Category: Films

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Friday News Round-Up 7/6/12


One week later and here we are again. News is slowing down, but the fan-art is speeding up. At this point, we’re in a lull, so we’ll take what we can get. There’s just never enough Anderson news for our liking.

Here we are again, so soon:

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Wes’s Excellent Interview with Fast Co.


As you may expect, around these parts we read a lot of interviews with Wes Anderson. (A lot of interviews.) But very few are worth posting here– the ground is covered, the same questions are asked, and there’s nothing really to report. However, Fast Co. Create’s recent interview with Wes was interesting because we finally got something new– an inside peek into his writing and directing process.

When asked about his writing process:

“[In writing the script], I want to make more than something you visualize, I want to make something you can sit there and read; you can experience the story.”
[…]
“I like to have a record of something I wrote out there,” says Anderson. Which is why he publishes his scripts. “I’m sure a lot of the people who buy it never read it because you read a few pages and say, ‘Yes, yes, oh yes, I remember all this stuff,’ and then you can kind of move on. But I just like to at least be able to say, ‘Well, it was published and it existed.'” So the Moonrise Kingdom script was recently put out as an e-book by Faber & Faber, […] And he’s not exactly celebrating the e-book’s brisk sales. “I asked the guys at Faber, ‘How many have we sold?’ and they said, ‘We’ve already sold 100.'” Anderson pauses. “Oh, so, 100. In three months. Wow, that’s great. We’re doing great.”

Note to Rushmore Academicians: This is a call to action. Let’s help make Wes a little happier and all buy the ebook. For everyone we know.


The rest of the interview covers his decision to film in Rhode Island, set structure, storyboarding scenes, lessons learned from previous films, the challenges of working with young actors, and his musical selections. Again, it’s well worth a read.

And finally, some great news about Movie #8: they hope to start shooting by the end of the year. Read the full article at Fast Co. Create.

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Moonrise Kingdom DVD Preorder!


Yes, you read that right. Despite the fact that many of you are seeing Moonrise for the first time in theaters, MR is now available for preorder on Amazon. A release date hasn’t been set yet, but you can be the first on your block to add the film to your Wes Anderson collection. No word if the film will get a Criterion release, but you know we’ll stay on the trail.

(Fan art by TheArtOfAdamJuresko)

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Friday News Round-Up 6/29/12




Friends, Romans, Countrymen– welcome back into the fold. As you have surely noticed, yes, things are slowing down- down, but not out. There is more to come and much to look forward to: the ever expanding release of Moonrise, award season, more information about Movie #8, films by related artists, and new features (!) on the site. But for now, let’s get to it.

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Cousin Ben Hosts a MR Screening

Maybe you haven’t yet heard, but Moonrise Kingdom is still expanding in its platform release. In order to keep up spirits and excite new audiences, Funny or Die produced an exclusive video directed by Wes Anderson with Jason Schwartzman as Cousin Ben hosting a screening for the Khaki Scouts. No spoilers, but a very cute addition to the online exclusives.

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Moonrise Kingdom and the Success of the Platform Release


The most frequent question that we’ve seen on tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook has been, “When is Moonrise Kingdom opening in my hometown?” If you yourself have asked this question, you are part of the success story of Moonrise‘s platform release strategy.

First, let’s turn to wikipedia for a definition of a platform release:

A platform release is a limited release strategy, whereby the film opens in only a few theaters, then gradually expands to more theaters as word of mouth spreads and the marketing campaign gains momentum. Depending on the film’s success, there is even the possibility to expand into a wide release. The advantage of this strategy is that marketing costs are conserved until a film’s performance has been established. This way, if a film turns out to be very popular or critically acclaimed, the distributor may opt to spend more money than originally planned and push for a wider release; if the movie flops, the distributor can withdraw from the campaign without having spent much money promoting and advertising the film.

As you may have heard, MR opened in only four theaters (two in New York and two in Los Angeles), but the film earned $167,250 per screen, which is highest per-theater box office average for a non-animated film of all time.

Join us after the jump for more thoughts regarding MR‘s success. Continue reading “Moonrise Kingdom and the Success of the Platform Release”

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A.V. Club’s Pop Pilgrims Visit the Real Rushmore Academy

Yes, this is another post about something fantastic the A.V. Club did, but it was too good not to share. The A.V. Club recently took a field trip to Houston and visited the school that stood in for Rushmore Academy, St. John’s School.

The video features shot-by-shot comparisons of campus then and now, excellent interviews with a current teacher at St. John’s who was a friend of Wes’s in high school and the owner of Rosemary Cross’s home, and, as a bonus, has shot of Wes’s yearbook from senior year.


Houston: The Rushmore School

Join us after the jump for a bit more. Continue reading “A.V. Club’s Pop Pilgrims Visit the Real Rushmore Academy”

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A.V. Club’s WA Video Quilt

The A.V. Club put together a fantastic supercut of seemingly all of the accessories in Wes’s first six films. Every belt buckle, pair of sunglasses, hat, and shoe (or paw) is represented in this three-minute film. It looks like a true labor of Wes Anderson-love, and that’s right up our alley.


A video quilt of whimsical Wes Anderson accessories

You can also read a bit about the film over at the A.V. Club.

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New Animated Shorts Released to Accompany “Moonrise Kingdom”

Wes Anderson has released enchanting animated shorts to accompany the film, “Moonrise Kingdom”. In the film, Suzy (Kara Hayward) packs six ficticious storybooks. Wes wrote passages read from each of the storybooks and decided in April to animate these passages. You can watch them on EW.com here, or in the embed below.

More details below from EW.com:

“I wrote passages for the other books that didn’t have any text [read aloud in the film], and we animated that too,” he says. “So we now have this piece where our narrator, Bob Balaban’s character, takes us through these little sections of each of these books.

To pull off the animated shorts in just six scant weeks, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox producer Jeremy Dawson worked to pair each of the cover jacket artists with professional animators. “We got the artist to do key drawings, and then someone else had to take those key drawings and animate them,” he says. “One of these guys I believe was in Sweden, one in Paris, and one in L.A. They were all over the world and we did it all by Internet. For instance, the one with the hydrogoblin, The Girl From Jupiter — that artist does his work in oil painting, so someone had to kind of emulate that oil painting look in the animation.”

After the cover jacket artists turned in their key illustrations, the animators, says Dawson, finished their work in only two weeks. “I think we all just pitched in and we pulled a lot of favors because it was not like we spent a ton of money doing it,” he says. “People got excited about it because it was a creative thing rather than if they were making a Snickers ad or something.”

The animated shorts and the stories they illustrate are strikingly evocative of an earlier era of children’s and young adult literature. “I think it’s kind of nice that rather than just doing one whole story, [we’re] doing these little snippets,” says Dawson. “They’re about imagination — it’s just more like a spark of this story.”

Would the stories hinted at from these books ever be completed? “I think that’s up to Wes,” says Dawson. “I have no doubt he’s capable of doing it.”

So, Mr. Anderson, would you? “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” says the director. “I’m not gonna write them.”

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Friday News Round-Up 6/8/12

  • (Above) Suzy’s earrings have never looked so good than in this artistic poster by Alex Quinn.
  • The Museum of the Moving Image has republished their five-part video series on the Substance of Style for Wes Anderson. The series is extremely detailed, well-researched, and absolutely engrossing. Absolutely recommended.
  • Roman Coppola talks with Interview Magazine regarding his experiences co-writing The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. (Bonus trivia: In the interview, Roman uses the phrase “a memory of a fantasy,” which was coined by an interviewer during Cannes, which was referenced by Wes in his NPR interview.)
  • Watch the full 40 minute Moonrise Kingdom press conference from Cannes over here.
  • Short List has “alternative” designs for the Moonrise Kingdom poster, some of which we’ve featured here before, but it’s worth taking a look at the whole gallery. Certainly telling that the film inspired so many diverse images.