I think it's fine to anticipate Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom

It occurs to me that I haven't really liked a Wes Anderson film in a decade, but I have high hopes for this to the extent that I think it deserves its own thread.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/04/10/moonrise-kingdom-wes-anderson/

I liked the Fantastic Mr. Fox. This sounds promising, at least.

I was initially unsure about Darjeeling and Life Aquatic, but i've come around pretty hardcore on the former and I quite like the latter. Fantastic Mr Fox is great.

Still, with each new release, I anticipate a massive failure.

"The movie is partly about how children at that age have this overpowering need for fantasy."

"at that age", huh

so did everybody else notice when the trailer came out that every shot is just bang-on symmetrical with the subject at the center of the frame?

also bill murray is in it?

Haven't LOVED a WA film in a decade but have never disliked one either, so, sure, I'll anticipate this one.

i really really want this to be good

i kind of hope there isnt an dialogue are action or anything but music and elaborate tableaux

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2opbhfNnp1qz6f9yo1_500.jpg

Yeah, this looks like a Wes Anderson film all right.

lol difficult listening hour

so did everybody else notice when the trailer came out that every shot is just bang-on symmetrical with the subject at the center of the frame?

― raw feel vegan (silby), Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:14 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have you ever seen a wes anderson movies?

I just... I dunno

:D

Should I watch The Life Aquatic? I have been avoiding it because I heard it was Anderson's worst. I didn't care for Darjeeling but liked the rest of them.

nah, don't do it

i'd say you have to be interested in everything he does (which i am) in order not to be irritated and occasionally quite bored w/ life aquatic.

it's better than the life aquatic, but big step below everything else

lol, better than the darjeeling limited i mean

i actually found life aquatic the most tolerable of his movies thanks to the seu jorge ost

I really like Darjeeling, despite some clunking moments.

Life Aquatic is an unfocussed mess, but there's good stuff in there.

anticipating this for sure, partly for because i kinda love the preciousness of anderson's set designs & set decoration, partly for the tilda, partly for the rhode island locations. it'll be pretty at least.

i think bruce willis is the only casting decision i'm semi-excited about

can't give Life Aquatic a fair shot after I saw it in a packed theater and the fanboys fell out over every single shot even if it wasn't meant to be funny

smh
http://www.teoylamaquinadeideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/adidas-zissou.jpg

will not top Addams Family Values summer camp IMO

i just assume i will like this one and at worst there may be some stuff in it that i don't like. unless he has some kind of sudden decline which i doubt.

milo z otm

reviews rolling in. didn't realise how close the US release date was for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbztK0gjTnQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzGn5DdCYIk

psyched for this.

i find it weird that this dude is so polarizing. i don't actually know many people IRL who hate wes anderson's films, but reading the interwebs (especially some critics i respect) you'd think he were brett ratner or something.

to me it seems partly to do with how much you value the idea of the decorative and the obsessively patterned as values in art, ones that need not be combined with heady themes. i was going to say that critics prefer more obviously "humanist" films but that isn't true, since some of the same folks who dislike anderson's films will go gaga over haneke or dumont.

i mean his films have given me extraordinary pleasure for values that seem essentially decorative (in the gombrich sense, though the fact that the word "decorative" has a negative connotation sort of makes my point), albeit transcendently deocrative. todd mccarthy's review gets this right i think.

of course the film giving me pleasure doesn't really amount to a very mature or convincing defense, since i don't know that i'd entirely buy that argument for some other films (part of me would, but not all of me).

I don't hate him or anything but Rushmore to me was the clear apex of his style for me; every subsequence film has felt like diminishing returns, even the beloved Mr Fox.

Argh too many "me"'s.

rushmore remains my fave but FMF is close, an i don't think there's been a steady downward curve. i liked darjeeling better than the two films that preceded it. so there's no way i'd write him off via law of diminishing returns. IMO

astonishing to me how little love there is these days for Tenenbaums (basically my fave film of the last 12 years or so) compared to the rest of his stuff.
it's like the 'Sgt Pepper's..' of his movies or something.

Oh wow, I said Rushmore when I totally meant Tenenbaums. Rushmore also leaves me cold save for "Oh, are you?"

i think rushmore won when be polled w.a. films, so there.

his weakest feature is... Bottle Rocket. really, with all the shit filmmakers Millennials like....

anticipating.

Clear case of texture over content but still, but I'll still go see it in the theater.

content, wtf

Clear case of texture over content but still, but I'll still go see it in the theater.

― calstars, Saturday, May 19, 2012 8:53 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can you explain this a bit more?

all style no substance?

ppl upthread are crazy, life aquatic is his best film

it's his best movie with the word aquatic in the title but if you then go on to include all of the movies he has made that do not have that word in the title then it suffers badly by comparison

life aquatic is a fine mess

For all of its surface affectations, Life Aquatic has some of the least affected performances in a Wes Anderson film. It's my favorite latter-day Bill Murray role, and Owen Wilson and Anjelica Huston are good, too. Plus Jeff Goldblum is funny.

all style no substance?

― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Saturday, May 19, 2012 9:13 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but what is "substance"? i'm sure we've had this debate a million times, i just never know what people mean when they say that.

Paintings of horses.

everything post tenenbaums seems a little autistic

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/209224/WES-ANDERSON.jpg

an emotional and/or intellectual engagement beyond "that's pretty" or "that was fun". I think the argument is that Anderson makes very stylistically affected and aesthetically attractive movies that don't really say much about anything or any of its characters beyond the surface story. xposts

Ok one thing's for sure, his films >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> his prose.

i guess this is his "new wave" movie?

I think at this point, I've just come to accept that I just like every movie Anderson has made, even if some of them are kind of hard to defend on many levels. He just has a visual style which really appeals to me. Really good cinematography and set design is enough to make me like a movie.

I think, increasingly, that "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is his best and most emotionally rewarding since "Tenebaums."

(Funniest, too)

Wes Anderson haters seem to have a lot in common with Jerry Lewis haters (or people who would be if they ever watched Jerry Lewis films). They just want him to be more like the others.

WA should remake The Day the Clown Cried.

All I meant above is that I seem to remember the sets and the visual sequences more than I do the plots of his movies.

Morbz, I don't think that comparison holds at all. Jerry constantly challenged himself and his audience; Anderson's been in his comfort zone (or, more unkindly, repeating his cliches) starting with Life Aquatic.

ALMOST mentioned autopilot references to The Day the Clown Cried. Just stop it.

someone's gotta do it

Wes Anderson haters seem to have a lot in common with Jerry Lewis haters (or people who would be if they ever watched Jerry Lewis films). They just want him to be more like the others.
As a Wes Andeson and Jerry Lewis fan, I agree.

IV likes it

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/notebook-reviews-wes-andersons-moonrise-kingdom

MINOR SPOILER FROM ABOVE LINKED REVIEW

Moonrise Kingdom is set mostly to the music of Benjamin Britten... the kids meet during performance of the composer's "opera for amateurs" Noye's Fludde

^^ i have instantly gone from "basically not gonna see this movie" to "i will see this movie and it will be great"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-8OOvf1NPY

and GK gives it 5 stars: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/moonrise-kingdom/

WA should remake The Day the Clown Cried.

― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Sunday, May 20, 2012 4:12 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kids marching into the gas chamber in slow motion to "death of a clown" by the Kinks

reviews are pretty rapturous, maybe throwing off all the Daddy baggage at the end of Darjeeling Limited actually worked.

Wish the whole movie was 'Bill Murray Hosted Tour' but I'll take what I can get

when is this getting a full u.s. release?

Tilda Swinton: 'She's tall, she's Scottish, she does what she wants"

Goes wide in the States on 6/8/2012.

Or I should say "Less Limited", cause they aren't in Houston and other markets then.

love that murray vid

AV Club gave this an A: http://www.avclub.com/articles/moonrise-kingdom,75568/

LOL @ Bill Murray video

"it's a spiced rum"

Cannot wait to see this film!

Comes to DC next week. I guess it's a steady roll-out.

Isn't what a lot of people hate about Anderson a perceived fetishization of aesthetic quirkiness, emotional sensitivity, and childhood nostalgia -- in other words, a sense that he's twee as fuck?

UK release today. Came to it as an unrepentant stan of Anderson's previous work - Rushmore esp. is one of my favourite films.

I really liked it: looks great as ever, although strange seeing his usual camera tricks and slides done in beautiful soft super 16mm. For a period piece, the aesthetic is basically the same as all his other films (particularly The RT's ) ie. if it wasn't stated "it's 1965" then (apart from the police car) you'd never guess. For its shortish run time it felt really dense and there was lots of quick editing so will def. need a second viewing to get the detail.

The cast are all good and special mention to Norton who was a lot better than I expected him to be. The main kids were both decent, although the lead lad speaks like he's got a mouth full of marbles the whole time. Felt to me like Anderson was a bit less buttoned-up than on Darjeeling, in a good way - there were some really atmospheric outdoors shots, and wonderful location scouting with a Swallows & Amazons vibe a lot of the time. Use of music was less dead-on than in some of his other stuff, and if I'd not seen Desplat credited would never have noticed his contribution (again, this might come out more on further viewings). Not much here that will convince non-fans of Anderson's style, but a lot to love for those who are on side.

this definitely looks more like the kind of WA i like, i am tentatively excited after feeling various degres of letdownness since tenenbaums

visual style looks like instagram

dont put the cart before the horse here.

On a cameo(s) related note, there was not enough Schwartzman for my liking, although he does some good work with minimal screentime. Keitel given nothing to do. Swinton as great as ever + ace outfit.

http://vimeo.com/20089652

Isn't what a lot of people hate about Anderson a perceived fetishization of aesthetic quirkiness, emotional sensitivity, and childhood nostalgia -- in other words, a sense that he's twee as fuck?

― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Friday, May 25, 2012 3:20 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was this apropo of anyting in particular?

wes anderson's movies are fun! for the most part! i'll go see this.

I thought it was, but on rereading the thread, perhaps not. I guess I was just trying to pinpoint what the haters hate about W.A. (you said you found it weird how polarizing he was) -- although I guess there's a larger question about why anything remotely "twee" provokes such derision.

(xp to Am)

for me its as simple as, his early movies were about people i wanted to spend time with, and his later ones were about people i wanted to stuff into lockers and give swirlies to

jaymc, w/ all due respect, that argument has been had a zillion times since the late 1990s and it doesn't get any more interesting. there are people who won't like a WA movie, and those who will, and i'm OK w/ that.

wes asserson

i guess the things that people see as major flaws i either just don't see, or find it easy to ignore. the arguments tend to take place somewhere kind of far away from what i most appreciate about his films anyhow.

i think for me i was such a huge fan of his first couple movies, thought they hit the perfect balance between his curatorial/affected side and a more freewheeling kind of deadpan hilarity, that when he gave into the former, i just felt like it unbalanced them

esp since what seems to be the archetypal anderson film, royal tenenbaums, is not one of my biggest favorites.

xpost

moonrise buttdom

its hard to formulate exactly what i liked about the ones i liked and what i dont like about the ones i don't.

jaymc, w/ all due respect, that argument has been had a zillion times since the late 1990s and it doesn't get any more interesting. there are people who won't like a WA movie, and those who will, and i'm OK w/ that.

I'm OK w/it, too!

w/o it seeming like i'm blanket-condemning his whole thing, which i'm not

Am, I hope you don't think that I'm necessarily endorsing that view of WA. I am, however, interested in how and why that kind of post-Salinger twee-ness *has* become such a polarizing aesthetic these days -- if you've seen some good analysis from a sociocultural perspective (as opposed to just rehashed ad-hominem arguments), then let me know.

i don't read stuff about that because it's boring.

and by "these days" you mean 2001?

i'm gonna put it out there and say it's not so much a polarizing aesthetic (though it also is) as it is something that's been hammered-to-fucking-death by lesser talents over the last decade, making w.a. himself seem like part of the problem (though he also sometimes is).

xpost

sorry jaymc i don't mean to be rude but i basically said above that i don't care about that stuff, so i'm not the one to refer you to the article you want.

also "children and childlike adults learn to put away childish things (without losing their essential impish charm)" is a theme that's also been hammered-to-fucking-death over the last decade, and not just in twee-ass indie movies, e.g. the apatow corpus.

i think for me i was such a huge fan of his first couple movies, thought they hit the perfect balance between his curatorial/affected side and a more freewheeling kind of deadpan hilarity, that when he gave into the former, i just felt like it unbalanced them

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki)

i sort of hate quoting things and just saying "otm" and not adding anything of worth whatsoever but this is exactly how i feel.

for me its as simple as, his early movies were about people i wanted to spend time with, and his later ones were about people i wanted to stuff into lockers and give swirlies to

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, May 25, 2012 5:30 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm & this seems linked to owen wilsons level of involvement

the more ppl ref the antoine doinel series, the more scared i am 2 see this

I like this line from the Slate review:

"But maybe it’s OK to find Moonrise Kingdom both dramatically inert and aesthetically entrancing, to recommend it with a Wes Anderson asterisk (which would probably be a bright yellow asterisk, lovingly embroidered on brown corduroy)."

If it's being reviewed, I thought it would have opened in Toronto this week, but doesn't seem so.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2012/05/moonrise_kingdom_directed_by_wes_anderson_reviewed_.html

and by "these days" you mean 2001?

I mean within the last 10-15 years. I'm not saying it's new to 2012.

Anyway, I don't get why this is suddenly a big deal! I shouldn't have said anything, I guess.

(For anyone who's not Amateurist: I think that Jess is right that people are skeptical of Anderson because of superficial similarities to a whole host of terrible "quirky" indie films. But I also feel like a lot of people -- plenty of ILXors, in fact -- have an intense knee-jerk reaction against anything that might be described as precious or naive in art, and I wonder whether that's worth interrogating.)

As a Rushmore lover who remains basically sympatico with what I think Anderson is up to, I recommend the Salon review, which addresses this very point.

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/moonrise_kingdom_wes_andersons_mid_60s_love_story/singleton/

(Suddenly I'm a clearing-house for indie film reviews.)

i think it's fair to say that a lot of ILXors (and people in general) respond with special vitriol to a certain stripe of twee, indie-oriented pop art - the venomousness of the response all the more remarkable for the seeming inoffensiveness of the thing in question. you can find evidence of this in discussions of bands/musicians like belle & sebastian and jens lekman, and films like little miss sunshine and the darjeeling limited. probably the best stand-alone example, though, is the official pomplamoose thread: So who ARE that insufferable indie couple in the new Hyundai TV ads.

there are a lot of reasons given for the distaste: the ubiquity of the style, its tendency to value soothing comfort above all else, the idea that it's a neutered thirdhand version of something that once had substance of a sort, the lack of depth and aggression, christian-friendliness, etc. i often think it's a class-based response, tbh. there's something specifically entitled and middle/upper class about the cutie-pie ennui of twee indie. it often seems to be the disaffection of those who never really had to care about anything, could afford to be indolent and romantically wistful, and i suspect that annoys a lot of people.

i think its just nerds being macho but what do i know

i'd say yr right:

for me its as simple as, his early movies were about people i wanted to spend time with, and his later ones were about people i wanted to stuff into lockers and give swirlies to

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, May 25, 2012 9:30 PM (Yesterday)

i have a hard time seeing what W.A. has to do with those pamplemoose or whatever videos. almost nothing, it seems to me.

there's something specifically entitled and middle/upper class about the cutie-pie ennui of twee indie.

OTM. I think this is one of the reasons I prefer Rushmore over all other Wes films (although I've only seen Tenenbaums once, in 2001, and should probably re-view): Max' entitlement is confronted/challenged. Maybe something similar happens in Mr. Fox, but I couldn't finish it. Great actors do not make great voice actors.

But this new one is getting crazy-good reviews, so I'm sure I'll see (what Kinks songs are in) it.

i actually have very little idea what people mean by calling his characters "entitled," except for darjeeling limited where that is explicitly thematized. max is i guess "entitled" (for the first 1/2 of the film) but in a very specific and idiosyncratic way.

i feel like people are projecting a lot of things onto the films that may have been circulating in the discourse at the time but don't actually seem a strong part of the films themselves.

it's possible that his films (the best ones anyway) satisfy me so deeply in some OCD/semi-autistic way that i just don't see what other people see, or don't care.

max is not really 'entitled' in the class sense -- his dad is a barber! he got to go to rushmore because of a scholarship. always read his character as being lower middle class.

i don't think it's really an issue in 'fox' since, yknow, they're foxes.

in mentioning entitlement, i wasn't describing something i object to in wes anderson films, but rather something that i think a lot of people object to in twee indie stuff generally. that said, entitlement (a condition that results from unchallenged privilege), is a common theme and condition in anderson's films. rushmore, subverts it, i think, by having max essentially aspire to entitlement. he's a poor kid, remember. he adopts an attitude of privileged entitlement as compensation.

the characters in bottle rocket, the royal tenenbaums, and the darjeeling limited, on the other hand, accept their entitlement without question, seem bored by their privilege and construct trivial (heartwrenching) agonies to fill time. i think anderson romanticizes this kind of privileged disaffection, but also questions and criticizes it. he's not guilty of anything, as i see it, but i do understand why people might lump his films in with pomplamoose and their ilk.

oh fuck off JD. i was criticising the way he writes characters, specifically how his characters have become unlikable degenerates. ive never had anything to do with the ILX War Against Twee, i thought the pomplamoose and etsy threads were stupid as shit and i even liked little miss sunshine.

Just hit me I won't be watching this until it hits Redbox because I have a newborn.

(I misread that post as signed Twee4Ass.)

http://img.slate.com/features/2012/bingo/bingoCardBlank.jpg

Blank card; you have to go here to play. (Not meant as a knock on Anderson--you could do the same with Scorsese, Bergman, and most any great filmmaker ever.)

Critics sometimes use "twee" as shorthand to describe you work -- or they dismiss it as just another "Wes Anderson movie." How does that make you feel?

Well, it's not annoying. It's just, you know, my real honest response is just ... nothing. It's just white noise to me. It's lost all its sting over the years.

whatre the reviews like on this thing, do people like it who didnt like his last few, the trailer makes it look like kinda the worst but im getting the feeling via internet headlines that this is maybe being considered a return to form

it's worse than the trailer and he must be stopped

ha ok cool will ignore

The reviews on the freq misleading RT are 4 "rotten" out of 80

yes, his characters are often irritating, welcome to people.

lol is that srsly yr argument

hay dude:

whatre the reviews like on this thing

that was not the post I was commenting upon!

ah, gotcha

so that is PART of my argument, yes.

more bored by films that do not have any people (eg T*r*ntino)

u dont say

morbs just isn't a foot guy tbh

wasnt feeling this. i dont get the reviews saying it was more like rushmore/tenenbaums... so little humour compared to those films

to give a straight answer this is pretty much getting his best reviews since tenenbaums or maybe rushmore.

and yet somehow i don't buy it

"buy it"? who gives a crap what you think if you haven't seen the film?

i just don't want to be burned again amateurist. Is that so wrong?

that's between you and your conscience.

the action sequences are terrible, totally incoherent. for a guy with such mannered direction, it's amazing the extent to which he can make you lose your bearings.

also it is not funny

and all the characters are wes anderson characters except the one bruce willis acts his way past

ive never had anything to do with the ILX War Against Twee

Who can forget The Night ILX burned down Daisy Ashford's wikipedia.

among the 22 reviews from sources rottentomatoes designates as "top critics", it's 100% positive. includes dargis at NYT, sharkey at the LA Times, travers at the rolling stone, edelstein at NY mag, stevens at slate, buckwalter at NPR, etc.

I'm undecided about this. It certainly didn't annoy me like his last two have, and I was charmed at times, but it certainly does feel dramatically inert. It's not for lack of a plot. It made me think about how often children's plays have featured in his films. I think he has settled into making something like … puppet shows. In Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, the comedy (and pathos) was allowed to come out more from the characters. I only got flashes of that here. Frances McDormand and Bill Murray felt wasted; Bruce Willis made something of his role at least.

I dunno. I'd definitely see it again; but my taste has definitely diverged from his.

the night they drove old twee-xie down

imo it was better than life aquatic, but not as good as darjeeling

yeah i'd agree w/ that

set a weekend record by grossing over half a mil in 4 theaters.

i laughed a lot when the boy punched someone in the balls in a flashback

set a weekend record by grossing over half a mil in 4 theaters.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, May 29, 2012 9:34 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the final 4-day tally was almost $700,000. damn.

Just saw this tonight. I thought it was quite sweet, and occasionally v funny. There were a couple of cartoonish moments that felt a bit jarring in context (not sure if I should mention for fear of spoilers...) - I know Anderson's films are never 'realistic' in the sense that they're incredibly mannered and un-naturalistic (and full of Futura) but a couple of throwaway bits in this one felt like they violated some kind of internal logic.

I probably haven't explained that v well.

i laughed a lot when the boy punched someone in the balls in a flashback

― caek, Tuesday, May 29, 2012 10:36 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

sold

people who assert Bruce Willis as the best thing in anything are not people whose opinions I value

oh god shuuuuuut up

yeah wtf Willis has been fine in a lot of movies.

his smug oft-naked, GOP ass has never risen above tolerable imho

prob best to just decide that now before seeing the movie

if he's the best thing in this movie than it must be really, really bad, is how I interpret that assertion, is all.

it is pretty bad

in his best movies Willis has never been smug.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qEVYzpBSouE/TuUuKqr1D6I/AAAAAAAAAY4/Ye4BPNd_Tvg/s1600/Die-Hard6.jpg

his smug oft-naked, GOP ass has never risen above tolerable imho

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 31, 2012 7:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

love the idea of bruce willis' bare ass waltzing itself into a voting booth with a shit eating grin on its face and pulling the lever for mitt romney

Fairly plausible scenario imo

this was the closest Wes Anderson (and the estate of C. Monroe Schulz) would let him get to making his live-action "Peanuts" movie.

There are many objections one could make to this film but people itt who say it doesn't have any humour are crazy.

this was the closest Wes Anderson (and the estate of C. Monroe Schulz) would let him get to making his live-action "Peanuts" movie.

YES! the whole children w/ adult problems thing, the fact that it's set in 1965 (round abt the absolute peak of Peanuts), a dog called Snoopy (duh), the misery of camp and childhood cruelties, the lead character being an alienated charlie brown-type whose father we never see and who is infatuated with a red-haired girl etc etc, all brought to mind Schulz while I was watching this

More on this:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/05/28/moonrise_kingdom_and_peanuts_wes_anderson_s_latest_is_filled_with_allusions_to_bill_melendez_and_charles_schulz_s_specials_.html

There was me thinking Sam was based on Gukbe.

and what's that supposed to mean?

he could have been, though, because i loved the hell out of this and I don't know what caek saw but there yah go.

Just got home from seeing it. I feel like I should be processing it, but it was actually really straightforward and charming and perhaps purposely superficial and I liked it anyway.

Going to a midnight show tonight

I was in a theater full of boomers instead of hipsters, which was not what I was expecting.

my local arthouse is showing this like 20 times a day. its the arthouse avengers

yeah, xp, the crowd at the showing I went to in Berkeley was made up of almost all boomers as well. they seemed totally charmed by it

I loved it. best since Tenenbaums imo

jason schwartzman was funny and i wanted more jason schwartzman

"its the arthouse avengers"
we waited through the credits hoping for an extra scene with samuel l jackson that never came. there was cosplay though.

it was so great!

What else Wes Anderson didn't take from John Duigan's "Flirting" for Rushmore he put to use here. It seems to secretly be a touchstone for him. (probably a reason the lead actor in Flirting, Noah Taylor, was cast in "Life Aquatic")

W.A. finally just goes out and sets a film, literally, in the sixties; the forbidden romance between the two youngsters is similar, as well as the, er, (spoiler!) love-scene.

If you smashed "Moonrise" and "Rushmore" together you'd get that 1990 Australian movie starring Nicole Kidman, yeah.

in an interview i read with him circa rushmore he says he originally wanted to cast noah taylor in rushmore

i'm so looking forward to going to see this by myself. seeing wes anderson movies alone is the best.

So is seeing any movie alone. People ruin things.

Huh, I loved Flirting when I saw it at age 13, but I never would've made the Anderson connection.

That awkward school dance scene between Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton, taking place in 1965 and playing the Trogg's "A Girl Like You," that's couldn't be more proto-WA.

Bruce Willis as sad old man/young old bill murray

Has anyone on ILX besides me seen CQ? Serious question. Look to CQ and the idle internet musings that Roman actually directed everything for Sophia pre-Marie Antoinette.

Anyway I'm willing to accept RC as WA's new OW.

The small-time stop motion/cut-paper sfx I could do without but the spirit is there. I think the talk of MK being WA's pure FNW is kind of over stated bc as a director he's clearly taking things he's learned since FMF and brought them the live action fold in a way that Tim Burton wishes he did.

IDK i feel like in spite of TLA and DL wes anderson is still probably the best US filmmmaker working today in terms of the dual qualifications of prolificness and quality of material divided by the amount of self-parody < /marty >

What else... idk I liked it plenty but I wanted to take a girl to see it and I didn't because no one would go w/ me so here I am. If my viewing experience were different I might approach this movie differently

Also I don't recall what I meant when I said FNW so w/e

oh FRENCH NEW WAVE

Look to CQ and the idle internet musings that Roman actually directed everything for Sophia pre-Marie Antoinette.

what the hell?!? who says this?

longstanding internet rumor that RC was the brains behind everything good that SC has done. He was 1st AD on all of it.

That seems pretty baseless imo. CQ was totally different in tone than any of her films, and being a Coppola he could've gotten his own projects greenlighted without much effort.

sounds like classic internet forum misogynist bullshit.

given that she's directed more films than he has, you'd wonder why the rumor doesn't go the other way around. except that you don't have to wonder why, because so much of what ppl write and say about sofia coppola is riddled with the same kind of barely veiled sexism. armond white's review of 'somewhere' was an especially bad example, not that he's much above the level of any random anonymous internet commentator as a writer or thinker tbh.

gubke and J.D. otm

fuck a "longstanding internet rumor". as though everyone involved with SC's films would maintain this ridiculous conspiracy of silence about the fact that roman secretly directed them from the DP's chair. all while he let his own directorial career slide. horseshit. he made CQ, and no one cared.

while looking around for info on roman's charles swan iii flick, i did find what seem to be three viral sites...

a fan page about the mysterious artist "charles swan iii": http://swanworld.8m.com/index.htm
a blog entry containing art and video samples: http://www.laboca.co.uk/blog/tag/charles-swan-iii/
a notice about a show at a japanese art gallery (apparently on the tom of finland foundation site's events list!): http://tomoffinlandfoundation.org/foundation/Events/ev_2006_08_09_YosakaGallery_CharlesSwanIII.htm

there are three rather nsfwy videos on youtube, all linked one way or another in the above. oddly, the videos appear to have been posted in 2006.

oops

speaking of misogynists, CSIII to be charlie sheen's comeback role: he plays the title character

That awkward school dance scene between Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton, taking place in 1965 and playing the Trogg's "A Girl Like You," that's couldn't be more proto-WA.
― Cunga, Friday, June 15, 2012 1:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a beautiful scene in claire denis's TV film "US go home" that also has characters dancing to this song, to beautiful effect.

two more thoughts:

1) can you guys stop using so many acronyms?

2) c.q. was a few funny sketches and clever art direction in search of a movie. i'm not too fond of sofia coppola's films either, but i have a weird kind of respect for marie antoinette.

2) i saw this (moonrise kingdom). it was spectacular. more later i hope.

i mean three more thoughts. i always end up adding a thought or two.

2) c.q. was a few funny sketches and clever art direction in search of a movie.

this. those rumours are total horseshit

marie antoinette is the only sofia movie i'm enthusiastic about, roman should have stopped shadow directing earlier, maybe taken some time off to write to kill a mockingbird w/ his dick

morbz otm about seeing movies alone

i still want to see this! i saw they're using that Bill Murray Introduces The Actors clip for TV ads; i kinda liked that.

I went to see this and the picture went ten minutes before the end. It was enjoyable up to that point

CQ was crap! never heard those rumors. fuckin internet.

i saw they're using that Bill Murray Introduces The Actors clip for TV ads; i kinda liked that.

― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Saturday, June 16, 2012 10:51 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha that's great. i have to think his movies have had a stable audience now, ads are a matter of 'base activation'

i snuck into this (maybe missed the first 5 min) after i saw 'thats my boy' (v bad btw)

it's cute idk
the scene on the beach w/ the dance & i guess the scene w/ willis & the kid in his kitchen are the only ones i really loved

yeah, that's about right. It was definitely better than Life Aquatic and Darjeeling if only because it wasn't so oppressively Andersonian (the less obvious soundtrack helped in this regard) but there's just something missing in his films these days. Comedy mainly

roman should have stopped shadow directing earlier, maybe taken some time off to write to kill a mockingbird w/ his dick

― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Saturday, June 16, 2012 11:51 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

ha that's great. i have to think his movies have had a stable audience now, ads are a matter of 'base activation'

― goole, Saturday, June 16, 2012 4:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this movie is reaching people who maybe aren't big wes anderson fans? it's doing spectacularly well, to the point that its release date around here was moved up two weeks.

the "defloration" scene was incredible. i know that sounds bad, but see it.

I really liked this. More so than I thought I would for some reason.

jason schwartzman was funny and i wanted more jason schwartzman

― phantompenguin, Sunday, June 10, 2012 10:46 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES. He is hilarious.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5zyueWSVb1qzspj4o1_500.gif

The girl who plays Suzy looks not entirely dissimilar from pictures I have seen of my wife at that age.

jaymc in theater:

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/005/650/weirdestboner.jpg

the guy i was sitting next to in the theater was laughing at every scene, like regardless of whether there was actually any joke or even visual gag just cracking up at like, the way the shots were framed or some shit??? this weird guttural, clucking laugh if you can imagine that, just dreadful

Saw this in a tiny "arthouse" theater on Saturday with a full-house mob of people roughly my own age. Which is Anderson's age, give or take a couple years, so no real surprise that he's pulling a less-than-youthful crowd. Loved it to death, easily my favorite American film of the year, so far. It may not quite measure up to Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums (I'll have to let it sit awhile and rewatch it a couple times before I can say for sure), but it's not far shy of that mark.

My biggest criticism is that during the 20 minutes, prior to the halfway-point beach dance/makeout scene, I was starting to get a little bored. I wouldn't call Jared Gilman a bad actor, but his delivery is so intentionally flat and affected that it's hard to see any real, human personality behind Sam Shakusky's words and behavior. To the extent that the film focuses on Sam's interactions with the similarly disaffected Suzy, this opacity begins becomes a little frustrating. The film tells us that the kids like each other, that they have certain interests and tics, but those qualities seem attached to rather than expressed by their performances. Anyway, that all evaporates during what amateurist called the "'defloration' scene", and everything after that just roars.

Was personally struck by the film's use of nostalgic camp imagery. By "camp" I mean of a specifically northeastern lakeside summer vacation culture. Appropriated Indian names and symbols, canoes (especially birch), self-reliance, rugged boyhood, handheld weapons, scouting and merit badges, log cabins, zealous mental moral and physical hygiene, "summer places", leisure, implicit wealth, etc. A kind of lost Eden; Teddy Roosevelt shit as handed down and remembered by the well-to-do in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and demenses. I grew up with that, and have been fascinated by its cross-country spread over the last few decades. The LL Bean catalog has a lot to do with it, I suppose. And it fits well with the turn towards the folky, acoustic and nostalgic in American indie culture over the last decade. Not so long ago, a trendy menswear & accessories shop in Seattle opened a sister brother store dedicated to stylishly old-fashioned camp & camping accoutrements. Duckboots, Filson, fly fishing, elevation maps, thick woolen sweaters and wicker knapsacks. It was short-lived, but now I'm thinking they just jumped the gun by a year or two.

...during the 20 minutes, prior to the halfway-point beach dance...

uh, strike that comma

i reread the whole thing without the comma--post is still too long

rmsht

^^much better

cold comfort

the guy i was sitting next to in the theater was laughing at every scene, like regardless of whether there was actually any joke or even visual gag just cracking up at like, the way the shots were framed or some shit??? this weird guttural, clucking laugh if you can imagine that, just dreadful

I think we were in the same theater. Like the laugh track from Everybody Loves Raymond or something. It was so off-putting I went to see it again yesterday. Much better.

fwiw i really liked reading your post. will maybe see this again tomorrow. if i get enough work done today.

thanks

this reminded me so much of romantic fantasies i had as a kid

bruce willis was really killing it in the scene where he and sam share a beer. they both were, actually. so amazing.

this reminded me so much of romantic fantasies i had as a kid

― carly rae (flopson), Monday, June 25, 2012 9:36 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wes anderson has owned up to it being an extrapolation from one such fantasy.

xpost

yeah that was a great scene.

Was personally struck by the film's use of nostalgic camp imagery. By "camp" I mean of a specifically northeastern lakeside summer vacation culture.

Helps that half of the WA team either vacations or has housing on Martha's Vineyard.

this film is going to push so many nostalgic buttons for me i don't know if i'm going to be able to handle it

a friend who saw it first day it openned warned me "it will make you think very nice things about new england"

ohno and i already think nice things about new england!
this will push my nostalgic buttons, ideal-summer buttons, fantasy-in-reality buttons, wistfulness buttons. and i will be happy. though not quite as happy as i would be if i could go see it with the person i want to see it with, but he is far away. that's probably how wes anderson would have it though.

the actual film is pretty boring though

i like wa's style of boring

this was great. i loved this.

all that rain and beige and yellow.

One of my fb friends said it was shot in "instagram".

I like that look, though, fine by me!

totally
also reminder that some part of me is still twee as fuck <3

loved it! moonrise kingdom > life aquatic > all the other ones

that opening scene alone was worth the price of admission

has anyone posted this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U9wvsiE6RJA

they should've used this in the promo poster: http://cdn.nahright.com/news/m.php/2012/06/rocky-lana.jpg

(asap rocky and lana del rey, the irl sam and suzy)

no

Cray-cray subtitles in that vid Mordy

Ninety degrees indian in eighteen confucian abiding in the field keeping watch over if not buying denial in june of nineteen pune the landlord time and help them the arrests are trained any defendant and hearing from the whole ending the timing for grandchild it should be talking financially respondents danish tv dvd a seafood if christ the lord

One of my fb friends said it was shot in "instagram".

yeah, i described it as "the instagram movie" on the way out

I thought this was really something, though it may take a while for me to unpack it. Elements of French New Wave, obviously, but also "Badlands" and Powell/Pressburger (i was getting "Black Narcissus" vibes for some reason; Swindon is totally Deborah Kerr, regardless). I really appreciated the inclusion of real violence and real sexuality to offset the Wes Whimsy.

also it made me really want to learn more about Britten. The music of his they used was breathtaking.

i admit this is kind of awesome. nashville folks, do this!

http://www.belcourt.org/moonrise-kingdom-promotion

http://www.sitemason.com/files/lMKttC/Moonrise%20Kingdom%20PROMO_web.jpg/main.jpg

btw the belcourt rules.

ha, my FB status is "I can't tell, did wes anderson shoot moonrise kingdom using instagram or hipstamatic", shoulda checked here first

yeah belcourt is A+, saw so many 90s indie flicks there

i wonder what kind of knife comes in that picnic bag.

A couple of thoughts: how different would this have been had it been more outright emoted and not delivered in an almost exclusively affectless monotone? Also, I was wondering how the movie might have been a tiny bit better had it been exactly as it was, word for word and shot by shot, except the girl was black. Something to justify her outsider status beyond being pretty, listening to French pop and reading books, because as written (or underwritten) there's really no impetus for her acting out (beyond puberty, I guess), whereas the boy clearly has issues (parents dead, foster homes, sucky greaser foster brothers). Anyway, just a thought.

maybe if she was a gelfling?

That would work, too, though she sort of was a gelfling.

Two gelflings, in love and on the run.

all that stuff is p cool as like collectables for the action figure crew i guess but anyone over 15 who carries/uses it should be mercilessly beat up imo

how different would this have been had it been more outright emoted and not delivered in an almost exclusively affectless monotone?

yeah, i wondered that, too, though it was really only the two principals who took the affectedly disaffected monotone thing all the way. everyone else managed to transmit some personality (intellection, emotion) through the deadpan.

because as written (or underwritten) there's really no impetus for her acting out (beyond puberty, I guess),

never underestimate the sheer emotional fragility/ferocity of a girl going through puberty and her teen years

also, there are all kinds of reasons for people to act out or be depressed or otherwise emotionally "not normal" - sure the boy has quantifiable reasons but someone else with exactly the same background might not act out at all. reason or clear causality doesn't always matter much wrt these things. even in a movie...

will watch tomorrow

Well, yeah, I understand there are all sorts of reasons to act out, and it really doesn't matter - I pretty much loved the movie - but I did wonder if it could be better.It's just a little unbalanced. He's a quirky (if confident) clear outsider, with, yes, multiple and quantifiable psychological issues. But she's just acting out, which of course includes attacking people - maybe she's just crazy? Anyway, that's why I said the movie didn't need to be changed, necessarily. Just something, some beat, to give her behavior some direction.

The problem, I suppose, with Wes Anderson World, is that it's almost implied his characters have been like they'v been for years (think: Royal Tennenbaums); they don't really change. So it's weird, in the context of this film and how it is written, to think there is a Before Suzy and an After Suzy. In Wes Anderson World, she's been listening to French pop since diapers.

i think the peanuts analogy is really illuminating. why is charlie brown so depressed? what tragedy happened in his life to make him this way? we don't know, and maybe there's nothing. after all, anderson seems to constantly be suggesting that all humans are damaged in some way or another, and maybe the explanation matters less than the damage it left. sometimes that information is included on the registration profile (or whatever it was that Ed Norton kept referencing) and sometimes it isn't and you just have a damaged person and it's unclear why.

what i mean to say is that leaving it ambiguous worked for me - i found it relatable

well, she's a fantasy love object, and anderson's films are often about the outsider's desire for the trappings of wealth. suzy's a rebellious rich girl: pretty, weird, smart & malleable (not just in the boob area). the fact that she's down with sam's rebellion is pretty much a given.

xp to josh in chicago

i thought the kids' behaviour was anti-social because they are the true lovers in a cruel unfeeling world (that includes electro-therapy)

i disagree about 'fantasy love object' analysis 100% xp

I think part of the reason the girl was acting out was because her parents are weirdos who don't seem to be in love and her mom's hooking up with the nice policeman?

I just wish there were a tiny beat or two more indicated what drove her into the arms of the kid. She's much, much angrier than he is, so I wish there was ... something. I agree it's easy to overlook. BTW, all that stuff on the roof at the end was really striking.

Charlie Brown is depressed because he likes that girl, he can't kick the football, his dog is cooler than he is and he got a bag of rocks for Halloween.

Charlie Brown is depressed because that is his natural state, good grief

Charlie Brown is depressed because he likes that girl, he can't kick the football, his dog is cooler than he is and he got a bag of rocks for Halloween.

plus everybody's always pickin on him

I suspect CB suffers from IBS.

I keep wanting to call this movie "Moonage Dream." I wonder if that's where the idea for the title came from, now that I think about it.

it's hard to know what's the chicken and what's the egg w/ charlie brown, is he made fun of because he's a stick in the mud or is he a stick in the mud because he's always being made fun of?

http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/harvey_head_big.jpg

I liked this but not much more than Rushmore or FMF. The script ran out of ideas in the last ten minutes (i.e. let's gather all the characters in a central location for a final time, for another climax).

fmf is way better imo, feels so full of ideas & jokes and characters compared to this

the dance scene on the beach reminded me of Pierrot le Fou

"FMF" is so good.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WpvgDgqTvdQ/Tyd9QqvWytI/AAAAAAAAAZw/jErSooKJdnI/s1600/wolf:fox+.jpg

There's Pierrot stuff all over this one (the scissors scene being another great example).

Caught this last night. This & FMF best 1-2 Anderson punch since his first two. Old people behind me thought Schwartzman was Sacha Baron Cohen. Young women next to me not ready for topless Bill Murray.

I liked this but not much more than Rushmore or FMF. The script ran out of ideas in the last ten minutes (i.e. let's gather all the characters in a central location for a final time, for another climax).

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 30, 2012 12:37 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's some truth in this. the worst offender is life aquatic, where there are like eight climaxes all involving a grouping of nearly the entire cast.

the dance scene on the beach reminded me of Pierrot le Fou

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 30, 2012 12:50 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm 99% sure this was 100% intentional.

and if it wasn't Anderson has to refine his methods.

is it just me, or has he gotten a lot worse at achieving seamless tonal shifts? the murray/mcdormand marriage stuff felt kind of jarring in the context of the rest of the movie. especially as compared to tennenbaums, where he was able to glide back and forth between deadpan hilarity and much darker territory without creating any sense of disjointedness.

idk i remember something with an Elliott Smith song that was pretty jarring but it probably was supposed to be

It was jarring because it was an injection of a contemporary song.

I think it's important not to overlook having Owen Wilson as your writing partner vs. Roman Coppola or Noah Baumbach, both of whom have been hit or miss vs. Wilson. Though again, this and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" were pretty great, which sort of redeems those two vs. Wilson.

i don't think it's been overlooked

i must have missed all the ideas and jokes FMF was apparently brimming with

Huh? That movie is brimming with ideas and jokes!

bad ideas and unfunny jokes

this wasn't a bad movie at all

fmf sucked

I prefer talking foxes to arch adults

otm

argh started reading thread but SPOILERS but s'ok, only got halfway through one sentence and scrolled down quickly.

i have never ever understood why people don't appreciate the life aquatic for the subtle, layered, bittersweetly ridiculous comic genius that it is. one of murray's best rolls, all time.

not to mention willem dafoe

because it's just awful

If you like The Life Aquatic at all your opinion cannot be trusted

another one of bill murray's best rolls, all time:

http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/golf/www/release/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/gallery_images/murraysandwich_1000.JPG

Where does this Life Aquatic film hate come from? I really don't see it as being significantly better or worse than his other films. Maybe it's the weakest link or something, but really, what about it makes it stand out as SO BAD?

this picture sums it up

http://kpnv.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/zissou-rom.jpg

no you're right, i don't think it was bad in qualitatively different way, it was just him being so much more wes anderson than in any of the others

rushmore > bottle rocket > tenenbaums > darjeeling > moonrise >> aquatic

xp loool

I think the hate springs from Murray's beret and its color.

if find the "he needs owen wilson" back thing plausible, but is any of it based on anything more than "the good movies had owen wilson therefore..." correlation implying causation?

for me its based on - new wes isnt funny, owen's funny, therefore need owen.

this article does some speculating

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2005/07/the_o_factor.html

i have found anderson's slippage into tics + mannerisms to be beautiful and even writerly. there's a certain hallowedness + stillness + meditation to moonrise whose genesis imo occurs in life aquatic (hated darjeeling) and i've found his distance from naturalism (which he's obv always found uncomfortable) to be more + more interesting. i suspect this accounts for the massive distance between the films i love by anderson (primarily these later ones) and the ones other ppl like. thought it wasn't a coincidence that the penultimate scenes of moonrise occur at a church, the two lightning strikes from heaven, etc. more stately than realistic.

maybe unrelated that credit card commercial was a big mistake since it kinda exposed how apolitical some of his homage artifice was (he can even pan the camera for Mastercard!), and cheapened some of the tricks.

See the tics and mannerisms are just part of the WA package for me. I remember seeing the trailer for Rushmore and thinking "Holy crap they are playing the live "A Quick One" from the 1968 Rock n Roll Circus and look at how weird and symmetrical everything is! This is going to rule!"

maybe unrelated that credit card commercial was a big mistake since it kinda exposed how apolitical some of his homage artifice was (he can even pan the camera for Mastercard!), and cheapened some of the tricks.

I like to think that he's just doing his thing and this recognizable quality is what the ad producers snagged him for, so a) this is the cost of doing business in hollywood/tvland, and b) he's making mad cash so he can make weirder less "likeable" movies. I am an optimist obv!

He also did that commercial before making one movie in India and another entirely with stop motion.

Yes, proof!

I thought the whole point of those credit card ads was playing up all the director's quirks (M. Night, I'm looking at you).

saw this over the weekend! thought is was great. only complaint is that keitel was underused!

Anderson's learned much from Woody's penchant for star non-turns.

Frankly, I'm not sure how one even uses Keitel these days.

after seeing his photo in the khaki scout magazine in the beginning, i thought it would be interesting if anderson just used his picture, and keitel wasn't even in the movie.

i had no idea harvey keitel was in this. im suddenly interested!

he is underused!

but he's good. made me realize it had been forever since i'd sen harv in anything.

he's been underused for the last 12 years. the 90s were so kind to harvey, what happened!

The film's biggest disappointment is not using Keitel, McDormand, Balaban, etc as nothing more than visual cues.

*as anything

i dunno, i thought balaban was perfect. and mcdormand was great in that bathtub scene.

supposedly there's a photo of Owen Wilson (as Miss Cross' dead husband) in Rushmore somewhere. Never spotted it though

The film's biggest disappointment is not using Keitel, McDormand, Balaban, etc as nothing more than visual cues. - this is a problem w/ wes anderson and actors in general, he knows how to use them as dolls but as human beings (post rushmore at least and maybe even then) forget it. when actors have actually made characters more than cartoon figures - bruce willis in this, mcdormand for the bathtub scene, and the big one gene hackman in tenenbaums - it's felt like an accident or, as we know in hackman's case, an actor deliberately ignoring what his director wants. i basically enjoyed this and think wes anderson should maybe focus on making actual kids flicks, children tend to come off as full of shit cartoon characters anyway. will add that watching this a few hours after finally reading that 'can a 9 year old be a psychopatch?' times piece was something, i kept thinking 'these kids are gonna get swept out to sea and we're supposed to think it's sad or tragic but all i'm going to think is 'thank god'.' still enjoyed it though - find myself way way way more willing to tolerate wes anderson (or woody allen) frothy mediocrities if they come out at a time of year where my other option is something like ted.

there is something family guy-esque about moonrise kingdom...

also: young kids do what you tell them to do. I don't know what the hell attracted Keitel to this script ("You'll wear a Sam Elliott mustache!").

wtf at Shakey bashing Willis upthread. Willis has always been particularly good acting with kids.

Keitel got paid and got a Wes Anderson movie on his resume--that's all you need to know.

how is that a plus

free scarves for life

Rachel McAdams abasing herself for Woody Allen I understand

supporting actresses in Woody films get Oscars or Oscar noms -- she had nothing to lose.

Wes Anderson>straight to dvd/tv movies/commercials Keitel usually does these days.

xpost

speaking of which, i see woody has reeled in ellen paige for his next one

also: young kids do what you tell them to do.
lol what

i wouldn't have wanted to see any more or any less of Keitel in this

I've already seen ALL of Keitel several times (Bruce Willis too, unfortunately)

i would've liked to have seen less of the stupid rescue scene

shakey i know you did not just trash color of the night

i like wes anderson's thing for casting men who are atypically good-looking and often kind of beaten-up or busted-nosed or sagging-faced. save for luke wilson, of course...

Bruce Willis gets naked in like 3/4s of the movies he appears in!

also I am allowed to hate him! he makes movies worse!

sheesh

no he doesn't!

you like die hard, though, right, shakey?

lol what

lol I knew this would raise eyebrows. I'm just saying that even Truffaut would agree that the worst six-year-old tantrum is less onerous than a sixty-year-old star's.

I have never seen the entirety of Die Hard and have no plans to. don't even bother.

ha I love you Shakey

Willis has been at least terrific or better in Mortal Thoughts, Pulp Fiction, Nobody's Fool, and The Sixth Sense.

pretty good on miami vice also. best performance in moonrise kingdom also w/ possible exception of the girl (though who can tell w/ kids).

shakey have you seen die hard 3: die hard w/ a vengeance. pretty pretty good, esp if you like puzzles. graham greene is in it. not THAT graham greene though.

Willis will either win a Lifetime Achievement Oscar or one for a shitty film in which he befriends a young punk-ass who wants to fight German terrorists in skyscrapers while in his bare feet.

I have seen Die Hard 3. I saw it in the theater with a friend who was trying to convince me that Willis was "the American Chow Yun Fat"

some highlights of Bruce's finest moments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6aTqBL62Yo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDXkd2NyCCE

I could make fun of you singing in the shower too

maybe but you couldn't make fun of me for attending the '92 GOP convention

wow shakey you hate robert mitchum or telly savalas also?

are you seriously dismissing an actor for being an ass in his personal life?

Mitchum is great in at least several great films, spanning several decades and styles (Night of the Hunter, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and Dead Man, off the top of my head). Telly I have no real opinion on. he reminded people to love him, or something, iirc...?

xp

i kept thinking 'these kids are gonna get swept out to sea and we're supposed to think it's sad or tragic but all i'm going to think is 'thank god'.'

doop doop doo taking this out of context later

is that a Steely Dan lyric

Willis' personal life is just the shitty icing on a shitty cake imho.

Pulp Fiction is Tarantino's worst movie, can't stand Willis in it apart from a couple minutes (his scenes with his wife are unbearable). 12 Monkeys is okay, he's the worst thing in it, mystified as to what Gilliam saw in him. 5th Element I have some issues with but again Willis is the most irritating thing in it, (mostly because he is not a setpiece designed by Moebius lol). I can't think of any other movies I even like that he is in for any appreciable amount of time.

xp

find it hard to believe any grown man could not have an opinion on telly savalas

I remember enjoying Moonlighting at the time. otoh I was like 11 and haven't seen it since.

xp

lol willis most irritating thing in it? did you turn it off before chris tucker popped up or before gary oldman spoke or before tricky 'acted' or before love Love LOVE was the fifth element?

strongly suspect allyce beasley is best thing in moonlighting (maybe booger?). plus pretty hard to hate bruce willis when hate magnet cybill shepard is right. there.

Savalas has been dead for almost 20 years, I imagine there are a fair amount of grown men who have no idea who he even is. I think the only thing I may have seen him in is the Dirty Dozen...? which I probably slept most of the way through.

re: 5th Element - some of those things are bad, but at least they are bad in a way that is very much in the spirit of the source material (ie Metal Hurlant). I don't really like that movie much tbh. I enjoy it more when it's just on in the background and I don't have to make any effort to follow it or listen to it

I gasped when I saw Keitel. I had no idea he was in this until that moment. More Keitel would have been welcome obv but the person I was left really wanting more of was Schwartzman.

I do remember that my favorite episode of the Moonlighting was the one where Beazley and Booger take on a case by themselves (I don't think Willis/Shepard even appear?)

xp

'Willis was "the American Chow Yun Fat"'

i kinda want to see chow yun fat in a wes anderson movie. not as a manservant though.

I know Morbs is off the grid due to being on vacation, Shakey, but you're really taking this curmudgeon game seriously today

i think that's toward the end when shepard was flaking out big time, willis was already looking to movies, and glenn gordon caron had a hard time getting episodes in on time (and frequently failed iirc).

honestly not Morbzing here, ILX is the only place I frequent where Bruce Willis is so roundly praised so I guess my opinion sticks out

critics have routinely praised Willis for years!

I only like a handful of things he's done but I think he does a quiet confidence well

i wonder how many times willis was on the moonrise kingdom set thinking 'starting to get a north vibe here'.

willis is great onscreen, even in shitty movies. he's got tons of presence, rarely seems affected or "actorly", undercuts his glib charm with a sense of wounded depth and any angst with self-deprecating wit. think he's a complete dork in real life and wish he picked more interesting projects in general, but he's easily my favorite action-hero/leading man-type actor of the past few decades.

This seems like the appropriate place and time to talk about the soft spot I have for Hudson Hawk. I have it on DVD.

so do i!

willis h8rs gtfo

mainly, initially I found the idea of Bruce Willis in a Wes Anderson film incongruous, but then I remembered the affected quality of Hudson Hawk, one of its strengths, such as they are, and I thought to myself "this will probably work out really well."

Willis is almost always great when it crops up in stuff like "Fast Food Nation" or "Pulp Fiction" or "Nobody's Fool" or as himself in "Oceans 12" or even in unconventional (for him) leading roles like "12 Monkeys" or "Sixth Sense" or even "Fifth Element."

"12 Monkeys" or "Sixth Sense" or even "Fifth Element."

Apart from the Die Hards, these are my favorite things Bruce Willis has done (and I could conceivably add "Moonrise Kingdom" to the list).

Also, he was pretty good in "Unbreakable" too, but that movie had huge issues.

yeah on both points

man i need to watch nobody's fool again. i also need to not always hear that kenny loggins song in my head whenever i hear the phrase 'nobody's fool'.

Finally saw this. Hard to sum up my feelings in a couple of sentences, which I guess is a good thing. It has not replaced Rushmore as my favourite Wes Anderson film; obviously they have a lot in common, but Rushmore drew me in and really affected me emotionally, Moonrise Kingdom I looked at with interest. The boy is basically Dirk from Rushmore, and later on in life he was my boss for a couple of years in the late '80s. The performances are fine--I thought both Willis and Norton were surprisingly subdued. The symmetrical compositions fell somewhere between wearing and distracting before long. The whole time I wondered what universe I was in, but I realize many people feel the same about Rushmore. In spite of these and other misgivings, I was moved by the ending. I missed the way pop music was used in Rushmore and Tenenbaums. I'm not sure if I should quit while I'm ahead or wait a bit and see it a second time.

A couple of additional thoughts after skimming comments above. I was never a camper when I was young--once or twice--and I think I would connect more with the film if I had been. One image I liked a lot was the medium-long shot of the canoes fleeing with Sam and Suzy; the riverboat escape in The Night of the Hunter flashed across my mind. And I liked Sam's spastic dancing.

wait wtf bruce willis is a fantastic actor.

speaking of ... i just watched a film with a really early telly savalas appearance. he is already completely bald on top, but he has some hair around his ears. and he was smoking a cigar!

willis h8rs gtfo

Srsly.

I don't understand this at all.

he is by far the best thing about this movie

second only to the way Norton holds his cigarette six inches from his body.

GUYS WHAT ABOUT SCWARTZMAN? He was really funny!

he was!! he is my #1 wedding officiant of choice

:)

i don't think anyone was underused in this movie. it's an ensemble-cast thing done with star-power names, known entities or not.

i like how he made them spit out their gum

this movie actually made edward norton likeable!

there was the perfect amount of schwartzman in this one.

now see Schwartzman I will watch in pretty much anything. love that dude.

movie maybe could have used tilda swinton a bit more? although her character was basically a gag.

i saw this and i liked it but something about it has really buried itself in my mind and i'm growing to like it more and more. the interactions between sam and suzy initially struck me as a bit off, but then really it makes perfect sense that these two slightly (or more than slightly) precocious and awkward children would build something through letters that would take a while to realise in real life. and... i dunno, even though it seems quite simple i feel like my thoughts on it are still germinating.

and ya i don't really agree with the underused thing wrt anyone, even beyond it being a big-name ensemble cast i think they're more all a supporting cast to the two kids.

this movie actually made edward norton likeable!
otm. seems like he took the owen wilson role of the film and made it his own

this was pretty good!

-loved how willis couldn't even change his accent if he tried really very hard

-this movie confirms that wes anderson is just max fischer directing the war movie at the end of rushmore. the bits of unreality, like the motorcycle all of a sudden in the tree, or the three of them hanging off the burnt church tower in a silhouette. the giant walkie talkies.
-suzy = margot from tenenbaums, wes has a thing for moody women who wear makeup that make their eyes look sunken (also loved how asymmetrical her face was & how that clashes with his framing)
-merdeyeux otm about the initial awkwardness between sam and suzy, it's how I imagine most people interact in their first meeting irl after carrying on an internet dating relationship
-maybe it's just cause FMF was the last wes I watched, but wes seems to shoot all his scenes perpindicular to the scene, facing it straight on - all his dolly work is straight horizontal, no slanted angles, feels kind of video-gamey. love the use of frequent cuts to convey action rather than elaborate panning and zooming. this is again why this film made me think of max in rushmore - feels like we're watching a stage play. also, noye's fludde etc. - plays within plays - hamlet's players - yadda yadda
-there was a lot of humor in this but the people at my theater were not laughing and that dampened my own laughter : (

movie maybe could have used tilda swinton a bit more? although her character was basically a gag.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, July 3, 2012 10:02 AM (6 hours ago)

yeah, i would have loved to see more of swinton as she's one of my favorite living actors, but the character would have had to be a good deal more developed to justify it. social services is a cartoon as written, and it's not like "ice queen" is new look for TS (the limits of control, narnia flicks).

She played the White Witch again.

yup

owen wilson was in this! wasn't he? i thought he was swinton's pilot.

Nope, this is the first Anderson with no Owen at all.

w/o bothering to check i think the other wilson bro was the pilot

i saw both darjeeling limited and moonrise at my local indie theater, both times drawing big crowds heavy on seniors, and both times the audience laughed appreciatively at, like, all the jokes. is this a thing? or is it just my own circumstantial experiences.

no, the old ones like to laugh

ime seniors love going to movies, can't understand why an adult would go see a movie about a spiderman, etc, leaving this as one of few options left. plus: racist? anyhow first time i saw rushmore we drove to atlanta when it was still limited release, crowd were all bottle rocket fans, huge huge laughs. when it opened wide in athens a few weeks later (big ad blitz also - i think it was an mtv film also?) crowd were not on that wavelength, crickets except for when max gets walloped wrestling (my friend and i were still dying laughing throughout, rushmore's a classic). w/ this crowd (old people, young people who dress like old people) were super generous, laughing at any and everything.

having checked that is not the other wilson bro as the pilot.

yeah there were tons of seniors at my showing. they didn't laugh at the right jokes.

i remember when i saw deconstructing harry there was a group of old ladies that were the only other ppl in the theater. 15 minutes in they bailed. i can remember catching a matinee of 40 year old virgin w/ a friend and there was a group of old ppl there and we thought 'i think they have the wrong idea about this film'. pakistani guy starts going on about butthole pleasures and theater clears out like someone yelled 'fire'.

My crowd on Sat morning was mostly seniors and they applauded when the end credits rolled.

I can see why this film would be a big hit with the seniors. look at these young people being so young! the old people proably went and danced a slow jig afterwards.

new demographic for wes anderson?

dudes, old people invented hazy nostalgia

also, it's set in 1965. that's their time!

if you were 18 then, you'd be 65 now

there's probably a site that screen captures all of andreson's tableaux's and interior decorator arrangements and exhaustively lists what each element in it is. right? some weirdo repugnant-to-whiney saddoe has already done it off a boot of moonrise kingdom, yeah?

norton was relaly good in this btw, pulled of the overgrown man-child vibe perfectly

Saw this today, enjoyed it pretty much start-to-finish, laughed a few times, admired Willis and Norton, thought all the kids were good and the two leads especially. Otoh, I didn't really ever feel like anything much was at stake, for the characters or for Anderson -- it felt like safe territory all the way around, storm and lightning strikes notwithstanding. But that's OK. I like the careful design of his fantasy worlds, the devotion and meticulousness are rewarding in themselves. (In a way he reminds me of Mark Hogancamp, each movie its own Marwencol.) Past a point it's not worth getting frustrated with him for not breaking out of his own head, because that's where he lives.

Also, yeah, Jason Schwartzman as a Boy Scout Milo Minderbinder was pretty sweet.

Saw this today, enjoyed it pretty much start-to-finish, laughed a few times, admired Willis and Norton, thought all the kids were good and the two leads especially. Otoh, I didn't really ever feel like anything much was at stake, for the characters or for Anderson -- it felt like safe territory all the way around, storm and lightning strikes notwithstanding. But that's OK. I like the careful design of his fantasy worlds, the devotion and meticulousness are rewarding in themselves. (In a way he reminds me of Mark Hogancamp, each movie its own Marwencol.) Past a point it's not worth getting frustrated with him for not breaking out of his own head, because that's where he lives.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, July 4, 2012 5:11 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

marwencol's an interesting comparison! i was taking to my friend about this and we decided rigidity/stuffiness is what turns us off about WA - i dont think its revealingly stuffy a la ozu, its just like comfort-zone stuffy and he doesn't want to go outside of that. i think it would be less vexing if his first couple of films didnt feel a little more grounded or whatever

there's probably a site that screen captures all of andreson's tableaux's and interior decorator arrangements and exhaustively lists what each element in it is. right? some weirdo repugnant-to-whiney saddoe has already done it off a boot of moonrise kingdom, yeah?

― now all my posts got ship in it (dayo), Wednesday, July 4, 2012 1:14 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would bookmark such a site.

and yeah norton was pitch-perfect in this.

ETSY SEARCH OF THE DAY ---> http://www.etsy.com/search/vintage?q=moonrise%20kingdom

wow

omg the cat coin purse

gets much worse (better?) when you switch from "vintage" to "handmade" http://www.etsy.com/search/handmade?q=moonrise%20kingdom

I enjoyed this but I feel like I'm still digesting it and there seemed to be a lack of urgency compared to the large cast and busy subplots.

There should be Wes Anderson Lego kits.

i really liked this. felt like it crystallized a lot of the stuff he's been playing with for his last several films, that sense of people who don't fit in to the structures to which they belong trying to create their own worlds often with a suffocating sense of order. and its a little easier to deal with the kiddie sense of love and life when its... actual kids. willis and ed norton really kill it, everyone else doesnt have much to work with it i guess, schwartzman steals his scenes

'actual kids' otm, this was like the missing piece of the puzzle for me with WA

There should be Wes Anderson Lego kits.

Or playmobil...

more like moonlighting kingdom

^ my official opinion

more like the the lost boy scout

hahaha

this was pretty good, although upon initial viewing I didn't like it as much as the last either Mr. Fox or Darjeeling. Willis didn't bother me at all, enjoyed pretty much all the cast really, but it seems odd to praise anyone's acting in this film when basically every actor delivers their lines in the same identically stilted monotone - they're more like dolls than actors.

that being said, Schwartzmann was predictably my favorite

My complaint about most Anderson movies, which is why the puppet foxes were awesome.

this was pretty good, although upon initial viewing I didn't like it as much as the last either Mr. Fox or Darjeeling. Willis didn't bother me at all, enjoyed pretty much all the cast really, but it seems odd to praise anyone's acting in this film when basically every actor delivers their lines in the same identically stilted monotone - they're more like dolls than actors.

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 1:31 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that being said, Schwartzmann was predictably my favorite

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 1:32 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree with both of these.

i should get around to expressing my thoughts about this movie, but despite liking some of the "stuff" fuck did it leave me cold

schwartzmann at least had a little of the ol' WA swagger

yeah I did not feel any real emotional investment here (which isn't the case with some of his other movies that I've found genuinely moving). Schwartzmann makes things a little more fun than the others.

other castmembers I mean

bill murray's sad dad shtick was so much more fun in rushmore when he had some spunk to him, it feels like he's just been on this long andersonian decline into complete impassivity

though i liked the moments in this of his that were in the trailer.

("that's a loaded question")

re: Murray - previews before this included his FDR movie. which might be fun...? I dunno, I'm glad it's not a straight biopic at least.

bill murray's sad dad shtick was so much more fun in rushmore when he had some spunk to him, it feels like he's just been on this long andersonian decline into complete impassivity

― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 2:37 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

the bit in rushmore when he wanders onto a basketball court and blocks a little kid's shot slays me

this schwartzmania is surprisng to me -- are you guys fans of his detective series with ted danson and zack galifianakis? because that's just non-stop schwartzman.

I haven't seen it but a friend was telling me last week that I should check it would. Bored to Death, yeah?

this schwartzmania is surprisng to me -- are you guys fans of his detective series with ted danson and zack galifianakis? because that's just non-stop schwartzman.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, July 18, 2012 2:53 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its cuz he's the only character in the movie with any energy

I got through two seasons of Bored to Death, and never disliked watching it, but couldn't bring myself to bother when Season 3 was on.

Schwartzman also given the most classic Anderson schtick in the whole film - that assured importance in delivering protocol despite the circumstances not warranting such a serious approach.

loved this movie though. haven't seen much this year, admittedly, but my favourite so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFlCjTVGkc

there was also a short-lived sitcom where I think he is a therapist?
i liked schwartzman in rushmore, but i'm really perplexed by the idea that he elevates or outshines bad material.

bored to death is pretty funny, but danson kind of steals the show for me.

i want to say bored to death is good/funny despite schwarzman but thats not quite right, maybe its that its good regardless of him, hes fine, sometimes funny, sometimes a drag, but hes not why i liked the show

i really wanted to watch bored to death but schwarzman and his stupid hair kept me away. get a haircut hippie, you're not in the damn Monkees

watched first season of Bored to Death but not really enough going on there to keep me engaged.

would watch Yo Teach tho

i'm 100% certain schwartzman is actually tom cruise in hipster drag

idly curious how they got away with showing two obviously way underage actors engaged in nominally sexual activity... aren't there laws against this kind of thing? like, they couldn't show Kristen Stewart and whatsername kissing in that Runaways movie but somehow this was different/acceptable...?

Dakota Fanning

Schwartzman saying "O, R they?" in Rushmore is one of the funniest things in the world to me.

OK maybe not in the world but you know.

no you right. "O.R. they" is soda-through-nose good

ya thats a classic

it's definitely the funniest line in the movie

altho the thing I laugh hardest at in any WA film is "Whackbat"

Willis steals this.

not much to sell though

Dunno. The beer scene was super.

Also: Norton.

idly curious how they got away with showing two obviously way underage actors engaged in nominally sexual activity... aren't there laws against this kind of thing? like, they couldn't show Kristen Stewart and whatsername kissing in that Runaways movie but somehow this was different/acceptable...?

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 2:30 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

? they don't do much onscreen. i am kind of amazed though that nobody has taken it upon themselves to be professionally outraged by this depiction of pubescent romance. then again "indie" movies seem to fly below those folks' radar, hence people get upset over little things in blockbuster films but films by todd solondz or gregg araki don't generate much controversy.

well I'm not outraged or anything, I just don't understand the laws/regulations that would allow two underage teens to be shown making out in one movie but not in another - like, what weird arbitrary rules are in effect here.

what rules are those?

teen laws

to be fair to the (barf) MPAA, the runaways scene was probably more lascivious.

"What Happens in Indie..."

i think kids are still allowed to kiss

teen laws

― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Sunday, July 22, 2012 11:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

first rule of etc.

Did the MPAA really say that the Fanning-Stewart kiss=NC-17 rating? If not, I figure either Fanning's or Stew's people put the kibosh on the scene.

As for Moonrise..., I was kinda surprised they played a fairly extended scene in their undies. I also recall some folks around me gasping between laughs during the slow dance bit with Suzy telling telling Sam "They'll get bigger" re:her breasts and then particularly "It's hard" which probably wasn't about the ground beneath their feet.

I don't think it's a ratings thing, it's a "you will be charged with child pornography" thing iirc.

Fanning had a parent on-set iirc

I watched leon earlier this year and that was def p uncomfortable at times, a sign of a different era

just saw this. it wasn't good. but it was interesting. i've never felt so implicated in a movie, and i spent a lot of time working on movies.

1) some scenes filmed at the horrible camp i attended (and have blabbed about pretty extensively). my old cabin the was the one in which WA showed the kid jumping on the trampoline.

2) some scenes filmed on the land trust my mom maintains (the field/windmill)

3) some scenes filmed in the church on the island where my father used to be a minister.

4)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8281/7710012476_62ec191eb8.jpg

vs

http://losmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/jared-gilman-as-sam-in-moonrise-kingdom-2012.jpg

are you saying that's you with the glasses in the first pic?

there's definitely some things to like about this movie. it's not great, but its probably his least-bad since tenenbaums

That's me in the first pic in the location where the movie was filmed

Fuck, I can't remember if there was a montage in this or not!

correspondence montage

its probably his least-bad since tenenbaums

f u

Nothin wrong w/ this at all, prob his 3rd-best behind Rushmore and Fox.

didn't even notice he was sneaking daddy issues in w/ Bruce Willis til he got there.

Pre-teen got dragged out of theater by parent after the breast fondle, shrilly asking "Did it get INAPPROPRIATE?!"

hahahaha

parent prob just worried about Francoise Hardy exposure

"She's singing in French! Who knows what filth is in there!"

This was great, good story, good characters, good film-making. Excessively twee and stylized in some places, but it's full of Zeitgeisty signifiers that you sort of always felt like Anderson should do, and he does them well. I like the long zoom he uses in lots of places. Feels very French New Wave when it's not being Wes Anderson Wave.

Also, I loved loved that ridic play they meet at, with Noah and the psychedelic Ark.

Pretty much all of the actors are good in this imho.

I loved loved that ridic play they meet at, with Noah and the psychedelic Ark.

that would be a benjamin britten opera

The two leads gave very effective and dynamic performances. Maybe people describe the acting as monotone because usually child actors are the opposite of subtle. I thought it was a realistic portrayal of depression/angst that was deep yet not overly cynical or self-obsessed.

the Britten sequence (as noted earlier in this thread) is heavily inspired by John Duigan's Flirting

which seems to be Anderson's Urtext