a ~star~ fruit
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 15 March 2014 23:21 (ten years ago) link
I loved this -- impressive to look at, fun to watch, full of almost Zucker-Bros-worthy gags, everyone in the film looks like they had a good time making it. Maybe my favorite Wes Anderson since Rushmore. Not destined to be remembered as a "great" film, but very clever and totally enjoyable.
― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Sunday, 16 March 2014 14:07 (ten years ago) link
I thought the comedy was very hit and miss, and the only character with any substance at all was Ralph Fiennes'. But yeah, it was good fun and it looked fabulous.
― painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture (DavidM), Sunday, 16 March 2014 17:25 (ten years ago) link
i fell asleep twenty minutes in.
― Nerd Trombones (thebingo), Monday, 17 March 2014 17:04 (ten years ago) link
i thought this was wes anderson's worst movie by far. both visually and in terms of the characters, there were no glimpses of realism to temper the cloying whimsicality. the wes anderson-izing the SS as the "ZZ" was in bad taste, although i did lol at the fact that they called their cigarettes "zigarettes". in general i feel something like betrayal wrt movie.
― Treeship, Monday, 17 March 2014 17:10 (ten years ago) link
he sounds like a fruit but otherwise theres nothing weird about him
h4a, clean it up
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, 17 March 2014 17:22 (ten years ago) link
I thought the comedy was very hit and miss
yes. saw this in a large, full, Glasgow cinema where the audience were almost WILLING the film to be funnier than it actually is - huge stretches of it, particularly the prison and 'chase' material, fell dismally flat. i don't know if owen wilson is the answer, but anderson def needs a co-screenwriter can punch up/polish his gags.
i agree that the ZZ stuff is p lame, and seems to be part of a final third 'grab for seriousness' that the film really can't support - tarantino handles this kind of stylistic clash between cineaste fantasy, farcical comedy and genuine terror so much more deftly/inventively in Inglorious Bastards, imho
it also took the film a LONG while to recover from the horrible framing story at the start.
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 17 March 2014 18:20 (ten years ago) link
i agree w/all of that ward, though it was still funnier than his previous 4 movies & it went down smooth enough for me compared to those. ralph fiennes death is weird because i mean, it would evoke zero sadness if we saw him being dragged off the train and shot in the head yet the movie cuts around it like it'd be unbearable for us to watch. when really its more like if Dos Equis killed off the most interesting man in the world. guess its a semi-funny metagag that in the train scenes fiennes is playing schindler now instead of goth
wanderson's limits as a writer of dialogue showed really strong in this, especially when f murray abraham & fiennes are saying things. i wonder if the glibness of anderson's voice is an acknowledgement of those limits, like he knows he has to work around the crudeness. he gets some good effects out of it, i laffed solidly at a lot of adrien brody's lines. owen wilson showing up was great and reminded me that for all the good actors that are in these things hes one of the few who can be naturally funny performing in the Wes Anderson Style
― Hungry4Ass, Monday, 17 March 2014 23:29 (ten years ago) link
"where the audience were almost WILLING the film to be funnier than it actually is"
This exactly, every hipster doofus in the theatre laughed at the most mundane things throughout. Oh my god look a cut scene to bob balaban...this is the funniest thing ive ever seen..
Give me a break. dull, boring and his schtick is getting old.
― Nerd Trombones (thebingo), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 13:45 (ten years ago) link
Why wld you go to a movie just to boo it
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 13:48 (ten years ago) link
same reason they read Armond White
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:20 (ten years ago) link
i went hoping to like it as i did most of his other movies.
― Nerd Trombones (thebingo), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:23 (ten years ago) link
i did laugh when ed norton first appeared. bob balaban can suck dicks in hell though
― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:31 (ten years ago) link
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Tuesday, March 18, 2014 9:48 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 18, 2014 10:20 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
...
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:31 (ten years ago) link
every hipster doofus in the theatre laughed at the most mundane things throughout.
this has happened every time I've seen a movie of his in the theater since Rushmore. it's quite bizarre, like a pavlovian thing.
― ryan, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:34 (ten years ago) link
Maybe his movies give people delight on a level unavailable to you?
― Eric H., Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:37 (ten years ago) link
say that in deadpan and I guarantee it would bring the house down.
― ryan, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:41 (ten years ago) link
bob balaban can suck dicks in hell though
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51a%2BxVJdaZL._SX342_.jpg
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:43 (ten years ago) link
no maybe they are just such Wes Anderson fanboys that they would laugh at anything he does.
― Nerd Trombones (thebingo), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:45 (ten years ago) link
Why would you go to a movie just to get blown?
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:47 (ten years ago) link
Maybe his blowjobs give people delight on a level unavailable to you?
― Eric H., Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:48 (ten years ago) link
can be the best option if it's Django Unchained
s1ocki, you don't have to be theatrically apoplectic abt posts where i'm not criticizing you, sweetz.
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:49 (ten years ago) link
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:55 (ten years ago) link
trying to imagine the level of drunkenness/dementia I'd have to demonstrate to let Bob Balaban blow me.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:56 (ten years ago) link
"apoplectic"
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:56 (ten years ago) link
Pocket gay Balaban c. '69 could get it.
― Eric H., Tuesday, 18 March 2014 14:57 (ten years ago) link
Joe Buck did it for cash
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:01 (ten years ago) link
(Soto, remember his other johns incl Barnard Hughes)
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:04 (ten years ago) link
Sylvia Miles dressed as Bob Balaban wouldn't be much better
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:04 (ten years ago) link
"I have the self control to make sure I don't enjoy myself too much at a 'hipster' film"
― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:11 (ten years ago) link
FWIW I did think Jude Law kind of sucked as the writer and that made the whole opening of the movie drag.
― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:12 (ten years ago) link
Bob Balaban's kinda cute!
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:20 (ten years ago) link
feel like its really hard for anyone to suck or excel in these movies
― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:22 (ten years ago) link
yer bananas, Willis in MK was a top-3 career perf
and Murray should've won all the awards for Rushmore
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:35 (ten years ago) link
Also just wanna say that this film seemed to have a lot of Zhivago references and/or resonances, and that pleased me because I am a Zhivago stan.
― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:48 (ten years ago) link
that'll be good cuz i had a refresher viewing of DrZ last summer (did u go at BAM Harvey then, Hurting?)
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:50 (ten years ago) link
I did yeah. It was packed. Go early if you're seeing it there so you can actually sit toward the center -- the aspect ratio + their seating arrangement made the film feel a little odd from the side seats.
I didn't think it was an especially deep film or anything but I thought it was a 100% enjoyable and fun film.
― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 15:53 (ten years ago) link
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/03/wes-anderson-and-the-old-regime/
And now on top of everything, instead of his usual indirect evocation of that older, deeper, darker, harder, unfathomable past in remembered songs and storybook allusions, as part of the nostalgia kit Anderson characters seem to carry about like fashionable messenger bags, he announces with this new film that he’ll present that lost world to us outright.He doesn’t do it, of course. But even his semblance of doing it is horrible, like a waking nightmare.
He doesn’t do it, of course. But even his semblance of doing it is horrible, like a waking nightmare.
i quite liked this piece but i disagree with the notion that all of wes anderson's movies are rotten to the core, just this one. nostalgia is obviously a big thing for wes anderson, and all of his memorable characters have been self-centered eccentrics redeemed by a quixotic nobility, or a refusal to see the world as others see it, in the gray light of reality. the past for the tenenbaums or for zissou is the unattainable and has no positive value in its own right; i don't think anderson really idealizes the past the way this critic seems to think he does. this is probably part of why his past two films, which have actually been set in these previous, fetishized decades, don't work (imho).
― Treeship, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:20 (ten years ago) link
like really, who would want to watch a movie that was actually set in max fischer's fantasia, when men were men and all the rest? i wouldn't, but that is sort of what this film is.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:22 (ten years ago) link
what
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:27 (ten years ago) link
this writer sounds like a total asshole
After viewing The Grand Budapest Hotel, I realized I had had it with Anderson’s fancy boxed chocolates. Either they’ve gotten toxically moldy over time, or they were always disgusting and I was too disgusting myself to notice it. To put it bluntly, I’ve decided I hate Wes Anderson, and that at some level, I’d like to think I’ve always hated him. I wish I could come up with a quick, clever way to sum up my hatred and be done with it, like Kyle Smith of the New York Post, who ends his furious pan of The Grand Budapest Hotel with the snappy line, “That’s Wes Anderson: He can’t see the forest for the twee.”
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:32 (ten years ago) link
I thought that piece was obnoxious and dumb.
The film makes pretty obvious that the "nobler past" it purports to reflect on is imaginary -- there's even a line about it in the film -- something about the past that Ralph Fiennes pined for actually being over long before he was born (i.e. never existed, is how I took it).
― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:33 (ten years ago) link
i think the writer recognizes that with her invocation of jameson at the end and this notion of historical amnesia. there is this issue of the inversion of the past and the future, with the former usurping the latter as the screen on which we can project our fantasies of the good life. nostalgia isn't politically neutral; imagining utopia as something that was had and then lost is an easy way of thinking to slip into as it is deeply embedded in the judeo-christian tradition, but radical or even progresssive thinking probably needs to begin from the point that the past is something we need to wrestle with and free ourselves from.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:40 (ten years ago) link
idk. wes anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers and i don't really agree with the author of that piece, as i noted earlier, but i think she raised some important questions about how, exactly, the past functions in his films. this pervasive sense of loss inhabits every detail of his good films, which lends them a sense of depth even though they can be pretty superficial, even farcical, by most other measures. here he tries to represent the past directly and the whole thing becomes a total farce.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:42 (ten years ago) link
jacobin writer doesn't like nostalgia for pre-stalinist europe, funny
― goole, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:43 (ten years ago) link
you'd think a Jacobin would like nostalgia for a pre-Napoleonic Europe though
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:46 (ten years ago) link
i'd be into a wes anderson movie set during the french revolution
― Treeship, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:46 (ten years ago) link
Rohmer sort of made a WA movie set during the Terror.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:47 (ten years ago) link
i love that movie!
― goole, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:48 (ten years ago) link
I did too, especially how Rohmer directed the man playing Robespierre to act like Brian Cox playing Robespierre.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:51 (ten years ago) link