“I don’t think he cares very much what anyone thinks,” says Oliver. “I can remember him saying to me when we worked on Fantastic Mr Fox, when I had suggested something to him: ‘Yeah, that’s the sort of thing we would do if we were making a film that we wanted people to go and see.’”
(link)
Very well thank you. It was a bit touch-and-go after Bottle Rocket and The Life Aquatic, but, following the success of Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel, Mr. Anderson should have sufficient resources for his projects going forward.
Three notes on this:
These figures do not include DVD sales/rentals or online revenue.
Our analysts have estimated the budget of Isle of Dogs as it appears to have not been disclosed.
Isle of Dogs is still in theaters, but suspect will only break even on box office revenue, ultimately putting lifetime surplus about where it was after Grand Budapest.
For context, note that the budget of Black Panther (about $200 mm) exceeded the total budgets of every Wes Anderson film ever made. Anderon's lifetime box WW office is about the equivalent of one Marvel tentpole movie.
It has been noted that, despite a 20+ year career as auteur, Wes Anderson has never won an Academy Award. This says more about the Academy than Anderson, whose place in film history is already assured. Perhaps their best strategy now would be to lie low and wait for a suitable opportunity for a Lifetime Achievement / mea culpa.
But we will not wait. After watching every Wes Anderson feature-length film this week (except for The Fantastic Mr. Fox), we felt compelled to do what the Academy could not, and make some awards of our own.
Best Soundtrack
Nominees: Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited, Isle of Dogs, Moonrise Kingdom
The Envelope Please: Darjeeling Limited
TheOtherFront Comment
We were swayed by the bookending of "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" in the prequel Hotel Chevalier and "Aux Champs Elysées" at the end. I was also impressed by the fine use of The Kinks here:
Possibly the finest musical moment of the entire oeuvre, the homage to The Graduate pool scene in Rushmore:
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Best Goldblum
Nominees: Isle of Dogs, The Life Aquatic, Grand Budapest Hotel
The Envelope Please: The Life Aquatic
TheOtherFront Comment
Very tough call, as Goldblum has crushed all three of his Anderson roles. Perhaps we are acknowledging here what Marvel also seems to understand - good Goldblum is good, but evil Goldblum is better.
LatoucheJr Comment
Goldblum’s character, Alastair Hennessy, is truly a “slick faggot”, to quote Steve Zissou.
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Best Child Actor
Nominees: Gilman AND Hayward in Moonrise Kingdom, Tony Revolori in Grand Budapest, Koyu Rankin in Isle of Dogs
The Envelope Please: Tony Revolori
TheOtherFront Comment
One of the toughest calls, I think. Anderson gets wonderful performances out of kids, but asks even more of Revolori, and the lad ends up helping to carry the movie. Schwartzman's Max Fisher was not considered, we have kicked him into the adult pool.
LatoucheJr Comment
Revolori was 17 at the time of this movie’s production, but seemed older, both due to his impeccable acting skills as well as his draw-on porn-stache.
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Best Supporting Actress
Nominees: Lumi Cavazos - Bottle Rocket, Anjelica Huston - The Royal Tenenbaums, Gwyneth Paltrow - The Royal Tenenbaums, Scarlett Johansen - Isle of Dogs
The Envelope Please: Gwyneth Paltrow
TheOtherFront Comment
Identifiably human, Paltrow plays someone coming out of a frozen emotional state (and out of St. Claire's exhibit case) with care, style, and courage.
LatoucheJr Comment
Cigarettes, fur coats and attitude: what’s not to love?
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Best On-Screen Chemistry
Nominees: The Darjeeling Three, Fiennes and Revolori in Grand Budapest, Murray and Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic, and Gilman and Hayward in Moonrise Kingdom.
The Envelope Please: Murray and Wilson in The Life Aquatic.
TheOtherFront Comment The Life Aquatic is a tough movie in many ways. One thing it did was push Murray and Wilson (and their characters) out of their comfort zones, and into a relationship. They are so good together, when it's over you wish there could be more.
LatoucheJr Comment
Bill Murray and Owen Wilson receive the Best Chemistry award because of Bill Murray. Sorry, Owen.
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Best Supporting Actor
Nominees: Murray in Rushmore, Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums, Adrian Brody in Darjeeling, Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic.
The Envelope Please: Luke Wilson
TheOtherFront Comment
This has to be the toughest category (James Caan couldn't even get nominated). And we have to screw over Murray, who made Rushmore, and also set Wes Anderson's career on track. But Wilson is the glue of Royal Tenenbaums. And the single toughest Anderson scene ever filmed is all Luke Wilson.
LatoucheJr Comment
Luke Wilson stands accused of making me cry the hardest I’ve ever cried in a movie.
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Best Script
Nominees: The Life Aquatic, Grand Budapest Hotel, The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums.
The Envelope Please: The Darjeeling Limited
TheOtherFront Comment
A bit of an upset here, but we felt Darjeeling had the most coherent plot and character motivation from beginning to end. The movie knows exactly what it is, and gets there almost as if it's (raises pinky) on rails.
LatoucheJr Comment
You’ll never guess it, but this Wes Anderson script was quirky and whimsical! It’s almost as if he’s made several movies with the same type of script and tone!
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Special Award - Willem Dafoe
TheOtherFront Comment
Turns two relatively minor characters - Klaus in The Life Aquatic and Jopling in Grand Budapest Hotel into indispensable elements.
LatoucheJr Comment
When I watched Grand Budapest, I thought to myself: this isn’t going to work. I can only see Willem Dafoe as Klaus from Life Aquatic. After watching Grand Budapest, I thought to myself: I’ll never be able to watch The Life Aquatic again without thinking of Willem Dafoe as Jopling from Grand Budapest. Also, you can get that coat!
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Best Lead Actor
Nominees: Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore, Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic, Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums, Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest Hotel.
The Envelope Please: Ralph Fiennes, Grand Budapest Hotel
TheOtherFront Comment
Really between Hackman and Fiennes once we thought about it. Two epic performances. How can you not give it to Gene Hackman? Because Fiennes was just a little bit better, brought the character to life just a little bit more. Right in the middle of all that mad comedy and brilliant, a real guy, brilliant and flawed, living and breathing.
LatoucheJr Comment
To quote the man himself: “I go to bed with all of my friends.” The quote may be irrelevant, but it did sway our award committee to the point that it was agreed that the movie would have been a shambles without him.
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Best Wes Anderson Film
Nominees: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel
The Envelope Please: Grand Budapest Hotel
TheOtherFront Comment
Very often reviews of Wes Anderson movies will use diminutives: "a minor masterpiece", "a triumph in its genre", "another quirky entry in the Wes Anderson canon" etc. If Grand Budapest Hotel isn't a masterpiece - flawless in conception and execution - what is? It's an immaculate film, and as big a fuck you to fascism as anything the Marx Brothers or P.G. Wodehouse ever did.
LatoucheJr Comment
Upon first viewing, the film fell a little flat of my Titanic-sized expectations. But then again, this is coming from the guy who thought Batman V Superman would be good, so you’re better off ignoring me.
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Best Director
Nominees: Wes Anderson
The Envelope Please: Wes Anderson
TheOtherFront Comment
Last week I knew I'd seen a couple of his movies and liked them. Having seen almost everything now, who in the modern era is a better filmmaker? His films are treasures. Dylan Thomas once said of Thomas Hardy's poems that the worst thing to do would be to select from them enthusiastically. You should read them all, he said, the whole damn lot. So it is with Anderson. His works may all be the same in some ways, but you could say the same of Hitchcock and Shakespeare. There is little enough care, love, and laughter in this world - Anderson's films are full of them, and we are the richer for it.
LatoucheJr Comment
After hours of deliberation, we finally settled on the best director: Wes Anderson. To be fair, the competition was stiff. I started my viewing experience with The Life Aquatic, then Moonrise Kingdom, then Isle of Dogs, because fuck orderly society. After watching and thoroughly enjoying his entire repertoire, I can only say that it is a Crime against Humanity that Wes Anderson has not yet received an Academy Award, and one that will hopefully be rectified in the years to come.
Constructed in 1910, the Stadthalle had been closed for years when it was discovered by Anderson & Company. The production team then dramatically transformed the old city hall into the magnificent dining room we see on the big screen. To complete the set, Anderson commissioned artist Michael Lenz to paint a large backdrop in the style of 19th-century landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich.
(Mr. Anderson has the Kodachrome palette down pat)
What makes the film thrillingly different—in content and in affect, in emotional energy and in visual imagination—is its metaphysical and religious element. There’s an expressly transcendent theme in “Moonrise Kingdom” that raises the tender and joyous story of young lovers on the run to a spiritual adventure. The moral vision of the world, which was always implicit and latent in Anderson’s other films, here bursts out as a distinctive, ecstatic, visionary new cinematic dimension. Anderson has always been far more than just an exquisite stylist—his style is an essential part of a consistent spiritual vision. But in “Moonrise Kingdom,” his world view is projected beyond personal experience into a cosmic fantasy. It’s Anderson’s own counter-Scripture, a vision of a moral order, ordained from on high, that challenges the official version instilled by society at large—and he embodies it in images of an apt sublimity (as well as an aptly self-deprecating humor). - Richard Brody
"My rational mind informs me that this movie doesn't work. Yet I hear a subversive whisper: Since it does so many other things, does it have to work, too? Can't it just exist? 'Terminal whimsy,' I called it on the TV show. Yes, but isn't that better than half-hearted whimsy, or no whimsy at all? Wes Anderson's 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is the damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.'" - Ebert
Wes Anderson was Wes Anderson before he was Wes Anderson. None of this "you can see the artist emerging" crap. He appears fully formed.
The movie doesn't get much respect, despite being beautiful and launching the careers of Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson, and Luke Wilson, and teeing up Lumi Cavazos for Like Water for Chocolate:
Here are the Wilson brothers at the 2006 Academy Awards:
Owen - Our first project together was a 13-minute short called Bottle Rocket. We're incredibly proud of the fact that later on we got five million to expand it into a feature film that grossed almost one million dollars.
Luke - And that was one million back in 1996, before inflation.
Even if you like it, it's hard not to damn it with faint praise. Our resident film critic calls it a "solid little movie." The first word that came to mind for me was "diverting."
Well, bullshit on that. It is very very good. Not because of what they all did later, but because if this came on TV right now and you watched it for the first time you'd have some laughs but also be asking yourself what are these guys up to (both the characters and the creators)? And feeling wistful, and admiring the performances and the cinematography.
This is a beautiful, human movie, and it's a kick. Enjoyed viewing. Would watch again. Two thumbs up.
Collider did a nice piece on the 20th anniversary of the film in 2016 (here).
