Update: The fantastic tribute is the work of artist Chris Wharton. You can purchase t-shirts, prints, and more right here. For future reference, we want the iPhone case for the winter solstice.
Imagining the Grand Budapest Hotel
Check out Barcelona artist Lorena’s work here.
Music of Wes Anderson: Rushmore
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More here.
The Grand Budapest Hotel and Mitteleuropa
The terrific Danusha V. Goska sent us her review of The Grand Budapest Hotel many moons ago (March 22, to be exact). We apologize for our lateness on behalf of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Please enjoy.
My Aunt Tetka lived most of her 101 years in Bayonne, New Jersey but she never learned to speak English well at all. Who needed The New York Times, Kennedy’s inauguration speech, or William Shakespeare? Aunt Tetka could sing all one hundred verses of Slovak folksongs.
Visiting Aunt Tetka was a trip to another world, a world she took with her when she (finally!) died. There were many curtains. The air was inside her home was as thick as soup. It smelled sweet, like Uncle Strecko’s pipe smoke, and pungent, of cabbage, onions, and ham. There were sepia photographs of grim faced men with serious mustaches and
women in embroidered babushkas, oil paintings of peasant huts and high mountains, figurines of goose girls, brass ornaments incised with pagan sun symbols and a graphic crucified Christ. Aunt Tetka consumed only pastries, sprinkled with powdered sugar, served on handmade doilies. Five minutes into Wes Anderson 2014 film “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” I was weeping. Anderson took me back to Aunt Tetka.
Continue reading “The Grand Budapest Hotel and Mitteleuropa”
Scandal at Herr Mendl’s at Nebelsbad
@CountDmitri This is just barefaced product placement by the fat effing slave-driver, no doubt.
— Adelheid D. u. T. (@DesgoffeTaxis) June 19, 2014
@DesgoffeTaxis Of course. It’s a mafia operation. Notice how Mendl’s was the -only- patisserie to get any screen time?
— Desgoffe-und-Taxis (@CountDmitri) June 19, 2014
@CountDmitri He sure hoped the viewers would be infatuated with his *products* and turn a blind eye on child labor and unsanitary conditions
— Adelheid D. u. T. (@DesgoffeTaxis) June 19, 2014
@DesgoffeTaxis Right–did you notice Mendl’s girl wasn’t even wearing gloves?! #ew
— Desgoffe-und-Taxis (@CountDmitri) June 19, 2014
@CountDmitri Neither gloves nor a baker’s hat. God only knows which bacteria the cakes might’ve been infected with.
— Adelheid D. u. T. (@DesgoffeTaxis) June 19, 2014
@DesgoffeTaxis Good point–who knows how many lives this Mendl devil has claimed with his diabolical cakes….
— Desgoffe-und-Taxis (@CountDmitri) June 19, 2014
Wes Anderson is saudade, and primeiro
According to Indiewire, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the best film of the year so far, and Wes Anderson is so saudade.
With 122 critics voting in Indiewire’s second annual mid-year poll of the Criticwire Network, Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” checked in with a strong showing in first place… “Budapest” appeared on nearly 60% of the total ballots…
There was some discussion on Twitter about the appropriateness of this term.
“Wes Anderson is the master of ‘saudade’, the nostalgia for something you never had or that never existed.” What a line (and how accurate)!
— Tanul Thakur (@Plebeian42) June 18, 2014
@plebeian42 @rushmoreacademy Very true – but that’s a stretch of definition of “saudades”
— Jenelle D’Alessandro (@freshgreenbeans) June 18, 2014
@freshgreenbeans I just looked up the word online, and google tells me it can’t be accurately translated to English. + @rushmoreacademy
— Tanul Thakur (@Plebeian42) June 18, 2014
@plebeian42 @rushmoreacademy Saudades = always tied to something once known – longing for what is now gone. Good ref: http://t.co/hLQRqnxqeP
— Jenelle D’Alessandro (@freshgreenbeans) June 18, 2014
@freshgreenbeans @rushmoreacademy @Plebeian42 it’s like a noun for missing something/someone.It’s a feeling, like a vanilla nostalgia.
— Deborah Vasques (@vazquezzz) June 18, 2014
What do you think?
The Grand Budpest Hotel, built with 50,000 Lego blocks
Credit: Dan Steinberg
A team of 10 people, led by Ryan Ziegelbauer, spent 575 hours constructing the hotel, with bricks sourced from collectors across the world. It’s 7ft tall, 6.5ft wide, weighs 68 kilos, and will go on display at the A+D Architecture and Design museum in Los Angeles as part of their Come In! S, M, L, XLA exhibition on scale and size in architecture.
If you visit the Lego Grand Budapest in L.A., be sure to share your photos with us via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is now available on Digital HD, Blu-Ray, and DVD.
Check-in to the Grand Budapest Hotel, on DVD and Blu-ray today
The Grand Budapest Hotel DVD/Blu-Ray Available June 17
Watch the Grand Budapest Hotel in your home theater as soon as June 17. Check it out at Amazon, or wherever you shop.
Wes Anderson’s Highest Grossing Film is The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel has surpassed $100 million at the worldwide box office, making it the highest grossing film of Wes Anderson’s career. The record is a tremendous success for Anderson, but it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone after the film broke the record for the highest-grossing limited live action debut of all time when it debuted on March 7.
A recent Variety article credits an impressive marketing strategy for helping The Grand Budapest Hotel stand out in the eyes of moviegoers. In the article, Fox Searchlight President Nancy Utley highlighted five elements she believes made the film a hit: Anderson’s world, unique promotions, “viral chow,” “young moonrisers” and universal access. You can read the Variety article on marketing here and you can read more about the box office success here.
Royal Tenenbaums, which grossed $71 million worldwide, is Anderson’s second most successful film.