Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

i maintain owen wilson's writing was the secret ingredient

i liked moonrise kingdom okay but i cant tell you anything about the characters

when you're my age you'll understand Willis, McDormand, Murray

(i hope)

Maybe, maybe not. I already understand Tilda Swinton in every movie she's ever been in, though.

emotional undercurrents of MK took several viewings to really unfold for me--and that restraint seems to give way a real depth of unforced compassion that is really moving imo.

i understood those characters but they didnt leap out for me

i maintain owen wilson's writing was the secret ingredient

― AIDS (Hungry4Ass), Friday, March 7, 2014 10:30 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and ive always said this

he needs a little goofy insouciance to balance his formal dollhouse-ism. together i think it was a wonderful pairing.

did they have a falling out or did OW just stop around the time of his...whatever that was

it's hilarious how we're still having the same arguments about this dweeb 12 years later

nah, their last script together was Tenenbaums in 2001 and Wilson's personal problems happened long after that. I figured he just became too big of a movie star and didn't have time to be working that closely with Wes.

Obviously it's difficult to prove who was responsible for what in the early films but it does feel like something was lost. Baumbach has talent but Roman Coppola I dunno

they both bring the wrong thing to the table imo

Wilson hasn't written anything apart from his Wes collabs though so it's hard to work out exactly what he brought whereas Baumbach's style is obvious.

yeah, where it's not well documented, you can't tell shit from screenwriting credits.

glenn kenny, four stars: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-grand-budapest-hotel-2014

ive always felt this... i liked moonrise kingdom okay but i cant tell you anything about the characters, they're just wisps... whereas dignan, max fisher, bill murray in rushmore i think about all the time

as a wes anderson fan i admit this is true! i don't really expect a lot of emotional resonance from his films. i'm a bit bewildered by the critics (esp. the ones I respect, like matt zoller seitz and kent jones) that talk a lot about the depths of his films. I guess I'm just not sensitive to them. and yet, I consider myself an unabashed fan. I guess the formal dimension of his films is enough for me. and I also think they are funny, funny is very important.

actually, i should make one point: I think that formal patterns, or style if you want me to be less pretentious about it, can be the source of emotions. i'm not, like, deeply emotionally involved in the travails of max fisher (though there are some very affecting moments, it's true), but something about the way the thing builds to a release stylistically and motivically (sp?) carries an emotional charge for me. gratitude, or awe, or something like that.

i guess i'm correcting myself insofar as when most people talk about a movie's ability to bring forth emotion they aren't usually talking about the full range of emotions.

all this puts me in a weird position of actually agreeing w/ many of anderson's critics (to a point) and disagreeing with his most vocal and sophisticated boosters--even though, as I said, I'm a big fan.

I mean, I take a lot of pleasure in design, whether it's a nice dress or jacket or an extraordinary painting or just arranging stuff in my apartment in a pleasing way. those things are emotional for me, even if they aren't about love or loss etc. in any strict sense.

i mean, yeah, anderson's never going to make something like sansho dayu (who is?!), where all the formal mastery is put in the service of an absolutely harrowing and devastating and cathartic story. or even meet me in st. louis, for the same reasons (a film which shows a kind of mastery of color/mise-en-scene that anderson can't really touch). but not all films have to be the same, or aim for the same things, or aim as high.

sorry, i'll stop now.

I think you are all seriously underestimating the value of Wes Anderson films. They are great for asking people out on dates. Lighthearted but not frivolous, romantic, and an excellent bellwether for music preferences.

i mean, yeah, anderson's never going to make something like sansho dayu (who is?!), where all the formal mastery is put in the service of an absolutely harrowing and devastating and cathartic story. or even meet me in st. louis, for the same reasons (a film which shows a kind of mastery of color/mise-en-scene that anderson can't really touch). but not all films have to be the same, or aim for the same things, or aim as high.

― espring (amateurist), Friday, March 7, 2014 2:32 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think a lot of this criticism comes, though, from the fact that some people, myself included, do think he hit a really interesting balance, something very affecting and personal, early in his career, and we've been waiting for that same feeling ever since

I think you are all seriously underestimating the value of Wes Anderson films. They are great for asking people out on dates. Lighthearted but not frivolous, romantic, and an excellent bellwether for music preferences.

― erry red flag (f. hazel), Friday, March 7, 2014 1:39 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

unless your date is a wes andeson h8er, then you fucked up, son.

They are great for asking people out on dates. Lighthearted but not frivolous, romantic, and an excellent bellwether for music preferences.

Fellini movies are also great for these same reasons, imo.

if someone asked me to a fellini movie i'd decline :(

unless maybe it was i vitteloni

Fellini's films don't leave much time for drinks and fucks afterwards.

Yeah, but during…

That's like fucking after two helpings of lasagna.

i would engineer Nights of Cabiria as your date movie

i think most of the famous ones would work ok, except 8 1/2

ok I have actually gone on a date to see Nights of Cabiria at the Castro

loooong time ago, before I was married

in case any of you are keeping track

How about La Strada?

La Dolce Vita is nice too.

i think some of you wd draw the line at the final one w/ R Benigni

I like Rushmore fine, and its the only one of his films to even sort of understand class instead of drool on it, but everything that I seemed cramped and bored about that film has gotten worse and worse. Moonrise kingdom was so formally constipated and numb it actually sort of me. The plot seems to be advanced by the display of beautiful objects rather than any sort of affective convolution. static and thin. It was exactly the sort of boring film that can only think of tilda swinton as a succession of still images and so she seems to exacerbate the flatness.

The trailer for this was about as much as I could bear I think

Hi plax

I saw a report on another forum that this film is already having issues re: proper projection at screenings.

oh man i can imagine

as a total aspect ratio hardass even that sentence gives me a bit of a panic attack

i wonder, do they have anamorphic files for DCP? does this one switch between anamorphic and non? b/c to assure that the aspect ratios wouldn't be botched, they could have just encoded in one ratio and make the black bars on either side part of the file.

it'd be weird if the different parts of the film were encoded differently, i.e. they actually required the projector/DCP setup to switch between anamorphic and non, 1.33 and 2.25, etc. during projection.

I think that formal patterns, or style if you want me to be less pretentious about it, can be the source of emotions

Sirk, Naruse, Ozu, Hou, Minnelli -- they excelled in formal patterns, as ruthless at times as Anderson. My problem with his work, Rushmore and Fantastic Mr. Fox excepted, is I don't like the particular emotion he stylizes, if that makes sense.

and what ids that singular emotion, do you think?

s1ocki, out of respect to you, honeybunch, i am not changing my dn to 'aspect ratio hardass'

switching between anamorphic and non would be impossible with 35mm platter setups, since you either put an anamorphic lens on the projector or not. (if you had a two-projector set up, which multiplexes never did, you could alternate reels anamorphic/non. i know one experimental film that does this, or rather, it is a dual projection, and one of the projectors is projecting an anamorphic reel and the other in academy ratio. but that's a crazy and awesome exception.)

i'm just talking to myself but whatever

anything that requires the teenager sweeping the floors to periodically change something during projection is doomed to fail.

did he shoot this digitally?

i wonder if there are any 35mm prints of this being struck and if so where they are playing.