The World of Wes Anderson
Time Out Chicago interviews “Bottle Rocket” Criterion DVD artist Ian Dingman:
TOC: So did you make a truckload of money?
Ian Dingman: [Laughs] I deduced that I made about 50 cents on the hour over the eight months. There were a couple of times where I worked 36 hours straight. But it was one of those jobs I would’ve done for free.
If your entry doesn’t show up here, e-mail your photo as an attachment to edwardappleby @ yankeeracers.org (no spaces).
Cheerio.
Kind of funny… starts at 2.23. Don’t forget the Second Annual Wes Anderson Inspired Halloween Costume Contest.
Enter our Second Annual Wes Anderson Inspired Halloween Costume Contest. We are giving away at least two prize packages, which include some great items that Wes fans should covet:
To enter, upload a picture of yourself in your Wes-inspired costume to Flickr (registration required) and tag it with “rushmoreacademy2008” (if, for whatever reason, you can’t use Flickr, e-mail edwardappleby@yankeeracers.org to make alternative arrangements). Who will you be? Peter Whitman? Max Fischer? Steve Zissou? Wes Anderson himself? Bob Yeoman? Dart Boy? Check out some of the entries from last year.
Entries will be voted on by the staff of the Rushmore Academy. By submitting an entry, you:
a) confirm that you are eighteen (18) years of age or older and that it is legal for you to post your picture.
b) give permission to rushmoreacademy.com to post your entry on its public website.
The contest submission period ends November 7, 2008 at midnight EST. Contest rules, stipulations, and prizes are subject to change at the sponsor’s discretion. RushmoreAcademy.com cannot control the content of Flickr.com. Please report inappropriate entries to the Flickr administrators. Direct inquiries to edwardappleby @ yankeeracers.org (no spaces).
Thanks to Sneak Attack Media, Nick Flora, and Derek Hill for sponsoring this year’s contest.
For our U.S. readers:
We don’t normally use this forum to political ends, but we must encourage you to register to vote. If you already are, please verify your registration. The registration deadline for the vital state of Ohio is Monday, October 6.
Use this nifty tool to find information on your state and locality and to verify your registration.
To talk politics, visit the “All Things Political” thread on the Yankee Racers forum.
Call for Submissions
In celebration of the tenth anniversary of the premiere of Rushmore, the film that inspired this site, the Rushmore Academy will release the first issue of our online art and literary Yankee Journal this fall (early October). Submissions should be inspired by the films of Wes Anderson but need not be about Mr. Anderson or his films (they, of course, can be). Accepted submissions will include, but are not limited to:
By submitting your entry, you give us permission to publish it online. Your work will be subject to the same Creative Commons license that the site uses. We will not sell your entry nor use it for any purpose other than the stated one.
Submissions must be submitted by midnight on October 31, 2008 to edwardappleby@yankeeracers.org. Only selected entries will be used in the journal. Thank you.
From the New York Times:
Paul Newman, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, died Friday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 83.
The cause was cancer, said Jeff Sanderson of Chasen & Company, Mr. Newman’s publicist.
If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.
He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless. Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into craggy, charismatic old age.
(pictures of Houston from the recent Houston Chronicle article on the 10th anniversary of Rushmore)
(more after the break)
Derek Hill is an American abroad, currently residing in rural Ireland. His writing has appeared in numerous print and online publications, such as The Third Alternative, VideoScope, Mystery Scene, Video Watchdog, Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture, and All Movie (previously The All Movie Guide). He was also a contributor to the three volume Greenwood Press Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (writing about the Planet of the Apes film series and Close Encounters of the Third Kind). He’s currently writing a book for Wallflower Press’ Cultographies line about Alex Cox’s seminal 1980s cult film, Repo Man.
RA: Could you briefly describe the book, and tell us what motivated you to write it.
DH: The book is a look at contemporary (mostly) American filmmakers Richard Linklater, David O. Russell, Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, and Michel Gondry-a sort of new American New Wave if you will. Using the films of Charlie Kaufman as the center-pieces, so to speak, I felt that there were a number of filmmakers who had enough shared themes and comedic sensibilities to be viewed as a movement. It’s an unconscious, unplanned movement, to be sure, but a vital psychological one. I think that these filmmakers are some of the most engaging, imaginative, original, storytellers working in commercial film today. There’s a real sense of experimentation (especially with someone like Linklater or Russell), virtuosic style, and a peculiar mix of angst and comedy that seemed pertinent to these troubled times. There’s a real sense of dissatisfaction with a lot of the characters and the humor running through all of the films. And while most of these films are ostensibly comedies, there’s an underlying melancholy and seriousness in them as well which seems completely antithetical to what’s coming out of the Hollywood machine or even the indie-trenches for that matter. Many of the filmmakers had been written about only in terms of their loose affiliation as directors in the “independent film” scene or whatever… not in terms of their thematic or stylistic similarities. It just felt appropriate to engage them on an aesthetic or thematic level instead of a consumer-oriented level which would be much too broad for what I wanted to do.
(more after the break)
