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

if only he had T*rantino's unpredictability/range, amirite

i apologize if my glib word choice re: aristocracy ruffled your feathers

though he probably won't make some dramatic stylistic shift just to prove he can, i do think eventually wes is going to drop a relatively grounded memoir on us and reap some oscar hay for it - ten bucks says a girl first touched his dick at a screening of the red balloon

I suspect fans love the sensation of submitting to an all-encompassing vision -- the guy knows exactly what he wants to say.

all Great Artists create a little world, you understand. Wes Anderson has created a little world, therefore--

ten bucks says a little girl first touched his dick at a screening of the red balloon

fixed

in a way this guy reminds me of tim burton inasmuch as once he was through exploring his private array of cultural obsessions and fetishes he had nowhere to go except repeat himself or make (admittedly awesome) animated films.

I dunno. I see the Burton comparison, but I find there's always an emotional core/complexity to Wes Anderson - the intricacies, ironies and contradictions of family, mostly - and I appreciate the affectations as a sort of stylistic sleight of hand, or at least shorthand. He's never ... cheap the way that Tarantino (or Burton) can be. Like, his level of homage rises above references, I think. I can see why the surplus of style can be maddening, and there's a lot Anderson has done that I have not dug, but coming off my least fave batch of his films, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and this one reminded me of the guy's gifts.

Yeah everything he does, stylized as it may be, still has some kind of emotional core to it.

Burton is a bad point of comparison, hasn't written any original material in what, 20 years...? Anderson is one of the few writer/directors of original material worth a damn.

I dunno – he's recycling himself something awful.

that's different

Anderson doesn't have a filter that he applies to existing corporate properties once a year

Burton is a shitty director but writing your own material can be as inhibiting as using Hollywood rent-a-scripts.

Recycling? I dunno. He uses a lot of the same sort of imagery, and of course many of the same actors, but if you distilled each of his movies down to a sentence or two, you couldn't possibly come up with a weirder bunch of stories.

for all my issues with modern-day wes anderson there's no comparison bw what he does and tim burton's alice in wonderland type garbage

MK is just as garish and mannered.

Garish?

I'll give you mannered.

yeah i'm gonna say... no on that one.

No, he's refining himself in splendid fashion, Alfred. His last two films eclipse everything but Rushmore.

I suppose he gets points for creating his own lurid tropes instead of buying them readymade but like croup said upthread I'm done with him unless he gets Clooney to play another wry fox.

i think i'll give him garish, just with 70's curtain and cushion fabric as opposed to matte foundation and shitty hairdye

Whit Stillman is a better example of a guy refining himself in splendid fashion.

they might be on a continuum of manneredness or garishness, but that doesn't make them the same.

the idea that he's reinventing himself is a bit of a joke though. he's just drilling down.

Anderson doesn't have a filter that he applies to existing corporate properties once a year

we are forgetting that wes anderson has wes anderson'd up a roald dahl property

ha.

At the essence below his love of British sixties pop and colorful clothes are...a love of Francoise Hardy and people holding cigarettes in mannerist poses.

i agree that burton is way way worse, espec once he turned into the ed wood of CGI.

i def don't want to make it sound like i wish wes anderson would prove us all wrong by making a planet of the apes movie

interesting that both wes and tim's debut movies heavily involve texas, which you wouldn't expect from their later work

yeah but look how well he did with a Planet of the Foxes movie.

"make me a daiquiri, koko. the way they do down south."

Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is so much better and better fleshed out than Dahl's.

Dahl's book ends in medias res, with the farmer's waiting for the foxes to come. "And there they wait, still, to this very day" or something like that. I have a weird suspicious that dictated every one of his stories in real time, just making shit up as he went along, flow be damned.

which Burton movie should Anderson remake

Pee Wee.

"Big Fish."

Edward Cigarettehands

Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is so much better and better fleshed out than Dahl's.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 17, 2013 10:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

there's more of it alright. That doesn't make it better

I'll grant Anderson: more directors should follow his lead and make 80- and 90-minute fillums.

Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is so much better and better fleshed out than Dahl's.

ugh ugh no no nothing worse than 'experts' coming in and retooling a genuinely magical work so that it 'fits; whatever standard identikit they learned in media/film.whatever school- even if i like fantastio mr fox, the fact that anderson ran with (the very burtonesque) "this is now autobiographical" angle for it only worked out by dumb luck imo- it is in no way one of the better things about the movie.

what's the autobiographical angle?

alienated precocious teen fox anderson

I have to represent my home town and point out that Rushmore also takes place in Texas--specifically Houston.

i don't think it actually "takes place" there. Shot there maybe

How many of you have actual read "Mr. Fox" lately and are not just fondly remembering it from childhood? I read it all the time with my daughter, and trust me, all the important stuff is in the movie. Movie works better because it is not entirely faithful, which is why movie versions of "The Witches" and "Matilda" don't work. Those books are a narrative mess.

Thats true, Number. Though it captures how Houston feels in the winter extremely well so it always feels like a "Houston" movie to me.

Also, I would hardly consider Anderson's "Mr. Fox" identikit in any sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRoLgBE9AOs