The World of Wes Anderson
On February 21st 1996, Bottle Rocket was released, the first feature film directed by Wes Anderson.
Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote this beautiful article to commemorate this special date.
Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson exiting Columbia Pictures offices after signing deal to make Bottle Rocket, which was released 20 years ago this week.
Source: Consequence of Sound facebook.
Bottle Rocket
Rushmore
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
The Darjeeling Limited
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Moonrise Kingdom
The Grand Budapest Hotel
With the first movies, we thought he would be like Woody Allen, whose credits always look like the same, but then he changed. First he added an image, then changed the color and then he changed the font! If you ask me, I think he has become more elegant over the years, and you can also see that in the credits.
And by the way, tell me you can see these images and not mentally listen to the songs that play at the end of his movies.
We received a tip on our Tumblr about Wes Anderson Title Cards, a blog that does what it says on the tin. In their own words:
I screencap only the title cards from each movie, chronologically from the Bottle Rocket short up to Moonrise Kingdom. Right now I’m at The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Check out the rest of their images at the blog.
We’ve been off for a month, and for The Musical Wes Anderson‘s triumphant return we’re going back all the way to a seminal moment in Wes’ very first feature film.
Continue reading “The Musical Wes Anderson: The Rolling Stones – “2000 Man””
Toronto-based artist & designer Ibraheem Youssef has created some gorgeous, clever movie poster redesigns for Wes Anderson films, as well Tarantino films. Youssef produces concise illustrations that fall somewhere between elegant and raw.
The first wave of these redesigns has earned a lot of attention around the internet. We here at Rushmore Academy have also taken note, and an exclusive Rushmore//Youssef surprise is in the works. It’s a cliffhanger, so keep checking back for more details.
In the meantime, you can purchase the released-as-yet posters in 2 sizes at Ibraheem Youssef’s shop.
In an on-going series that takes a look at films from the past twenty-five years that have found their audiences in non-traditional routes, the A.V. Club‘s Scott Tobias has taken a look at Wes’ first film, Bottle Rocket.
We did it, though, didn’t we?” —Owen Wilson as Dignan, Bottle Rocket
Back when Fantastic Mr. Fox debuted a few months ago, the following thought occurred to me: “Wes Anderson is forever doomed to make Wes Anderson movies.” Here’s a director who did all he could to step outside his comfort zone, adapting someone else’s work for the first time—in this case, that of Roald Dahl, an author with his own singularity—and using stop-motion animation, a painstaking collaborative process that seems like it should suppress his auteurist instincts. Alas, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a Wes Anderson movie from frame one, because he found a way to square his sensibility with Dahl’s (or, as detractors might put it, “shoehorn it in”) and wrangle a team of animators into bringing his homemade, obsessively detailed Rankin-Bass universe to life. There are two ways to look at it: Anderson is either to be praised for his consistency of vision, or damned for painting himself into a stifling creative corner. This may explain why the maker of such gentle, eccentric, lovingly particular comedies remains one of the more polarizing directors in the business.
Read the full article at the A.V. Club, complete with clips from the film.
Todd Gilchrist at Cinematical writes about Bottle Rocket in their Shelf Life feature. It’s an interesting read and we agree with his conclusion. Full article after the break.
Wes Anderson’s movies have entertained and enchanted audiences for more than a decade now, offering a singular and yet strangely universal point of view time and again about oddballs and outsiders who simply want their creativity to connect with others. This week, Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox arrives in theaters (in limited release), and while we’ve already fallen in love with the his latest work (thanks in no small part to his particularly fertile adaptation of author Roald Dahl’s source material), it seemed appropriate to go back and revisit his first film, the oft-forgotten Bottle Rocket, to remind ourselves where the writer-director started, if not where our love affair with his work began.
Continue reading “Cinematical Takes a Look at Bottle Rocket’s Shelf Life”
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.
