11 4 / 2012
They got Adam Sandler comedy voice-over guy to narrate this, I think.
“Three extraordinary young men! All they ever wanted… was to be WANTED! They’re gonna keep on trying until they get it right!”
Permalink 2 notes
10 4 / 2012
"You began, spectacularly enough, with the excellent “Bottle Rocket”, a film we consider to be your finest work to date. No doubt others would agree that the striking originality of your premise and vision was most effective in this seminal work. Subsequent films - “Rushmore”, “The Royal Tenenbaums”, “The Life Aquatic” - have been good fun but somewhat disappointing - perhaps increasingly so. These follow-ups have all concerned themselves with the theme we like to call “the enervated family of origin”©, from which springs diverse subplots also largely concerned with the failure to fulfill early promise. Again, each film increasingly relies on eccentric visual detail, period wardrobe, idiosyncratic and overwrought set design, and music supervision that leans heavily on somewhat obscure 60’s “British Invasion” tracks a-jangle with twelve-string guitars, harpsichords and mandolins. The company of players, while excellent, retains pretty much the same tone and function from film to film. Indeed, you must be aware that your career as an auteur is mirrored in the lives of your beloved characters as they struggle in vain to duplicate early glories."
Permalink 23 notes
15 9 / 2011
"It was in that context that The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou came out in December 2004. Oozing ambition out of every pore and self-consciousness with every move, the movie remains the most divisive entry in the Anderson canon. Unscientific measures like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes rate it as his worst, a judgment with which this Anderson fan concurs. He was approaching the pinnacle of his cultural influence—the “Wes wannabe” was fast becoming the decade’s version of the Tarantino imitator—and had made a movie that felt more like an exhibition. It was the work of an artist who had become the curator of his own style. Seven years later, it remains Exhibit A in the case against Anderson—and, paradoxically, a reminder of his value to film culture."
Permalink 8 notes
08 3 / 2011
The live action version of The Tick is now on Hulu. Patrick Warburton’s greatest performance ever. Comic gold. It may be my favorite superhero story, and I swear it’s etched onto my DNA - watching it, I realized that a giant project I was working on was very much Tick-inspired. Rushmore and Gilmore Girls, too. But they were all subconscious inspirations and that’s what made it spooky.
Internet research reveals some things: Colleen Atwood, Academy Award winning costume designer, made this iteration of The Tick’s costume. Ben Edlund calls the show “a superheroic portrait of genuine human lameness,” which is funny. (He works on Supernatural now, I guess?) After listening to Fresh Air’s replay of a 2002 interview with Tom Waits, I’m pretty convinced he is The Tick. But that is a whole other post. He at least talks in Tickisms.
Permalink 18 notes
02 3 / 2011
Women in film
I have been enjoying This Recording’s conversation on sexism and gender roles, in movies, tv, and in life this week. It’s good to talk about these things, even if they make you uncomfortable or piss you off - in fact, that’s when you know it’s working. And these ideas relate to anything when you’re fighting the status quo as an “other.”
It’s funny, to me, how old these conversations seem. How the VIDA list of female contributors to magazines and media was non-existent, and it wasn’t a surprise. They’re statistics showing you what you’re up against, in what you’re trying to pursue. And they’re statistics that show you that you’re not alone - in realizing that you’re up against a lot - and what you’re doing may have some purpose, because maybe you can affect those statistics. I remember being a kid and learning about feminism and that “women were equal now,” and feeling terribly cheated when I got in the workplace and dealt with things that were patently sexist and condescending.
Anyways, since I have somewhat of an expertise in film (stupid brain!) I can share some observations I’ve made regarding female film directors. (Warning: it’s long.)
1) The discussion of female film directors, when you’re at some media thing and talking about “women in film,” is, often, not a conversation that people want to engage in, or want to spend the time talking about, particularly when they’re trying to sell their film. And that’s completely fair and understandable. Conversations about representation in your field can be tiring when you’re just trying to represent in your field. It’s a meta-thing best suited to media people who should be talking about it.
The only women who add to the women in film conversation have tended, you notice, to be legends. Dame Helen Mirren talking about roles, for example. Whereas a Kathryn Bigelow, to me, seems to want to push the conversation along by doing kickass work, post-Hurt Locker. (Despite the fact that - oh, look, first woman to win an Oscar for directing - she’s in the history books now.) And in order for her to get back into the system and back into a position of power, notice, she had to go outside the system and rock it. The Hurt Locker was a comeback film, you know. She hadn’t done something in 7 yrs and was in “director jail” thanks to some big budget flops, I believe.
2) To me, it doesn’t seem like the problem is women making films. Anyone can make a film, and get it distributed in some form or fashion, and make it happen. You can do that, once. The problem, to me, is that the American studio system (indies and majors) doesn’t seem to be hospitable to women making careers in film. I don’t understand why a Nicole Holofcener isn’t getting to make films at the rate of a… Wes Anderson, let’s say. (And he’s a slooooow boy genius. And these two are both post-Woody Allen directors of “rich” people ennui, so there’s that.) You know that part of it is - Holofcener has done TV (including Gilmore Girls episodes) between films, Anderson has not - and part of it is… what, exactly? Is a Wes Anderson movie more of a guaranteed money maker than Nicole Holofcener, because it has Bill Murray in it and not Catherine Keener? I believe they’re both equally niche, in their way.
3) Do you need female directors working in the studio system even if it’s corrosive to the soul? Is a Catherine Hardwick a director to root for?
4) Funding for female-directed films is interesting to observe. In Europe, a Susanna Bier or Catherine Brelliat can make films like an auteur. And I think part of that is due to European government support of films.
5) I have found that there are far more female directors in the documentary world than the world of feature films. (Every year, look at the Oscars. Where do you see the females? In documentary.) The reasons for this, to me, seem to be twofold: first, when you’re making a documentary, it’s a passion project. A story you have to follow to its end point. It’s an exercise in empathy and observation. It makes sense that women can excel in these sort of situations. Secondly: when you’re making a documentary, you are, more often than not, getting grants. Is that kind of fundraising easier for women? And yet, you know - give me the name of three documentarians. I guarantee it they’ll be men, and maybe Michael Moore.
I do think that the new guard of women sneaking into films is pretty exciting, and I’m curious to see where they go and whether they sustain careers. (Anyone else think Natalie Portman’s going to be a Drew Barrymore when it comes to producing and getting films made?) I’m just really looking forward to when the system is dismantled completely, so new voices can come in and build their own structure. Maybe it could happen in my lifetime. That would be a gift.
(Yes, this post is full of generalizations, rooted in truth. I would love to write something more in-depth and researched on this in the future.)
Permalink 20 notes
12 8 / 2010
When I was younger
It’s a bit of a shame that Wes Anderson was arguably the most influential director of the 2000s. Granted, he’s released a mere six films, but since he came onto the scene as such a full-formed visionary with a distinct sense of style, other directors have spent the past ten years trying to steal from him as much as possible. And this quirk-as-substance occurred at the exact same time that Anderson’s films dived into a hermetic, smug hole, becoming stories about sad rich people. (Not for nothing did he stop writing with Owen Wilson and start writing with Noah “hack” Baumbach.)
When I saw The Life Aquatic, I was sitting next to a woman who just yelled out “weird” every time something “funny” happened. She was correct. None of the action went with the characterization. It was weird for weird’s sake, nothing meaningful about it. I walked out of The Darjeeling Limited. I couldn’t take it. And I watched Bottle Rocket every day in high school. It was a meaningful and major film for me. (Funny enough, Fantastic Mr. Fox - while not quite a return to form - was the best Anderson film in years, partially, I think due to the freedom of someone else’s work, and the fact that Anderson could spend time being completely meticulous over the animation, stop-motion animation is the perfect genre for a man who makes dollhouse films.)
But I think the fact that Wes Anderson has become shorthand for “indie quirk” has taken away from his very real talents as a director. Rushmore is a perfect movie. I adore it. It’s one of those movies that I’ve ingested; I read a recent piece of mine and I realized that Rushmore (and the Gilmore Girls) was definitely an (indirect) influence. But it’s there, for sure, and you can suss it out.
I think the reason that both Bottle Rocket and Rushmore spoke to me was the fact that they’re films about strivers and they’re films about class. What’s appealing about Bottle Rocket - having a bunch of twentysomething guys find meaning by becoming great “thieves” - it’s an awesome metaphor for how confusing the twenties are. How you want to define yourself while the world’s telling you no. And do you remember when it came out? How the comic rhythms were so off, unfamiliar, and different. It felt like they were speaking a new language.
Rushmore, on the other hand, is a romance between a boy and his school. For Max, Rushmore is a ticket beyond being a barber’s son. It’s what makes him special, what makes him somebody, and when he’s without it, he’s adrift. Bill Murray is such a wonderful foil to that character as the deeply unhappy Mr. Blume. The oil man may have everything - including the riches of a self-made man - but he doesn’t have Max’s enthusiasm and zeal for life. It’s what makes his betrayal with Max’s number-one crush Rosemary so cruel, and truly a declaration of war.
The journey in Rushmore is about a kid trying to define himself and figure out how to exist - wonderfully - in the world. It’s more than fitting that the film ends with Max finding himself again, putting on an epic Vietnam play, older, wiser, and sadder. And when it ends with a dance with Miss Cross, set to The Small Faces’ “Ooh La La,” it’s truly a magical moment in film.
“Ooh La La” is such a great song - lyrically, it’s a bitter warning to a young man from his grandfather about the mysteries of women, but the open way that Ronnie Wood sings it, loping across lines like poor old granddad/I laughed at all his words, it swings back around to innocence and joy. He hits the chorus wonderfully: “I wish/that/I knew what I know now/When I was younGAH,” stressing the last syllable of “younger” like he can’t even pronounce it right, in a super UK way. Mixing that song with Max Fischer smiling enigmatically at Miss Cross, saying he didn’t get hurt that bad - it’s transcendent, and the the film completely earns it. It’s why the film is a classic.
Permalink 18 notes
