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Friday News Round-Up 7/20/12


Hello hello! Another Friday, another round-up. Many thanks to my compatriots for posting while I was away. This week brought us some exciting revelations regarding Movie #8, aka The Grand Budapest Hotel. We are thrilled, excited, and just beside ourselves with glee over this news and, as you’d expect, we’ll bring you all of the updates as they come. Now, onward!

 

    • (Above) ANTWRANGLER‘s flickr photostream once again has some excellent behind-the-scenes shots from Moonrise.
    • Film Fashion Junkie’s MR fashion style boards manage to capture the essence of a few key characters.
    • A great round-up of some Wes-inspired posters. Don’t miss the great reinterpretation of the ‘stars’ of Rushmore.
    • Have you been wanting a Camp Ivanhoe shirt of your very own? For only $6? Today is your lucky day. (There’s also a $6 Team Zissou shirt if that’s more your speed.)
    • We’re charmed by the Moonrise and Tenenbaums cross stitch projects on amezissou‘s flickr.
    • Aphelis explains the inspiration of French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue on Rushmore and The Life Aquatic.
    • Bright Wall Dark Room’s Moonrise Kingdom write-up is half-review, half-personal reflection and wholly excellent.
    • Classic(-ish) Interview: Noah Baumbach and Wes Anderson discuss Fantastic Mr. Fox (and many other great things) in this lengthy video from the New York Public Library.
    • The Criterion Collection will be releasing a Blu-Ray Edition of The Royal Tenenbaums in August. Preorder at Amazon.

 

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Friday Saturday News Round-Up

We made a mistake?

  • Life would be so much more awesome if this article was actually true.
  • A Bill Murray comic comic book? Sign my kid up! I have the therapy sessions for 2025 scheduled, anyway.
  • Our new pal Roland MacDonald (no relation) sent along the above fanart.
  • My eyes burnt up when I saw this.
  • I think that this is lame, but you are entitled to your own opinion (sort of).
  • Our friend Jeffrey wonders if he has located *the* cove. Let us know what you think.
  • Wes Anderson recently offered his thoughts on Christopher Nolan and Dark Knight Rises to the UK’s Empire Online:

I enjoy Chris Nolan’s work in general, but I watched the Blu-Ray and it has a thing where you can go to any scene in the movie and go to the making of that. There’s nothing that has ever made me feel less like a professional than watching Chris Nolan’s group at work. The remote-control miniature cars. Just every technique. The rehearsal of flipping the semi-trailer end over end in the middle of the desert before they blow it up in Chicago… There’s one scene where a guy jumps off the top of a skyscraper — they rehearse the jump but for the actual thing they did it CG. ‘But for the rehearsal you did jump off the building?’ ‘We have it as a reference.’ Wow. Chris Nolan is quite great. My favourite is Memento, but I’d like to learn how to do these things.

  • The Village Voice’s 4Knots festival is today in New York City. Their poster brings to mind a certain Aquatic film.
  • Scouting the Moonrise Kingdom filming locations (no pun intended, or maybe intended. I don’t know about these things):

Finally, thanks to Gloria for her work on this weekly column (our condolences to her and her family). And sorry for ruining it by posting it a day late the one week that it is my job.

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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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Pitchfork, Wes Anderson, and Randall Poster Talk Shop

As any person with two ears who has seen an Anderson film can tell you, the soundtrack is vital to the tone and success of the films. For many of the most memorable scenes, it’s impossible to extract the song from the memory or imagine any other song in its place. Try to imagine Margot stepping off the Greenline Bus without Nico. Try to imagine Peter running to catch the train without the Kinks. You can’t and you shouldn’t; the songs are perfect and pairing music with film is an artform in and of itself. Pitchfork interviewed Wes Anderson and Randall Poster separately about their musical influences, their personal music choices, and discovering new music.

Our favorite is this bit from Randall Poster:

Pitchfork: Do you ever think about whether your work with Wes has inspired people to make music, or opened them up to new sounds?

RP: In the course of the 16 years that we’ve worked together, a lot of bands have been born, and I think there have been some inspired by Wes, to a certain degree. And when kids come up to you and they’re like, “Rushmore really opened me up to a whole world of music,” that’s the absolute greatest. Both of us have shared the experience of being the kid in the dark, watching the movie and just saying, “Oh my God, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” And when you feel like you’ve affected another kid sitting in the dark, that’s a great reward.

The rest of the article can be read over at Pitchfork.

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Wes Anderson on how to make a “Wes Anderson film”

The writer and filmmaker, John Lopez, recently spoke with Wes Anderson on the process of making a “Wes Anderson film.” Check out the full interview here.

No matter how often others deconstruct and mimic Wes Anderson’s style, he almost always nails a note of whimsical enchantment you just won’t get anywhere else short of your first field trip to the Natural History Museum. And his latest, Moonrise Kingdom, has hit the commercial-critical sweet spot — who better to re-create the fastidious fantasies of adolescent love — without Anderson really changing it up: wide-angle tracking shots, check; deadpan delivery, check; Bill Murray’s vague sense of subdued aggression, double check. Which begs the question, how does Wes Anderson make a Wes Anderson film?

 

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A.V. Club Interviews Bob Balaban


The Onion’s A.V. Club sat down with Bob Balaban to discuss his experience of working with an auteur and selections from his four-decade career, including when he worked as a translator both on- and off-screen for Francois Truffaut during Close Encounters.

This part especially charmed us:

AVC: There does seem to be a lot of Truffaut in Moonrise Kingdom.

BB: That’s what I thought. I didn’t think of it when I read it, but when I saw the movie, it just leapt out at me. The formality of the movie did not let me see it earlier than that, but when I saw the movie all together, I went, “Truffaut.” I was really sad Truffaut wasn’t watching it, because he would have just been crazy for that seven-minute scene on the island with the boy and the girl. That was Truffaut in a nutshell, the seriousness of kids and the respect you have to give them when you’re dealing with them or portraying them. The not talking down, the specificity of young love, which nobody ever gets, really.

Read the rest of the article over at the A.V. Club.

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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.