Woody Allen

"September" is Woody Allen in his Ingmar Bergman mode. That is to say, Woody Allen with no laughs; Woody Allen seriously zeroing in on unhappy relationships. The theme is unrequited love and, in this film, there is quite a lot of that going around. Lane (Mia Farrow) has retreated to the family summer house in Vermont to recover from a suicide attempt. Howard (Denholm Elliott), a lonely widower who lives nearby, falls in love with her. But Lane has fallen for Peter (Sam Waterston)

Back in the days when Woody Allen made unadulterated (but adulterous) comedies, two of his funniest were Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) and Love and Death (1975). They mark his transition from the parodist to filmmaker. Everything . . ., a hilarious riff on Dr. David Reuben's self-help book, has seven different episodes, each shot in the style of a different director. A personal favorite is the Stanley Kubrick-style futuristic sequence with Burt Reynolds as a reluctant sperm.

It's usual to write a biography about an icon who is young and hot or old and dead. So why do one on Woody Allen, age 56 and neither red-hot nor stone-cold? For another good reason: Allen has had a very rich 40-year career in show business. It started with his days as a teenager sending in gags to newspaper columnists. In his early 20s, he was pulling down $1,700 a week writing for The Garry Moore Show. In his mid-20s, he chucked it all to do stand-up comedy for $25 a week.

TORONTO - It's been a long time since Woody Allen acted in a film he didn't direct. It's probably even longer - as in never - since he's played a pimp. The 76-year-old will do just that in "Fading Gigolo," a movie conceived and written by John Turturro. Turturro will direct and - of course - play the hooker. The johns? Those would be Sofia Vergara, Vanessa Paradis and Sharon Stone. There were plenty of highly touted Hollywood movies at the Toronto International Film Festival. But somewhat below the radar were a number of projects, such as "Fading Gigolo," that are seeking attention within the industry as their principals talk them up to distributors.

Old-timey music (Little Jack Little singing "You Ought to Be in Pictures"), tasteful white-on-black credits . . . yup, two seconds into it and you know it's a new Woody Allen film. Funny thing, though: The guy playing the self-obsessed, libido-driven, having-a-midlife-crisis protagonist - a successful magazine journalist by the name of Lee Simon - sounds like Woody, but he sure doesn't look like him. In an act of mimicry that is at once remarkable and remarkably distracting, Kenneth Branagh stars as the filmmaker's alter ego, using the whole array of Woodyesque gestures and speech patterns (the flailing hands, the angsty gab, the by-way-of-Brooklyn accent)

Woody Allen leaped to the defense of Jackie Mason Thursday night in a most unlikely setting - a Big Apple Democratic fund-raising event for mayoral candidate David Dinkins. Dinkens stiffened noticeably when Allen brought the subject up. "I think that he's in no way racially prejudiced, that he was just joking," the filmmaker said of Mason, who, among other things, said Jews vote for blacks out of guilt. "These are the same jokes that he's always made. The press was pious and foolish, and you know that he got a raw deal.

With funny situations, some excellent one-liners, interesting and amusing supporting actors and well-drawn dialogue, The Marshall Chronicles has only one problem: Its central character grates your brain with his continual, third-rate imitation of an adolescent Woody Allen. Beginning tonight, the new ABC series sends Anything but Love on hiatus and takes over its time slot, Wednesdays at 9:30 (Channel 6). Chronicles is a cross between Head of the Class and The Wonder Years, with Joshua Rifkind playing Marshall Brightman, a New York teenager who turns to the camera five or six times a show to explain the nature of his angst.

"Apparently, they were doing fine until he rented 'G.I. Jane' and she rented 'The Jackal.'" - Conan O'Brien, weighing in on the Bruce Willis-Demi Moore split Here's an unexpected new chapter in the nasty saga of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Yesterday, the filmmaker wondered plaintively why he hadn't been invited to Monday's funeral of Farrow's mother, Maureen O'Sullivan. Our guess: Something to do with Allen's sleeping with O'Sullivan's daughter and granddaughter at the same time.

A big week for new arrivals at your video store includes the latest from Woody Allen, a psychological drama starring Faye Dunaway, another consideration of the effects the Vietnam War had on those who fought it, a bittersweet tale of a fading high school hero and an odd rethinking of the opera Carmen. ANOTHER WOMAN (1988) (Orion) $89.98. 81 minutes. Gena Rowlands, Ian Holm, Gene Hackman, Mia Farrow. Instead of being a homage to Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen's sobering study of a cold academic who finds it impossible to live a life of the mind and ignore the heart actually plays like a Bergman film.

Forty-three eager learners are jammed into a class planned for 25. What's the professor's secret? For starters, the students actually are teachers. And the title of Amitram Amitai's two-credit college course is "The Films of Woody Allen. " In fact, it was the students' urgings that led the film expert to develop what he believes is the Delaware Valley's first film course devoted solely to Woody Allen. Amitai, 52, teaches in the evening division of Gratz College, which specializes in Hebrew and Jewish subjects.

THE CYNDI LAUPER -scored "Kinky Boots" has earned a leading 13 Tony Award nominations, with the British import "Matilda: The Musical" close behind with 12. Those two crowd-pleasers will compete for the best-musical prize with the acrobatic "Bring It On: The Musical" and "A Christmas Story, The Musical. " Four big Broadway musicals. Four adaptations. "Matilda" is from the Roald Dahl book. The other three are based on movies. So, basically, the risk-averse, get-off-the-couch entertainment industry has come down to this: The big movies are usually sequels to - or remakes of - other big movies or television shows, and the big theatrical shows are based on not-so-big movies (unless they're "The Lion King" or "Spider-Man")

Mickey Rose, 77, a childhood friend of Woody Allen's who cowrote his movies Bananas and Take the Money and Run , died of cancer April 7 at his home in Beverly Hills, his daughter, Jennifer, told the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Rose and Allen met in high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., and became friends. They shared a love of jazz and baseball. Mr. Rose met his late wife, Judy, through a blind date arranged by Allen. Mr. Rose became a TV comedy writer. He wrote for Johnny Carson and Sid Caesar and for shows including The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour , All in the Family , and The Odd Couple . Allen said Rose was one of the funniest people he has known - and a "wonderful first baseman.

With the big holiday coming up Thursday, match the Thanksgiving - or Thanksgiving-themed - story or poem with its author, the song with its singer, or the film or television program with its director. Answers on C3 . 1. "Alice's Restaurant. " 2. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving . 3. "The Courtship of Miles Standish. " 4. Hannah and Her Sisters . 5. Home for the Holidays . 6. "It's Thanksgiving. " 7. "My Triumph. " 8. Planes, Trains & Automobiles . 9. "Thanksgiving Song.

TORONTO - It's been a long time since Woody Allen acted in a film he didn't direct. It's probably even longer - as in never - since he's played a pimp. The 76-year-old will do just that in "Fading Gigolo," a movie conceived and written by John Turturro. Turturro will direct and - of course - play the hooker. The johns? Those would be Sofia Vergara, Vanessa Paradis and Sharon Stone. There were plenty of highly touted Hollywood movies at the Toronto International Film Festival. But somewhat below the radar were a number of projects, such as "Fading Gigolo," that are seeking attention within the industry as their principals talk them up to distributors.

Kris: Her mom made Kim's sex tape In an explosive allegation that adds even more sordid spice to their rancorous, rancid, divorce, Kris Humphries claims the sex tape that made his wife of 72 days, Kim Kardashian, famous was conceived by her mom, Kris Jenner. TMZ says this is one of the nasty tidbits about the Kardashian Kabal that Kris shared with his ex-gf, Myla Sinanaj. Humphries reportedly told Myla that Jenner even made Kim reshoot the vid, which costars a hunkoid identified as Ray J., because she didn't look hot enough.

PARIS - Paris is a city where possibilities are endless, expectations are high, and no one doubts that magic can happen. Anyone who saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris , his recent homage to the City of Light (up for four Academy Awards Sunday), knows what I'm talking about. Allen's protagonist, a Hollywood screenwriter who yearns to be a serious scribe, takes to wandering the rainy streets of Paris at night in search of a muse. On one such night, he accompanies a couple in 1920s dress to what he assumes is a costume party.

* AMERICAN MASTERS. WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY. 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday, WHYY 12. WARNING: Watching "Woody Allen: A Documentary" - a two-part "American Masters" that premieres Sunday - is likely to only lead to more time on the couch. And, no, not the one in the psychoanalyst's office. I found it impossible to watch Allen and others discussing his life's work without wanting to immediately rewatch a number of his movies, if only to figure out why he thinks he screwed up some of the ones I remember liking best.

The three new one-acts combined into a Broadway show called Relatively Speaking come across as a comedic evolution in time-lapse. It all goes by in barely more than two hours, beginning with the subtle, ending with the zany. We start with writer/filmmaker Ethan Coen's "Talking Cure," a facile piece that ups the sharp comic ante as it progresses. After a four-minute break, we're into classic Elaine May, a piece called "George Is Dead," with more nuance and bigger laughs as it turns from a character study into a poignant scenario that works.

LOS ANGELES - Woody Allen has his biggest hit in a quarter-century. Now the question is how much further it can go. "Midnight in Paris" has in the last week surpassed all of the 75-year-old filmmaker's releases since 1986 at the box office, selling a total of $28.6 million worth of tickets, including $4.5 million this past weekend. That is Allen's highest mark since 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters," surpassing such recent hits as 2008's "Vicky Christina Barcelona" and 2005's "Match Point," both of which took in just over $23 million each.

'Just remember that you have to be the most fabulous life of the party that ever existed. " Those were Woody Allen's instructions to Alison Pill when she went to work on his latest endeavor, Midnight in Paris , last year - in, yes, Paris. Pill plays Zelda Fitzgerald , Jazz Age muse and spouse of F. Scott . What exactly the Roaring '20s flapper is doing in Allen's movie is something that should be left for moviegoers to discover on their own. In fact, Pill, the 25-year-old Canadian actress of TV ( In Treatment )