We’re fans! (link)
Houston Chronicle article, Rushmore tonight in the park (Houston)
(credit: Houston Chronicle, more photos after the break)
First, if you live in the Houston area, you can see Rushmore tonight on the big screen!
Discovery Green’s free movie series celebrates Houston on film with a 10th anniversary screening of this indie classic by Houstonian Wes Anderson.
Event times: 5 September 2008 (Friday), 7.30 pm (link)
Andrew Dansby has written a great article about the 10th anniversary of Rushmore for the Houston Chronicle (link):
It takes a special eye to see Houston as the setting for a fairy tale. Wes Anderson thought about shooting his second film, Rushmore, in New England, but he couldn’t find a location that worked for the titular school.
So he asked his mother, real estate agent Texas Anderson, to shoot his alma mater, St. John’s School, “standing in the circle and rotating while shooting one photo after another,” she said. The search ended there.
Having found Rushmore Academy right in his backyard, Wes Anderson’s next task was finding Houston locations for the rest of the film. (By the way, the city is never stated as the setting in the movie.) He shot most of it at St. John’s, but there are also scenes filmed at a home in West University, Lamar High School, a barbershop in the Heights, North Shore High School, the Forest Club on Memorial and a stadium parking lot just outside the Loop (see map on Page E3).
Continue reading “Houston Chronicle article, Rushmore tonight in the park (Houston)”
Have you…
… visited our community forum The Yankee Racers lately?
… joined our Facebook group?
… bookmarked our Amazon link, so that your purchases there support the site?
… submitted your entry for the Yankee Journal?
… signed The Darjeeling Limited Criterion petiton?
… subscribed to our feed?
… requested an @yankeeracers.org e-mail address by e-mailing edwardappleby[at]yankeeracers[dot]org?
Interview with Derek Hill, author of Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood’s Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists, and Dreamers
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)
A favor to ask…
Please support the site by shopping Amazon.com through our links.
Rushmore Academy Amazon.com Bookmark
^^ bookmark this link by right-clicking on it (in most browsers)
Thanks for your support!
Rushmore no. 20 on EW’s “Cult 25”
20. RUSHMORE (1998)
An oddball love triangle between a freakishly precocious 15-year-old, a widowed teacher, and a depressed tycoon, Rushmore is a movie that defies its eccentricities. The production is stagey, the dialogue stilted, and the performances gleefully deadpan, yet it is as tender and life-affirming a movie as the irony-drenched ’90s produced.
SIGNATURE LINE ”She’s my Rushmore, Max.” (link)
Thanks to Loraxaeon. Bravo, Max! (Yankee Racers thread)
A few tidbits…
An interview with Life Aquatic animator Henry Selick (no mention of Wes or TLA, sadly).
Selick’s new film Coraline debuts in December. He was scheduled to work with Wes on The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but scheduling conflicts with Coraline prevented a second collaboration.
Wes was mentioned in a recent article in The Guardian (U.K.):
Soundtracks and musical scores fit a specific purpose. However, what I find interesting are scores that go beyond their specific purpose and take on multiple lives.
Film soundtracks have always had the power to impact culturally. From the obvious: Ennio Morricone’s theme to the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or dialogue from Scarface – to the less obvious: Wes Anderson reusing Sven Libaek’s Shark Theme in the Life Aquatic (a score that in turn found itself on a Volvo Advert).
Using a film sample or being under the influence of a score will almost always result in the adjective “cinematic” being used to describe a band’s sound. It’s a rich tradition in hip-hop, rock and dance, and I enjoy the approximation and interpolation of movies and music (link).
Friend of the site and contributor Derek Hill discussed the musicology of Wes Anderson in a recent guest blog post.
In the September issue, Paste Magazine choses Dr. Nelson Guggenheim (Brian Cox, Rushmore) as their third favorite cinematic high school principal (vote for Dr. G in their poll!).
Cool new t-shirts from Waterloo
(click on the image to visit the Waterloo product page)
Very cool.
Bottle Rocket available for pre-order on Amazon
The Criterion Collection edition of Bottle Rocket — out 25 November — is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com. Order yours here, and help support this site.
We’ve decked out the page in a Bottle Rocket theme to celebrate. Let us know what you think.
And, now, to the original BR trailer:
