starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as a horny tennis player who got mixed up with a crazy woman played by Scarlett Johansson. The good news about Cassandra's Dream is that it doesn't star Scarlett Johansson. This is the first Woody Allen movie in recent years that hasn't featured his buxom muse and, not coincidentally, it's the best movie he's made in that span. I use the term "best" reservedly by the way. It's not like it has much competition. Match Point was at most passable, and Scoop was so God-awful, I would not have minded if Woody had simply hung up his view-finder forever afterward, and retired to a life of banging his daughter until the inevitable on-set of senility.

Cassandra's Dream stars two pretty good actors who aren't bad to look at either - Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. They play brothers who are both pretty much losers, who aren't willing to accept their loserdom, and become embroiled in all kinds of nasty financial difficulties as a result. It sounds like the set-up to one of those incredibly depressing, documentary-like Ken Loach movies about miserable, squalid people being ground down by the system - but no, it's a Woody Allen movie from his mid-tempo British thriller phase. Basically, it plays like an above-average English TV drama, something that might star Helen Mirren, and get run on BBC America to enormous acclaim.

Colin and Ewan make this movie worth watching. Farrell plays the greasier brother, who works at a garage and is always losing huge sums of money in poker games. McGregor, by comparison, has his shit together: He works at their father's restaurant, and is a more-or-less responsible adult, but he's plagued by ambition. McGregor is always entering into schemes - he's just smart enough to find opportunities, but not smart enough to make anything out of them. Things get complicated for Ewan when he becomes enamored of an actress played by Hayley Atwell, whose body makes one think of Scarlett Johansson, but whose talent makes one think of anyone but Scarlett Johansson. Ewan wants to nail this broad bad. Unfortunately, he's broke. He and Colin both get themselves up to their necks in debt, and have to prevail upon a rich relative (Tom Wilkinson) to bail them out. Their uncle is willing to save them, but only if they do him a certain favor...

Ha...you thought I was going to tell you. But I'm not. The movie unfolds in twisty thriller fashion and I hate spoilers.

As thrillers go, this one is pretty effective. Woody is an old pro and the movie has that quality of a well-made, modest boutique production - it's like the stuff Claude Chabrol has been doing for about the last twenty years. It's not exactly edge-of-your-seat, but it does keep you interested. And did I mention Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor are in it? They're not as much fun to look at as Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, but they're okay. The movie is definitely less annoying than most of what Woody's been churning out since he became irrelevant (I'm so glad we're beyond the point where we have to pretend to love everything Woody does. Really, some of his '80s stuff was horribly overrated. Hannah and Her Sisters? Puh-leeeeeeze).

I give Cassandra's Dream 3 Chips Ahoy out of 4. It's rated PG13 for drug use, discreet murder and Philip Glass music.

Woody And Scarlett At Work

"All right Scarlett. In this scene what I want to do is emphasize the breasts. Your character is a girl with a very large, round, enticing bosom. That's mainly what I want to get across to the audience. Also, you have an incredibly juicy ass. So I'm going to have you bend over and pick up a penny. But you drop it the first time see, so you have to bend over again. This is why I get nominated for Oscars, this stuff right here..."



"I'm worried about your shirt Scarlett. I think it may be far too loose. So I think what we have to do is, we have to have a guy spray you with a hose. So we're gonna have a guy watering his lawn, and then suddenly he turns, and he doesn't see you there and he gets water all over the front of your top. And then you stand there sort of surprised with your top wet. Also, I think we're gonna have to lose the bra."



"You know, I was thinking about that scene yesterday, the one where we show everyone what amazing melons you have, and I really don't think we got it. I think we're gonna have to shoot that one again. Only this time, I think we're gonna have you be on a trampoline. With no bra. And then from out of nowhere it starts raining, a torrential downpour, and you're soaking wet with no bra, but you keep jumping up and down on the trampoline. I think this could really be the key scene in the movie because, you know, it establishes the whole theme of the picture, which is that you have amazing breasts and I really want to have sex with you even though I'm a sick old man who has sex with his own adopted daughter..."

Woody And His Muse

Scarlett Johansson is in Barcelona filming a new movie with Woody Allen. The Woodman says this one, which is without a title as yet, is to be a "love-letter" to the Spanish city. Come on Wood - everyone knows that all your movies are now love-letters to Scarlett Johansson. Those big titties of hers make your little Jewish pecker pop up faster than Mariah Carey when someone says "free buffet." Really, it's lovely - the way you dote on Scarlett. It's almost as if she were your own adopted daughter.