By far my favorite contemporary director, who I think is an unmatched genius of creating a uniquely coherent body of work/immersive “world-building”:
Tweed or checkered cloth with stitches
Colorful things like bright yellow raincoats or boots
Anything involving gardens, garden sheds, tools, backyards
People with quirky interests in weird vintage machines [guilty]
Having beards and glasses but not in a hipster way, rather an almost Edwardian (not Victorian, mind you) way [guilty]
Situations that are “comedies of manners” revolving around some obscure or niche interest or objective [guilty, in many social interactions, especially feels that way if I’m stoned]
Woodland creatures
Weird John Irving-esque familial situations [guilty, but not in a bad way]
Occasional or sometimes huge dashes of what could be broadly called “the way Sgt. Pepper’s album cover looks”
What else am I missing? Any other big Wes Anderson fans here?
I was a passenger in a friend’s car as he was speeding through one of the local woodland/park areas, and he had classical music on the radio. I was looking out the window and thought “I feel like I’m in the opening of a Wes Anderson film.”
Oh my God.
I’m going to post so much there, they might think I’m self-promoting my own movie based on my life or something. There’s seriously SO much around me that catches my eye this way.
Yeah, ‘the music’ belongs on the OP list.
Not just classical; he also uses pop-music themes in an idiosyncratic way–perhaps nowhere as characteristically as in Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this…
I hated Fantastic Mr Fox so very, very much. I couldn’t work out whether angry or sad was winning at any point, but I was overwhelmed by them both. I’m getting quite annoyed just thinking about it. It’s about as close as I’ve come to thinking “No. It’s NOT a matter of taste; anybody who likes this is WRONG and needs to learn why.” I binned it. There was a total and utter failure to grasp the charm of the main character - he was tiresome and sort of selfishly hapless rather than…well…fantastic - and it clearly took a sheer delight in its own spectacle, sound, wordplay (etc.) to a degree which completely swamped the story; appallingly arrogant artistic self-indulgence. It was undoubtedly distinctive and richly constructed, but seemed horribly misjudged. Maybe…maybe like a very well made gravy which, although made with veal stock and rhubarb, could nevertheless have been a genius creation…but was served over an apple pie.
But I like gravy. Even unusual gravy.
What should I have served this gravy with?! What has Wes Anderson done which might be worth a look to someone who - despite all that - is prepared to give him another try?
You might like Moonrise Kingdom, it’s my favorite of all his movies. There’s just something about the whole remote-location, old-fashioned-outdoorsman, scouting-themed setting that just kills me, I have a good friend who lives way out on the coast of Nova Scotia near Cape Breton, and I swear to God there are places and people just like that there.
I just submitted two new entries on that Accidental Wes Anderson reddit, by the way.
(Jesus H. Christ, downvoted on the first one already. Dude, do you even Wes Anderson?)