Our favorite Wes parody is still the McCain ad.

via /Film, Yankee Racer Magnus Rushlee

In October 2001, audiences at the New York Film Festival viewed the director’s cut of the film The Royal Tenenbaums, the way it was intended it to be seen and heard. The final cut, shown in theaters and released on DVD, changed several of the songs originally used, for a variety of reasons. The two soundtracks released also omit much of the film’s music, including eight tracks of Mark Mothersbaugh’s wonderful score.

Join KZSU Stanford University at 5:00pm PST this Wednesday, 30th December 2009 for a special broadcast of the complete chronological soundtrack music from The Royal Tenenbaums. You will also hear excerpted commentary and interviews with Anderson and music supervisor Randall Poster, as they explain the difficulties in obtaining and replacing certain songs.

Listeners in the San Francisco bay area can tune in at 90.1 FM. Anyone may stream online at http://kzsulive.stanford.edu.

Over at Salon, Matt Zoller Seitz (freelance critic, and author of one the earliest and best profiles of Wes, and this incredible series of video essays from earlier this year) has been taking a look at some of the most influential directors of the decade in an on-going series of essays. Seitz’s latest examines the work of Robert Zemeckis and Wes Anderson.

An excerpt:

That’s where Wes Anderson comes in. The director of “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” (2004), “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007) and this year’s Roald Dahl adaptation “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is as much a train-set filmmaker as Zemeckis, Jackson and Lucas, and like Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson (“Punch-Drunk Love,” “There Will Be Blood”), Zemeckis and Spielberg, he’s one of the few prominent Hollywood filmmakers working in the ’70s auteur tradition — and doing it with a style so distinct that it can never be stolen, only imitated. He’s notorious for fretting over every aspect of his movies, from the texture of the clothes to the precise geometric motion of each shot and camera movement to the choice of on-screen font (he prefers variations of Futura). Detractors describe his style as fussy, overcomplicated, even airless — and if one prefers a messier, more spontaneous kind of filmmaking, or a more “invisible” style of direction, Anderson is almost certainly the opposite of fun.

I won’t mount a defense of Anderson as an exciting, imaginative and important filmmaker in this article, because I’ve already done it in a series of video essays.I mention him in this piece because of two particular aspects of his art. One is his commitment to analog moviemaking. He shoots on film and prefers to do everything, special effects included, on the set rather than create them after the fact. Even when he employs digital effects or processes, he calls attention to their artificiality; think of the obviously stop-motion sea creatures in “Aquatic” — or, for that matter, the unruly, roiling fur on the creatures in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” — which the director insisted be fabricated with hard-to-manage animal hair rather than more controllable synthetic hair, because he just liked how it looked.

Be sure to read the full piece at Salon, and leave your comments below. It’s a great essay, and well worth the read.

Season’s Greetings: http://bit.ly/64LSjt

Happy Holidays: http://bit.ly/7qnOIH

Word today from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of twenty films eligible for an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Film category. To see the full list of films, head on over to the AMPAS site. Only five films can receive a nomination, and prognosticators are betting Fox will be one of them.

Two more stories after the break.

 Paste Magazine has included The Royal Tenenbaums in its top ten of the decade list. It’s an interesting list worth checking with a lot of unusual choices, and features the Anderson produced The Squid and the Whale. To jump to Tenenbaums click here, or to start from the top, here. The film places even higher in the readers’ poll. The new print edition of Paste features Jason Schwartzman on the cover.

10. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Writer/Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: Owen Wilson
Stars: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Andrew Wilson, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, Bill Murray
Studio: Buena Vista PicturesWith his third movie, Wes Anderson let all his quirks run rampant: a storybook setting that is and is not New York, a uniform for each character and an obsession with childhood detritus. Rather than deflect the family’s conflicts (as Anderson’s critics claim), these elements only enhance its spiritual conundrums, making The Royal Tenenbaums Anderson’s most directorially confident and emotionally cathartic film—a bittersweet ode to regret, forgiveness and hard-won contentment.—Stephen Deusner

Finally, a small clip from Bill Murray’s recent apperance on The Late Show with David Letterman. There was a nice Mr. Fox bit later in the show that doesn’t appear to be online. If we find a full version we’ll let you know.

$25

Bravo to Drew.