Category: Meta

Wes Anderson Month…In Retrospect


Well, it’s come and gone. It was a lot of fun and also a lot of work, but Wes Anderson Month is over. When I first announced this project, I pretty much expected to fail at some point and not have time to write everything I hoped to write.

Shocking the hell out of me, I actually delivered on every one of my promised features, and even had the chance to post a few more.

We had…
– Friday Musical Interludes of “Here Comes My Baby” by Cat Stevens (Rushmore), “30 Century Man” by Scott Walker (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), “Les Champs-Élysées” by Joe Dassin (The Darjeeling Limited), “Let Her Dance” by The Bobby Fuller Four (Fantastic Mr. Fox), and “Zorro is Back” by Oliver Onions (Bottle Rocket).
– A Fun Deconstruction of the Moonrise Kingdom trailer.
– An Admittedly Biased look back at Wes Anderson’s films to date.
– A Revised Version of my 10 Most Affecting Wes Anderson Moments article.
– A Direct Response to reader David Black, who wondered whether or not Anderson’s obtrusive hallmarks might prevent his films from achieving greatness.
– …To Which Dave Responded with a defense of Fantastic Mr. Fox.
– We Compared the handling of cross-cultural romance between Bottle Rocket and The Darjeeling Limited, and had no difficulty determining which was more successful.
– We Spotlighted Anderson’s rightly adored coming-of-age tale Rushmore, and explored its hands and handiwork.
– We Deconstructed a Scene from the criminally under-appreciated The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, which we think makes us Blue Star Cadets by default. He’ll send us a red cap and a Speedo.
– And Finally we defended Anderson’s voice, and his desire to stay true to it. Some see it as a refusal to evolve. Whether or not that’s true, we’re perfectly happy where we are.

…alright, alright. I admit, I did not fulfill all of my promises. The month was meant to culminate in my review of Moonrise Kingdom, but — of course — it’s not playing anywhere near me. At all.

So thanks for sticking with me through this, and for being on-hand to revel in my inevitable disappointment.

We’ll resume regular noiseless chattering immediately.

Announcing: Wes Anderson Month

One month from today sees the release of Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson’s seventh film and one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. To celebrate, I will be giving this blog over to discussions of Anderson and his work, and I can’t think of a living director more deserving of that attention.

The rolling tribute will last for one month, up to the release of Moonrise Kingdom, so if you have no interest in that or any of his other films, I’ll see you in June! Nah, I’ll probably have a bunch of non-Anderson posts here as well, but this will give me a good outlet for what is some pretty major excitement right now.

What you can expect to see:

– Commentary on the Moonrise Kingdom Trailer, along with some analysis and conclusions drawn from what we know so far
– A Noiseless Chatter Spotlight on one of Wes Anderson’s films. Feel free to suggest which one.
– That’s How We’ve Always Done It: A discussion of the consistency of Wes Anderson’s approach, themes and characterizations, and whether it’s an indication of his strong and developed voice, or a reluctance to chart new ground.
– Listomania: The 10 Most Affecting Wes Anderson Moments, reworked from my original article at Noise to Signal
– Anatomy of a Scene: Deconstructing one of Anderson’s many unforgettable moments, and taking a look at how and why it works.
– A Look Back at Wes Anderson’s previous films, as a brief primer for newcomers.
– Friday Musical Interludes consisting of licensed music from the films of Wes Anderson
– My Review of Moonrise Kingdom, once it’s out of course. Spoiler: It’s better than Fantastic Mr. Fox. Because come on.

…and maybe some more stuff too, so stick around. I look forward to counting down the days with all of you, and reading your comments as we discuss one of the most interesting artists of any kind working today.

Oh, and the image above and to the right is an egg I dyed with my girlfriend this past Easter. It’s Steve Zissou, and I ate him on a sandwich.

Housekeeping — March 24, 2012

A few pieces of business.

One: You’ve probably noticed that updates here aren’t quite…regular. Never fear…that was always my intention for this particular blog. Longer, more exploratory articles posted less frequently. I understand some folks might prefer shorter pieces posted regularly, but dat ain’t how I roll so…never fear if you find me going a week or more without updating. But that leads me into…

Two: I’ve recently obtained permission — or, rather, confirmed that I had permission — to post some of my old Noise to Signal articles here. So expect a few of those to turn up in the near future, which should give you more to read and enjoy and call me an idiot for writing. I might revise them slightly to correct any errors or to include information I’ve learned since, but they shouldn’t change much and if you’ve read them you’ve read them. Hooray!

Three: Many thanks to the folks at Dead Homer Society, who recently singled out my essay about the South Park episode “AWESOM-O” as their link of the week. You can find it in this edition of their Reading Digest, and I can suggest that anybody looking for intelligent essays about television should explore that site even more fully. One of the best ongoing deconstructions I’ve seen, and it’s run by excellent people. So check it out.

Four: A lot of things are bugging me about this template — including the name…”Delicious”…which I’m embarrassed to say out loud — but I haven’t had time to sit down and figure out how to change them. Some folks have already griped about the way the comments section treats paragraph breaks, and I don’t blame them. I’m also inclined to fix the silly overlay in the banner that wants to print the page description in a really ugly font in a really ugly place…which is why I deleted my page description, leading instead to a stray dash in the toolbar. A lot needs to be fixed, so bear with me as I find the time to figure out how to fix it. And do please let me know your complaints in the comments section, if you have any, and I’ll try to take care of them all at once.

THAT WAS FUN