Category: Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel is getting rave reviews after its world premiere at Berlindale. There are too many articles and reviews to share them all here, but I’ve included a few below to get you started. Perhaps most enjoyable, however, is the festival’s full-length press meet ‘n greet with Wes Anderson and several cast members that you can watch online here.

The Daily Beast ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ Review: Wes Anderson’s Best Ever Is a Whimsical Crime Caper 

Indiewire/The Playlist: Trailers For The 6 Films Wes Anderson Says Are Key Influences On ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ 

Hollywood Reporter Wes Anderson on Why Avoiding Awards Season Can Be a Good Thing (Q&A)

It’s February, so we can finally say The Grand Budapest Hotel is coming out next month! Although the film’s marketing is still in its early stages, actors Ralph Fiennes and Bill Murray have been talking about it while promoting their other projects. Here are a couple of quotes they offered about what it’s like to make movies with Wes Anderson:

Bill Murray, in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer to promote The Monuments Men, had this to say:

You worked again with Wes Anderson in “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Have you seen it?

It’s going to blow your mind—it’s really impressive. Wes just keeps getting better. I just saw it. I didn’t compose a letter to him yet, but I said to him, “I think you make these movies just to please me,” because I’m so delighted by the way he works. And the way he writes his movies, obviously he has  an idea. But, the dialogue in them he takes from life. I have seen his movies where I go, “Wait a second…” He will say, “Yeah, you said that.”

Like if we were in this room, Wes would take something that someone said, and it would end up in one of his films. He made the making of the movies the way he lives his life. When we made “Moonrise Kingdom,” we worked in Newport (in Rhode Island). He rented a mansion and lived in it, with an editing room, and the cinematographer, myself and a handful of the actors. It was like a dormitory. We had a cook. It sounds like a great deal that we had a private cook, but it  meant that you could work endless hours because you’d say, “We are going to have dinner waiting for us at midnight.”

Wes wanted to live in Paris, so he edits his films in Paris. He wanted to shoot here, he goes there, he does this. We shot ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ in Germany and rented a small hotel. We had the whole place  to ourselves. It was like the actors’ old folks home. We would pad down in the morning in our robes, have coffee, and the make-up room was just in another part of the lobby. We would get made up and go to work. Wes is really having fun! I believe in having all the fun you can have while  working. The more fun you have, the better you do. He’s made the fun of making movies the fun of his life. He’s doing great work!

Meanwhile, while promoting The Invisible Woman, Ralph Fiennes told The Playlist this:

But as an actor, next up is “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which seems like it was an awful lot of fun to do. Was it? Or is it twice as much work to give the illusion of it being a lot of fun?

It was fun, but it was challenging because Wes is so deliberate, but in a lovely way. We came to a great way of working together; I realized that he would want a certain thing that he’d been hearing. He wrote the script and he hears the rhythms very precisely of speech. I said, “Please can I just do maybe two or three takes when you just let me do my instinctive version, and then please give me all of the things that you want to see and I can attempt to do. And when you’ve got to the place that you are happy, and you’re happy to say you got it, then if there’s time, give me two more.” Then I feel freedom, but obviously I’ve gone through a little training ground to get there… you never know which is the take he’s going to use. But the process feels satisfactory.

So can you tell which were the takes he mostly used?

I can’t really remember the exact takes, but I can tell you… it was always a part that could lend itself to being pushed too far. It was a high-definition role and you could easily make it too flamboyant, too overstated. Yet you didn’t want to deny a little bit of that. But Wes, always seemed to like it when it felt as real as possible, where it wasn’t underlined too much but has a sort of interior reality. He seems to have just chosen those takes.

What do you know about The Republic of Zubrowka?  Did you know that it is the home of the Grand Budapest Hotel or that it possesses a rich heritage known only to the few who have thought to seek it out?

Few of us know anything about The Republic of Zubrowka, so don’t bother emailing your old History teacher about it. Instead, click here to “explore the detailed political, cultural and artistic world of 20th-century Zubrowka at the Akademie’s Historical Archive. Learn about the military coup of 1935, the involvement of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the roving cast of characters that make up its intricate past.” Or you can just type the website address out if you feel so compelled – www.AkademieZubrowka.com.

The soundtrack for The Grand Budapest Hotel now has a release date. The latest Anderson movie soundtrack will be available March 4 on ABKCO Records. But if you are expecting to find music resembling the Kinks or Rolling Stones, you are going to be surprised. The 32-track score primarily consists of music by French film composer Alexandre Desplat, who previously worked with Anderson on Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox, for which Desplat received his 3rd Oscar nomination in 2010.

A hallmark of Anderson’s movies has been the inclusion of pop music, dating back to songs such as Over and Done With by The Proclaimers in Bottle Rocket to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which is packed with David Bowie songs and covers. However, Anderson’s most recent efforts appear to be relying less and less on popular music.

Movie soundtracks don’t always include every song featured in a movie. For instance, The Royal Tenenbaums released a second soundtrack a year after the original to add previously excluded songs such as Everyone by Van Morrison and Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard by Paul Simon. Meanwhile, Ruby Tuesday and She Smiled Sweetly by the Rolling Stones are still missing from the official soundtrack.

The Grand Budapest Hotel may indeed still have a few musical surprises, but here’s a listing of tracks we know will be in the movie:

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel (Original Soundtrack)’ Track List:

1. s’Rothe-Zäuerli – Öse Schuppel

2. The Alpine Sudetenwaltz*

3. Mr. Moustafa*

4. Overture: M. Gustave H*

5. A Prayer for Madame D*

6. The New Lobby Boy*

7. Concerto for Lute and Plucked Strings I. Moderato – Siegfried Behrend & DZO Chamber Orchestra

8. Daylight Express to Lutz*

9. Schloss Lutz Overture*

10. The Family Desgoffe und Taxis*

11. Last Will and Testament*

12. Up the Stairs/Down the Hall*

13. Night Train to Nebelsbad*

14. The Lutz Police Militia*

15. Check Point 19 Criminal Internment Camp Overture*

16. The Linden Tree – Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra, Vitaly Gnutov

17. J.G. Jopling, Private Inquiry Agent*

18. A Dash of Salt (Ludwig’s Theme)*

19. The Cold-Blooded Murder of Deputy Vilmos Kovacs*

20. Escape Concerto*

21. The War (Zero’s Theme)*

22. No Safe-House*

23. The Society of the Crossed Keys*

24. M. Ivan*

25. Lot 117*

26. Third Class Carriage*

27. Canto at Gabelmeister’s Peak*

28. A Troops Barracks (Requiem for the Grand Budapest)*

29. Cleared of All Charges*

30. The Mystical Union*

31. Kamarinskaya – Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra, Vitaly Gnutov

32. Traditional Arrangement: “Moonshine”*

*Music Composed by Alexandre Desplat

Produced by Wes Anderson & Randall Poster