Didn’t mean to ignore these. I just couldn’t reply to them on mobile Tumblr.
quaasar said: i know what you mean about Anderson. his films, when you watch them, are actually very substantial and well written, just thinking about them, you think they will be really cutse-y.
Eh I don’t know if I agree. Just look at the female characters in Wes Anderson films. They are basically the same person. It’s probably his dream girl or something. Someone who looks like they’ve stepped out of a Godard movie, wears outfits only from the Modcloth catalog, and someone who probably orgasms at the word “vintage”.
There are only three Wes Anderson films that I love and they are Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, and those three are very different and actually substantial. Tenenbaums I love because of the dysfunctional family, and the use of humor to kind of skirt around that touchy subject was very well done. It’s actually a very emotional movie without being saccharine, and part of me wonders whether Anderson poured all of his evocative writing into this movie and as a result, his other films are much less moving. Rushmore is great because it’s sort of like a less raunchier, less obscene Election, and Max Fischer’s character felt novel and fresh at the time. And The Life Aquatic is just made up of a slew of entertaining shenanigans. The story is completely ridiculous but so much fun. And the ensemble cast in each of these films seemed intentional, like they had very specific roles to play and they served a purpose. Now the ensemble cast just seems like schtick. The actors just show up and sort of phone it in, partially because the script is just so blah.
I know after reading this, it seems like I have a serious bone to pick with Anderson. But I really don’t. I don’t care enough to dislike him. I’m not overwhelmed or underwhelmed by his work. To paraphrase a quote from 10 Things I Hate About You, I’m sort of just “whelmed”.
pricklylegs said: Just watched Catching Fire and I noticed how different (better) it was from the 1st movie.. read Gary Ross` (brown nosing statement) on why he did not return. Kinda wish he`d not touched the first one.
I don’t think it was entirely Gary Ross’s fault. Yeah, the shakycam didn’t do him any favors, but the problem was the script, which he co-wrote along with Billy Ray and Suzanne Collins. I think that the script made the book seem like child’s play, when in truth it was a lot grittier. I find it interesting that Collins, who had a hand in the first film’s screenplay, took a step back and didn’t get involved with the infinitely better script for Catching Fire. The odd thing is that Catching Fire for the most part, is a very faithful adaptation of the book. And one would think that having the author of the book involved in the screenplay would make the movie better, but in The Hunger Games’s case, I feel like she did more harm than good. Whether Ross or Billy Ray are more to blame for the lackluster script than Collins, we won’t really ever know.
I’m comforted by the fact that director Francis Lawrence is returning for Mockingjay, but since Catching Fire scribes Michael Arndt and Simon Beaufoy aren’t returning, we will see if Mockingjay is as strong as Catching Fire. Danny Strong will be penning Mockingjay Part 1, and he wrote Game Change, which was good but not revelatory, and The Butler, which was okay. So we will see how the third installment turns out.
