I want to go to Jazz Heaven.
From Janet Maslin at the New York Times:
No one in ''Stardust Memories'' is exempt from the film's brand of acid humor, least of all Mr. Allen himself. It may seem, at least for a while, as if Mr. Allen is shooting only at sitting ducks: ''Stardust Memories'' is inhabited by grotesques, sycophants, every kind of fool, and when the film takes aim at any of them it easily hits its mark. But the principal target is Mr. Allen, who serves not just as the film's star, director and author but as its only real focus. ''Stardust Memories'' is after big game.
''Stardust Memories,'' which opens today at the Baronet, the Little Carnegie and the Bay Cinema, invokes the mood of an early Fellini film as it swirls through the troubled recollections of a film director, played by Mr. Allen. Sandy Bates, the director, is renowned on earth, at film seminars and in outer space as a clever comedian. (''You want to do a service for mankind?'' ask some spacelings he meets, rather casually, in the film's surreal scheme. ''Tell funnier jokes.'') His gifts are admired way out of proportion to their actual worth. He is surrounded by fawning fans wherever he goes.
Mr. Allen places Sandy Bates at a weekend film course, where Sandy is seen doing a soft-shoe for the guests, wearing a top hat and tails and a wretched smile. Sandy is also seen answering hilariously stupid questions from the audience, signing autographs, being showered with gifts he can't use. Sandy's loathing for his fans is something Mr. Allen captures with deft, viciously funny strokes that cut right to the bone; the crowd scenes of ''Stardust Memories'' provide both its most effective moments and its most disturbing ones.
The throngs of extras in these scenes are terrible, one and all. There isn't a face on the screen that looks benign. But if Mr. Allen is wickedly funny in caricaturing these fans, he isn't any gentler when it comes to Sandy. In the deserted lobby of the Stardust Hotel, the dreamlike setting for this film seminar, Sandy is accosted by an old schoolmate who says he's now a cabdriver. ''You look good,'' Sandy lies, and the camera lingers patiently, watching Sandy squirm.
It is in its treatment of Sandy that ''Stardust Memories'' becomes most ambitious and most troubled. Sandy has a great deal in common with other characters Mr. Allen has played, most notably Alvy Singer of ''Annie Hall,'' but the character this time seems imbued with an intentional weariness. So many scenes here serve as pale echoes of ''Annie Hall'' that the effect is overpoweringly sad. As Alvy chased lobsters around his kitchen, Sandy chases a pigeon. Sandy gets sick to his stomach under stress, just as Alvy did. His confidant about his troubles with women is Tony Roberts once again, and when the film students speak up, they're photographed in a style that recalls Alvy's grade-school classmates in their schoolroom. And Sandy is still asking the same big questions Alvy asked, about what life is for and whether it's possible to love anyone. He's still not getting any answers.
Far from repeating himself carelessly, Mr. Allen appears to be using these echoes to emphasize those aspects of Sandy that have worn thin. In the midst of a desperately crowded movie - it takes three women, Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper and Marie-Christine Barrault, to offer a composite version of what Diane Keaton offered in ''Annie Hall'' - Sandy is a tired, unsympathetic figure standing alone. Far more than the Fellini overtones, these shades of ''Annie Hall'' give the present film the stylized wistfulness that lingers longer than the laughs.
Though he frets about large issues (like what the meaning of life may be) and small ones (like why his cook insists on making rabbit every night), Sandy doesn't have much of a middle range. Though Sandy himself is the film's most daring invention, its attitude towards him is incomplete. At times, it's blank enough to be damaging. ''Stardust Memories'' is full of questions, from the silly queries Sandy spends his life fielding to the earth-shattering ones he himself asks. But it doesn't go beyond that, and it suffers from a laziness of sorts. The elaborate Felliniesque structure seems more camouflaging than essential. The important moments - like a glimpse Sandy has of Dorrie, the woman played by Miss Rampling, a glimpse supposedly filled with an emotion that catches him by surprise - are announced rather than experienced.
As photographed by Gordon Willis and played by a cast of excellent though muted principals, ''Stardust Memories'' is starkly handsome and imbued with a very special bravado. This isn't Mr. Allen's most successful film - ''Annie Hall'' was that. It isn't his most earnest experiment - ''Interiors'' was far more so. It isn't even his first brush with fatigue or uncertainty since there were traces of these things in ''Manhattan.'' But ''Stardust Memories'' is his most provocative film thus far and perhaps his most revealing. Certainly it is the one that will inspire the most heated debate, though the film makes fun of those who take these things too seriously.
Technical Information:
Title: Stardust Memories
Year: 1980
Country: USA
Director: Woody Allen
Source: DVD5 Retail
DVD Format: NTSC
Container: .iso + mds
Size: 3.62 GB
Length: 1:28:24
Programs used: ImgBurn
Resolution: 720x480
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Video: MPEG2 @ ~3200 kb/s
Frame Rate: 29.97 fps
Audio 1: English- AC3 Stereo @ 192 kb/s
Audio 2: Spanish- AC3 Stereo @ 192 kb/s
Subtitles: Spanish, French, cc-English
Menu: Yes
Video: Untouched
DVD Extras: Theatrical trailer
(Use JDownloader to automate downloading)
Stardust Memories Megaupload Links