Wes Anderson

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Wes Anderson

#201 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Oct 31, 2019 3:39 pm

Boosmahn wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 3:01 pm
While we're on the subject of ranking, I never got why The Life Aquatic received such lukewarm reception.
It's plotting is eccentric and I think it's a less consistent vision as a result, which makes it esoteric to a portion of Anderson's fanbase looking for an airtight milieu with expected moods and narrative arcs, and alienates much of the rest. Having said that, I think it's one of his most humorous films in bringing the focus deeper into the absurd, and I've known a few people in my life who I would never expect to even look in its direction and yet consider it not only their favorite Anderson but favorite film, so who even knows.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Wes Anderson

#202 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 3:53 pm

It's a strange one, for sure. Murray doesn't seem fully engaged (he wasn't), and the there are filmmaking choices (the questionably authentic piracy of the boat, for one) that don't always work for most viewers, myself included if I'm being honest. I still find it very funny, like therewillbeblus said, which means I'm a fan, but it's probably at the bottom of my live action list, just above the animated ones depending on when you ask.

Worth noting that it's Matt Zoller Seitz's (author of those handsome The Wes Anderson Collection hardbacks) #1 film of Anderson's.

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knives
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Re: Wes Anderson

#203 Post by knives » Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:03 pm

Not a fan of FMF? I thought that was a great use of his silliest tendencies.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Wes Anderson

#204 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:07 pm

It's fine. I was very charmed by it the first time but it's... you know, a very minor piece of work when I catch up with it now, and I usually don't get to the end of it. And the third act is way too frantic and goofy for my taste. I think I just prefer to watch actors than puppets at a very baseline level.

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knives
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Re: Wes Anderson

#205 Post by knives » Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:10 pm

And I prefer the puppets over the people which might explain mine.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Wes Anderson

#206 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:29 pm

One thing I absolutely miss that is an enduring hallmark of his earlier work: The pop music.

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knives
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Re: Wes Anderson

#207 Post by knives » Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:35 pm

Music still seems to play a big role even if it's not a Kinks fest anymore. FMF gave him an opportunity to explore different kinds of music while Moonrise Kingdom makes great use of Hank Williams.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Wes Anderson

#208 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:54 pm

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a wonderfully diluted exploration of existentialism that doesn't feel simple because of the emotional resonance much of the uncomplicated interplay elicits. It's a really subtle way to get at the intensity behind meaning in being. I absolutely love it, though like most of his films its place in a ranking order depends entirely on my mood of the day.

I'll second the draw of the soundtrack in his earlier works as a big plus, though his experimentation with more diverse musical choices other than his favorite pop songs is also an indicator of Anderson's maturity. That is not to say that the other films were immature, but he's clearly moving on from the idea of inserting his favorite cool tune that he foresaw amplifying a visual montage in his fantasies and onto different interests. Still, I'd love for him to discover some new pop music, get excited about it, and infuse that into his work again someday, and speaking for myself - those scenes cued to pop songs from his first handful of efforts will likely remain the moments in film that are permanently implanted in memory, more than most, for the rest of my life. I think of them often and they matched and affected my own emotional states too many times to forget, or not have my own nostalgic relationship of attachment to them.

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Re: Wes Anderson

#209 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Oct 31, 2019 5:40 pm

I thought the musical star of Moonrise Kingdom was Benjamin Britten (it inspired me to buy a big box set of his music -- which included Noyes Fludde). ;-)

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Never Cursed
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Re: Wes Anderson

#210 Post by Never Cursed » Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:44 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 12:48 pm
All of this Moonrise Kingdom legacy subtweeting is nuts
Just wanted to pop in here and express my agreement with this sentiment. I first saw Moonrise Kingdom around three weeks ago on a whim, and fast forward to now and my girlfriend and I are about to go trick-or-treating as Sam and Suzy. Yeah, it's the Anderson film whose material fits best within his affected style, and the child performances are some of the best put on film by anyone, but I love it most because it's every story a kid ever hears (books, records, operas, rumors swapped among scoutmates) brought to life as an introspective exploration of being a kid and hearing those things. None of Anderson's other movies (not even Tenenbaums, which I also think is masterful, or the endlessly entertaining Isle Of Dogs) and most movies in general don't get at something that great as effortlessly as Moonrise Kingdom (though to be fair, I am automatically more sympathetic to anything that reminds me of The Westing Game).

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mfunk9786
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Re: Wes Anderson

#211 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:16 pm

Never Cursed wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:44 pm
I first saw Moonrise Kingdom around three weeks ago on a whim, and fast forward to now and my girlfriend and I are about to go trick-or-treating as Sam and Suzy.
Never Cursed wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:44 pm
my girlfriend and I are about to go trick-or-treating as Sam and Suzy.
Never Cursed wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:44 pm
about to go trick-or-treating
I mean, it is rated PG-13, makes sense that you'd just be catching up to it now

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Never Cursed
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Re: Wes Anderson

#212 Post by Never Cursed » Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:49 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:16 pm
I mean, it is rated PG-13, makes sense that you'd just be catching up to it now
Not that you meant that in mean spirits (or could have known this), but the embassies here in DC have always given out candy on Halloween. It's pretty common among college kids (such as myself) and twenty-to-thirty-somethings to hike on over to Embassy Row around sundown, which is what I was referring to.

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Re: Wes Anderson

#213 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 11:18 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 3:53 pm
It's a strange one, for sure. Murray doesn't seem fully engaged (he wasn't), and the there are filmmaking choices (the questionably authentic piracy of the boat, for one) that don't always work for most viewers, myself included if I'm being honest. I still find it very funny, like therewillbeblus said, which means I'm a fan, but it's probably at the bottom of my live action list, just above the animated ones depending on when you ask.

Worth noting that it's Matt Zoller Seitz's (author of those handsome The Wes Anderson Collection hardbacks) #1 film of Anderson's.
I think it's his funniest work, but not his best. There were perhaps one too many characters getting in the way of a really interesting idea of seeing Murray play Cousteau but somehow also playing himself too.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Wes Anderson

#214 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 11:39 pm

Never Cursed wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:49 pm
mfunk9786 wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:16 pm
I mean, it is rated PG-13, makes sense that you'd just be catching up to it now
Not that you meant that in mean spirits (or could have known this), but the embassies here in DC have always given out candy on Halloween. It's pretty common among college kids (such as myself) and twenty-to-thirty-somethings to hike on over to Embassy Row around sundown, which is what I was referring to.
I didn't at all because I figured there was some cute explanation

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domino harvey
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Re: Wes Anderson

#215 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 01, 2019 12:15 pm

Can’t believe Malkmus left the candy part out of the lyrics


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Re: Wes Anderson

#217 Post by Constable » Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:38 pm

Has the forum ever done a collective ranking of WA films? I've seen other forums do threads in which they rank a director's filmography, IDK if that's ever been done here and with WA specifically. I'd be very curious to see where each film would fall.

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domino harvey
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Re: Wes Anderson

#218 Post by domino harvey » Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:42 pm

Somewhere (in this thread, I think) a lot of us posted our rankings

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ChunkyLover
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Re: Wes Anderson

#219 Post by ChunkyLover » Sat Apr 02, 2022 1:57 pm

Bottle-Darjeeling is the period I love the most and I'm a bit more mixed on his post-Darjeeling output. Even then, the only one I genuinely disliked/didn't care for (so far) was "The French Dispatch".

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Re: Wes Anderson

#220 Post by Constable » Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:02 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:42 pm
Somewhere (in this thread, I think) a lot of us posted our rankings
I mean like a thread where people voted and then a collective ranking was determined from everyone's votes.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Wes Anderson

#221 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:25 pm

We’ve done Auteur Lists for a handful of directors in our List Projects section; generally the rule of thumb is that we want at least 30 films in a filmography as a floor for a project.

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ChunkyLover
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Re: Wes Anderson

#222 Post by ChunkyLover » Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:34 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:25 pm
generally the rule of thumb is that we want at least 30 films in a filmography as a floor for a project.
Damn, Robert Aldrich is just short one (unless you want to count "The Garment Jungle" but idk how much of his footage ended up in the final film).

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Re: Wes Anderson

#223 Post by swo17 » Sat Apr 02, 2022 5:40 pm

Constable wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:02 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:42 pm
Somewhere (in this thread, I think) a lot of us posted our rankings
I mean like a thread where people voted and then a collective ranking was determined from everyone's votes.
It was informal but I did this almost a decade ago

Constable
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Re: Wes Anderson

#224 Post by Constable » Sat Apr 09, 2022 4:58 pm

swo17 wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 5:40 pm
Constable wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:02 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:42 pm
Somewhere (in this thread, I think) a lot of us posted our rankings
I mean like a thread where people voted and then a collective ranking was determined from everyone's votes.
It was informal but I did this almost a decade ago
Damn, Rushmore comes out on top. See, for me, Rushmore is near the bottom of my list, because what I love about WA is the style and that's basically completely absent in Rushmore.

I recently listened to a podcast in which they ranked the movies and they put Tenenbaums at #1 and Budapest at #2 for the reason that Tenenbaums had more of a human story. For me, Budapest is #1, because for me the stylistic pleasures and cleverness of Budapest is more appealing than the, admittedly, greater humanity of RT. On the first page of this thread, people were discussing two different camps of WA fans and it reminded me of my takeaway from the podcast - it was so clear listening to the hosts explain their picks that our sensibilities were different and the specific way in which they were different and you could understand on that basis why our rankings would differ.

The podcast I mentioned is here, if anyone is interested:

https://soundcloud.com/intercutpod/best ... stcast-117

While we're at it, what ARE everyone's WA rankings? Here's mine:

1. Budapest
2. Mr. Fox
3. Moonrise
4. Tenenbaums
5. Life Aquatic
6. French Dispatch
7. Isle of Dogs
8. Darjeeling
9. Rushmore
10. Bottle Rocket

As I mentioned earlier, the thing I primarily appreciate about WA is the style, but also the creative character and set design and the humor, so naturally GBH is #1, as it's so far the best instantiation of what he does, most packed with style and Wes Andersonyness. Mr Fox is not far behind at all, it almost could give GBH a fight for #1.

French Dispatch is also very style-laden, but I just found the stories weak and uninteresting. The bottom three are the bottom three mainly because of how light on style they are.

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Re: Wes Anderson

#225 Post by mteller » Sun Apr 10, 2022 12:03 am

1. Tenenbaums
2. Fox
3. Rushmore
4. MK
5. Budapest
6. Isle
7. Aquatic
8. Bottle
9. Darjeeling
10. Dispatch

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