Woody Allen

Probably its only because of my stay in the US, I have started liking Woody Allen way too much. His cinema might not have transcended boundaries of this country, to get the acclaim that some more profound directors have got. But his movies make so much sense here, mirroring the American life as beautifully as possible.

Now his movies are not like most Americans actually watch. His movies are those art-movies, the ones an average American would watch once every ten movies or so. Not quite unexpectedly, Woody Allen has been heavily influenced by European cinema instead. The characters in his movies, though carved out sharply in the script, are not so much of an imagined portrait of someone you hadn't seen yet. His characters are not exceedingly different from the ones in our daily lives either... and that is probably why neither does one have to have the taste of art-cinema, nor does anyone even need to relate some complex idealism to reality in order to comprehend Allen's existentialism.

The most profound of things could have been said with a sense of humor in his movies. The dialogues and the actions in the movie like you would expect, are just as natural as what you see in the people from everyday life.

I just finished watching melinda and melinda, and liked the movie. Its not really so much of a popular movie but I find it to be a powerful depiction of the Western life - the critical situations which individual desires bring you into, and the shimmering relationships that try to address them. The whole movie, like a good fiction, is so fluid and so gripping, that it becomes an emotional experience in itself. You can't avoid starting to ponder over your own life, while thinking about what you could possibly do to help melinda.