"There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity."
With his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, writer/director Wes Anderson has retreated almost entirely up his own asshole. But it's a perfectly symmetrical asshole that's been hand painted the most delicate shade of pink, complete with embossed signs of intricate caligraphy leading you to a ludicrously charming realm of paper-puppetry and miniature delights.
So I guess that's cool.
I honestly can't blame you if you've written Anderson off entirely at this point. He's a man whose films have become entirely consumed by his unique cinematic style and if that particular style no longer appeals to you (or, if you're a philistine, it never appealed to you) then that presents a pretty significant hurdle when trying to engage with Anderson's work. It just so happens that I still adore the auteur's singular vision, so a new Wes Anderson movie is pretty much Christmas morning for me. I'd certainly agree that his earlier films like Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums have a bit more in the way of substance, but Grand Budapest has so many incredible moving pieces churning and swirling around each other at any given moment that it's hard not to at least be entertained. Still, Anderson's movies have always had a strong emotional core that fuels all the precocious absurdity floating upon the surface and that core feels notably absent here. Anderson hasn't quite broached the barrier of "all sizzle, no steak," but with The Grand Budapest he gets dangerously close.
Episode 10 of the podcast features our first attempt at including a remote guest in the form of my good friend and Anderson superfan Jared Watterworth. I'm still tweaking the technical methodology here, but I think Jared sounds remarkably good considering we captured his audio by Skyping him on my iPad and propping it up next to the microphone. We chat about The Grand Budapest and its place within Anderson's full body of work before delving into the death of James Rebhorn, a possible X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover film, and whether or not Ghostbusters 3 is anything but a bad idea. In the process we accidentally invent a couple of imaginary yet awesome sounding films. My favorite is Conan The Barbarian directed by Milos Forman.
As always, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or on Soundcloud, depending upon your preferred method of podcast delivery. I'm going out of town this weekend to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on Broadway, so there may or may not be a podcast next week. But we'll DEFINITELY be back to talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, so get excited about that. I certainly am.
I came to the Veronica Mars series fairly late in the game, speeding through the entire show on Jamie's DVDs a few years after it had gone off the air. But like any good detective noir, once Veronica got her hooks into me, there was no going back. When creator Rob Thomas launched his now infamous Kickstarter campaign to finally bring Neptune to the big screen, I was an early and vocal backer of the project, excited at the opportunity to catch up with all my favorite characters and see that enthralling world brought to life once more.
Exactly one year and one day after the start of that campaign , the film hit theaters and Jamie and I were there to see it. I actually could have gone to the premiere at SXSW, but I promised the wife that I wouldn't see it without her. Then we had tickets to a backers only screening the night before it opened, but Jamie's parent-teacher conferences forced us to give away our tickets and by the time we realized our scheduling mistake, the only tickets we could get for opening night required a lengthy (by Boston standards) drive to the only other theater in the area that was showing the film. So after work on Friday we piled into the car and hauled ass to the north shore, where we pounded beers and Buffalo Wild Wings before running into the packed theater and grabbing seats in the bottom row.
We also brought Bart along for the ride and I was very curious to see how the film would play out for someone who knew absolutely NOTHING about Veronica Mars walking into the theater. I knew that Thomas had essentially done a fan service movie, cramming in as many references and characters from the show as possible in order to please the folks who forked over their hard earned cash in order to get the movie made in the first place, but I hoped that perhaps the clever dialogue, crazy mystery, noir style and palpable chemistry would be enough to sustain a VM virgin's interest.
Apparently my hopes were a bit high.
Having now watched the film twice, Bart's totally right. A lot of the really strong emotional beats, whether they be humorous or tragic, are predicated on the deeper love and understanding of the characters and their relationships that only comes with having been immersed in them for three television seasons. Without all that, it's easy to feel like you're just constantly not in on the joke. Not that the movie is hard to follow on its own merits, but it does probably fall a bit flat in some of the bigger moments. The story functions fine, but Thomas tries to squeeze in so many peripheral characters that the integral ones don't make quite as big an impact if you're unfamiliar with them. (The best example is pretty spoilery so I've relegated it to the footnote below.*) It's a fair point and I hope we'll get a chance to see a sequel in which we can focus more on Veronica being a badass and less on making sure we catch up with Korny the pizza boy and his duct tape wallet business.
Bart, Jamie and I dig into all this and more in the ninth episode of our (now weekly!) podcast, along with some thoughts on the Man Of Steel/Captain America scheduling non-controversy as well as the latest casting rumors for Star Wars Episode VII. Suffice it to say, we're all pretty nervous.
Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes or Soundcloud so you can get the latest episode delivered unto you automatically each week! Next week we'll be talking about Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, so feel free to leave questions or comments below and we just might talk about them on the digital air.
*It's easy to see the tragedy in reformed biker bad boy Weevil getting shot while trying to help a stranded motorist, but it all plays very differently if you know who Celeste Kane is as well as Weevil's history with the Kane family, none of which is touched upon in the movie.
So last Memorial Day weekend Jamie and I got married, and during the reception my college friend Jared came up to me and said, "I hope you don't have plans for your first anniversary, because that's the day of my wedding."
I'm astounded that it's been a year already.
And so we celebrated our first anniversary by celebrating the marriage of our dear friends Jared and Karyn in Connecticut. Since Jared is a huge Wes Anderson fan, there was Mark Mothersbaugh music playing before the ceremony started. I thought our ceremony was pretty quick, clocking in around 25 minutes, but they blew us out of the water. Ten minutes all in, but it definitely didn't feel lacking in any way. It was actually quite lovely, held in an earthy wooden chapel location at a private club with the reception in a sort of lodge-type building complete with large fireplaces and oversized leather couches. Our dinner table was situated right next to the photo booth, so needless to say we took many, MANY pictures which we put in their photostrip guest book along with numerous nerdy quotes from Doctor Who, Community and Batman. And since we were close to the door, we also had prime seats for the entrance of the wedding party, set to the theme from The Price Is Right with each bridesmaid and groomsman wearing the appropriate giant yellow name tag. We only knew one other couple at the wedding and, since they had an early flight the next morning, they had to split early. It's kind of an odd thing to be at a wedding where you don't really know anyone other than the bride and groom, but we were able to stave off any potential awkwardness. At our wedding, Jared and I launched into an impromptu re-enactment of the dance routine for "Shake A Tailfeather" from The Blues Brothers. Jared had warned me that an encore performance would be in order, so I came prepared with the appropriate hat and glasses. It was a showstopper. Finally, in the ultimate classy move, they had the DJ wish Jamie and me a happy first anniversary and then play our wedding song, "To Make You Feel My Love" by Billy Joel. I honestly can't imagine a better possible way to celebrate our marriage than at another fantastic wedding, and since we got married over a holiday weekend at the beginning of spring, I suspect that it's not the last anniversary we'll spend that way.
Since the wedding was at night and only about two hours away, we decided we'd just drive down that afternoon, giving me plenty of time to squeeze a movie in before the festivities. I figured it should be something wedding themed and settled on Four Weddings & A Funeral, a much beloved film that I really have no good reason for never having seen. I was only eleven when it was released and British romantic comedies were not exactly in my wheelhouse at that time. Ace Ventura was more my speed. But as for the ensuing years, I can only blame my various girlfriends for never having sat me down to watch it. At some point I sort of assumed that the film was probably overrated, having gotten bored with Hugh Grant's well meaning, bumbling English playboy routine and having never understood the appeal of Andie MacDowell in the first place. (I do admit I kind of love her in Hudson Hawk, but I love everything about that movie.)
Having now seen the movie, my opinion remains largely unchanged. I don't have a particular problem with it, I guess I just don't see what all the fuss is about. Granted that might not be a totally fair assessment speaking from the perspective of 2013. Four Weddings helped spawn an entire British invasion of rom-coms, including huge hits like Notting Hill and Love Actually. I've seen most of those successors more than once, so perhaps I simply can't appreciate their forebearer's novelty at the time. Hugh Grant is probably the perfect embodiment of that potential conundrum: this is the movie that put him on the map, but having seen him play variations on this same character in a half dozen other movies that came later, his performance here just feels par for the course.
The most interesting element to me was the storytelling device of the actual weddings (and the funeral). The longer the first wedding played out, the more invested I got in the idea that every scene of the movie would take place at either a wedding or a funeral. That actually felt like an interesting structure and a very cool way to tell a story. But alas, it was not to be. The movie sticks pretty close to that concept, but as soon as we cut to scenes of Hugh Grant running into Andie MacDowell and helping her shop for a wedding dress, I got kind of disenchanted. I understand the need to give the two characters more screen time, that the audience wants to see him woo her away from her stuffy Scottish fiancee, but it actually served to dissipate the narrative tension for me. Especially because the second wedding, when he discovers that she's engaged, is so much shorter than the rest. I'd have rather seen them spend extra time together at that wedding. Perhaps her older groom-to-be gets tired and goes to bed before everyone else, leaving Grant and MacDowell more time together. Yeah, you'd probably have to sacrifice something like Grant being stuck in the room while the new bride and groom have sex, but that's certainly a trade I would have been willing to make.
The funeral is, of course, pretty devastating. I was a little unclear on the implications of Gareth and Matthew's relationship. Are we supposed to believe that none of the friends knew they were gay? Or perhaps they simply didn't realize the two were in a relationship? Both situations seem a bit farfetched in any group of friends as close as these folks appear to be, but at least I can appreciate this subplot as being pretty cutting edge for 1994, two years before DOMA would establish that only opposite sex marriages would be recognized by the U.S. federal government. It's remarkable just how far the gay rights movement has come in less than twenty years. A scene that was probably somewhat controversial at the time would now be considered by most to be no big deal at all and that gives me tremendous hope. I have no doubt that, within my lifetime, I'll see gay marriage become a federally protected right of every citizen in this country, while those individuals who cling to the homophobic beliefs of yesteryear become rightly relegated to the extreme margins of the American mainstream.
But Four Weddings was perfectly lovely and sweet, a great movie to get me in the mood to celebrate not just one, but two marriages that day. And from this point on, if either Jared or I manage to forget our joint anniversary, we'll only have each other to blame.
--------------------------------------- Title: Four Weddings & A Funeral Director: Mike Newell Starring: Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Simon Callow, John Hannah, Kristin Scott Thomas, James Fleet, Rowan Atkinson Year Of Release: 1994 Viewing Method: DVD (TV & Laptop)
