Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

not countless, they count them all the time.

but enough about Woody Allen...

shouldn't you be off championing Rocky and Patton?

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 24, 2014 11:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my comment was just a bad pun on their common initials, WA, and they both have reputations for being self-indulgent filmmakers. but you used it as yet another occasion to toss a literal-minded and witless barb. i have no idea why "academic" is in quote marks in your response, what that's supposed to mean, or why i should care. but you're incorrigible. goodbye indeed.

btw i should be less dismissive of films, both ones i've seen and ones i haven't, here and elsewhere. for my lapses I apologize to everybody. seriously. it's an easy habit to indulge and i need to work harder at avoiding it. god bless.

ok, sorry -- i let my assumptions carry me away now & then.

im not at all fussed whether moonrise was autobiographical or not, my problem with WA is that his films are just plain shallow. it would be okay if the sheer vivacity or joi de vivre/charm/panache etc of them was really high (why has WA not made a musical? i cant think of a better director to make one), but its not, because it gets polluted by his inability to not be smug/knowing/smirking - i find it too distancing (i keep thinking of him as being a posh tarantino, both want you to see what theyre doing, except QT wants everyone to love it and be in on the joke, WA invites you to be in on the joke and condescend those who dont get it). i seriously LOVE looking at his movies but more or less hate everything else about them. and he really should stop the mammoth-all-star-lineup approach to casting now, as it just got silly in this new one, as if he forgot how many surplus actors he had at his disposal until the final reel). he doesnt have to be mr. depth of the human soul, but he clearly cares about how people dress and walk and how their environments appear more than anything else. i dont see the point in people trying to convince themselves this is not the case so they can like his movies better.

how people dress and walk and how their environments appear = the depth of the human soul

his (mis)use of all-star casts has reached Woody Allen levels of noxiousness.

what, exactly, is smug and knowing? idgi

really? when is the last time Dafoe or Goldblum had parts this good?

when was the last time Dafoe had a part this ephemeral? Could've been any Dial-a-Thug.

WA invites you to be in on the joke and condescend those who dont get it

I think this is a huge reach, and if anything I think you have Anderson and Tarantino switched in the comparison.

^^^^^^^^

i mostly disagree. tarantino's films feel very generous to me, he's nothing if not an audience pleaser (I mean this in the best possible way) and his films are mostly very emotional albeit not in the conventional ways. Anderson still seems tied, in a lot of ways, to the Indie distancing devices and, sometimes, unreadability. even though he's very very popular right now, I feel like tarantino is definitely more of a "mass" filmmaker.

i'm a big fan of both btw.

No, this movie doesn't condescend to its audience.

To answer your question, Morbs: Spider-Man or the one in which he played Nosferatu.

xpost - not when they all walk and talk in such an overwhelmingly mannered way! most of his characters seem to be afflicted with the same mannerisms, diction, similar vocal inflections, etc (and yes i know QT gets this criticism too, so maybe thats another parallel). odd how such a twee director is so polarising.

goldblum and dafoe were both really enjoyable, yes. but the feeling i often get watching WA is that yes, the casts are all having tons of fun ('hes so great with actors! no wonder they keep returning and working for scale!' etc), but its like youre meant to buy into the idea of all these famous actors having a ball, and im sure they are, its just never *quite* as much fun when youre watching on the other side of the screen (for me at least).

i mean obv not all of taratino's films function in the same way all the time. but his recent films (well, the last two) feel like very mass-audience, emotionally generous things to me.

even though django is simultaneously a riff on a sub-subgenre that about 0.1% of its audience is closely familiar w/.

yes if anything the recent Tarantino films pander to audience sensibilities, particularly when it comes to vigilantism.

i would use a different word than pander but yeah

mattresslessness

I like your sn.

QT vs WA is an interesting topic. maybe throw PTA in there too.

hard to decide who has the better ironic fast-zoom...

what do you mean by "ironic" in this case?

QT vs WA is an interesting topic. maybe throw PTA in there too.

― ryan, Tuesday, March 25, 2014 6:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

let's toss in JT, SM, and QAZ

PTA has had the opposite trajectory to WA in terms of the quality of his films. He keeps getting better.

I sort of hate Magnolia and I count the Master as one of the best films I've ever seen.

i'm with you there, although magnolia is one of those films i "admire" to a degree even while I don't enjoy it. I think There Will Be Blood is a bad movie but a bad movie made by a really skilled filmmaker.

otm

Rushmore is on one of the HBOs right now. still so good. better than anything QT or PTA ever did imo.

Alfred, Dafoe is basically doing nosferatu again here, and he's so sepulchral he may have lain in the tomb since Last Temptation. Hardly a stock thug! Also, Fiennes "an average actor," wow.

I don't get comparing someone as precise as Anderson to a warped 50-year-old adolescent who makes 4-hour hommages to 90-minute drive-in grinders from his childhood.

(btw Alfred, Spider-Man and Shadow of the Vampire are 12 and 14 years old, so my point stands.)

maybe it doesn't really hold up, but I think it's an interesting comparison because they both seem make movies about or set in a kind of extended adolescence. QT is pretty precise! (just less interesting to me.)

what do you mean by "ironic" in this case?

i should say 'funny' rather than ironic, but yeah, i compare WA's fast zooms to those QT does in django (im especially thinking of the shot where the camera zooms into dicaprio's face). both use fast zooms quite self consciously for jokey effect.

i dont see the point in people trying to convince themselves this is not the case so they can like his movies better.

There's no pretence required. Anderson's not my cousin. I don't have to like his movies.

tarantino is a REMARKABLY precise director by any standard. until the last film, i guess.

both use fast zooms quite self consciously for jokey effect.

yeah I'd say they have the quality of citations. similar thing to when Anderson switches to rough hand-held camerawork for the "Serpico" adaptation in Rushmore--the camera style is itself a kind of punchline, since he briefly adopts New Hollywood '70s-style "realism." I also think that //some// of Anderson's zoom and long-lens shots (the more meandering ones; esp. in Darjeeling Ltd, which I think is pretty underrated) have the effect of kind of deliberately mussing up his very carefully controlled camerawork in general. in a way the mussing up is the exception that proves the rule. i hope he does that in GBH.

but I don't mean to imply that everything tarantino does is basically a citation, as some would have it. although it's inevitably informed by his knowledge of cinema history, he does have his own style, and it's a beautiful widescreen style IMO. tarantino can be super-indulgent and he has scenes and even a film or two that don't work, but overall I think he's, uh, a more complete filmmaker than anderson, esp. in the way he puts together his narratives.

i mean that truthfully/honestly but I guess I'm also baiting dr. morbius who seems to break out in hives when people salute tarantino.

que sera sera, IB was the last thing i will ever see by him.

...but you reserve your right to shit all over the next few films in pithy ILX posts, I assume.

Never say never. You've sworn off ILXing a few times, right? xp

haven't we all, though :sigh:

we're not all drama queens like the Good Doctor tho

bye

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsH/57382-14682.jpg

I may be dead before he finishes another! ta da!

anyway, why havent u cineastes read that Geo O'Brien piece on GBH in Film Comment yet, cheapskates?

i'll have to check that out. i should subscribe to that magazine but I hate their layout. btw that picture of francis is meant to be waterbabies.

i'm kind of picky about layouts and small type.

liberries carry it too

libraries are free idiot

so your cheapskates insult is denied