Museum of the Moving Image recently did a retrospective of director David O. Russell’s work to celebrate the release of his fifth film The Fighter, for which he’s nominated for an Academy Award. To kick off the celebration, Russell did a live discussion with friend and sometime collaborator Spike Jonze. Russell offhandedly mentioned The Royal Tenenbaums and was prodded by Jonze to talk about the film, which as you’ll hear Russell is quite fond of. As the clip begins, Russell is talking about showing his first film Spanking The Monkey to his son.
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It’s an interesting hour-long talk if you’re a fan of Russell’s work. You can listen to and download the full recording at the Moving Image Source and read a report on the event, including an explanation for an interruption midway through, at The Playlist.
Bits and pieces, but information about the spring shoot for Wes’ new film Moonrise Kingdom is starting to come in. A reader points us to this recent Boston Globe article that claims a casting office began posting notices for the film at the end of January in Rhode Island. The presumption is that the film will at least partially be shot there. This is supported by producer Scott Rudin moving all of his operations to New York to oversee a number of East Coast projects, including Wes’ film and Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young. The film looks to be moving along steadily for a spring shoot, and if you come across any info you’d like to share with us, let us know on Twitter, the forum, or in the comments below. See our previous stories, including the rumored cast here.
We’ve been off for a month, and for The Musical Wes Anderson‘s triumphant return we’re going back all the way to a seminal moment in Wes’ very first feature film.
We here at The Rushmore Academy are fans of all types of films, including those of director Darren Aronofsky whose Black Swan has very deservedly been making the awards rounds this year. Wes is a fan too, and sat down with the editor of the film Andrew Weisblum for HitFix ahead of the upcoming Oscars, for which Weisblum is nominated. The two have a deeper connection than mutual admiration though, Weislbum edited both The Darjeeling Limited and Fantastic Mr. Fox. The full conversation can be found at HitFix and after the jump. Thanks to Yankee Racer jexxica for the tip.
Editing is one art form that moviegoers rarely have a firm grasp on. The process is hardly as easy as just cutting from one shot to another. Different directors have different editing techniques to make their shot material work and some filmmakers don’ even know how a film is going to come together until they get in the editing room. This years best editing nominees include “The Fighter” (deft), “127 Hours” (pace setting), “The Social Network” (intricate), “The King’s Speech” (old school) and “Black Swan” (deliberate). The latter film owes just as much of its town to Andy Weisblum’s work as to fellow nominees Mathew Libatique (cinematography) and director Darren Aronofsky.
Weisblum has hit another level in his career after successive collaborations with both Aronofsky on “The Wrestler” and “Swan” as well as Wes Anderson on “The Darjeerling Limited” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Fox Searchlight passed along this transcript of a conversation on Skype between Anderson and Weisblum and it’s worth a read not just for more background on the creative process for “Swan,” but on how Anderson views editing and his intriguing interview skills.
Wes Anderson:
Shall we begin the interview process?
I think I once read an interview with Peter Weir where he said that he did two movies in a row, Witness and then Mosquito Coast, and he said Mosquito Coast was the most difficult movie to edit that he had ever worked on — it took a long time to cut and it was a struggle — and Witness was just assembled and then he was done. Where does ‘Black Swan’ fall on that spectrum of difficulty?Andy Weisblum:
If you take ‘Mosquito Coast’ and you cram it into the ‘Witness’ schedule, you have our experience. It was a pretty intense, concentrated raw period working on that movie. There was a lot of technical logistics and other things that the movie required from us. It was difficult both technically and psychologically, but we got out on the other side.Wes Anderson:
What was your biggest challenge?Andy Weisblum:
Performances weren’t a challenge in that they were all there. It was really just a question of calibrating it correctly to get from point A to point B through the course of the movie and letting her insanity spill over. The biggest challenge in the movie is the tone, because it’s not a simple thing to define. It’s not strictly horror, it’s not strictly scary, it’s not strictly campy. It’s kind of all those things. You take this ballet and you put it in this new setting and put realism on top of it and you have this curious hybrid that we had to play with to make it feel satisfying, comfortable and engaging.
The internet loves gifs, and the great Tumblr If we don’t, remember me. loves Wes Anderson. Many more after the jump.
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