Wes Anderson

Started by Sleepless, March 19, 2012, 12:14:21 PM

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jenkins

Quote from: jonas on November 13, 2013, 01:58:29 PM
A new Short Film "Castello Cavalcanti" by Wes Anderson starring Jason Schwartzman and apparently financed by Prada.



i like how he knows he's just goofing around. the racing car crash in this short is like this short, beautiful and flaming and how can you really give a fuck. you can't, but it looks nice, and everyone is looking around for sure. good job darius khondji. good job wes anderson, keep those rich people spiritual questions burning

thanks jonas

MacGuffin

Wes Anderson "would" make 3D movie
Moonrise Kingdom director says he would consider making a 3D film; and would like to turn his new short for Prada into a series set around the world.
Source: Screen Daily

Wes Anderson discussed 3D, animation and an idea for a series of shorts at the Rome Film Festival this evening [Nov 13], where he introduced the world premiere of a short sponsored by Italian fashion label Prada.

The Moonrise Kingdom director, whose Grand Budapest Hotel will open the Berlinale in February, was joined on stage by regular collaborators Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman.

Together with cinematographer Darius Khondji, they worked on Castello Cavalcanti, an eight-minute short centred on racing driver Jed Cavalcanti and set during Italy's Molte Miglia rally in September 1955.

Shot at Rome's famous Cinecitta studios, where Federico Fellini made La Dolce Vita, it opens with Cavalcanti (Schwartzman) crashing his car in a village square, where the racing driver soon discovers he has a connection with the people.

Coppola revealed there was a prop included in the short that was used in La Dolce Vita and said: "The fact that we used a prop that had been in that movie was a wondrous thing."

Anderson said the short was inspired by a scene from Fellini's Amarcord (1973) and could be the first in a series set at famous studios around the world.

"I love Jason's character of this racing car driver in the 1950s and we think this could be the first chapter in an ongoing series," the director told a packed theatre at the festival's Cinema Village.

"We have to ask Prada but they have been so enthusiastic and encouraging, I bet they would let us do another one.

"This is sort of connected to Fellini and we filmed it at Cinecittà. Maybe these films could be connected to different countries and different filmmakers. There are many wonderful old studios. There's one in Nice; Toho in Japan; and Ealing in the UK.

"Maybe we could go to the studios that we love from old movies and try set one of these there and connect each one with the filmmakers who worked in that place. It would be a world tour with this guy."

He cautiously added: "It'll probably never happen."

3D

In an interview for an upcoming feature, Vision3's Chris Parks, who was stereo supervisor on Gravity, told Screen that he would like to work with Anderson on a future project.

Asked by ScreenDaily if he would ever consider making a film in 3D, Anderson said: "I would. The 3D in Gravity is unbelievable and Alfonso Cuaron is quite amazing.

"The last movie from him was staggering. The staging of the scenes in Children Of Men are so powerful and exciting. But the 3D in Gravity is at a whole other level and I wouldn't begin to know how to take on scenes the way Alfonso does.

The director continued to enthuse about 3D and revealed he had been watching classic and contemporary movies in the format.

He said: "We recently got a 3D TV and Blu-Ray player. I loved Spielberg's 3D in Tintin. I also got Dial M for Murder, which I'd never seen in 3D, which is essentially in one room. The 3D is mainly used, I found, for lamps. There's a few other things, like the hand reaching out. But just the way the way the lamps and furniture and people are staged in 3D is spectacular. [Hitchcock's] visual mind working in 3D.

"I recently got a photography set by Jacques Henri Lartigue. He shot with a stereo camera. You can order a set of these pictures with a viewer. It's such an enjoyable thing. You look deep into these pictures. It's mesmerising."

Animation

The director, who made stop-motion film Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), said he would like to return to animation but his idea was becoming "increasingly violent" so may find it a challenge to secure financing.

"We have been talking about an animated film together but as we work on it, we are struggling as it's becoming increasing violent, depressing and inappropriate for youngsters so probably won't get funded," he said.

"I would like to do something though as it's been a pleasure to make a couple of films that young people like. With Fantastic Mr Fox, I have all the puppets in our apartment in New York and kids love to see them. So I would like to do something for young people again."

Italian cinema

Asked about Italian film, Anderson said the most recent he had seen was Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty. He considered it Sorrentino's "best" film to date and said lead actor Tony Servillo "is amazing".

"We don't see at least 90% of Italian films but we saw Gomorrah and I love many Nanni Moretti movies," he said, adding that he would like to make a film in Italy in the future having previously made The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou at Cinecitta.

"I'm interested in the art and culture of Italy today and I'd like to make another film here," said Anderson.

"Working at Cinecittà is special but I've not worked here with a smaller group, more free, out in the world as opposed to the insular nature of a studio. That's the experience I'm looking forward to having in Italy in the coming years I hope."

Next film

Speaking about his upcoming feature, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson said: "It's set in an invented country that is part Czechoslovakia, part Hungary, part Poland.

"The biggest inspiration is the novels and short stories of Stefan Zweig and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. We were also trying to draw on American movies of the 1930s set in Europe, like the films of [Ernst] Lubitsch."

The film recounts the adventures of Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend.

Fox Searchlight will release the film in US cinemas on March 7, 2014.

Beautiful, contained world

Schwartzman, who has acted in several Anderson movies including Rushmore, The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom, said: "Whenever I have the good fortune to work with Wes it's really its own thing.

"When you read the script, it's its own beautiful, contained world. It's always exciting to read the scripts because you know you're going to have fun.

"One of the great things about working with Wes is that the things he wants to make he's interested in them as a director but also as a person. He wants to go to those places and experience those things for himself.

"We had an excitement about working at Cinecittà and building that time period. It was romantic in a lot of ways, in that style and place. Working on Wes' movies, I always have the time of my life."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Pubrick

Quote from: jonas on November 13, 2013, 01:58:29 PM
A new Short Film "Castello Cavalcanti" by Wes Anderson starring Jason Schwartzman and apparently financed by Prada.

it's a bit meh but what do you expect. now if you'll excuse me i must leave now to purchase some prada accessories.

on another kind of vaguely associated note, why even bother to change cinematographers at this point? darius khondji did as good a job as any kid off the street under wes' template.. the same goes for a lot of other aspects in his films. in this regard the names he stamps his films with are a kind of brand.. it's less that he used the talents of an amazing cinematographer but that an amazing cinematographer is endorsing the wes anderson product.

yes the lighting changed from warm to cold when he talked to gus on the phone, but what we usually talk about as the stamp or identifying hallmarks of an artist seem to disappear when applied through the wes filter. it's the wes anderson show, featuring whoever he hires.. next episode, emmanuel lubezki! (as an example)

in terms of actors the results are less consistent. i think you can mark his successes and failures purely on how well he casts his films. that is basically the only aspect of his output that he can't make for himself. the way actors function in a wes anderson film are, yes, a branding as i mentioned earlier, as is the case when any actor goes out of their way to work with an acclaimed director, but the result is a phenomenon quite different to what you see when actors clamber to work with, say, woody allen or PTA. in those instances the actors are given free rein, but in a wes anderson universe the interest lies in what exactly the actor can retain beyond the heavily codified constraints already present in the frame.

all his actors lose a lot of freedom in many aspects that they could otherwise expect, in movement, posture, speed at which they must say the lines. so what remains? i think the goal of his actors is not so much to try to force some life through the cracks, but rather paint themselves into the picture wes has set for them. the challenge is finding what is left to paint with, since they have been straitjacketed so severely, and in the best performances it comes through as subliminal cues which we pick up as genuine character portrayal. they find themselves in the portrait.

it explains why Bill Murray is so in love with wes. has there ever been a greater actor whose main shtick has been to not act? or rather to not be forced to act? yeah he killed it in groundhog day but that film is really about how a disinterested impostor becomes an interested impostor. the happy ending doesn't really feel right, i want to see his and andie macdowell's sham marriage 10 years down the track. they didn't get married but as soon as they do he'll get that familiar feeling again! throughout the film the recurring day is a recurring film, with recurring shots and recurring sets, and it's ultimately on him to elevate it beyond pageantry.

wes anderson films are pageantry. the films and the shots within those films, they are a series of refined cinematic groundhog days. the interest for the actor is that those constraints serve as a shortcut to finding the magic that can only come from people trapped within it.
under the paving stones.

Alexandro

I've said this before, but the best performance by any actor in a Wes Anderson film (besides Murray in Rushmore) is by Gene Hackman as Royal. There really has not been any great performances in his films since then. there are good comic turns, but no one stands out because the real star is Wes and his compositions and his sets and all that Wesville stuff. Hackman reportedly hated his experience in that film, but he is the more alive of all the performers, because he constantly refused to be "painted in" as you put it. the result is that he is funnier than everyone int hat movie, more rounded as a character and with more depth, something that since then, no one has really achieved in his films, not Murray, or anyone. George Clooney kind of found a way in Fantastic Mr. Fox, but it's a different kind of performance of course...

I wish more actors were allowed to go where Hackman went in The Royal Tenembaums, my hunch is that the films would be much more involving like that.

©brad

Good point. I agree and never thought about it that way. Gene Hackman was certainly a bull in Anderson's dainty, intricately designed china shop. His performance contrasts so nicely both with Anderson's aesthetic and the other performances which are all so monotone and understated.


ono

That was the point though.  Royal was ostracized from his family.  It was part of his role to be a larger than life asshole.  You can attribute that to Hackman as an actor, but I don't think that you can say he succeeded in spite of Anderson.  It was his design for the character to be that way.  More actors don't really go the way of Hackman because it's not called for (in any situation that comes to mind immediately, that is).

Alexandro

I'm not talking about the character design, I'm talking about the way hackman approached his performance. he moves, he injects a bit of extra energy and pathos to every dialogue and scene. when he reviews the children's play, he could have easily say his lines with the same deadpan expression all the other asshole father figures in anderson films have, but he somehow makes it come more alive than that. this is also why ben stiller works so well there.

It's a weird thing. kind of what happens with woody allen. From time to time, some big fucking actor will come along (like Sean Penn) and transform the material to the point it seems fresh, but most actors just show up to his films and say their lines in that "woody allen film style", regardless of his instructions of not respecting every line. The main reason Bardem and Penélope Cruz were so good in Vicky Cristina Barcelona is because they were able to improvise their spanish dialogue, and that film really comes alive in those sections.

Lottery

Wes Anderson's favourite animated films. He has decent taste.

Akira
The Iron Giant
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
101 Dalmatians
Only Yesterday
Porco Rosso
Princess Mononoke
The Secret of NIMH
Spirited Away
Watership Down


http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2014/04/16-1/director-wes-anderson-names-studio-ghibli-akira-and-end-of-evangelion-among-favorite-animated-movies

Other lists included but felt like posting here.

tpfkabi

Secret of NIMH is one that has stayed with me.
Before Grand Budapest there was a trailer for an Asian cartoon. Something about a farewell movie for a director. It's probably a famous one, but I have no knowledge of foreign cartoons.
This reminds me - I still haven't seen the recent one based on a Tati screenplay.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Axolotl

Quote from: tpfkabi on April 18, 2014, 10:00:15 AM
Before Grand Budapest there was a trailer for an Asian cartoon. Something about a farewell movie for a director. It's probably a famous one, but I have no knowledge of foreign cartoons.
Lottery's going to pass out when he reads this.

Jeremy Blackman

Category for next year: Best Foreign Cartoon.

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

jenkins


MacGuffin

Wes Anderson Says Next Film May Be A Stop-Motion Movie Influenced By Vittorio De Sica
Source: IndieWire

While Wes Anderson's hopes of a theme park were a bit of a surprise, don't worry too much that he's left the realm of cinema. The director is coming off the most successful film of his career with "The Grand Budapest Hotel," and now may be using that cachet to try something ambitious for his next movie.

Speaking this weekend at the Lisbon And Estoril Film Festival (via c7nema), Anderson revealed during a Q&A that he may return to the world of stop-motion for his next picture. Even more, he said that the story would be divided into episodes, not unlike Vittorio De Sica's "The Gold Of Naples." That film presents six vignettes, with the only connecting thread that they're all tales set in Naples (you can see two un-embeddable excerpts here). The prospect of Anderson borrowing that structure, but applying stop-motion animation to it, is certainly interesting.

When we spoke to Anderson this past spring, he revealed he was co-writing an undisclosed project with his "The Darjeeling Limited' and "Moonrise Kingdom" collaborator Roman Coppola. "... it's a little bit vaguely avant-garde in its concept and I'm just not sure if it's going to quite gel," he said at the time.

"I'm trying to think of a good tease," Anderson added. "I think the thing is well, it's a thing where maybe there's 'many things happening at once.' That could be my tease."

So, could this De Sica-influenced project be the same one he was talking about earlier? Perhaps. But as Anderson showed with "Fantastic Mr. Fox," stop-motion allows him to expand his creative palette, so we're curious to see how this one shakes out. 
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Ravi

http://hypebeast.com/2016/12/wes-anderson-isle-of-dogs-announcement?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebook_post

Wes Anderson Officially Announces His Animated Stop-Motion Movie About Dogs
Featuring a star-studded cast that includes Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and more.

Just last year, we got word of Wes Anderson's upcoming shot at cinematic canine redemption and now the director himself has officially announced the project. Dubbed Isle of Dogs, the film will be an animated stop-motion affair — a la 2009′s Fantastic Mr. Fox — and feature a star-studded cast that includes the likes of Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Bryan Cranston, Greta Gerwig, Jeff Goldblum and Harvey Keitel. Anderson even offered a glimpse of Edward Norton's character, Rex (Norton also appears alongside the director in the announcement video).

Best of all, though? Fans have a chance to be a part of the film. Anderson has partnered with Crowdrise to offer a winner a trip out to London to tour the set and even voice one of the dogs in the film. Those interested can enter for a chance to win here with each $10 USD donation going to support Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the history of motion pictures.

Isle of Dogs will be Anderson's first feature film since 2014′s The Grand Budapest Hotel and is currently slated to hit theaters in 2018.