A First Look at Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch.

A First Look at Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch.

OMG, it's New Yorker Fan Fiction!

It really does appear to be that, Hec.

Fascinating visual landscape, though. The colors and the tone and the costumes! So neat.

I am tensely eager to see Parasite (it sounds like the kind of thing that's going to make me profoundly upset, but worth it). All the more so since when I last saw my dad, just before the Oscars, we went over the Best Picture nominee list and he'd seen almost all of them (I had, and still have, seen exactly none); when I asked him what he thought of Parasite, he said, "Not much. I heard it was supposed to be a movie with a message, but there was no message. There was nothing there."

Since this is a level of meh that he has previously only reached with his reactions to Thelma and Louise and Raising Arizona, I feel pretty confident that his disdain means that Parasite will hit me like a freight train.

Trailer for The French Dispatch: [link]

Every time he makes a movie, I go, "that's the Wes Andersonest he's ever Wes Andersoned!" Then he goes one higher.

That cast is ridic.

The Song Kang-ho article I linked to in my DW post is so worth reading if you guys haven't.

David Ehrlich going all rhapsodic on Song Kang Ho's looks made me chortle, but that's an excellent article. BTW, I really need to watch Thirst, where he is 1) a priest, who turns into a 2) a vampire, which sounds like extremely my shit. He looks edible in the stills from the film: [link] But it's also Park Chan Wook and I have to take ginger steps when it comes to his work. I loved The Handmaiden and Stoker but have never quite recovered from Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which kinda broke me with the depth of its spiritual despair (I couldn't bring myself to watch Oldboy or Lady Vengeance after that because Mr. Vengeance made me wanna stick my head in the oven, even though Song Kang Ho is tremendous in that film).

"Not much. I heard it was supposed to be a movie with a message, but there was no message. There was nothing there."

You know, I am not surprised there are people who feel that way about the movie. It has some heavy handed metaphors but the characterizations are much more nuanced, and the ending gives you nothing close to a neat message. There are surprisingly varied takes on What It All Means, although I think some of them are very wrong.

Every time he makes a movie, I go, "that's the Wes Andersonest he's ever Wes Andersoned!" Then he goes one higher.

I liked the breakdown by the New Yorker where they identified specific writers that the characters were based upon, and the stories that inspired each segment.

The French Dispatch = New Yorker Fanfic
The Grand Budapest Hotel = Stefan Zweig Fanfic
The Royal Tenenbaums = Salinger Fanfic
Moonrise Kingdom = 60s Kidlit Fanfic (Let's Kill Uncle, Mixed Up Files, Harriet the Spy, World of Henry Orient)

David Ehrlich going all rhapsodic on Song Kang Ho's looks made me chortle, but that's an excellent article.

The rhapsodic description made me chortle, too. It's so ridiculously purple and yet 110% accurate!

You know, I am not surprised there are people who feel that way about the movie. It has some heavy handed metaphors but the characterizations are much more nuanced, and the ending gives you nothing close to a neat message. There are surprisingly varied takes on What It All Means, although I think some of them are very wrong.

Some interpretations of the text are...really strange to me.

Thirst came highly recommended to me, but I didn't enjoy the film. Like, at all.

The trailer for The Green Knight, directed by David Lowery and starring Dev Patel as Sir Gawain: [link]

The trailer looks splendidly atmospheric. I like Lowery and I love Dev Patel so I'm all kinds of excited for it. Not to mention how Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a genuinely cracking good story.

Between this and The Personal History of David Copperfield (saw this during TIFF where he plays the titular role and it is delightful), Patel is doing his level best to shatter the whole "having brown faces in European lit adaptations is historically inaccurate wah wah" BS. He has a GREAT face for period drama and should never shave because... damn, son.