Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

Yeah when there are these artists that do variations on the same thing it's a matter of accumulation. Like after 5-10 years of the same thing it's a rut but after 15-20 years it's consistency.

yeah! like a repeating joke that goes from funny to not funny to funny again.

looks great

I'm torn between finding such stylistic consistency kind of intriguing in its own right and wishing to see an artist "confront new problems." like, why not bring a wes andersony style to a very non-wes andersony kind of story or setting? maybe that's a stupid question.

that's what he used to do, to much better results imho

i can see that. i do think filmmakers (and maybe narrative arists in general?) are kinda held up to some standard of virtuosity in lots of different styles and kinds of stories. how is this different from telling piscasso or whoever "ok nice work, but now let's see you do a fruit bowl." or is the issue more precisely that anderson's "style" is just a collection of tics and rote gestures?

Fox + Moonrise a real deepening over the likes of Darjeeling, Aquatic, most of Tenenbaums.

Did you ppl not notice all the sad adults in Moonrise, or are you just too young to take them seriously?

Darjeeling is underrated

but yeah the last two were leaps forward imho

Since I think The Life Aquatic is the best thing he's ever done, I can't agree with that. Plenty of sad adults in TLA. I think this new one looks like fun!

Agreed, and Moonrise def looked like the SOS from the trailer.

(Agreed with Shakey/Morbs, I mean.)

All of his movies have sad adults. But remind me what "sad adults" are a measure of again?

someone for me Morbs to relate to

I just thought the most acutely drawn sad adults were in the last one, and Murray in Rushmore.

fuck the sad adults imo. he should take all of these hotels, secret maps, and precocious kids and make a full on "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" style kids adventure.

The trailer makes it look like he's aiming for the 1930s motor-mouth screwball comedy style and he's not quite up to the scratch.

What do you fans of the most recent few see as improving in Anderson's work?

I liked Fox, but everything else from Life Aquatic on left me cold. Bottle Rocket and Tenenbaums are what I like most. Maybe that's the conventional take on Anderson?

To me, it feels like he's intentionally going for this blank, stage-y, mannered, school pageant feeling more and more - and the acting is getting more stilted and unnatural. I guess all that was always there - and could even make for a good movie - but I just don't feel any emotional pull from any of it. Feels like flipping through a really great coffee table book or something - just cool unto itself but nothing more.

What am I missing? Not being troll-y at all - really interested to hear what people think he's going for and why they like it.

I'm torn between finding such stylistic consistency kind of intriguing in its own right and wishing to see an artist "confront new problems." like, why not bring a wes andersony style to a very non-wes andersony kind of story or setting? maybe that's a stupid question.

anyway, i suspect this sort of thing might look better when his career is over. it's not quite the same, but i can imagine someone thinking "ugh another Hitchcock thriller?"

― ryan, Thursday, October 17, 2013 11:25 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

been thinking about this today and i think, probably, it has to do with the conventions of the genre anderson works in. that is, humor is still the counterweight against whatever new setting he's mining in his sets, but jokes don't get funny when you retell them, or just have slightly different characters mouth the same punchlines. as opposed to a thriller, or horror, where we all recognize the stylistic conventions but we still get crawly fingers up our necks every time.

i enjoyed fantastic mr. fox and moonrise kingdom, his tropes really suit themselves to the free-roaming, unbounded nature of the animation sandbox.* if he had had the ability to create a 'hotbox' type scene in any of his live action movies there would probably be one going all the way to bottle rocket. moonrise kingdom was also good in that those same tropes were a natural fit for pre-teens in that awkward phase between everything-in-the-world-actually-being-a-game and puberty.

the life aquatic and darjeeling limited, otoh, are truly dire and should be summarily erased from the face of this earth.

*the irony being that the sandbox also allows anderson to be at his most staged and least dependent on the nagging confines of the real world and real actors. brio hits it right when he says that all anderson films can be traced back to the stage play at the end of rushmore. well, except for bottle rocket maybe, which is why that remains his best film.

I really don't see a whole lot of the framing and cutting in Moonrise being 'school pageantlike' aside from a few obvious sequences (unless yer talkin' about, like, the lateral pan when Norton walks thru the camp at the beginning -- what schools do that?). A lot of the scenes involving the two kids on the run together are crafted with a lot more sophistication than that.

Normally I'd groan and barf at the same time, but his last one and "Mr. Fox" were possibly his best, so benefit of the doubt in place.

Did I imagine ed norton cutout shadow puppets used as stunt doubles for storm scene?

they made a movie about brodie

― velko, Thursday, October 17, 2013 10:11 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

finally

I wasn't referring to framing, cutting, or lateral pans as school pageant-like, Morbs - as you say, what school plays did any of that?

Referring more to an intentional stiltedness - sets that announce themselves as sets, costumes as costumes (the lobby boy with a hat that says Lobby Boy on it), and it feels like to me - acting and direction that seems like it is meant to evoke a kid's idea of acting (or maybe dialogue written to highlight that effect)

have you ever seen children act? they don't do flat line readings.

well that kind of "intentional stiltedness" can be found in some or many films by lots of filmmakers, Kubrick, Fassbender, Demy, Jerry Lewis (who had a mammoth cutaway set in The Ladies Man that WA has somewhat aped a couple times, esp the Aquatic sub).

Yeah, sometimes I'm really into that tableau framing, certainly when it lends the material some weight.

Morbius otm re: precedents for this kind of acting/line readings in film. Its a technique that serves to sort of give equal weight to everything going on in the film; rather than priveleging the actors and the capital-A Acting they are doing as the central thing attracting the viewer's attention, it brings all the other elements (the design, the costuming, the editing, the sdtk, etc. - all the highly stylized elements WA clearly spends a lot of time on) into sharper relief.

it can produce a heightened air of unreality in the proceedings but idk "realism" is overrated

wes, please stop

― 乒乓, Thursday, October 17, 2013 10:33 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so far four people in my fb timeline have shared this piece of garbage, guy has sucked so hard since he lost his writing partner owen wilson

? owen's been in all his movies except maybe MK (can't remember)

maybe owen just doesn't want to write anymore

WRITING PARTNER

amusing myself w/ picturing Anderson's opening sequence in the Korova Milkbar

OW hasn't had a writing credit since Tenenbaums, and icey is high per usual

you would have to be high to enjoy any of his post tenebaums movies folks

don't mind if I do!

iirc tho i saw the life aquatic high and it was still dumb as hell

many xposts

morbs - totally agree that other people have done "intentionally stilted" and unreal, to me it feels like it's working against him at this point. But generally, I like the look and style of Anderson movies - not a huge sticking point for me.

I don't think the acting in the new Anderson movies is child-like because it's flat exactly - more because it just doesn't feel believable, sounds like people reading lines. lines written to sound like written lines.

anyway - I was asking what you guys like, didn't really want to argue about everything I don't like

and here we are going over the auteur's entire oeuvre for the tenth time 5 months before the film comes out. bye til March.

all these stiled manchildern, now w added stiled scripts

Can we talk about how Anderson has specially tailored ill-fitting suits, a la Gene Kelly's shirts?

a la pee wee herman

Surprised Reubens hasn't made it to a Anderson movie, tbh.

guy has sucked so hard since he lost his writing partner owen wilson

― lag∞n, Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:27 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

hah for some reason i had htought darjeeling limited was co-wrote by o.w. - but no, it's fucking jason schwartzmann

i was going to say, maybe noah baumbach is a salve but he has a credit in the life aquatic

apparently this guy now has two writing credits http://i.imgur.com/AApvrJ6.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2zXwfIx.jpg

That guy looks like he has murder credits.

His eyebrows look like they got pissed off at each other and started to fight.

Perpetually smelling a bad odor.

the scent of CQ

There's something about Anderson that reminds me of Joseph Cornell but I can't put my finger on it

i already want to see it again. Mr Veg loved Rushmore but hasnt liked much since Life Aquatic, i am gonna try to get him to try this

I bailed on this the first time, felt almost intolerably twee & annoying.

I stuck with this but I did feel it was overly twee. Maybe I should give this another go.

at this point calling WA twee is like calling Kubrick cold

talk to the hand

Have seen this twice and I mostly really like it !!

at this point calling WA twee is like calling Kubrick cold

talk to the hand

yeah, and people who criticize because they consider he always does the same thing, he's locked in his own little dolls world, etc.
It's like they love "Rushmore" (or "Bottle Rocket" for some extremists !) and then consider it's cool to say the rest is shit/samey.
the "the first album is their only good album" syndrome.

Only Moonrise and Fantastic are good. Twee films work best with kids and animation. How does that rank on the list of shitty arguments?

as for TGBH, I like the contrast between the nice little world of the hotel and the darkness all around (prison, mountain, train...).
It's pretty violent (the fingers !) and desperate (the casualties of fascism, sickness and then communism/capitalism, as the hotel turns into an almost abandoned ruin no one cares about).
it's also quite impressive the level of aesthetic and visual control he reaches. of course, that's been one of his strength since the beginning but the evolution is remarkable (the experience of MrFox has certainly helped).
I think his best work is still ahead of him.

"you FUCKERS"

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 1, 2014 9:00 AM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's kinda strange to call a film largely about fascism where several characters are killed "twee."

Nazis didn't wear turquoise and pink?

Rohm probably did

(sorry, that's a terrible joek)

"...along with whatever we haven't spent on whores and whiskey."

this has just started on telly and on rewatch of the first twenty mins i think we ought to declare it the greatest movie ever made in mature retrospect

vg otm a week ago basically

:D

it's also quite impressive the level of aesthetic and visual control he reaches. of course, that's been one of his strength since the beginning but the evolution is remarkable (the experience of MrFox has certainly helped).

otm. never liked this guy outside of some bits in rushmore but liked fantastic mr fox a lot and then was hugely impressed by this one, it's totalized. like if nabokov made a movie (w any irritations that might imply). the 20c-nesting-doll structure of the (literal) framing is rly sad and sweet, my favorite thing he's done w his storybook fetish. fiennes' performance is p much sublime. anyway

"you FUCKERS"

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 1, 2014 6:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otmfm

Yeah, I'm always a sucker for framing narratives. I guess three-levels of framing is about as much as you can do, before the effect starts to wear off. This was sort of what happened with Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler", which is kind of like if someone decided to write a novel that was all frames, like peeling layers of an onion. After you've made it through the first few frames, it becomes a bit repetitious.

"you FUCKERS"

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 1, 2014 6:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otmfm

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, January 22, 2017 11:30 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still

As part of the acting and production design module this week in my film class, I showed it. First, the class' enthusiastic response -- when they didn't know who Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Bill Murray, etc were -- astounded me after two periods when Playtime and Touch of Evil inspired lukewarm responses. Then it astounded me. Anderson's grasp of what each scene needed cinematographically blew me away, and the sheer pace of the thing.

I hadn't watched it since 2014.

And was surprised to find that maybe it's my new favorite of his. I feels like it pulls all of his talents together in a meaningful way

otm

I retract everything I said upthread, by the way, especially when my class made the connections between production design + cinematography + acting. It helped that I'd shown Playtime.

Lukewarm responses to Touch of Evil?! Away with these philistines

they're young

You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it.

The line about how Gustav's age ended before he was even born but that he "certainly maintained the illusion with remarkable grace" seems more than a little self-referential/on-the-nose re: Anderson.

Keep your hands off my lobby boy!

My favorite Ralph Fiennes performance, and he's wonderful in Anderson's Roald Dahl shorts. (Great in Schindler's List and Spider too, but Grand Budapest Hotel is the one I'll be watching most.)