The Darjeeling Limited

    King of the Sadbois, Wes Anderson generates stories that are unique visually and, especially earlier in his career, walked a line between amusingly absurd and deeply troubling. The Darjeeling Limited is his most perplexing and exotic film. 

     The film stars Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman as brothers who are taking a train ride through India to reconnect after the death of their father. The characters deal with complex relationships that center around the mental health issues their patriarch's passing has caused. 

     Like any Wes Anderson film, the visuals seem almost like a picture book. Robert Yeoman composes the shots so they are symmetrical and balanced and the characters seem to move along distinct planes. What makes this movie slightly different from his other works is that a lot of the film is extremely crowded. 

     The train is a naturally confining space which pushes and compresses the brothers closer together. Additionally, Anderson consciously burdens the scenes by putting all three brothers in the frame at the same time. 

     The Darjeeling Limited has the most distinguishably production design of any Wes Anderson film, the colors are almost entirely blue and orange.

     Until the very end and the emotional climax when Anderson switches to a more neutral green. 

     This may be Anderson's most strikingly pretty film. However, it fails to be his best due to story and structural failings. There are several obstacles that the brothers face that could be considered end of Act Two moments. Whenever the brothers are faced with conflict they back down and when they are offered an option to leave they turn around and go back. This creates a meandering journey in which each brother has his own emotional climax rather than the family having an emotional climax together. Additionally there is a long flashback scene that doesn't add to the plot or the character development.

     The Darjeeling Limited is not Wes Anderson's best film but is one of the most poignant. Complex characters and visuals create a interesting dynamic. However, its structural issues bring the movie down. Wes Anderson, instead of doing his usual and making an amusing movie that is also sad, makes a sad movie that is amusing.

Buster Keaton and Physical Comedy

As many of you know, my thesis film, Mime and Punishment is inspired by the works of Buster Keaton and his influence on visual and physical humor. On the off chance you are not aware of who Buster Keaton is, he's this guy.

Steamboat Bill Jr.

This bit, from his film Steamboat Bill Jr. is perhaps Keaton's most famous stunt and has been continually referenced throughout pop culture.

Gags, like the one above, are what Keaton was known for. His films were chock full of and heavily reliant on physical humor. Keaton's characters, would often find himself in zany and often dangerous situations. What's even more remarkable was all of his stunts, were done by himself. With all these zany stunts came a fantastic visual storytelling. Silent films of the time, Buster Keaton's included, had to rely on title cards in lieu of dialogue for exposition. Most films of the period had an average of 240 title cards.

 Imagine 240 of these being needed to tell your story. Keaton said that he never used over 65. That's almost 1/4th of what every other film used. Instead, Keaton relied on the kinetic and often slapstick energy to tell story in non-verbal manners. Keaton was always entering and leaving frame in interesting ways. His mannerisms and framing have had a lasting legacy. This fantastic video from Every Frame a Painting shows the lasting legacy of Keaton as well as better explaining the points I made in this post.

Why Fantastic Mr. Fox is the Best Wes Anderson Movie...Ever

Wes Anderson is an enormously polarizing director. I know people who can't even sit through the first ten minutes of his films, and people who see them 10 times...in theaters. His work is quirky to say the least and his highly stylized films are products of complete creative control. Every single thing in the frame in a Wes Anderson film has been carefully thought out, color coordinated and placed with extreme care. This is perhaps what makes Fantastic Mr. Fox the best of his films, because he is able to control every single detail and movement through stop animation. It is the absolute peak of creative control. He doesn't even need to depend on actors to look the right way because he could physically create all the characters. If he wants a room full of golden hard cider, he doesn'tneed to create a life size one he can make one digitally or in miniature.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox is also amazing because many of the things that may have come off as pretentious or too quirky or weird in a live action film, come across perfectly in animation. Also the characters themselves are allowed to be strange caricatures of themselves because they're animals. For example, Mr. Fox would be a totally obnoxious character if he were played by George Clooney in the flesh, not just voice acted by him. But instead, he is a funny and strange character whom we can rally around.

This film has also succeeded in making a mature animated film that kids also enjoy. Based on the classic Roald Dahl book, Anderson makes complex characters with flaws and journeys, something that is not often found in animation, especially not the maturity part. By having the animals voice acted by famous actors, Anderson was able to entertain adults and by making the movie a delightful and funny movie, kids are entertained as well. He really helped to heighten the opinion of animated films, and please a large group of people.

Stop animation is so perfectly suited to Wes Anderson's style that I don't know why he doesn't use the medium more often. Many fans do not even consider Fantastic Mr. Fox when they are ranking Wes Anderson's best films, but for me it belongs at the top of this list. I don't think his style will ever be better captured than through an eccentric band of woodland animals stealing squabs and hard cider.

The Grand Budapest Hotel: Set Design Done Right

Over spring break, I was lucky enough to visit the AMC movie theater in NYC. What’s special about this theater is that, unlike the normal, relatively comfortable seating that is generally in movie theaters, this place had beautiful, plush, reclining seats. I cannot begin to express to you how much more enjoyable my movie experience was, and I would go into further detail, but I don’t want to get sidetracked.

What I really wanted to talk about was the movie that I saw. I went to see the Grand Budapest Hotel, written and directed by Wes Anderson. If there were a way to describe this movie, I would say that it is very “Wes Anderson” (if that makes any sense). The entire movie was very fast paced both in dialogue and in action. The storyline was interesting and there were a ton of stars such as Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, and of course the short appearance of Bill Murray. But although the story and cast were captivating, the real star aspect of this movie was the set design and art direction. The entire film was flooded with bright colors and large, detailed spaces. Here are a few pictures to show what I am referring to:

If only for the set design and art direction, I would highly recommend you see this movie. The colors are beautiful and detailed. The cinematography is creative and the costumes are fitting. I would also highly recommend seeing this film in a movie theater because all of these things are much better seen on such a large screen (and of course if you can go somewhere with comfy reclining chairs, I would recommend that too).

Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox is by far one of my favorite animated films of all time. Not only is the stop motion incredible, the story is entertaining and witty. There are so many quick and sassy lines that could go unnoticed if one wasn't paying attention but they're all ones you don't want to miss. I love how instead of cursing they replace each "bad word" with the word "cuss" I think it adds a bit of a "choose your own adventure" type of a feel. You can replace the word cuss with whatever you want to in your mind. Here! Give it a shot! It's pretty fun!

I appreciate that the detail they put into each line of dialogue as well as every movement we see on screne. This film blows me away each time I watch it. It will always have a special place in my heart.

the reason I went into making movies

when I was younger I was quite the handful for my mother i refused to take naps or sit still or behave. the one thing that my mom found could give her some rest was if she turned on the television. this was a struggle for my mom because she detested television for some motherly reason I will never understand.

the problem with television was it had comercial and urring commercials I was back to running around breaking things.

so my mom started to get movies for me to watch.  i must have watched 2-3 movies a day starting from 4 years old up until high school when i got much busier

There was one movie i saw in 6th grade that changed my perception of movies it was The Royal Tennebaums directed by wes anderson. it was the first time i realized a movie could be multi layered  it could be funny and sad and provocative and complicated. visually beautiful yet hard to watch.

I watched it when I was very young so i re watched it every few months to this day and i notice something else and get more out of it ever time. when i realized this i realized how much a movie could be and i wanted to tell storys that way.

Wes Anderson

A couple weeks ago over thanksgiving break, I forced my Dad to sit and watch one of “my” movies. This basically means a quirky independent movie he’s never heard of before, or a movie without explosions and gruesome death scenes. Although he fell asleep halfway through, we watched The Royal Tenenbaums. I haven’t seen this movie in a couple years so I was excited to watch it again. This time, (since I’ve taken some classes about filmmaking) I noticed a lot of great things.

As usual, Wes Anderson uses a strong color scheme. In Moonrise Kingdom for example there were a lot of green and yellow. In the Life Aquatic there are strong blues and red. In this particular film, there was a strong use of reds. This varies between each scene of course, for example when Luke Wilson’s character tries to commit suicide the tone of the room is blue, which sets the somber mood of the scene and anticipates something bad is going to happen.

Also, there always seems to be a narrator in his films. Whether they are physically in the movie or just their voice is heard, the movies are always being told by someone outside of the plot that the characters don’t know exist. Although it can be annoying at times, it is also a comic relief and is used to pay attention to detail of the characters. This is shown clearly in The Royal Tenenbaums, where the narrator (Alec Baldwin) spends most of the beginning of the film solely describing he characters. I find this a good way to get the audience connected with the characters and understand their background better, even if this put my Dad to sleep. 

I thoroughly enjoy his films although they are a little off beat and usually end up with a two people running away. 

Moonrise Kingdom

In my small suburban town in New Jersey, there is a theatre that plays only low budget films; the movies that wouldn’t exactly be a blockbuster hit. This past summer I saw a lot of great independent films there: To Rome with Love, Friends with Kids, etc. But one movie I saw I am still thinking about today. And that movie is Moonrise Kingdom. I did go into this movie a little biased since I love Wes Anderson and the cast also drew me in; Bill Murray, Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand. The movie blew me away, it exceeded my expectations. It takes place in 1965 and stayed authentic to it’s time throughout the whole movie. The costuming was detailed, and the soundtrack was flawless. The island that the characters lived on was beautifully designed and it didn’t confuse me at all, and made sense location wise. 

Moonrise Kingdom is about two preteens who fall in love with each other via snail mail and attempt to runaway together. Their romance is only one aspect of this plot, with the chaos of the dysfunctional adults handling the situation making up much of the story. (Bill Murray of course played his usual depressing, alcoholic character who is the father of Suzy.)  Sam, the male protagonist is an orphaned boy scout living on an island with his troop for the summer. Although his romance with Suzy was adorable, I wasn’t too fond of Sam. It’s usually very hard for me to enjoy a movie when I can’t sympathize or relate to the main character however, the other characters made up for his lack of connection. 

Basically, I highly recommend this movie to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s not only aesthetically pleasing but the hilarious quirky characters make this movie very enjoyable.