![]() ![]() #Scoop 2006 serial#The ghost, a recently deceased journalist, Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), believing he knows the identity of a serial killer on the hunt, gives Sondra the scoop. The premise of “Scoop” sounds like the windup to a joke: a journalist walks into a magician’s trick closet, where she meets an actual ghost, and - presto, changeo - walks out with a news lead of a lifetime. Nancy Drew probably didn’t go past first base, but neither did she chase ghosts and aristocrats while running with a magician called Splendini. Johansson tends to wear roomy, almost dowdy clothes, the exception being a screaming-red maillot that she fills out beautifully, bringing to mind Cathy Moriarty baking under the sun and Robert De Niro’s hotter gaze in “Raging Bull.” Sondra is more the Nancy Drew type, particularly when dressed and wearing her glasses, though she is also the kind of girl reporter who thinks nothing of sleeping with her interviewees to get the story. In her role as Sondra Pransky, an American journalism student in London, Ms. Johansson, though his camera tends to linger appreciatively over her form. Another plus: he wasn’t in the film groping the starlet. With its fierce performances and writing, “Match Point” proved very much a return to fine form, if not for the comic Woody Allen, then for the serious Woody Allen, the one who didn’t try to hide his misanthropy, his fear and his loathing behind jokes and shtick. The name of its writer and director was conspicuously played down in the advertisements, the consequence of the string of flops he had lately churned out. He had stayed out of sight for “Match Point,” which was largely sold on its leads and its enthusiastic reviews. Allen would return to the front of the camera were worrisome. The film, in turn, is positively slack, which turns out to be one of its virtues. Her sweaters are looser, as is her smile. As in the earlier film, Scarlett Johansson plays the succulent morsel, though with a performance set in the key of screwball rather than noir. Allen’s favorite themes, including money, conscience and luscious young women ripe for the plucking, this time for laughs. Like his last outing, the pitch-black drama “Match Point,” the new one revisits a number of Mr. IN “Scoop,” his not especially funny yet oddly appealing new comedy, Woody Allen manages to act his age and prove there’s life in those old jokes yet. ![]()
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