by ·Comments Off on Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Wes Anderson)

The stop-motion in Coraline seemed untoppable, and now a few months later this seems untoppable. Coraline felt slicker and this had more rustling animal hair which gave it a rough feel without ever looking less than terrific. Anderson’s controlled compositions and affinity for tiny visual details are a perfect match for the rigorous stop-motion process, and the writing and voices and action were all wonderful – this was better than I dreamed it would be.

So I don’t know the original story, but in the movie Meryl Streep agrees to marry Fox on the condition that he stop stealing livestock from farmers. Years later Fox, still a “wild animal,” has a midlife crisis, enlists his buddy and his nephew and sets out to defeat the security systems of the three farmer fatcats in town. Bandit hats are handed out (seems to steal too obviously from Bottle Rocket) and all kids have major parental issues (Anderson would’ve added those if they weren’t already in the book), and Fox ends up getting all the animals in trouble when the fatcats team up to retaliate. Ends happily with a grocery-store hoedown.

Katy liked it, too.

by ·Comments Off on Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)

Jan. 2013:
Watched again on blu-ray, including the scenes I missed last time. Things I forgot: they are all addicted to painkillers and cough syrup, Owen acts like he’s in charge of the others and when they finally corner their real mom she speaks just like Owen. Not the most terribly interesting Wes Anderson movie but the colors and camerawork are just wonderful.

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Missed part of the movie for being ill, including the river rescue scene, which I like to imagine was shot like the shaky-cam action bits in Life Aquatic with a drum solo soundtrack.

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ME: Had no idea Bill Murray would be in it. Me, I love the wes-anderson visual style and the music was nice, and the actors are funny, so I had an alright time… will rent sometime to see what else happened. Certainly not a disappointing movie, now that I’ve come to accept life aquatic, heh. Wes probably thinks this is unlike anything he’s ever done before (a road film! in india! with adrien brody? outrageous!) and doesn’t notice that all his movies are about three people (rushmore: 1 person) with father issues. The money issues were notably gone from this one.

P: I felt like the characters were pretty empty.. maybe it IS because all
his movies are the same, and the guys with father issues are now
caricatures instead of characters, but i think its deeper than that.

ME: I asked Katy if there were any postcolonial/racism problems herein and she said ohhhh yes there were, and told me all about ’em, but I have to get to a meeting so I’ll tell you later.

P: really? i mean, outside the whole white people traveling thru india on
a “journey”, which i imagine is the most common sight of white people
there, and which you have to kind of accept and ignore to watch the
movie, i didnt see much else. theres the christian missionary mom
(jarringly cameod by yoda in an anjelica houston mask), but they did
seem to treat the funeral scenes with respect.
i guess the entire film is indian-fetishism, so i didnt really pick up
on the specifics of it..

ME: Lemme see, I forget now, but I remember her saying that even in the small town where the funeral happens (I missed the whole river scene, btw) more people would speak more words of english, and it’d more likely be the older fellas than the kids who speak it, so the whole “we can’t communicate with anyone” thing was an untruthful narrative convenience. Oh, and she went on about the sexualization of the foreign “exotic” women, esp. on the train. Those two and the “journey” spirituality thing might cover it… but the spirituality thing is true. Not true necessarily that India is such a spiritual place, but true that white people consider it so and go there to get in touch with their inner hippy selves.

by ·Comments Off on Hotel Chevalier (2007, Wes Anderson)

Jason Schwartzman is a sad man who has exiled himself to a Paris hotel after breaking up with his girlfriend. Natalie Portman is the girlfriend who finds him and comes to visit.

The main reason to watch this short:
nudie portman

Jason has his personal artifacts very carefully littering his room and he plays a specific song on his iPod speaker system when he hears Natalie coming upstairs. He’s got the typical Wes Anderson sadly introspective male performance, and she delicately shows off her quirky side by brushing her teeth with his brush as soon as she arrives. The camera compositions are meticulous and familiar.

So… why? I know it’s a back-story bit for The Darjeeling Limited, but why? Is it a marketing gimmick? It’s not a deleted sequence from the film itself – was shot separately. Does Anderson now think of it as part of the Darjeeling film? Does he wish it’d been included? No, because the short is on iTunes but won’t be included with the film release in U.S. theaters. So maybe I’m being a jerk about this, but a short should stand on its own as a short, not be a clever taster for the new theatrical product or a bonus to sell more DVDs. That’s an advertisement. This one doesn’t really hold up as a short. If there was no Darjeeling Limited and this was just released on its own, it’d just be a further downhill slide in quality after the crowning peak of The Royal Tenenbaums, and even that great movie threatens to get sullied each time Wes makes another sad dysfunctional-family-with-father-issues comedy with his now-trademarked music and visual style. Hopefully Darjeeling ends up having a reason to exist, and can provide this short with one, too.