{"id":1948,"date":"2009-05-07T20:49:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T01:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=1948"},"modified":"2009-05-07T20:49:53","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T01:49:53","slug":"whatever-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=1948","title":{"rendered":"Whatever Works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The latest Woody Allen film, <em>Whatever Works<\/em>, was shown recently at the Tribeca Film Festival.  I missed it there, but it looks like I&#8217;ll have to see it when it comes out in theaters later this year.   It features the conventional Woody Allen theme of a gorgeous young woman falling in love with a misanthropic Manhattanite old enough to be her grandfather.  But this time, the Woody Allen character is a string theorist.  Here&#8217;s part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moviejungle.com\/headlines\/templates\/templatemjnews3.aspx?articleid=2159&#038;zoneid=1\">plot summary<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A former Columbia Professor and self-proclaimed genius who came close to winning a Nobel Prize for Quantum Mechanics, Boris fancies himself the only one who fully comprehends the meaningless of all human aspirations, and the pitch-black chaos of the universe&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Boris once had a picture-perfect life. A world-renowned physicist teaching String Theory at Columbia, he was married to Jessica (Carolyn McCormick), a brilliant and beautiful, rich woman, and lived in an opulent uptown apartment. But Boris\u2019s good fortune didn\u2019t alleviate his perpetual feelings of despair, and one night, in the midst of an argument with Jessica, he leapt out the window. To his great disappointment, he landed on a canopy and survived. Afterwards, he divorced Jessica and moved downtown.<\/p>\n<p>One night, Boris is about to enter his apartment when he is approached by a young runaway, Melody St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), who begs to be let into his apartment&#8230;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest Woody Allen film, Whatever Works, was shown recently at the Tribeca Film Festival. I missed it there, but it looks like I&#8217;ll have to see it when it comes out in theaters later this year. It features the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=1948\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1948"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1953,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}