Friday, October 14, 2005
Pimping for the Man
Two of my favorites have made films of late, Wong Kar Wai and Noah Baumbach. Wong Kar Wai makes incredible films that visually no one comes close to. My favorite so far of his is Happy Together, a love story about two Asian wonderers in Argentina! His latest is 2046, a futurist thriller, I guess. Noah Baumbach is an amazing writer that writes the snappiest dialogue around. I hate him. He was born in 1969 and he's married to Jennifer Jason Leigh and he hangs out with Wes Anderson. He wrote the screenplay for The Life Aquatic (not my favorite WA film-too much wimsy). His Kicking and Screaming is in my top 10 and amazingly is not on DVD (at least a year ago it wasn't). NB's newest is The Squid and the Whale with Jeff Daniels and one of the most underated actresses ever Laura Linney.
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3 comments:
So NB is going from The Life Aquatic to The Squid and The Whale? Hmmmm.
By the way you are so WRONG about Kicking and Screaming. It is totally out on DVD. Will Ferrel ROCKS in that movie!!! And Ditka's good too.
ahem,
TLA was the least of Wes A's movies, I thought, but still very good. I think one's appetite for whimsy depends a lot on where you're at when you first see the film. (not where you're at physically, but , you know,...)
I saw Bullit (sp?) on AMC last night. There's a movie w/o a lot of whimsy. Good car chase, though.
IFs
I think the major difference between LA and RT's was budget. What I really liked about BR and R was how geeks were the protaganist and how their oddball lives were celebrated. In LA and RT's we have the geeks but with lots of gadgets and cutsy outfits and sets that are comic book like (I don't hate comics-the latest Batman was awesome). Not that I don't like fantasy but I was hoping the budgets would add to the oddness but in my book the elaborateness of both took away rather than added to the feel.
For me its like the difference between Kicking and Screaming (it was not out on DVD for years and there was actually a petition to get it out that I signed less then a year ago) and Singles. Both films that look at people our age but one, K and S, focuses on dialogue and character and Singles seemed to be more interested in Planet of the Apes dolls and Eddie Veder. It seems minor but one needed no gadgets and the latter leaned on them too much.
Wes Anderson is a genius and I love his movies, all of them, but I think the latter two will not hold up like the former. Even Dylan has lots of shitty albums.
If I remember right, K&S (the non-Will Ferrel one) also has a great soundtrack by Freedy "Stagediver" Johnston.
I really hadn't thought of RoyTenns as having a comic book feel but I sort of see what you mean. However, I thought the movie had some timeless performances by the actors involved, in fact I think the Gene Hackman role might be better than that of Bill Murray, (who I will now begin to referring to as BM) in Rushmore.
LiAq to me was just too self-concious, which is part of WesAnd's style but there is that fine line, you know.
Just saw the latest Batman while I was in exile in Alexandria last weekend. Pretty good, in fact probably the least objectionable BM movie so far. Still, I can't think of a comic book movie that beats the first Superman movie. Or am I thinking of the second one? Which is the one where he gets it on with Louis?
IFs
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