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Here is the first look at the second collaboration between Woody Allen and Vittorio Storaro:

 

 

It was posted yesterday. The film will premiere on 14 October 2017 at the New York Film Festival and will be available on 1 December in select theatres.

 

IndieWire has all the best shots and The Woody Allen Pages has a shot-by-shot breakdown.

 

It looks very candy-coloured, doesn't it? And not much unlike the last film even though the time periods are different. In fact, it seems like a continuation or a variation on a theme. People are already declaring it visually stunning and saying no wonder, since it's Storaro.

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Pretty, but the trailer doesn't really give us much insight to the movie. I have a feeling it's probably not very good. His last one was so/so, only really watched it due to liking the lead and wanting to see the F65 run by a 'film' guy. Looked really nice.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, the point was not the film; it was cinematography. You and I both no that there is a pretty good probability that the film won't be good – we have now become accustomed to think so given Allen's previous several films.

 

I've actually never posted about these films because of what they're about or anything like that. My main goal was to see the impressions about the cinematography of those movies, which I still think is a main purpose and goal of this whole forum and this particular subforum together with In Production.

 

At first I thought that Storaro went for diminishing the sharpness of this one compared to the last. In the trailer opening, is that diffusion, or whatever it is, a product of computer correction or on-camera filtering?

 

I'm a little surprised about how it looks – I expected it to be totally different, but at times it almost seems it's the same movie as the last one. In terms of cinematography.

 

I don't get it why is he so in love with that really powerful and overexposed backlight in hair. It's everywhere.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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The first reviews are up, too.

 

Variety:

 

Woody Allen films now come in three essential flavors, or maybe it just comes down to three levels of quality. Once in a blue jasmine moon, he comes up with an enthralling act of high-wire inspiration, like “Match Point” or “Blue Jasmine,” that proves that he can still be as major as any filmmaker out there. Then there are the quaintly crafted, phoned-in mediocrities, like “Café Society” or “To Rome with Love,” where the jokes feel old and the situations older, like the Woody Allen version of paint by numbers. But then there are the middle-drawer Allen films that still percolate with energy and flair, like “Bullets Over Broadway” or “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” They’re too baubly and calculated to be great, with each Woody trope locking into place, yet damned if they don’t hold you and even, in their way, add up to something (even if it’s ultimately something minor).

Wonder Wheel” is one of those movies.


The Guardian:

Don’t tell any of this to the Oscar-winning Apocalypse Now cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who seems blissfully unaware of the film’s many failings, gracing it with an aesthetic so beautiful that it almost feels like a waste. Allen’s films have rarely been remembered for their visuals, but Storaro, who also gave Café Society an unmistakable sheen, does fantastic, awards-worthy work here. Each scene is carefully, lovingly composed and he takes great pleasure in lighting the actors, whether it be in golden sunlight, bleak off-season greys or a selection of woozily reflected neon lights. There’s also a surprisingly ambitious and vivid recreation of 1950s Coney Island and coupled with Storaro’s aesthetic, it’s frustrating that the practical craftsmanship of others isn’t supported by a script that brings the requisite heft to the table.

It’s by no means the worst of Allen’s later films (Cassandra’s Dream remains unrivaled in that department) and the flashes of brilliance from Winslet and stunning visuals do lift it but there’s an overwhelming, existential pointlessness to it all. Allen’s lazy unengaged script is the work of someone short on inspiration, so why is he still churning these films out? If competent is now considered a compliment for him then why is anyone still funding them? Like Winslet’s character, Allen is stuck in the past and Wonder Wheel is a crushing reminder of his present.


Vulture:

Did Allen ask his cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, to pretend it was a Bertolucci movie? The colors are saturated, with oranges so intense that this film should have been called Tangerine. In Winslet’s big monologue, the lighting goes from normal to an orange bath to normal again, like in the theater. It’s lovely but over-the-top. So are Winslet’s last scenes. After Ginny’s good speech about “playing a waitress,” why didn’t Allen build on her insight into the difference between the roles she plays and her essence? How can she be a truly tragic character when she behaves in the end exactly the way we predict she will?
Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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Vanity Fair – “Wonder Wheel Review: A Pretty Melodrama with a Woody Allen Problem – Though gorgeous to behold, the writer-director’s latest has some familiar issues.”:

 

I did say that there is a beautiful movie in there somewhere, though. And I think there is, if Santo Loquasto’s gorgeous production design and Vittorio Storaro’s lush cinematography had been employed in service of a better script. Wonder Wheel’s careful compositions, saturated in shifting primary hues, really are lovely. They lend the film its only real poetry, evoking an emotionally alluring mood piece that might have been, had someone other than Allen made the rest of the movie. Maybe Loquasto, Storaro, and Winslet could isolate their work and shop it around to some theater companies. I’d be eager to see what they could come up with together, when they’re not stuck on Allen’s wheel—turning and turning, never getting anywhere

 

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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The Huffington Post has a brutal title: Surprise, Surprise: Woody Allen Made Another Lousy Movie:

 

“Wonder Wheel” is further enhanced by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who also gave Allen’s “Café Society” a sun-speckled elegance. Here, Storaro frames Coney Island with lush nostalgia. When things are going swell for Ginny and Mickey, the sunny sky’s blue hues glisten against pearly clouds. When events turn dreary, the gray of the rain crackles, as if disappointment is drizzling on the characters. In other words, Storaro does Allen’s work for him.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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You haven't justified your terrible argument position. All these things are subjective, but terrible is a level way below the Blade Runner film. I've heard people have walked out, but people also walk out of Godard and Werner Herzog films, but these aren't usually called terrible films.

 

Perhaps not what you were expecting is a better description or not your thing.

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Vittorio Storaro and Edward Lachman held a masterclass at the 55th New York Film Festival. Here is some of what they talked about:

 

http://filmmakermagazine.com/103696-color-crews-and-shooting-digitally-ed-lachman-and-vittorio-storaro-at-the-nyff/

 

For those of you who know Italian, here is more:

 

http://www.lavocedinewyork.com/arts/spettacolo/2017/10/16/nyff-lequilibrio-tra-luce-e-buio-di-storaro-la-piazza-politica-di-ferrara/

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  • 2 weeks later...

A few bits from Storaro:


Indeed, “Wonder Wheel” — to be released by Amazon on Dec. 1 and starring Kate Winslet as a former actress now working as a clam house waitress longing for what might have been — is a vibrant, lushly lit exercise in expressionism. And it was Vittorio Storaro, the three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer who first collaborated with Allen on “Café Society,” who really pushed the director outside his comfort zone.

“In any movie I try to find a kind of dialogue,” Storaro says. “Coney Island reminded me of illustrations from Norman Rockwell and the great painters after the Second World War. They make you think something is nice and positive, but that’s the surface. When you go into the story you see a different reality.”

Storaro was particularly interested in the central conflict between Winslet’s character, Ginny, and her stepdaughter, Carolina (Juno Temple), who comes along and whisks away the adulterous Ginny’s younger lover, Mickey (Justin Timberlake). Storaro doused Winslet in reds and oranges and Temple in blues. “We don’t see light or color only through our eyes,” he says. “It’s practically a physical energy. That theory, the physiology of color, is what really interested me.”

 

 

More in Variety.

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Well, the point was not the film; it was cinematography.

 

I've actually never posted about these films because of what they're about

But the photography serves the story, at least in mass-market pictures. We're the only ones who go to see a picture for the cinematography. No story, no audience.

The film itself always gets discussed pretty thoroughly here.

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  • 1 month later...

Storaro is also on board for Allen's next film (A Rainy Day in New York) which I think has already finished shooting. It's interesting seeing the two work together, some interesting results arising.

 

I asked in a post above, #15, which camera were they using for that film, but no one seems to have seen it.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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