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The Woody Allen Collection (Gift Set) [D...

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The Woody Allen Collection (Gift Set) [DVD]

A collection of six films from writer/director/actor Woody Allen. Includes A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY (1982;PG), ZELIG (1983;PG), BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (1984;PG), HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986;PG-13), THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985;PG), and RADIO DAYS (1987;PG).

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Scoop [DVD]

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Scoop [DVD]

In 2005, famed New York City filmmaker Woody Allen made MATCH POINT, a murder mystery set in London, starring Scarlett Johansson. Allen remains in London for the follow-up, the murder mystery SCOOP, again with Johansson, but this time he jumps in front of the camera as well. Woody plays Sid "Splendini" Waterman, a pathetic magician who somehow conjures up the ghost of Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), a recently deceased ace reporter who has been given a great scoop from beyond the grave. Strombel's spirit links onto young journalism student Sondra Pransky (Johansson), demanding that she get the story--and get it right. Pretending to be father and daughter, Sid and Sondra get into the good graces of Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), a wealthy British lord who just might be the Tarot Card Killer, a madman who has been terrifying London by brutally murdering prostitutes. Against her better judgment, Pransky starts falling for the charming playboy even as she gathers more and more evidence that points to him as the probable killer. Jackman and Johansson have an intoxicating on-screen romantic chemistry that is a terrific counterpoint to the manic energy she shares with Allen. While MATCH POINT was an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, the comedy-thriller SCOOP pays tribute to the master director's FRENZY and NOTORIOUS. Allen also manages to get one of his favorite characters--Death (Peter Mastin) into the film. The score includes works by Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and Grieg as well as swinging numbers by Xavier Cugat and Lester Lanin.

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Anything Else [DVD]

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Anything Else [DVD]

Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci star as a mismatched couple in Woody Allen's funny and well-made romantic comedy ANYTHING ELSE. Biggs plays Jerry Falk, a young comedy writer looking to make it big, while Ricci is Amanda, a self-absorbed free spirit whom men go wild for. They fall for each other instantly near the beginning of the film, then spend the rest of the movie trying to work out their very complex and complicated relationship, especially after her mother (Stockard Channing) moves in to their small apartment to live with them. With echoes of such classic Allen fare as ANNIE HALL, ANYTHING ELSE is a lighthearted look at young love in the Big Apple. Allen himself stars as David Dobel, an older comedy writer who mentors Jerry, often on walks through Central Park, but it seems that Dobel has a bit of an anger management problem. Once again, New York City is virtually a character unto itself, as Allen includes scenes in such Gotham places as the Village Vanguard jazz club, Isabella's restaurant, Roosevelt Island, Sheepshead Bay, and the Quad Cinema. Good supporting work is turned in by Danny DeVito as Falk's manager. The soundtrack includes songs by Billie Holiday, Ravi Shankar, Teddy Wilson, Lester Young, Moby, and Diana Krall, who appears in the film.

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Don't Drink the Water [DVD]

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Don't Drink the Water [DVD]

The Hollanders, a family of Americans on vacation in Eastern Europe during the 1960s, get into trouble after Walter (director Allen) takes a photo of a sunset near a sensitive military area. The family is forced to hide out in the American embassy, unfortunately in the hands of the ambassador's incompetent son. A remake of Allen's 1960s play, made for television.

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Crimes and Misdemeanors [DVD]

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Crimes and Misdemeanors [DVD]

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is Woody Allen's most mature, most profound film. Martin Landau plays Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist having an affair with Dolores (Anjelica Huston), who is threatening to reveal their relationship unless Judah commits to her and leaves his wife. He admits his sin to Ben (Sam Waterston), a friend, a patient, and a learned rabbi who is losing his eyesight but not his faith. Judah turns to his brother Jack, who is connected to the mob and can make Dolores disappear. Allen plays Cliff Stern, a documentary filmmaker who accepts an assignment to film his pompous, successful brother-in-law, Lester (Alan Alda), a comedy star; both Cliff and Lester fall for Hallie Reed (Mia Farrow), a producer involved in the documentary. Allen the director brings all the characters together in a fabulous mix of comedy and drama, deceit and delight. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is a marvel of complexity, with fascinating, well-written characters; deep, complicated relationships; and thought-provoking examinations of religion, infidelity, morality, murder, comedy, and tragedy.

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Sleeper

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Sleeper

The sci-fi satire SLEEPER is often hailed as the best of Woody Allen's early comedies, which relied mostly on slapstick and quick verbal asides, but still had more than their share of comic intelligence. SLEEPER tells the tale of Miles Monroe (Allen), who is accidentally cryogenically frozen following a minor operation. Released 200 years later, in 2173, Miles blunders his way through a bizarre future, featuring plenty of props and situations for Allen to mine for laughs. Eventually he meets vapid, hedonistic "poet" Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton), with whom he eventually joins a rebel group opposed to the oppressive government. As in his earlier BANANAS and LOVE AND DEATH, Allen's character stumbles into a revolutionary plot, revealing the anti-authoritarianism that will appear again and again in his films. Loosely based on H.G. Wells' novel WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES, the film features a strong parodic bent, particularly of the type of science fiction that was being written and filmed when it was made in 1973. Oppressive, faceless governments and the technological dominance over human life (altering even the most fundamental natural actions, such as sex) are the main tropes Allen skewers, as well as playing off the futuristic production design of films like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THX-1138. However, SLEEPER was still considered a strong work of science fiction, winning both the prestigious Hugo and Nebula Awards, which are given to the finest works in the genre.

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New York Stories [DVD]

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New York Stories [DVD]

NEW YORK STORIES comprises three short films set in New York, directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen. Scorsese directs "Life Lessons," in which painter Nick Nolte plays an abstract painter trying to save his relationship with Rosanna Arquette. Francis Ford Coppola directs "Life Without Zoe," which stars Heather McComb as a young schoolgirl who lives alone at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel while her parents (Talia Shire and Giancarlo Giannini) globetrot around the world. Precocious Zoe is lovingly watched over by her butler, Hector (Don Novello), until her parents return home one day with a surprising announcement. Sofia Coppola co-wrote the script with her father. The final segment is "Oedipus Wrecks," a classic Woody Allen piece about a Jewish nebbish who is a bit of a momma's boy.

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Husbands and Wives

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Husbands and Wives

Gabe and Judy Roth (Woody Allen and Mia Farrow), a long-married couple, find their relationship starting to crumble when their best friends, Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis), announce that they are separating. Allen's use of a hand-held camera and jump-cuts adds immediacy to a brilliant display of ensemble acting. Pollack delivers an Oscar-worthy performance.

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A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy [DVD]

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A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy [DVD]

Woody Allen's delightful farce deals with the misadventures of three couples who spend the weekend together in the country. They all seem to end up in love with the wrong person.

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Hannah and Her Sisters [DVD]

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Hannah and Her Sisters [DVD]

Woody Allen combined the best parts of his earlier films in creating HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, his 1986 masterwork about the changing relationships among three sisters living in New York City. Hannah (Mia Farrow) has put her acting career aside in order to take care of her family with second husband Elliot (Michael Caine in an Oscar-winning performance). Elliot has fallen in love with Hannah's sister Lee (Barbara Hershey), who herself is feeling suffocated by her cynical, mean-spirited loner of a lover, played with great intensity by Ingmar Bergman regular Max von Sydow. Meanwhile, third sister Holly (Oscar winnner Dianne Wiest) is struggling to find her own voice, working as a caterer while she tries to get her own acting career going. And in the middle of everything is Mickey (Woody Allen at his most neurotic), a television writer who is divorced from Hannah, has dated Holly, and, when he suspects he might have a brain tumor, decides to reevaluate his life and his faith in God. HANNAH AND HER SISTERS is Allen's most fully realized, optimistic adult comedy. He won a well-deserved Oscar for his marvelous screenplay, filled with his trademark sharp, witty dialogue, his undying passion for New York (its culture, architecture, music, romance), and some of his most well developed characters. The cast is extraordinary, the music illuminating, the settings magnificent. Taking place over the course of a few Thanksgivings, Allen's insightful, wonderful film is a thoroughly enjoyable mature look at the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of family life.

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Zelig [DVD]

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Zelig [DVD]

Perhaps the most unique film of his career, Woody Allen's ZELIG not only stands as a technical triumph for a director not often associated with the technological aspect of filmmaking, but also utilizes a documentary aesthetic that Allen has not often used before or since. One of the first major mockumentaries produced (it was released a year before THIS IS SPINAL TAP), ZELIG combines voice-over, footage both historical and faux-historical, and staged interviews with famous intellectuals to tell the story of Leonard Zelig (Allen), the "Chameleon Man" of the 1920s and '30s who has since been largely forgotten. Zelig creates a media sensation when he is discovered, for he seems to have the unique ability to transform himself to fit in with whomever he finds himself--when encountering Greeks, he becomes Greek; surrounded by fat men, he becomes heftier. But his condition leaves him open to exploitation, and the only person who believes in him is ambitious psychologist Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow). Technologically the film is a marvel, especially when the production history is taken into account. Allen wanted the film to appear genuinely from the period, and the footage shot was reportedly captured on equipment used during the 1920s. Even more astonishing is the manner in which Allen and other cast members were smoothly integrated into old photographs and film footage, some with distinguished historical figures, years before the advent of seamless digital techniques and over a decade before a similar strategy was used in FORREST GUMP. The setting and the aim for verisimilitude allow Allen to explore one of the most serious themes of his career: the assimilation of Jews and other immigrant groups into American culture, although the subject is still tempered by his intelligent verbal wit (for example, the voiceover explains: "As a boy, Leonard Zelig is frequently bullied by anti-Semites. His parents, who never take his part and blame him for everything, side with the anti-Semites"). Allen sees this desire for assimilation as a necessary part of cultural inclusion, but recognizes its dangers, as being a "Chameleon Man" seems only one step away from outright fascism.

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Small Time Crooks [DVD]

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Small Time Crooks [DVD]

Woody Allen returns to his slapstick days with this comic romp, which centers on a small-time hood, Ray Winkler, who just can't catch a break. It's as if Virgil Starkwell (Allen's hysterically incompetent criminal mastermind from TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN) has finally gotten out of prison and is still up to his old scheming. Against his wife Frenchy's (Tracey Ullman) better judgment, Ray puts together a ragtag group of misfits, including a scene-stealing Elaine May, and immerses them in a crazy plot to rob a bank. But everything gets upended when their front, a cookie store, takes off, thrusting the Winklers into the upper echelons of New York's high society. SMALL TIME CROOKS looks like no other Allen film; gone are the black-and-white shades of Manhattan, replaced instead by the ridiculously loud shirts Ray wears and the perfectly garish furniture and artwork Frenchy accumulates. Even the Allen soundtrack, usually exclusively jazz, big band, and Dixieland standards, features "Tequila" by the Champs as an underlying theme. What stands out most of all, however, is the offbeat, charming relationship between Ray and Frenchy, two ne'er-do-wells who get to spend a little time at the top.

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Stardust Memories [DVD]

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Stardust Memories [DVD]

Marking perhaps his first public consideration of himself as an artist, Woody Allen's STARDUST MEMORIES is also a bold narrative exercise that recalls the European cinema that Allen admires. Allen stars as Sandy Bates, a celebrated filmmaker who travels to a weekend retrospective of his films. There, he is assaulted by his fans and critics, and can only find refuge in the companionship of his friend's wife Daisy (Jessica Harper of SUSPIRIA fame), and in his memories of an intense relationship with beautiful but insane Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling). As the weekend continues, he struggles with his feelings of inadequacy, haunted by the repeated comment "I liked your earlier, funny films better." The most obvious point of reference for the film, as many have pointed out, is Fellini's 8 1/2: both deal with filmmakers questioning their own purpose and path, both combine comedy and pathos, and Allen's use of black and white cinematography and scenes of absurdity seem lifted almost directly from Fellini's film. Allen's examination of his career employs a nearly plotless structure, driven more by character and theme, with a rather daring temporal editing structure that causes his memories of the past to flow neatly into the present. It differs from his later films that deal with similar thematic material, such as the caustic DECONSTRUCTING HARRY and CELEBRITY, in that Allen seems to place equal blame on both himself and those he feels expect too much from him. STARDUST MEMORIES is truly unique, a film made by an artist on the edge of a divide in his career and considering if his actions are worthwhile or even legitimate. Although it may not be for everyone, for anyone with even a passing interest in Allen it must be seen.

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Manhattan (Checkpoint; Sensormatic; Wide...

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Manhattan (Checkpoint; Sensormatic; Widescreen) [DVD]

Woody Allen finished his first decade of filmmaking, the 1970s, with one of his greatest and most deliberately artistic films, the love song to his home city MANHATTAN. Allen plays Isaac Davis, another one of his thinly veiled self-portraits, who finds himself suffering from a mid-life crisis. Unhappy in his career as a variety show comedy writer and newly divorced from a woman who has since come out as a lesbian, Isaac waffles between two relationships: that with emotionally honest and open, but far too young, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway in an Academy Award nominated performance) and with pseudo-intellectual, neurotic Mary (Diane Keaton). Allen uses these two women to contrast the naiveté and lack of pretension of youth with the growing cynicism of middle age. Although the acting and writing is some of the sharpest of Allen's filmmaking career, what is truly memorable and endearing about MANHATTAN is its romantic view of New York. Whereas the character relationships in the film are largely dysfunctional and fueled by a vision of perfection, by contrast the city itself is envisioned by Allen as an object of perfection. In order to create aesthetically pleasing images of the city, Allen and his longtime cinematographer Gordon Willis decided to shoot the film in black and white and in the 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, the first time that Allen had used either format. The images are backed by the songs of quintessential New York composer George Gershwin, setting a tone of romanticism and grandeur that underlies Isaac's (and Allen's) inherent dissatisfaction with the mundane aspects of his life. The magnificence of the city of New York is the backdrop to the search for a similar splendor in human relationships in MANHATTAN.

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Broadway Danny Rose [DVD]

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Broadway Danny Rose [DVD]

A lovable schlub of a Broadway agent struggles to revive the sagging careers of of his motley clients. His misguided efforts to get a fading lounge singer's career back on track land him right in the middle of a gangland battle.

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Bananas [DVD]

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Bananas [DVD]

Woody Allen leads a revolution in a small Latin American dictatorship in this hysterical comedy that parodies everything from the American media and political activism to the CIA and the judicial system. Allen plays Fielding Mellish, a nebbish unwilling to commit to anything--until he meets Nancy, played by Louise Lasser. Mellish soon finds himself fighting with guerrilla forces in the small third world country of San Marcos, and he becomes an international figure, even appearing on ABC's WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS with Howard Cosell (who plays himself). The film is loaded with sight gags that pay homage to Chaplin, Bergman, and the Marx Brothers. It also tackles politics, government, and religion, even breaking for a commercial for cigarettes endorsed by the church! One of the most memorable scenes of Allen's career occurs when Mellish defends himself in the funniest courtroom scene since the Three Stooges' DISORDER IN THE COURT. Allen's obsessions with food, sex, and death begin to take form here, on their way to becoming major themes in such films as LOVE AND DEATH, ANNIE HALL, and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS.

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know Abo...

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask [DVD]

Ostensibly based on the famous non-fiction bestseller by David Reuben, EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX, BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK is a series of comedic sketches from writer-director-actor Woody Allen. All seven segments of the film are posed as questions taken directly from Reuben's book, but act mostly as satirical springboards for Allen's comic genius. They take many forms, from a scenario on medieval adultery to a mad scientist-monster movie parody to a send-up of Italian sex films. Like many of Allen's early films, the humor in EVERYTHING...combines both quick-witted verbal quips (bearing the influence of Groucho Marx) and outright physical slapstick, but also shows Allen evolving as a filmmaker after his previous two films, BANANAS and TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. Although it seems the logical extension of the scattered plotting of those earlier films, the segmentation of the film allowed Allen to experiment as a filmmaker: the clean and clinical appearance of the famous final sequence would be found again in his sci-fi satire SLEEPER, and the Italian parody (among other sketches) finds Allen imitating the aesthetic features of European masters (such as Antonioni) for the first time, something he would later do again and again. EVERYTHING...is also perhaps Allen's most thoroughly outrageous and subversive comedy, touching on a number of sensitive issues and mining laughs from touchy subject matter.

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Take the Money and Run [DVD]

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Take the Money and Run [DVD]

Although it followed his WHAT'S UP TIGER LILY (which was mostly just a humorous redubbing of a Japanese spy film), TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN was truly Woody Allen's directorial debut. After spending years writing gags for television comedies and as a stand-up comedian, Allen began to appear in films in the mid-1960s. He developed some frustration with the way his writing was being used and decided to make films himself, with the result being TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. Allen plays Virgil Starkwell, the world's most inept thief, as an early version of the nebbish, neurotic persona he would later perfect. The film combines two formal styles; in part it is played as a documentary about Virgil's life and his turn to crime, with a voice-over narration and interviews, but many of the scenes are shot like a standard fiction-comedy feature. Although in light of Allen's later work the film may appear a bit crude, many of the elements of his filmmaking and comic style are evident in it. In common with his other early works (such as BANANAS and SLEEPER) the plotting is very loose, as the narrative exists mostly as a skeleton on which to hang a series of gags and jokes. The influence of fellow Jewish comedians the Marx Brothers is fully evident in that structuring principle (Allen even goes as far as to have a scene where Virgil's parents disguise themselves in interview with false Groucho glasses), as well as in the combination of verbal quips with slapstick visual gags (such as Allen attempting to play the cello in a marching band). Although TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN seems a bit simplistic, it still retains its comedic effect and offers an early view of Woody Allen's later filmmaking style.

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$8

Mighty Aphrodite [DVD]

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Mighty Aphrodite [DVD]

MIGHTY APHRODITE is Woody Allen's stab at Greek comedy/tragedy, and it is wildly successful. Allen stars as Lenny Weinrib, a sportswriter married to ambitious Amanda Sloan (Helena Bonham Carter), who desperately wants her own art gallery in New York City and is willing to play the game to get it. Amanda convinces a reluctant Lenny to adopt, and they end up with beautiful Max. Lenny soon becomes obsessed with finding out who Max's biological parents are, and he is not exactly happy when he discovers that the mother is a high-pitched actress wanna-be who is also a minor porn star and hooker (Mira Sorvino, in an Oscar-winning performance). Lenny is determined to turn her life around--but at the same time is forced to examine his own marriage, which is failing. Allen intersperses New York City vignettes with hysterical scenes of a Greek chorus, led by F. Murray Abraham, chiming in about Lenny's life, comparing it to Greek drama, and breaking out into song-and-dance numbers. The scenes in which the two worlds meet--both in New York and in the Greek theater, are wonderfully witty and incisive. This charming light comedy from Woody Allen also features fine cameo appearances by Olympia Dukakis, David Ogden Stiers, Jack Warden, and Tony Sirico.

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Manhattan Murder Mystery

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Manhattan Murder Mystery

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton join forces again in this charming riff on such murder mystery classics as REAR WINDOW, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Allen and Keaton play Larry and Carol Lipton, a New York couple reevaluating their life together after their only son goes off to college. Carol thinks they have fallen into a boring life, but when one of their neighbors suddenly dies, Carol starts wondering if foul play was involved. Thrust further into the mystery by their friends Ted (Alan Alda) and Marcia (Anjelica Huston), the Liptons soon find themselves in the middle of murder and mayhem, with their relationship--as well as their lives--hanging in the balance. Seeing Allen and Keaton interact onscreen again, after a hiatus of several years, is a joy. The film moves at a fast pace, with Allen's trademark fabulous shots of New York landmarks. But the ending, which marvelously mimics the famous ending from Orson Welles's THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, is a tour de force that should not be missed.

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