Top 250 Challenge: 225!!

Manhattan (1979)
Number 200 on IMDb's Top 250

In Manhattan, Isac Davis (Woody Allen) is a divorced writer of TV shows unhappy with his job. His ex-wife left him to live with another woman and is writing a book about her relationship with Isac. He presently dates a seventeen years old high-school student, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), who is in love with him, but he does not like her. When he meets Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton), the mistress of his married best friend Yale (Michael Murphy), he has a crush on her. He finishes with Tracy and has an affair with Mary, affecting the lives of many persons including his own. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: There is a clause in the studio's contract that stipulates that the film must always be shown in letterbox format in any home release or broadcast/cable airing. Presentations of this film on television (broadcast, cable or home video) required preservation of the widescreen format. This presented a problem in the U.S. since certain F.C.C. technical regulations did not permit a portion of the screen to be left blank as in letterboxing. The problem was solved by making the area above and below the frame gray. The regulations have since been changed and letterboxing with black borders is now permitted. While this is Woody Allen's least favorite of the movies he has directed, this was the most commercially successful film of his career. He said years later that he was still in disbelief that he "got away with it".

In this movie Woody Allen really stretches his acting ability by playing...himself, again. Wow, what range. Woody Allen is funny in a neurotic, self deprecating sort of way and he can really write, but it is basically just the same movie with different punchlines. This time he even has an affair with a 17 year old, he's 42, talk about life imitating art.

Oh Well, Next Up: The Thing, gee that is a pretty big change of pace there don't cha think?