Over & Overs: Moonrise Kingdom

TFE is kicking off a new series. We began, unofficially with Julie & Julia and now each week a Team Member will share a movie they can't help but watch frequently, whenever it comes up. Here's Ginny O'Keefe...

-What kind of bird are you?”

-I’m a Raven”

And that kids, is how I met your mother. One of my sweetest “Over and Over” movies is the criminally underrated Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom. This 2012 gem follows two young kids in 1960’s New England who fall in love with each other and decide to run away into the wilderness so they can be together. One is a resourceful, kind orphan who’s been sent away to join the Khaki Scouts. The other is a troubled, solitary, creative bookworm feeling smothered by her overbearing family. The entire town goes on a manhunt for the two lovebirds before a massive storm hits and the Wes Anderson preciousness and hilarity ensues... 

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Soundtracking: The Life Aquatic

Chris Feil wishing Wes Anderson a happy 50th birthday!

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou feels like a transitional film for Wes Anderson, one caught between our perceptions of his “arrival” and the artist himself firming up his trademark approach. At the time of its release, dismissals of Anderson as all affect without substance were starting to take hold. The key traits used against the film were its dollhouse set design, its rudimentary and chintzy sea creatures, and a song score that relied heavily on revamping and repurposing the David Bowie songbook.

But now the (sure, flawed) film defies that perception on rewatch as a something that’s explicitly about living and creating with authenticity...

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Beauty vs Beast: Ye Olde Switcheroo Movie

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- this Friday the latest iteration of the freak-filled Halloween franchise hits theaters, but what of another Freaky Friday that cast the great Jamie Lee Curtis in a pivotal role? In 2003 - yes it turned 15 this past August, if you want to feel ancient) Mark Waters' remake of Freaky Friday with Curtis playing mama (then daughter) to daughter (then mama) Lindsay Lohan hit theaters, and it was a great big hit success with everybody. (I mean Jamie Lee should've snagged an Oscar nom, dammit.) So why don't we all eat a fortune cookie and repeat after me...

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PREVIOUSLY We ventured back to Wes Anderson's Rushmore last week and y'all took Bill Murray's side in a squeaker (just 53%) - said lylee:

"Team Blume only because Max is so annoying (even though they're both annoying, and Blume in some ways has less excuse to be so immature)! Really, the beauty here is Olivia Williams, whom I found very appealing in this, if a little softer-edged than in her later roles. She's still one of my favorite slightly-below-the-radar actresses out there today."

Beauty vs Beast: School's Out Forever

Jason from MNPP here with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" -- tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of Wes Anderson's film Rushmore, and so you celebrate the battle between Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman Blume (Bill Murray) we shall. This was Anderson's second film (after Bottle Rocket) and an instant cult hit - it only made 17 million dollars in theaters (it ranked 97th at the box office, between The Big Lebowski and 54) but I was in college at the time and believe you me, us youngins loved it right out of the gate.

Now it's rightly heralded as a classic - you're not going to hear an unkind word from me on the hermetically crafted direction that Wes started taking his film-making after this (Moonrise Kingdom is my favorite of all his films, after all) but Rushmore does feel airy in a way that he's moved far far away from (especially with the to the millimeter specificity of his animated efforts) and it might be nice to see him sample some of this looseness again?

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PREVIOUSLY I'm real glad that Judith O'Dea got to beat back the zombie horde this one time with last week's Night of the Living Dead anniversary edition - poor Barbra has had enough to deal with. Said Nick T:

"Without getting into details, I'd say this answer was a NO BRAINER!!! Hyuk hyuk hyuk"

Isle of Dogs Goes Wide.

What did you see this weekend? We'll skip the charts this week but let it be known that The Rock had another #1 opening weekend ($34 million for Rampage), horror hit A Quiet Place closed in on $100 million, and Isle of Dogs went wide in its 4th weekend and has a cumulative gross of $18 million. That means it's going to be about as succcessful as Fantastic Mr Fox and The Life Aquatic (i.e. his second tier successes) with his tier 1 biggest hits by a large margin being Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Moonrise Kingdom. 

I've been a bit sad that the inventive delights and storytelling nuances of Isle of Dogs aren't being discussed as thoroughly as the film's take on Japan...

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Isle of Dogs and Japanese culture: Riff, love letter, or appropriation?

by Lynn Lee

A friend on Facebook recently asked me, after I posted a positive response to Isle of Dogs, what I thought about the controversy over Wes Anderson’s alleged cultural appropriation of Japan.  My initial answer was that it bothered me a little bit, but not enough to mar my enjoyment of the movie.  Later I realized that I’d just implicitly accepted the charge that there was cultural appropriation and, as an Asian American, felt mildly guilty that it didn’t bother me.  But on further reflection, I’m not sure either of those knee-jerk reactions was warranted.  It’s more complicated than that.

The question of cultural appropriation can be broken down a few different ways...

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