>Did you see what Sarris wrote?: "I may still give an edge to
>1979’s Manhattan and 1977’s Annie Hall, but not by too much."
>
>I've seen reviews praise VCB, and some trashing it (one
>reviewer said this made him give up on Woody for good or
>something), but Sarris' comment made me want to see what
>PTPers thought of it.

No, I had not read that comment from Sarris, but I can definitely tell you it's nuts. Let's not even dare to mention those two classics in this conversation again. As far as being the best from Woody in ages, is it better than Cassandra's Dream? Yup, but that's no great feat. Never saw Scoop, but it certainly isn't better than Match Point. So it's the best film he's done in, what, two years, and it's still piss poor.

I hadn't read more than a couple headlines from a couple reviews. However, after seeing it, I headed over to the film's imdb boards and was surprised as hell to see most of the posts there being positive. I use those boards now as sort of the common folk's version of a RT / metacritic, and while you still have to wade through trolls and pre-teens mouthing off, usually they're pointed in the right direction. However, with them, with Andrew Sarris, whomever, I honestly don't know what accounts for the strong difference in opinion. Lazy filmmaking is lazy filmmaking, at least I always thought. (blue23 and I seem to agree consistently on movies, so I was relieved to see him in the same lane with me.)

>>And Scarlett Johansson? She should make movies for
>eight-year
>>olds, because that's where her acting skills lie.
>
>What did you think of her in Lost in Translation?

I was half-curious but mostly afraid to revisit LIT after coming out the theater yesterday. That's a movie I liked and thought she was at least suitable in, if not good. Maybe that was a case of the casting / character being just right though. Then she was appropriately, hmm, aloof, let's say, in The Man Who Wasn't There and fine enough in Ghost World. So, it's not like she's God's gift to the Razzie Awards, but she plays pensive about as well as I play concert violin.

>What % of screen time would you say Clarkson, Bardem, Cruz,
>and Hall respectively had?

Clarkson has three, perhaps four scenes. One early on and then she's absent for a while. 10% maybe.

Bardem might have the most screen time. He and the non-actor are neck-and-neck for that honor, at least. (Though Scarlett has a really clumsy disappearance from the movie for a bit.)

Cruz might be talked about on screen more than she actually appears. (You should cringe at the utterly contrived way her and Bardem's characters are first introduced into the story by Clarkson and dude who plays her husband.) Anyway, she's there maybe 15% of the time. Four or five scenes.

Hall is as close to a Woody stand-in as the film has, though she comes in behind Bardem and Johansson for screen time.