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Wes Anderson's next film, The French Dispatch


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On 7/15/2021 at 11:47 AM, HoustonFrog said:

1. Budapest Hotel. A masterpiece IMO and the only Anderson movie that has historical relevance (WW2/ Nazis)
2. Zissou. Movie gets me
3. Tenebaums
4. Fantastic Fox
5. Moonrise
6. Bottle Rocket
7. Darjeeling
8. isle dogs
9. Rushmore

worst list ever, man.

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Yeah, it's a shame Wes Anderson isn't directing the next Indiana Jones film.  Maybe we'd get more Nazi stuff. 

Or maybe a stop-motion animation movie about the Holocaust.  You know how he likes to keep it light?  

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5 hours ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, it's a shame Wes Anderson isn't directing the next Indiana Jones film.  Maybe we'd get more Nazi stuff. 

Or maybe a stop-motion animation movie about the Holocaust.  You know how he likes to keep it light?  

You can watch the (absolutely great) JoJo Rabbit and preens it’s a Wes Anderson film.

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6 hours ago, burntorangebongos said:

Holy fuck. I have never heard nor seen the Isle of Dog movie. I thought I had seen all his movies. Now I gotta go google when it came out and figure out how to see it. Sheeeeit.

it’s good. how the fuck did you miss it?

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I liked it. I am going to watch it again later. 

I like Moonrise Landing. It and Budapest Hotel are my 2 favorites of his. I like them all but those two I put at the top of my list. Bottlecap and Rushmore are too male oriented for me so I can see why young men and those who remember being young men would declare them the best, in their opinion.

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I'm gonna stream the Regal Tennenbaums tonight.  If my wife can stay up, certainly gonna check out Mount Rushmore.  Tomorrow, we'll watch the joint production between Wes Anderson and documentarian, Werner Herzog, in their forestry/climate change film, Isle of Logs.  

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18 hours ago, burntorangebongos said:

I liked it. I am going to watch it again later. 

I like Moonrise Landing. It and Budapest Hotel are my 2 favorites of his. I like them all but those two I put at the top of my list. Bottlecap and Rushmore are too male oriented for me so I can see why young men and those who remember being young men would declare them the best, in their opinion.

Can’t tell if this is a bit

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5 minutes ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Lots of hate for Darjeeling. It’s one of my faves

I didn't hate it.  It's just, if you're making a list...some film has to be last.  For me, it's that one.  Still a great picture, just not terribly rewatchable for me.  I have to confess, I have "gotten" the allure of Owen Wilson.  I didn't think he and Adrian Brody would carry a movie, and I was right.  Schwartzmann, Huston, and the Indian cast members made the movie work (Bill's small role never hurts).  I will give Owen Wilson credit, it was his first movie where he didn't talk with his hands in his sleeves whilst twisting his head around.  He made great strides acting wise, I give Wes full credit.  Hard to believe it's almost 15 years old already.  I haven't watched it in 10 years probably.  I'll give it this though:  Best use of the Kinks music in any movie, ever.  

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The best part about Wes Anderson is that my rankings for him can change from day to day.

 

Today:

1.) Rushmore

2.) Grand Budapest

3.) The Royal Tenenbaums

4.) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

5.) Moonrise Kingdom

6.) The Darjeeling Limited

7.) Bottle Rocket

8.) Isle of Dogs (and it is fantastic)

 

Never Seen: Fantastic Mr. Fox

 

By far my favorite film maker of the era.

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  • 1 month later...

Reminder:  release date on Oct 22.

In the meantime:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/movies/french-dispatch-behind-the-scenes-wes-anderson.html

 

Quote

What happens when you combine the cinema of Wes Anderson with a charming, historic French city? You get a stylized version of France that highlights the director’s whimsical passions — like centuries-old buildings reframed in symmetric picture-book ways and neighborhoods accented with quaint and colorful accessories.

“The French Dispatch” is Anderson’s ode to journalism, French cinema and the magic found while winding through the country’s cobblestone streets. It is heavily peppered with distinct, fussed-over design elements that both celebrate and heighten its French aesthetic.

 

 

Quote

The movie, which is scheduled to be released in theaters on Oct. 22, focuses on an American magazine that is published in the fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé (the name of which is a perfect Andersonian touch). With the death of its longtime editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), the magazine is planning its final issue, and the four stories each get their own dramatization in the film. While the film’s cast is a long list of recognizable names (Tilda Swinton, Benicio Del Toro, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright) one of its biggest stars is the city, showcased in a tour that makes up one of the segments. Rather than creating multiple town exteriors on a backlot, the filmmakers found a real French town, Angoulême, and used it as the movie’s beating heart, dressing it up or down as needed.

 

Spoiler

 

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The French Dispatch building in Wes Anderson’s film. The shot uses a combination of real exteriors in Angoulême, a town in southwest France, and miniatures to achieve its look.

 

In considering the setting for his movie, Anderson wanted something like Paris, but a version that doesn’t exist anymore outside of cinema, like the one of wonder captured by “The Red Balloon,” and one of whimsy captured by Jacques Tati.

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Anderson, center, shooting a scene of a student revolt, with cobblestones made out of foam.

 

One of the film’s producers, Jeremy Dawson, said that Anderson was looking for a place “with nooks and crannies, corridors, passages, staircases, layers and ramparts.” The filmmakers began their scouting search on Google, digitally navigating the streets of towns that might fit the bill. Then they hit the road to visit a few of them. While in Angoulême, they came across a plaza with a small cafe. Dawson recalled that Anderson suggested grabbing lunch at the cafe. “When he said that, I knew he’d picked this town,” Dawson said.

Angoulême, in the southwest of France with a population of about 42,000, is no stranger to invasions; during the Hundred Years’ War, it was the site of battles between the French and English. These visitors were much more benign. During the shoot, the crew came up with various ways to give the town’s old-world collection of buildings, streets and facades a bit of an Andersonized touch — a cute little vintage vehicle parked here, a peppy striped awning set up there. And sometimes miniatures were used to help enhance the setting.

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The left-side building in this cluster was used as the French Dispatch headquarters in the movie. In the “Andersonizing” of the shot, a symmetry is created that doesn’t exist the same way here.

 

For an establishing shot of the French Dispatch headquarters, the filmmakers chose one building on a block of similar-styled structures and found the best angle with which to capture the shot. “We then designed these foreground buildings and placed them on articulated scaffolding so we could twist them and turn them,” Adam Stockhausen, the production designer, said. Those foreground sets, angled just so, were able to give the impression of depth to the environment while creating the kind of symmetry in the frame often found in Anderson’s work.

The top floors of the building, which include a sign so wordy (The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun) that it continues across the upper-floor windows, were actually designed as a miniature. That miniature was digitally merged with the real building to give the top of it a more stylized look. The townscape of buildings in the background to the left is also a digitally added miniature. But on the ground level, the fronts were constructed for the film.

Buildings around town had signs painted directly on their walls in bold, frequently all-cap fonts to sync up with the film’s vision, but Stockhausen said his team sought out already-refurbished buildings to get movie makeovers. “Then we could come in and do our painting without damaging any kind of a historical finish,” he said, “and restore it afterward.”

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The crew painting signs on building walls for shots in the film.

 

While most of the film’s exterior scenes involved existing locations, one shot required something special. In an early moment of the movie, a waiter climbs a quirky staircase in the middle of the French Dispatch building that is visible at certain parts and hidden by walls at others. The design team built a full-scale version of the building’s rear so the cameras could capture the actor navigating the staircase from that vantage point.

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The crew built the backside of the French Dispatch building on set to capture a moment where a character walks up a visible staircase.

 

For a sequence set during a student revolt and standoff with the police, the creative team took over a residential square. Blocks of cobblestone were created out of foam, and two cafe fronts on either side were built by the crew. While at least one of the trees in the space was already there, Stockhausen and his team built more to enhance the look. Dawson said the production aimed to make sure residents were kept content while shooting around their spaces, whether that meant compensating them for any inconvenience or putting them up in a hotel. “It was case-by-case for each person,” he said. “But the town was very welcoming.”

 

 

 

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Yeah in terms of ranking his films, Royal Tenenbaums is the runaway #1 for me. I just think it's a perfect goddamn film and I love it so much. I think Gene Hackman as Royal is seriously one of the greatest film characters of all time.

In terms of the rest, I like-to-love them all, but would be hard to parse them out other than putting them in groups:

  • Favorites of the rest: Darjeeling, Moonrise, Rushmore
  • Like a little less, but very sentimental about it: Bottle Rocket
  • Didn't vibe with these as much, but still very much enjoy: Life Aquatic, Grand Budapest

And yeah I find the animated stuff charming, but just don't get into them like his live action films.

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  • 1 month later...
8 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

So, has anyone seen this yet?

Saw this opening weekend.  Wes Anderson style has always kept me entertained and this one did as well.  The list of stars that appear all give performances that make going to a theatre better than watching at home on pay per view. 

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3 hours ago, pch said:

Saw this opening weekend.  Wes Anderson style has always kept me entertained and this one did as well.  The list of stars that appear all give performances that make going to a theatre better than watching at home on pay per view. 

Cool.  I am playing catch up on all the movies over the next few weeks.  Seeing this Saturday night.  

 

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On 7/15/2021 at 5:30 PM, HoustonFrog said:

Seems like Moonrise is the most controversial by far.

It was on the other morning and I hadn’t seen it since it was released so what the fuck. Not nearly as bad as I remembered it and actually pretty  watchable.

Might give the Darjeeling Limited another shot one of these days 

 

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On 7/15/2021 at 9:57 AM, Reynolds Woodcock said:

1. Rushmore

2. Royal

3. Grand Budapest

4. Bottle Rocket

5. Life Aquatic

6.  Moonrise Kingdom

7. Darjeeling

8. Fantastic Mr. Fox

9. Isle of Dogs

Updated rankings from me. Honestly if this movie came out when I was in high school instead of Life Aquatic, I would probably have it higher, but nostalgia is a bitch. 

1. Rushmore

2. Royal Ts

3. Grand Budapest

4. Bottle Rocket

5. Life Aquatic

6.  French Dispatch

7. Moonrise Kingdom

8. Darjeeling

9. Fantastic Mr. Fox

10. Isle of Dogs

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