This is the thread where you come anticipate 'Life Aquatic' w/ me

i have a hard time spelling that guy's name

this looks rad. oceanographers are hot.

He did play GOD in Dogma I figure that Kevin Smith must've thought that he was being cute.

Whoa, you'll be saying you like Amelie next!

This thread is reminding me I really maybe actually should watch the Tenenbaums DVD I have.

-- amateur!!st (-...) (webmail), August 24th, 2004 9:28 AM. (link)

was totally write, am.

old roommate who saw the above-stated projection said it was ridiculously great. said the projectionist was the worst projectionist ever.

But I really like the title - "with Steve Zissou" flows better than ending on the hard 'c.'

x-post

see also: http://www.stevproj.com/Carz/CAIGGP2.html

Stripey, who had never seen an Anderson film before, was vociferous about it on the way back from the friend's house -- as she put it, she didn't flat out hate it but she found it very frustrating, to the point where she couldn't really enjoy it for that reason. Interestingly she used the word 'quirky' before I even brought it up -- Anderson is going to be trapped by that forever, I'm now willing to bet -- and used it very much in a negative sense -- to paraphrase her, "Yeah, it's quirky, but just about anyone can do something quirky, I could do it. It's not enough. There were some occasional funny moments but still." (She extrapolated a bit by noting she like me isn't interested in Napoleon Dynamite because the descriptions of the film sound so dully obvious, an 'oh isn't this quirky' sense that's pretty uncompelling, and she and I digressed into a larger discussion about 'quirky' as quality that deserves a separate thread/discussion.)

Her two other major complaints: first, that the pacing and editing simply didn't work, that it was at 'a stoner's pace.' (I had thought myself that it was telling that the action sequences were not filmed *as* action sequences.) She wondered if she was just so used to quicker editing and faster interaction in so many other films that as a result this just dragged in comparison, but felt that regardless that the conscious approach of the film (my take on it being that where some films use understatement as a quality, it was used here as a metier) grew irritating over time, and that we were seeing a series of related but individual sketches and bits that didn't 'congeal,' to use her own term.

Second, she felt that the film essentially indulged in red herrings too much -- that, as I believe she put it, Anderson and crew spent a lot of time putting in a lot of detail that was called attention to which did not in fact hold together, did not develop the story, didn't go anywhere. She found that extremely irritating, and quoted the Chekovian dictum about guns on the mantelpiece in the first act needing to go off in the third. For instance, I remember she was suddenly excited by the appearance of the crashed plane in the seabed because as she told me later she figured it would have something to do with Wilson's character, being a pilot, and felt miffed that didn't turn out to be the case. Later on she especially liked how the hostage rescue/sinking of the Hennessey boat/etc. sequence brought things together, gave it some urgency, actually tied the threads, but that this was too little too late. As for the climactic scene, as she put it: "We saw the shark. It was pretty. So what?"

She did like the music, the Bowie rewrites, etc., she appreciated the not-quite-real sense of the ocean scenes though still didn't think they fully worked, and concluded by comparing the film to two other movies with quirk and specific editorial/cinematographic styles, Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise and Almodovar's Women on the Verge.... She thought the Jarmusch just dragged, was dull, suffered from similar flaws, whereas she thinks Almodovar's got a perfect grasp as to how to tie everything together, how to "throw you up against the wall" with his story, editing, pacing, how to be 'gloriously superficial' and make it all work. Anderson, in comparison, she felt like makes films for a cult, one that if you're not in means his work, or at least this movie, becomes a sometimes pleasant but ultimately pointless exercise.

While not quite so negative I'm not all that far removed from Stripey's take on things. If anything this is rapidly confirming my belief that Anderson is, if not believing his own press, then is at least essentially dedicated to making curios, and that winsome flatness starts to weigh too heavily towards the latter for me to automatically doff my cap to, that there's something charging towards the self-congratulatory and smug here. I honestly didn't know what to expect, having heard praise and anger both -- now that I have seen it, well, I pretty well think I can live without seeing it again.

But yeah, soundtrack's good.

The first time I saw Rushmore I loved it, there was a really affecting sense of solidarity between the two main characters, especially in the scene in the lift when Jason Nevins or whoever asks Bill Murray how he is and he just shrugs and takes another swig from the bottle (that's how I remember it anyway). Tenenbaums took that moment and stretched it out very thinly over two hours. It was full of moments when the characters had these kind of Prozac moments of self-awareness, and as a consequence I found it trite and boring.

To be honest I couldn't get much more than halfway through the new one. It came across as a smug self-congratulatory wankfest for all involved. And I just do not get this deification of Bill Murray. Fine, I accept that he's a better comic actor than Dan Ackroyd. But his world-weary manner is very wearisome over the course of two hours, and especially over the course of films with so little of interest to say - thinking mostly of Lost in Translation, of course.

Great, great film -- I've only seen it the once, many years ago, but it was compelling and entertaining, and much of it still sticks with me.

Now how intentional is that reference? ;-) (Oddly enough, if our friend had opted for his other choice -- National Treasure, god help us -- Stripey had by chance brought along Yellow Submarine as a backup.)

i can't relate to how someone wouldn't be moved by his self-pitying monologue after he falls down the stairs.

That? But it was so *obvious* -- it practically shot up fireworks saying, "Look! Here's the self-pitying monologue! And we're acknowledging the obviousness of it by having him wryly think of the comment after he has just fallen down the stairs! DO YOU SEE?!" My reaction was a slight smile at most.

whimsical and exciting

I agree with the first (at least in terms of intention). The second? Er...

Glad you enjoyed it but I was deeply unmoved, and was definitely not positively affected. Straining for profundity by way of doing your damnedest NOT to seem like you're straining for profundity thanks to diffidence at all costs becomes its own potential trap, and they all fell right in.

I just remembered one other thing that Stripey said that I thought was brilliant -- she says it would have worked *perfectly* as a recurring sketch feature in a variety show format, SNL, Mr. Show, whatever floats your boat. As she put it (and as I thought too) the film felt so much like a series of minifilms -- each scene, almost each *shot* being like a minifilm -- that its inability to 'congeal' was annoying. (For myself, Momus's mention of Satyricon makes me think of a way that seeming disunity can work in comparison.) But if it had been something where each week or every other week or whatever another day was told or another few minutes were shown, then she felt it would have worked much more effectively as humor, that all the various details would have been reminding signifiers than go-nowhere things-in-the-frame.

I will agree with you however on Angelica Huston, who was the one character that I thought got the pacing and delivery right because it, well, fit her character. She seemed to use it as arched-eyebrow dismissive defense instead of modus operandi.

Goldblum and his Gattaca-like crew provided the best humor in retrospect because it was just enough -- at most a minute or two of screen time.

anyways, i'm sure you got all that and it didn't move you anyways. those are pretty interesting ways of regarding the movie, even if i don't agree.

x-post. goldlbum was hilarious. the moment toward the end when the entire cast is lounging aboard the belafonte, and goldbum is balancing a martini glass on his knee as he lies outstretched on the floor is poster-worthy

(sorry for the sinking metaphors)

(even if they weren't really metaphors)

I think Owen Wilson must have contributed a lot more to the scripts of the other Wes Anderson films than I would have guessed, this lacked the character and heart of his other movies. There were some bits I liked but it never really came together, but I can't say it is horrible because it had some Scott Walker. I couldn't condemn a Michael Bay film starring Carrot Top if there were some Scott Walker on the soundtrack.

i don't know, dude. i think you're leaving a lot out. what about cody?

He's inept but not comically inept, interested in his family although not in a heart-wrenching way, and all of the trouble he causes is boring. Great, Willem Defoe's character hates him and there's some half-assed love triangle. He's still the same guy coming out of the film as he was going in. No great epiphanies here, please move along. If anything, the Ned Plimpton character is the shark. Much noise is made about both, but they're both pretty static and unexciting.

Oh GOD, you're right. That's an example of how uninvolving the character was, I completely forgot his name! And it's mine! Grrr.

(and there's considerable evidence that he knows it)

nb -- i really really expected to hate this, i hated 'tenenbaums' and put off seeing this a year. it's no 'rushmore' but i roffed quite a bit. 'throw him over the other side'.

FWIW i didn't HATE this movie, i just liked the undersea/whimsical stuff better than the trite melodrama.

bottle rocket -- no
rushmore -- not really, ok, maybe a bit
tenenbaums -- within a large ensemble piece
life aquatic -- yes

Saw this it's good

The dog smack is a once-a-year genuine laugh out loud moment

Does it hold together ah who cares

this is an underrated one, never understood the low rep compared to Anderson's other work.

dmac u proclaim spoilers are horrible yet u fuck w me on this

this movie has Gut Feeling in it so it's basically already pretty good on that alone

also, have never come away from a wes anderson movie feeling bad or let down or anything. i think hindsight will be kind to his reputation

Guys the dog smack

This one and Darjeeling are the two Anderson flicks that made zero impression on me. Overuse of Bill Murray sadface. Visual feast tho (well they all are)

Darjeeling is the one that he needed slapping out of

I bet its LJ's favourite

think wes anderson's movies could benefit from a little more effort to collapse the "themes" into the phenomenology.

brother, couldn't we all

Last time I collapsed the "themes" into the phenomenology, I ended up in the back of a paddywagon