These people made a trailer for a movie based on God of War if it were a Wes Anderson movie. As Cal at Cal's Canadian Cave of Cool opines, "The guys who made this totally nailed Wes Anderson's annoying style of filmmaking. It shows how everything great can be ruined by a spin through the art house movie machine set to W. Anderson."
P.S. I'm not trying to start a Wes Anderson fight! I'm quoting the dude, granted, but I totally respect that there are people of impeccable taste who genuinely love and admire Anderson. That's fine with me! Honestly. Peace.
http://www.viddler.com/explore/gamervision/videos/1146/0
16 comments:
if i pass the "taste" test, then count me among the ranks. never met a wes anderson movie i didn't like.
by the way, that song is awesome. it's called "Home" and it's by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. it's a concept band -- the band leader's actual name is Alex Ebert.
listening to it over and over again.
1. Well, that was okay. They "nailed" WA's filmmaking vibe in a number of the easier ways, but they couldn't match the writing or performances which are essential.
2. Why include the disparaging quote at all? The only aspect of what Cal says that has any personality is "Wes Anderson sucks." Why slap it down and backpedal when you could just paraphrase it? It's not clear to me that the makers of the short dislike Wes Anderson at all, so is it even relevant?
I'm going on and on because I might've liked this more if it hadn't been introduced with such antagonism. Every WA movie from Rushmore forward gets an A from me. Cal's an idiot.
Because I agree with him but I respect people who don't.
"This doesn't do it for me, although I know people like it" is one thing, "this totally sucks, but it's okay if you like it" is another.
Maybe not starting a fight as much as punching someone in the shoulder and then stepping out of range, but there's an insult in there.
Fair enough. I guess I just maybe figured there'd be some horrorthon readers on "my side" of the Wes Anderson debate who would have the same frisson of recognition at reading what that guy wrote. I'm sorry I indirectly insulted your taste by proxy.
Well, thanks. I guess my point is you should've just gone ahead and started a Wes Anderson fight instead of issuing the disclaimer. I know JPX didn't like Life Aquatic. We need more chatter around here these days. Where is everybody?
(Having said that in a days-old comment thread guarantees the echoing sound of crickets as my response.)
"I know JPX didn't like Life Aquatic." Not true! I liked it and I watched it with you, Octo. I'm not a fan of Rushmore but perhaps I should revisit it...
I loved Rushmore. Then he does a Shyamalan. (Not as steep a grade, but same sliding motion for similar reasons with similar effects.)
Dude, this is like that time you compared Robert Altman to Nixon. This is my third start of this comment, so irked was I by that preposterous comparison I almost didn't see the slender connection. (But I guess if I tell you to start a Wes Anderson fight I should be prepared for one.)
But before I get into this, I believe your WA viewing history is thus: Loved [italics his] Rushmore, didn't like (or hated, this is my language here) The Royal Tenenbaums, and said of Fantastic Mr. Fox: "DOUBLE AWESOME" (all caps his, from a text sent to my phone on January 16th, Zombieland receiving a single AWESOME).
Have you seen Life Aquatic or Darjeeling Limited? I could be wrong, but I thought you hadn't. If so, you should really take a closer look at someone's career before you start throwing M-Night bombs. If my math is right, you only disliked a third of what you saw.
(I myself am not a big fan of Bottle Rocket, so I'm not bothering to bring it in.)
JPX, I had some memory of you thinking the humor in Life Aquatic was weird (and it is). I recall the word "pirates" being mentioned. Perhaps you were paraphrasing an article or something. Sorry I forgot I watched it with you.
Damn, I'm mixing his movies up. I didn't mind Rushmore, I didn't like The Royal Tenenbaums. Octo, I dug Aquatic, I especially love the music Murray's character uses when he puts on his deep sea diving equipment.
I didn't see The Village or Lady in the Water or The Happening either. If you can just overlook your (understandably) bilious reaction for a second you'll hopefully agree that it isn't that bad a comparison, insofar as the progression from one movie to the next involves 1) a greater and greater prevalence of certain idiosyncrasies and 2) a corresponding lower and lower tolerance for the movies amongst those not fully enamored of the director's schtick to begin with.
Obviously Anderson's much better than Shyamalan. Duh. But the trend of moving toward greater and greater dependence on certain "signature" idiosyncrasies (and shedding certain fans along the way, according to a familiar pattern) is basically the same.
And, yes, FMF was "DOUBLE AWESOME." But it's animated, which throws off the curve completely. (i.e. I don't have to actually see Owen Wilson.) It's like Holly Hunter getting a (deserved) Oscar for the movie where she can't talk -- what does that tell you?
I don't know what that tells me. Is it "MWUHHWUHHHH..."?
Sure, I did see the Anderson/Shyamalan connection you were trying to draw, but as with Nixon/Altman, the outraged reaction you invoked by linking the loved and the hated far overshadowed the point you're trying to make. So it took a few passes for me to get your point. But I don't agree with it.
Anderson is better than Shyamalan, duh, so you should see more of his movies before you claim full knowledge of his vibe. M. Night is leaning more on his idiosyncracies as time goes by because he doesn't actually have any ideas. Having watched all of Anderson's movies, I don't see him relying on his idiosyncracies more from movie to movie at all. He likes to make them a certain way and so he keeps on doing it, to the point where his hand has gotten too steady and people wanted to see some evolution, even me.
Which totally happened with Fox, which earned him quite a bit of critical redemption (which kind of scraps your comparison, especially if you factor in Airbender).
I don't get your point about the curve being thrown and Owen Wilson and Holly Hunter. I'm not saying you don't have one or it's bad, I just don't follow you. I just watched Fox last weekend and it's like the Wes Anderson vibe distilled. Honestly I think the evolution I mentioned might have been a bit of a fakeout, so purely Wes Anderson was that movie.
I don't understand why you'll defend so fiercely your very personal takes on movies like 2012 or Alien 3 and yet consider second-hand info on WA's movies satisfactory. Saying you didn't see Lady in the Water etc. is not the same thing (see above, Anderson better Shyamalan duh), and only serves to underscore the blunt comparison between the two that you claim to not be making.
Anyway, I could be wrong, you might dislike Aquatic and Darjeeling more than Tenenbaums. I know other people who dislike him, and it bugs me because his movies bring me such joy on a very minute level.
My Holly Hunter/animation point is as follows: I have trouble accepting Holly Hunter as being any good. I used to argue that her method of speaking, of expressing anything, was just intrinsically annoying. Then she made The Piano, in which she had zero lines of dialogue, and she was so impressive that she won a (deserved) Oscar. In other words, with the impediment removed (no talking) she's a winner.
Likewise in Tenenbaums (the only other Wes Anderson movie I've seen, as you keep pointing out) the mannered performances and stylized locales irritate me. Putting exactly the same storytelling mechanism to work in an animated fairy tale is just like removing the burden of speech from Holly Hunter: it removes both the burden of conveying convincing live-action locales and the burden of having actors behave in a way that does not irritate me the way every performance in TRT irritates me. Since I am allergic to Luke Wilson's dazed style I am spared watching him do his schtick because I may instead watch exquisite stop-motion animation. And it's a British "animals wearing pants" story for children so the distorted worldly dimensions (like the "350th street YMCA" or whatever) aren't going to bother me either.
Does that make the comparison clear?
I am totally aware that Holly Hunter delivered a wonderful voice-only performance in The Incredibles, thus neatly negating the above point. The formal comparison still makes sense, though. (In other words, the logic is sound even if the example turns out to be wrong.)
Holly Hunter is great when she doesn't have to speak and Wes Anderson is great when he doesn't have to point cameras at actors on actual sets and locations. That's basically what I was trying to say.
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