All things Woody Allen – a fansite, news and reviews
Woody Allen loves playing around in the past. Sweet And Lowdown goes back to the jazz age – the twenties and thirties. Which means lovely costumes, incredible cars – and a real challenge of finding locations. In Sweet And Lowdown, we don’t see the hip urban landscape of Manhattan that Allen sold to the world. […]
Small Time Crooks features one of Woody Allen’s great locations. One that should be on every great Woody Allen location guide – the cookie shop. It’s actually rare for Allen to take over such a public location for public filming. Otherwise, Small Time Crooks is an interesting mix of two New York’s – the schlubby […]
When Allen goes ‘period’, he tasks his team with finding locations that look like the past without being too far from his house. His team always do an incredible job – and The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion – one of his least loved and least successful films – looks great. Says Allen: “Everybody works […]
Hollywood Ending, despite the title, sees Allen remain faithful to New York City. The film spends a lot of the time inside a film studio. We suspect some of the offices and apartments are also sets created for the film. But there’s still a mix of gorgeous outdoor locations in Central Park, glamorous hotels and […]
Production has wrapped on Rifkin’s Festival, the apparent name of the 50th film to be written and directed by Woody Allen. It is set to be released in 2020, and here is our wrap up of all the details released so far. Warning: minor spoilers. The Story Here is what The Hollywood Reporter said about […]
Woody Allen’s films are usually tied to his beloved New York. But it’s only occasionally that he turns up the picture postcard prettiness of the city, and usually in romantic comedies. Anything Else mixes those postcard elements with a grittier side of New York as well. This isn’t a story about the glamorous types. Most […]
Who knows who knew at the time, but Melinda And Melinda would be Allen’s last film in New York and the US for several years. It’s once again modern day, and Allen mixes in a couple of gorgeous tourist locations in with impossibly beautiful apartments no one could afford. There’s a few we don’t know. […]
Woody Allen broke an incredible 28 year streak by filming outside of New York for Match Point. He was offered British funding and decided to decamp to Britain, work with a new crew, and tap into Britain’s vast acting talent pool. Allen’s idea for the script was originally to be set in Long Island. Moving […]
Scoop was the second Allen film to be set in London. Like he does in New York, Allen enjoys the finer neighbourhoods, even for low down characters. The lovely West London is the setting for the film. There is also an excursion to a beautiful property in Oxfordshire. There is a little nod to tourist […]
Cassandra’s Dream is Allen’s third film in the United Kingdom, and perhaps that familiarity allowed Allen to avoid the tourist landmarks. With more street level characters, it makes sense that Allen looked to less expensive parts of London than his other films. No doubt Allen looked to British kitchen sink dramas and the work of […]
Allen has always loved Spain – but who hasn’t? Yet, it took him many decades to finally make a film there. When he did, he crafted a story far away from the skyscrapers and fancy apartments of his other films. Released in 2008, Vicky Cristina Barcelona was unique in Allen’s extensive catalogue of films. Many […]
Whatever Works is an oddity in Allen’s career in this period. Released in 2009, it was the only exclusively New York film in a run of 11 films, when Allen was mainly shooting in Europe. Allen returns to New York, and focus is not Allen’s usual upper, more posh addresses. He sticks to downtown, Chinatown […]
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger sees Allen return to London, and is the last of four films he made there in the second half of the 00s. London doesn’t get the postcard treatment afforded by Allen to Manhattan or Paris. Instead, he loves the streets and the shadows, the overcast skies. Stranger features […]
Allen had worked in Paris before (Whats New Pussycat, Love And Death, Everyone Says I Love You), but his love of the city is best shown in Midnight In Paris. And audiences and critics alike flocked to the film. Of all his European travels, he has never made a city look so impressive. It helps […]
Released in 2011, Midnight In Paris was a huge success for Woody Allen. Part of it must be that location, and Allen managed to make Paris on screen as beautiful as any city had even been. Much like what he did for Manhattan in 1979, Allen opened Midnight In Paris with a montage of the […]
Allen continues his European tourist excursion with To Rome With Love in 2012. And by now, Allen makes no apologies for the postcard perfect scenes, covering just about every tourist cliché in Rome. It’s classic cinematic escapism as we see Rome at it’s impossible best, with various stories of romance and comedy mixed in. By […]
Blue Jasmine saw Allen return to America after another stint abroad, but he surprised his audience by not returning to New York – at least not fully. Allen announced that the film would be made in San Francisco, where he made his very first film Take The Money And Run (1969). Although some scenes would […]
Café Society was one of Allen’s most lavish films in recent years. Not only were the costumes and sets amazing in their recreation of the 1930s, Allen also shot in two major cities – Los Angeles (for the first time since Annie Hall in 1977) and his beloved New York. Allen and his team found […]
Woody Allen returned to France for the fourth time in his career for 2014’s Magic In The Moonlight, but this time he avoided his beloved Paris for more sunshine and open space – the breathtaking French Riviera. Part of the choice for setting is the beautiful houses and the natural countryside could pass for the 1930s. […]
Allen surprised his audience once again when he chose Rhode Island for his location for 2015’s Irrational Man. New York, Paris, London, Rome….Newport? Yet Rhode Island seemed to fit the bill. After several years of European funding, Allen had secured some US funding, meaning he could now stay in the US to make films. But his […]