Wes/Bob Yeoman as one of the ‘Great Cinematographer-Director Relationships’ & a tidbit on Robyn Cohen

A really interesting article at Daily Film Dose (a great site, by the way) lists the Anderson-Yeoman collaboration as one of the ‘great cinematographer-director relationships’:

Yeoman and Anderson’s films are so distinct, one frame of one of their films is immediately distinguishable as their own. They love their wideangle, anamorphic frames, extremely overcranked slo-mo and lush saturated colours. Look for “The Darjeeling Limited” hopefully later this year.

URL: the article at Daily Film Dose

One other tidbit…

Robyn Cohen (The Life Aquatic) is the star of a new direct-to-Internet feature length film, called Zzyzx (Zi-zux). The concept is interesting (I haven’t checked out the film yet, though. Post your comments if you have.).

URL: Story about the film in the Sun Chronicle
URL: Film site

Wes Anderson American Express commercial wins AICP award

Just a little tidbit…

The Association of Independent Commercial Producers has named Ogilvy & Mather’s “Wes Anderson” for American Express the best commercial of 2006.

URL: Read about the awards in AdWeek.
URL: Watch the video at YouTube.

Clooney and Blanchett a couple of foxes?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are in talks to provide their vocal talents to Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox as Mr. and Mrs. Fox, respectively. Wes is currently editing The Darjeeling Limited in New York, and he will go to London to film Mr. Fox when he is finished.

More at Coming Soon.

A few recent articles.

Owen Wilson on Exhibit After Filming in India, Dallas Morning News

Hollywood’s tryst with Udaipur, Business Standard

Pass the Peace, (Jason Schartzman), CHUD.com

Where’s Anderson? One New Yorker’s Quest For Wes {archive}

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Source: The Reeler blog (URL)

While enduring a walk through SoHo last week, I spotted a few photocopied posters taped to lampposts along Prince Street. They queried in blockish, hand-drawn letters: DEAR MR. WES ANDERSON, WHERE ARE YOU? SARAH, accompanied by an illustration of what I assumed was the artist guided by some hipster-auteur radar gadget in hand. “If you are Wes Anderson, know him or know how I can get in touch with him, please e-mail wesandersonsearch [at] hotmail.com,” the poster entreatied.

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“The Life Examined with Wes Anderson” {archive}

New York Magazine, December 20, 2004

What did the idiosyncratic director do with his first full-size budget? He put Bill Murray into a father-figure role, and gave him a speargun.

Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou looks, at first, as though it’s the inevitable final entry in what you might call Anderson’s Great-Search-for-a-Father-Figure Trilogy. It’s of a piece with previous Anderson movies like Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), in that it features a selfish bastard (Bill Murray in the first; Gene Hackman in the second) who, in crumbling middle age, decides it’s important to impart some of his wisdom, or at least his hard-won cynical savvy, to a young man who views him as a father figure, if not an actual father. What’s with the dad thing, Wes?

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Welcome to the Dahl House {archive}

August 18th, 2002 – New York Times
By Wes Anderson

My brothers and I grew up reading Roald Dahl’s stories. Our mother had gotten us nameplates to put in our books, and we used to steal one another’s copies of ”Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and ”The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” tear out the other’s nameplates and replace them with our own. Dahl was our favorite.

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“Road to Andersonville” {archive}

Reel.com

Welcome to Andersonville I’m a confirmed Wes Anderson fan, but then you knew that. Rushmore and Bottle Rocket (directed by Anderson, co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson) are among my favorite films of the ’90s. I can’t wait for the next one, something about a family of geniuses living in New York.

But my admiration for Anderson’s sly brand of filmmaking pales next to Jon Doyle and Mark Devitt’s. These guys are serious. How serious? Last February they went on a Wes Anderson pilgrimage, traveling by car from their native Canada to visit various locations Anderson used for Rushmore and Bottle Rocket in Texas. A little strange, I suppose, but also charming in an oddball, Wes Anderson sort of way.

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“On the Road” {archive}

Roughcut.com

by Andy Jones

When I heard that Wes Anderson was traveling across country on a bus to promote Rushmore, I assumed that he was driving around in a big yellow school bus. I don’t know why. But it seemed very Wes and very Rushmore — which is an odd, riotous, deeply satisfying, crushingly original film that Anderson directed and co-wrote with his good friend Owen Wilson. Both are also responsible for the equally out-there Bottle Rocket. Anyhow, it’s not a school bus. It’s a high-tech tour bus painted bright yellow and Anderson holds court in the back bedroom… with a mirrored ceiling. Very rock star. We caught up with him in Atlanta, early in the morning, between television interviews.

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“Wes Anderson carves a masterful ‘Rushmore'” {archive}

Boston Phoenix, February 1999
By Peter Keough

RUSHMORE; Directed by Wes Anderson. Written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. With Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel, Mason Gamble, Sara Tanaka, Stephen McCole, and Luke Wilson. A Touchstone Pictures release. At the Nickelodeon, the Kendall Square, and the Circle and in the suburbs. Adolescence, for better and worse, defines popular culture these days, from the hit movie Varsity Blues to the junior-high petulance and concupiscence of the United States Congress. In the process, with the emphasis on hormones, pseudo-hipness, bogus nihilism, and bodily functions, all of the charm of that evanescent, inescapable state of mind has been lost, as well as the magic, the optimism, and the spontaneity. In his brilliant new Rushmore, Wes Anderson goes a long way to restoring all that. It’s innocent (mostly — the deviations are crucial, never gratuitous) and funny — in its way as funny as There’s Something About Mary. Smugness and smarminess never taint its irony; compassion and exuberance stir its absurdity.The spirit of Rushmore, the genial private academy of the title, is embodied in its hero, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman, whose film debut is comparable in many ways to that of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate). His gravely monumental face peaking in a prominent, pasteboard-looking nose surmounted by Harold Lloyd-like glasses, he’s driven by simple, irreconcilable desires: he wants to be loved; he wants to succeed; and he wants to remain forever at his beloved school. On the basis of a play he wrote about Watergate at age seven, his mother got him a scholarship to go to Rushmore. Now 15, with his mother dead, and his loving dad (Seymour Cassel, another great face and performance) an embarrassment given the tony crowd Max is hanging around with, he sees Rushmore as his alma mater in the literal sense. It’s the womb he doesn’t want to leave.That may explain why he’s such a lousy student. An opening fantasy parodying Good Will Hunting notwithstanding, he’s failing every course. In extracurriculars, though, he’s outstanding — in a hilarious montage of yearbook-like snapshots, he’s shown as active in every group from the Bombardment Society to the Max Fischer Players, his personal drama corps. But Dean Guggenheim (Brian Cox, one of the few excellent supporting actors underused) has had enough. Max faces “sudden-death probation” — one more failure and he’s across the street, where the grim Grover Cleveland public high school looms.

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