Todd Plitt / Contour / Gallo Images
Todd Plitt / Contour / Gallo Images

Only happy when it rains



Woody Allen was probably the only man in Britain this summer hoping for bad weather. John Hiscock visits the set of the self-deprecating director making his fourth film based in the English capital and meets a man who has accepted that 'life is meaningless and empty'. Woody Allen squints into the bright sun that is bathing London's Notting Hill in a rare, warm glow and shakes his head in irritation. "I hate sunshine," he mutters. "It should be raining." Then he shrugs philosophically. "But those are the breaks. We'll have to shoot it differently or maybe use a garden hose on the windows." The 73-year-old New Yorker is currently making his fourth film to be set in London, and this time the weather isn't being kind to him. Instead of the grey clouds and rain he loves, he has endured days of sunshine and blue skies. "The sun is a very, very big problem," he says gloomily.

He is taking a brief break from filming a scene for his as-yet-untitled romantic comedy, which stars Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts and Freida Pinto, the Indian beauty from Slumdog Millionaire. The scene called for Brolin and Pinto to be talking in a restaurant while taking shelter from the rain. The rain is an important part of the story, Allen explains with a straight face: "If you go back through my films you find that it's a tip-off that whenever the boy meets the girl and it's a rain scene, they always mean business. I'm a big rain fan. I think it's beautiful in life and on the screen, so when Josh invites Freida to lunch and she says that it's pouring with rain and he brings an umbrella, you know right away something serious is going to happen. If they had met on a sunny day, it could just be platonic."

As always, he is keeping the plot and title to himself until the film is finished, although he allows: "Josh is playing a very frustrated writer who's having problems with his family and gets into an extramarital relationship, and hopefully it's interesting to people as well as being amusing and also serious. It's a delicate line that I try and hit, and sometimes I can do it and sometimes I can't."

Occasionally he thinks of a title while he is still filming, but he says, "I never title a movie until it's finished because if I look at the film and it's no good I don't like to give it an aggressive title. I'd give it what I call one of my hiding titles - the kind of title that is low key and promises nothing so people are less disappointed by it. But if I feel the film is good, I give it an aggressive, confident title and then hope for the best."

Allen speaks with a deadpan delivery in probably the same style he used many years ago during his days as a stand-up comedian, which makes it difficult to know when he is joking or when he is serious. We are talking in a converted church hall, just around the corner from the restaurant where he is shooting, which he is using to house his staff and the few extras working that day. Listening to him expound his wry views on love, life and filmmaking is one of the better entertainments available in London at the moment.

He is wearing khaki trousers, a floppy sun hat and a blue and white striped shirt and talks in a guilelessly downbeat manner about his lack of hope for the future, his low expectations for his movies and his fear of swine flu. He did not want to shake my hand, although, he insisted: "I'm not one of those crazy people who washes constantly and puts little white gloves on before I touch a doorknob or something. I'm not that crazy, but I do wash my hands for what I know to be a sufficient amount of time." That time, he says, is as long as it takes to sing the lyrics to Happy Birthday twice.

Allen shoots quickly and economically, using small crews and rarely issuing directing instructions. Despite paying his actors minimum rates, he never has any problems getting the cast he wants: most actors would willingly work for him for nothing. "I rely very much on the actors and actresses and I almost never direct them because people like Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts are wonderful actors," he says. "They come in and do the part and if I feel I'm not getting exactly what I want, I whisper something to them. I tell them I need them to be a little more sad or a little more energetic. Once in a great while I have to tell them to speak slower or some innocuous thing, but very rarely. I almost never have to speak to them because they know exactly what they're doing and I don't want to interfere with their creativity."

He never writes his screenplays with specific actors in mind, so if someone he casts is not available or drops out - as happened in the current film with Nicole Kidman - he has no problem replacing them. (The British actress Lucy Punch stepped in for Kidman.) The only one he felt was irreplaceable was Diane Keaton, his Annie Hall star and one-time lover. "When I was working with her there was a chemistry that I wouldn't have had with any other actress. No one else could have played Annie Hall or those other characters like she did. Diane was one of a kind and different from everybody else I've ever worked with."

Allen's five years of making films in Europe have coincided with an upturn in his film fortunes. He had a lean spell in the United States, in which he made a series of flops - Small Time Crooks, The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, Anything Else and Melinda And Melinda. Then the London-set Match Point, a romantic thriller with a surprisingly bleak ending, earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, while Vicky Cristina Barcelona, filmed two years ago in Barcelona, won Penélope Cruz a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and a Golden Globe.

He returned to New York for Whatever Works, which he originally wrote more than 30 years ago for the Jewish actor Zero Mostel, who died in 1977. He took the script out of his drawer when the writers' strike loomed and he needed to make a film quickly. The American comedian Larry David, after protesting that he could not act, stepped into the role of the misanthropic intellectual who becomes entangled with the family of a runaway girl he meets and befriends.

London has also proved conducive to his form of filmmaking and, despite the weather problems, he enjoys being in the city where he also filmed Scoop and Cassandra's Dreams. "I just go on the street and shoot. Everyone's very nice here, the crews are first rate, and I usually love the weather, because if I was shooting in New York in the summer, it would be hot and sunny and muggy, whereas in London it should be cool and grey, which is very good for photography. This summer there's been much more sun than I wanted, and it's caused some delays and problems."

One would think that after 50 films, 14 Oscar nominations and two wins, Allen would know exactly what he was doing when it comes to filmmaking. Not a bit of it, he says bluntly. "It doesn't work that way. It's a new thing each time so you never learn anything. Maybe a bit of technique, that's all. I don't know how to do this film because it has completely different problems than all my other films. When I'm making a film I never learn anything that will help me on the next one. So nothing I learnt on my previous films will help me with this one."

He is in London with Soon-Yi, his wife of 12 years who is 35 years his junior and the Korean-born adopted daughter of his former girlfriend Mia Farrow, and their two adopted daughters, Bechet, nine and Manzie, eight, both named after jazz musicians. Before shooting began, they all spent several days watching the tennis at Wimbledon. To fit his new life as a transatlantic filmmaker, he and Soon-Yi sold the town house on New York's Upper East Side, for which they paid US$20 million (Dh73.5 million) in 1999, for $28 million (Dh102 million). Previously, he made a $12 million (Dh44 million) profit on the Fifth Avenue penthouse he had bought in the late 1970s for $600,000 (Dh2.2 million), and he freely admits he has made far more money out of his property deals than he has from his cinematic career.

Allen began his show business career 60 years ago, sending jokes to the columnists Walter Winchell and Earl Wilson. He became a gag writer for such comics as Sid Caesar, Art Carney and Buddy Hackett and made his debut as a standup comedian at New York's Blue Angel in 1960. He was the first guest host to stand in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1965. The following year he made his film acting and writing debut with What's New, Pussycat? and had his first play, Don't Drink The Water, produced on Broadway.

Today he is fit, alert and funny, although he is somewhat hard of hearing and leans forward, sometimes cupping his hand against his ear, to hear what is said. For someone who has achieved such iconic status and manages to attract some of the world's biggest stars to work for him for very little, he is refreshingly self-mocking and seems totally free of any ego or self-importance. Despite his two Oscar wins - for Annie Hall and Hannah And Her Sisters - and a slew of awards from around the world, he does not have high expectations for the films he makes nowadays. "When you first start out you're always striving for greatness and perfection, and then after some years reality sets in and you realise that you're not going to get it," he says.

"One of the things that's so fascinating about an art form is that it may be good, mediocre or terrible, but it's not perfect, so when it's over you're constantly impelled to try another one because you suffer from the delusion that you can get perfection. Intellectually, I've given up and I'm happy that the picture is not an embarrassment. I start out thinking it's going to be the greatest thing ever made and when I see what I've done I'm always saying, 'I'll do anything to save this from being an embarrassment.'

"There's not much pleasure in directing. I get up very early in the morning and come to the set and stand around all day while the cinematographer spends three hours lighting the set, then I get 30 seconds to do the scene and then we move on and he lights for another three hours and I get another 30 seconds. It's tedious. I don't do it in order; just a piece here and a piece there and it never looks like anything and you never imagine it's going to come together in a story. The pleasure is when I get home and look at all the footage and sit down and put it together and put in the music and make it look like something."

He may play down his career successes with characteristic self-deprecation, but Allen counts his blessings gratefully. "I've been very lucky in my life and things have worked out well within the limited framework of existence. I'm 73 now and any minute I'm going to get old and infirm and keel over. You know, I'm subject to all the terrible things that happen but within the context of a very grim human existence, I've had a very nice life.

"People have had unspeakably horrible lives, so I've been incredibly lucky and have not had any major health problems and I've had parents with great longevity and I've been in love with some beautiful women who have made enormous contributions to my life and I've got great kids." Then he pauses and thinks for a moment. "But, you know, I could leave this room now and be hit by a falling piano." If he is to be believed - and the answer is possibly not entirely - Allen's view of existence and humankind's place in the universe is a dark and dismal one. "Life is hard, harsh, brutal, short and nasty and there's no hope for us," he states baldly.

"You'll go away thinking I'm pessimistic and cynical, but I'm not. I just feel that our job is to accept the fact that life is meaningless and empty and we're at a random event in a meaningless kind of universe that is eventually going to be gone. I always sound grim when I say this and people always accuse me of being cynical and pessimistic, but I'm not - I'm realistic and I feel those people who sell themselves a bill of goods about how things are going to turn out OK in the end are slightly deluded because things don't turn out OK; they turn out very disappointingly."

Then, without the glimmer of a smile, he asks: "Have I depressed you sufficiently?" Inspite of his gloomy prognosis, it seems the only thing he really does not enjoy about his life is getting older. "Everyone seems to think there's something kind of divine or mellow in getting older, but there's no advantage at all," he says. "Gradually you disintegrate. Your hearing goes, your eyesight goes and you're walking a little slower. You don't suddenly get wise and accept the world for what it is and accept people for what they are and suddenly realise what love is. None of that happens. What happens is your bones ache more." He stands up. "I've got to go back and be bullied by the actors," he says. Around the corner, outside the restaurant, his crew has rigged up a rain machine and water is beating against the windows and on to the pavements, drenching surprised passers-by as well as extras with umbrellas. "Ah, that's better," says Allen with a rare smile. "Rain. Lovely."

SPECS

Engine: 2-litre direct injection turbo
Transmission: 7-speed automatic
Power: 261hp
Torque: 400Nm
Price: From Dh134,999

The specs: 2018 Renault Megane

Price, base / as tested Dh52,900 / Dh59,200

Engine 1.6L in-line four-cylinder

Transmission Continuously variable transmission

Power 115hp @ 5,500rpm

Torque 156Nm @ 4,000rpm

Fuel economy, combined 6.6L / 100km

Biog

Age: 50

Known as the UAE’s strongest man

Favourite dish: “Everything and sea food”

Hobbies: Drawing, basketball and poetry

Favourite car: Any classic car

Favourite superhero: The Hulk original

EMILY IN PARIS: SEASON 3

Created by: Darren Star

Starring: Lily Collins, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Ashley Park

Rating: 2.75/5

Is it worth it? We put cheesecake frap to the test.

The verdict from the nutritionists is damning. But does a cheesecake frappuccino taste good enough to merit the indulgence?

My advice is to only go there if you have unusually sweet tooth. I like my puddings, but this was a bit much even for me. The first hit is a winner, but it's downhill, slowly, from there. Each sip is a little less satisfying than the last, and maybe it was just all that sugar, but it isn't long before the rush is replaced by a creeping remorse. And half of the thing is still left.

The caramel version is far superior to the blueberry, too. If someone put a full caramel cheesecake through a liquidiser and scooped out the contents, it would probably taste something like this. Blueberry, on the other hand, has more of an artificial taste. It's like someone has tried to invent this drink in a lab, and while early results were promising, they're still in the testing phase. It isn't terrible, but something isn't quite right either.

So if you want an experience, go for a small, and opt for the caramel. But if you want a cheesecake, it's probably more satisfying, and not quite as unhealthy, to just order the real thing.

 

 

COMPANY PROFILE

Company name: Revibe
Started: 2022
Founders: Hamza Iraqui and Abdessamad Ben Zakour
Based: UAE
Industry: Refurbished electronics
Funds raised so far: $10m
Investors: Flat6Labs, Resonance and various others

PROFILE BOX:

Company/date started: 2015

Founder/CEO: Rami Salman, Rishav Jalan, Ayush Chordia

Based: Dubai, UAE

Sector: Technology, Sales, Voice, Artificial Intelligence

Size: (employees/revenue) 10/ 100,000 downloads

Stage: 1 ($800,000)

Investors: Eight first-round investors including, Beco Capital, 500 Startups, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Hala Fadel, Odin Financial Services, Dubai Angel Investors, Womena, Arzan VC

 

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs

Engine: Single front-axle electric motor
Power: 218hp
Torque: 330Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 402km (claimed)
Price: From Dh215,000 (estimate)
On sale: September

COMPANY PROFILE

Company name: Nomad Homes
Started: 2020
Founders: Helen Chen, Damien Drap, and Dan Piehler
Based: UAE and Europe
Industry: PropTech
Funds raised so far: $44m
Investors: Acrew Capital, 01 Advisors, HighSage Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Partech, Precursor Ventures, Potluck Ventures, Knollwood and several undisclosed hedge funds

THE DETAILS

Deadpool 2

Dir: David Leitch

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Justin Dennison, Zazie Beetz

Four stars

Central Bank's push for a robust financial infrastructure
  • CBDC real-value pilot held with three partner institutions
  • Preparing buy now, pay later regulations
  • Preparing for the 2023 launch of the domestic card initiative
  • Phase one of the Financial Infrastructure Transformation (FiT) completed
The Specs

Engine: 1.6-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 118hp
Torque: 149Nm
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Price: From Dh61,500
On sale: Now

ARM IPO DETAILS

Share price: Undisclosed

Target raise: $8 billion to $10 billion

Projected valuation: $60 billion to $70 billion (Source: Bloomberg)

Lead underwriters: Barclays, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase and Mizuho Financial Group

Getting there

Etihad Airways flies daily to the Maldives from Abu Dhabi. The journey takes four hours and return fares start from Dh3,995. Opt for the 3am flight and you’ll land at 6am, giving you the entire day to adjust to island time.  

Round trip speedboat transfers to the resort are bookable via Anantara and cost $265 per person.  

TALE OF THE TAPE

Manny Pacquiao
Record: 59-6-2 (38 KOs)
Age: 38
Weight: 146lbs
Height: 166cm
Reach: 170cm

Jeff Horn
Record: 16-0-1 (11 KOs)
Age: 29
Weight: 146.2lbs
Height: 175cm
Reach: 173cm

SQUADS

South Africa:
Faf du Plessis (capt), Hashim Amla, Temba Bavuma, Farhaan Behardien, Quinton de Kock (wkt), AB de Villiers, JP Duminy, Imran Tahir, David Miller, Wayne Parnell, Dane Paterson, Andile Phehlukwayo, Dwaine Pretorius, Kagiso Rabada
Coach: Ottis Gibson

Bangladesh:
Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), Imrul Kayes, Liton Das (wkt), Mahmudullah, Mehidy Hasan, Mohammad Saifuddin, Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim (wkt), Mustafizur Rahman, Nasir Hossain, Rubel Hossain, Sabbir Rahman, Shakib Al Hasan, Soumya Sarkar, Tamim Iqbal, Taskin Ahmed.
Coach: Chandika Hathurusingha

Our family matters legal consultant

Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.

The specs

Engine: 77kWh 2 motors
Power: 178bhp
Torque: 410Nm
Range: 402km
Price: Dh,150,000 (estimate)
On sale: TBC

J Street Polling Results

97% of Jewish-Americans are concerned about the rise in anti-Semitism

76% of US Jewish voters believe Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party are responsible for a rise in anti-Semitism

74% of American Jews agreed that “Trump and the Maga movement are a threat to Jews in America"

EMIRATES'S REVISED A350 DEPLOYMENT SCHEDULE

Edinburgh: November 4 (unchanged)

Bahrain: November 15 (from September 15); second daily service from January 1

Kuwait: November 15 (from September 16)

Mumbai: January 1 (from October 27)

Ahmedabad: January 1 (from October 27)

Colombo: January 2 (from January 1)

Muscat: March 1 (from December 1)

Lyon: March 1 (from December 1)

Bologna: March 1 (from December 1)

Source: Emirates

Elvis

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Stars: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge

Rating: 4/5

The specs

Engine: 2.0-litre turbo 4-cyl

Transmission: eight-speed auto

Power: 190bhp

Torque: 300Nm

Price: Dh169,900

On sale: now

Law 41.9.4 of men’s T20I playing conditions

The fielding side shall be ready to start each over within 60 seconds of the previous over being completed.
An electronic clock will be displayed at the ground that counts down seconds from 60 to zero.
The clock is not required or, if already started, can be cancelled if:
• A new batter comes to the wicket between overs.
• An official drinks interval has been called.
• The umpires have approved the on field treatment of an injury to a batter or fielder.
• The time lost is for any circumstances beyond the control of the fielding side.
• The third umpire starts the clock either when the ball has become dead at the end of the previous over, or a review has been completed.
• The team gets two warnings if they are not ready to start overs after the clock reaches zero.
• On the third and any subsequent occasion in an innings, the bowler’s end umpire awards five runs.

War

Director: Siddharth Anand

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff, Ashutosh Rana, Vaani Kapoor

Rating: Two out of five stars 

COMPANY PROFILE

Company name: Klipit

Started: 2022

Founders: Venkat Reddy, Mohammed Al Bulooki, Bilal Merchant, Asif Ahmed, Ovais Merchant

Based: Dubai, UAE

Industry: Digital receipts, finance, blockchain

Funding: $4 million

Investors: Privately/self-funded

Company Profile

Company name: Cargoz
Date started: January 2022
Founders: Premlal Pullisserry and Lijo Antony
Based: Dubai
Number of staff: 30
Investment stage: Seed

Apple Mac through the years

1984 - Apple unveiled the Macintosh on January 24
1985 - Steve Jobs departed from Apple and established NeXT
1986 - Apple introduced the Macintosh Plus, featuring enhanced memory
1987 - Apple launched the Macintosh II, equipped with colour capabilities
1989 - The widely acclaimed Macintosh SE/30 made its debut
1994 - Apple presented the Power Macintosh
1996 - The Macintosh System Software OS underwent a rebranding as Mac OS
2001 - Apple introduced Mac OS X, marrying Unix stability with a user-friendly interface
2006 - Apple adopted Intel processors in MacBook Pro laptops
2008 - Apple introduced the MacBook Air, a lightweight laptop
2012 - Apple launched the MacBook Pro with a retina display
2016 - The Mac operating system underwent rebranding as macOS
2020 - Apple introduced the M1 chip for Macs, combining high performance and energy efficiency
2022 - The M2 chip was announced
2023 -The M3 line-up of chip was announced to improve performance and add new capabilities for Mac.

Dr Graham's three goals

Short term

Establish logistics and systems needed to globally deploy vaccines


Intermediate term

Build biomedical workforces in low- and middle-income nations


Long term

A prototype pathogen approach for pandemic preparedness  

ACC T20 Women’s Championship

UAE fixtures
Friday, June 17 v Oman
Saturday, June 18 v Singapore
Monday, June 20 v Malaysia
Wednesday, June 22 v Qatar
Friday, June 24, semi-final
Saturday, June 25, final

UAE squad: Chaya Mughal (captain), Esha Oza, Indhuja Nandakumar, Kavisha Kumari, Khushi Sharma, Lavanya Keny, Priyanjali Jain, Rithika Rajith, Samaira Dharnidharka, Sanchin Singh, Siya Gokhale, Suraksha Kotte, Theertha Satish, Vaishnave Mahesh

The National selections

6pm: Go Soldier Go
6.35pm: Man Of Promise
7.10pm: Withering
7.45pm: Mawj
8.20pm: Falling Shadow
8.55pm: Law Of Peace
9.30pm: Naval Power
10.05pm: The Attorney

Company Profile

Company name: Namara
Started: June 2022
Founder: Mohammed Alnamara
Based: Dubai
Sector: Microfinance
Current number of staff: 16
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Family offices

Six pitfalls to avoid when trading company stocks

Following fashion

Investing is cyclical, buying last year's winners often means holding this year's losers.

Losing your balance

You end up with too much exposure to an individual company or sector that has taken your fancy.

Being over active

If you chop and change your portfolio too often, dealing charges will eat up your gains.

Running your losers

Investors hate admitting mistakes and hold onto bad stocks hoping they will come good.

Selling in a panic

If you sell up when the market drops, you have locked yourself out of the recovery.

Timing the market

Even the best investor in the world cannot consistently call market movements.

RESULTS

Welterweight

Tohir Zhuraev (TJK) beat Mostafa Radi (PAL)

(Unanimous points decision)

Catchweight 75kg

Anas Siraj Mounir (MAR) beat Leandro Martins (BRA)

(Second round knockout)

Flyweight (female)

Manon Fiorot (FRA) beat Corinne Laframboise (CAN)

(RSC in third round)

Featherweight

Bogdan Kirilenko (UZB) beat Ahmed Al Darmaki

(Disqualification)

Lightweight

Izzedine Al Derabani (JOR) beat Rey Nacionales (PHI)

(Unanimous points)

Featherweight

Yousef Al Housani (UAE) beat Mohamed Fargan (IND)

(TKO first round)

Catchweight 69kg

Jung Han-gook (KOR) beat Max Lima (BRA)

(First round submission by foot-lock)

Catchweight 71kg

Usman Nurmogamedov (RUS) beat Jerry Kvarnstrom (FIN)

(TKO round 1).

Featherweight title (5 rounds)

Lee Do-gyeom (KOR) v Alexandru Chitoran (ROU)

(TKO round 1).

Lightweight title (5 rounds)

Bruno Machado (BRA) beat Mike Santiago (USA)

(RSC round 2).

Hidden killer

Sepsis arises when the body tries to fight an infection but damages its own tissue and organs in the process.

The World Health Organisation estimates it affects about 30 million people each year and that about six million die.

Of those about three million are newborns and 1.2 are young children.

Patients with septic shock must often have limbs amputated if clots in their limbs prevent blood flow, causing the limbs to die.

Campaigners say the condition is often diagnosed far too late by medical professionals and that many patients wait too long to seek treatment, confusing the symptoms with flu. 

MATCH INFO

Norwich 0

Watford 2 (Deulofeu 2', Gray 52')

Red card: Christian Kabasele (WatforD)

SPECS

Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder
Power: 101hp
Torque: 135Nm
Transmission: Six-speed auto
Price: From Dh79,900
On sale: Now