Fulfilling his role in Moonrise Kingdom as “Narrator,” the great Bob Balaban takes us inside the island of New Penzance, the (fictional) world of Wes’ latest opus.
Bob Balaban (Narrator) has been tweeting photos from his Cannes experience @BobBalaban.
Reviews
Telegraph (UK) – “Moonrise Kingdom (the name Sam and Suzy give their secret hideaway) is a worthy addition to Anderson’s canon – his deadpan wit meshes nicely with a generous view of human imperfections. A mood elevator of a movie, it’s an ideal opener to a sunny, blue-skies Cannes.” 4/5 stars
Time Out London- “This is an American story but it has an unmistakeable French flavour to it. The 1960s setting, the kids on the run and the wild plotting (a bit too wild in the final third), all give it a nouvelle vague feel. It’s an American ‘Pierrot le Fou’ refashioned in retrospect with Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo as pre-teens.” 4/5 stars
Hollywood Reporter – “Wes Anderson’s Cannes opening-night film is a highly idiosyncratic, impeccable made portrait of young love. A blandly inexpressive title is the worst thing about Moonrise Kingdom, a willfully eccentric pubescent love story in which even the most minute detail has been attended to in the manner of the most obsessive maker of 19th century dollhouses.”
Variety – “What is childhood if not an island cut off from the grown-up world around it, and what is first love if not a secret cove known only to the two parties caught in its spell? While no less twee than Wes Anderson’s earlier pictures, “Moonrise Kingdom” supplies a poignant metaphor for adolescence itself, in which a universally appealing tale of teenage romance cuts through the smug eccentricity and heightened artificiality with which Anderson has allowed himself to be pigeonholed. A prestigious opening-night slot at Cannes lends luster to Focus’ May 25 release, but not enough to grow his audience.”
Film Comment - “Key to its magic is the candlelit production of Britten’s opera about Noah’s ark, Noye’s Fludde, which the town is putting on in the wonderfully named Church of St. Jack. Sam first encounters Suzy there while she is costumed as the raven Noah sends off to find dry land, and the film’s giddy denouement unfolds during an actual storm when the community has taken refuge in the church, which stands in for the ark. Children clad as paired animals—in vivid costumes inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals—echo the movie’s emphasis on love, friendship, and imagination. Like The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and like Moonrise Kingdom itself, Noye’s Fludde celebrates beauty in a variety of forms and how it all can come together in a wondrous whole. “
IndieWire – “There are diehard Wes Anderson fans and then there’s everyone else. “Moonrise Kingdom,” the idiosyncratic auteur’s seventh feature, eagerly pitches itself toward that first group of audiences and ignores the rest. But those open to Anderson quirks will find a rewarding experience littered with warmth and playful humor.”
Film 4 Blog – “It’s doubtful this will win over any outright Anderson sceptics, but as someone who wasn’t sure about a couple of his more recent films, this is an exciting reaffirmation of talent (I’d say it’s his best since Tenenbaums).”
Atlantic - “He’s still a filmmaker teetering dangerously on the brink of terminal tweeness, but Sam and Suzy bring out Anderson’s sincere side. “Moonrise Kingdom” is about romantic love, but it’s also about love of books, music, nature, and objects—in many regards, a movie that allows Anderson to be himself in a way most of his recent efforts haven’t. It may fade from memory as the festival proceeds, but for now at least, “Moonrise Kingdom” has me reconsidering a filmmaker I had started to write off.”
The House Next Door – “Moonrise Kingdom is therefore an unabashed continuation and, what’s more, intensification of the rigorous aesthetic preoccupations and occasionally precious thematic concerns that have long marked Anderson’s films. Since, time and again, adolescent precocity has been his narrative meat and potatoes, he can be given a certain amount of latitude for such indulgences as his obsession with handwritten notes and other kinds of communiqués”
Press Play – “Moonrise Kingdom is a great success, both within the context of Wes Anderson’s body of work and as a work unto itself.”
Hitfix – “Gilman and Hayward are exquisite as Sam and Suzy, and I like that they don’t look like polished, perfect Disney Channel kids. They have big personalities that are just starting to come into focus, and they feel like real kids, struggling with the disappointments that are inherent to the maturation process.”
Little White Lies – “Yet with Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has made a film about youth that feels like it was ripped from the overactive imagination of a 12-year-old. It’s like a Prairie Home Companion version of Romeo and Juliet as made by a raffish aesthete. But the biggest coup here is that Anderson has finally managed to anchor his trademark whimsy with a sincere and heady romanticism, and by the end, you may even be reaching for your immaculately embroidered handkerchief (or neck scarf) to wipe away the tears.”
Thompson on Hollywood – “It’s fun watching Anderson manipulate this superb cast, who deliver delicious, precisely scripted comic moments surrounded by such archaic 1965 props as walkie-talkies, megaphones and person-to-person split screen phone calls.”
Technology and Business magazine Fast Company has released their annual list of the “100 Most Creative People in Business.” Wes clocks in at #28.
Setting has always been a living character in Wes Anderson’s films–from the school in Rushmore to the tree houses of Fantastic Mr. Fox–and his new movie, out May 25, lives just as strongly inside its own world. “We were looking for a sort of naked wildlife,” he says. Moonrise Kingdom is about two 12-year-olds who fall in love and run away in the summer of 1965, and Anderson didn’t have the time to send scouts to every wilderness in America. So he did what everyone else does: “We literally used Google Earth,” he says. It took months to settle on a location.
Read the whole (very short) article, and see some Google Earth photos of the Moonrise Kingdom locale, here.
Exciting news for fans of pixels, Wes’ third film The Royal Tenenbaums will, as Rushmore before it, be getting a Blu-Ray re-release from The Criterion Collection. Looks like the extras will be identical to the terrific DVD release. You can check out the still great, albeit admittedly familiar, artwork by Eric Chase Anderson below. The Blu-Ray will be available in the US on 8/14.
Jacob Weisberg sat down with Wes for an extended interview to discuss his auteur style, his commercials as mini-movies, stop-motion animation, and the pleasures of working with Bill Murray, along with answering Slate reader questions for the Conversations with Slate series. Two installments have been released so far, with others to be added as the week goes on (and TRA will be there to update this post!)
Here is the first installment, in which he discusses the casting of the adolescent leads, his childhood experiences, and his love-affair with Francois Truffaut:
I screencap only the title cards from each movie, chronologically from the Bottle Rocket short up to Moonrise Kingdom. Right now I’m at The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
The invitation to the exclusive premiere of Moonrise Kingdom for cast, crew, and friends unfortunately has all of the information blocked out. (via the illustratographer)
