Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

I was pretty into this! Way sillier than anything else he's done and the violence and swearing helped counteract the affectedness. Fiennes was great and I laughed a lot.

More than anything, it suggests the way one might read "sophisticated, adult" novels as a precocious adolescent, enthralled by the evocation of a complex world unknown, but unable to fully grasp the deeper resonances in play. Or perhaps it's just elegantly offhand, could call it either way.

"you FUCKERS"

the film is set in a Ruritania/Syldavia/Freedonia, a pastiche of a pastiche of Europe.

... Moldavia

http://www.bridalwave.tv/soap-weddings/dynasty-royal-wedding.jpg

"select cities" theatrical rerelease tomw

if this wins the oscar i'll eat my hat, and love it.

Unused storyboard from GBH:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HQKB2qtahCs/UDJAa0G7WWI/AAAAAAAACa8/Bd0h5r4quYE/s320/003.jpg

i liked this p well, has great timing & the editing is obv superb…it never seems to get old 2 me for heady and verbose characters & scenes to then include base anger and/or profanity coming a bit from left field -ie 'look at these assholes' from darjeeling ltd idk i always lol

they made a movie about brodie

― velko, Thursday, October 17, 2013 11:11 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol @ this btw

if theres anyone i think would be good at silent movies, or at least someone who id like to see make modern silents, just so i didnt have to endure the terrible, self consciously WACKY performances/dialogue, its wes anderson.

was weirdly thinking about GBH recently before all the nominations (it should win for set design, cinematography, costume and makeup), and thinking that ralph fiennes should actually win an award for getting some actual humanity and warmth in there.

hope this doesnt win for best writing btw.

Yeah I didn't care for this really but even I think Fiennes was great

this is a wes anderson movie ok so it could have been an enjoyable movie from setting and plot and cast even but for the relentlessness of everything

the bits with obvious miniatures e.g. cable cars or some of the fake-looking and presumably fake interiors e.g. tilda's gaff looked less cutesily crude than cheap and tossed off

(xp) otm.

Unfortunately at was at my mother's house when I saw this film and so had my mother scowling (comically) at the screen and saying, "What's this supposed to be about?" or similar before eventually dozing off.

the bits with obvious miniatures e.g. cable cars or some of the fake-looking and presumably fake interiors e.g. tilda's gaff looked less cutesily crude than cheap and tossed off

wildly disagree with this

making the artifice adorable

Pablo Fernández Eyre has performed a simple editing trick, and by doing so has revealed a beautiful facet to the filmmaking of Wes Anderson. By mirroring the image on one side of the screen, either horizontally or vertically, Eyre has underscored just how organized Anderson is in his shots, creating beautiful images that conform to a type of symmetry and converge at a negative space in the central point of the screen.

http://www.avclub.com/article/wes-andersonmirror-effects-shows-man-complete-cont-225551

Pretty amazing that you can take an image, mirror it, and it will be symmetrical.

I finally saw this. I thought it was pretty enjoyable, although maybe the first half was better. What really makes me this for me is the attention to detail and how fully imagined the milieu is. Just one example: the moment when the Dafoe character licks the frosting from the prison food tray and says "Mendls". Anderson is a good writer (in his idiosyncratic way), and a great set designer. You feel like he can map the inside of his head and project it onto a screen, an uncommon gift. I think Fiennes is mostly what lifts this above "Moonrise" for me. That was really missing the presence of a charismatic lead. It's partly the fact that Fiennes seems slightly out of place in the miniature-snowglobe Anderson milieu that makes him interesting to watch - like you see him trying to figure out how broadly to play some of the sillier scenes, or maybe even bridling imperceptibly at some of the crude dialogue at points - it's almost like a breath of adult atmosphere seeps through a tiny crack in the snowglobe, but not enough to spoil the fantasy.

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

I rewatched it yesterday, all the way through & i really enjoyed it. 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. The ending serves the whole story, makes every choice & all of the comedy so much more meaningful. I liked the layers of narration & layers of flashback, but I mostly was swept away by the hotel scenes, and those long lens shots where it feels like you could walk right through the screen into the movie, the same feeling I get whenever I watch the Shining. And when Goldblum is walking down the path towards the museum getting smaller & smaller & the camera just stays put...ugh! love it.
Fiennes was excellent

i also liked this much better on a second viewing

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.)