Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

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.

imdb sez:

Negative Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213)

he seems like one of those guys who will shoot on film until he can't anymore. but of course i assume all post production was digital.

Ozu maybe but sirk and especially Minnelli have none of the his fussy stiffness and almost contemptuous disinterest in their characters.

Ozu maybe but sirk and especially Minnelli have none of the his fussy stiffness and almost contemptuous disinterest in their characters.

― plax (ico), Friday, March 7, 2014 2:45 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jeez, have a cuppa tea or something. herbal tea.

you'd think he was the coen brothers or something

fussy stiffness /= formal patterns

An obsession w/a particular moral pattern congeals into fussy stiffness thou.

fussy stiffness /= formal patterns

Oh no I know. But these films are fussy and stiff.

moral = formal but lol it still works

I don't get the 'disinterest' accusation, he was clearly interested in at least 5 primary characters in MK, and I assume he was even in the films that didn't work as well for me.

you'd think he was quintin tarantella or something

re: 35mm prints--I wonder how many, if any, are being struck? Just for ref, here in Houston (where we get the film next week), I'm pretty sure the only remaining theater doing genuine film projection is our MFA (which is old school two-projector).

it's not disinterest for me either. he has a weird kind of respect for his characters, for their reservedness and for the slight embarrassing disjunctions between their self-presentations and reality. I like that he seems to allow them the dignity of holding up appearances, so to speak. feels compassionate, as I said above, and not about exposing or dilineating their inner life.

yeah something like 92% of american screens are now digital-only. and the ones that aren't are most likely to be small mom-and-pop places that--chances are--wouldn't show this film anyhow. but there are a handful of high-profile theaters in major metro areas that are still capable of projecting 35mm. for that reason--and sometimes at a filmmakers' insistence--a few 35mm prints are often, if no longer typically, struck.

I should also add that plenty of overseas markets have still not transitioned fully, or even very extensively, to DCP/digital projection. one example is Greece, who because of their financial situation didn't have the capital to do a major transition during the Great Recession. so that becomes another reason studios still strike prints (though my guess is that such prints would be struck in Europe, or wherever the country may be).

so p.s. if you want to see a movie on 35mm just visit greece!

XPOST

fwiw we have a cinematheque here that shows 90% of films (admittedly over half of which are revivals) in 35mm. but our film festival shows fewer and fewer films on 35m--this year it's maybe just 5%. that's not because we don't have 35mm projection--I think we have four 35mm venues on/near campus (!)--but because distributors just don't bother to strike prints for festival screenings anymore. so it's all a mix of DCP, Blu-Ray, digiBeta...