Wes Anderson's Asteroid City (2023)

Cinematic Tableaux To Make Life Worthwhile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye-K5uveOHA

This looks good and might even be great but posting just to say that it is really amazing how he moves steadily deeper and deeper into his thing with each movie. Don't think he's ever even attempted to pivot from the stereotype of a Wes Anderson movie, just embraces it progressively more wholeheartedly. you go, auteur

If they don't make this a double bill with Oppenheimer someone dropped the ball.

xp Yes. Wouldn't have it any other way.

looks good, seems like it's in the mode of the ones i like most

OMG that looks so amazing

Was surprised this was coming so soon after the last one, but then I remembered The French Dispatch sat for awhile due to the pandemic.

This looks good!

looks good, Anderson has to be one of the only people that could find new angles for teal and orange these days.

Curiously, this is his first without Murray since Rushmore and he also still has his Henry Sugar movie for Netflix scheduled for later this year, too.

Public explanation for Murray's absence was catching COVID after he had been cast.

Ah OK. My literal first thought was "No Bill Murray, no credibility."

I like the Wes Anderson cinematic universe, I'm aware of the haters and I think they have valid objections but ... it's still a deeply appealing thing to me personally.

Anderson captures something specific about the Gen X experience of growing up in the '70s/'80s surrounded by cultural/pop cultural detritus of the Boomer generation. I read my dad's Spin & Marty comics, listened to his '50s/'60s rock and pop albums, spent hours reading a circa 1960 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. Anderson's reference points hit home for me, because I think that for him as well as me they are received pieces of a past era or eras. He's not evoking the eras themselves, he's evoking the idea and sense memory of those eras as processed through physical artifacts and the nostalgia of our parents. Or something like that. I feel where he's coming from, I guess.

i watched Royal Tenenbaums and it's pretty striking how he used to make movies about people not these midcentury dollhouses

You act like this is a bad thing!

Sorry, j/k, I feel somewhat similar, although tipsy’s argument hits home.

yeah I mean I appreciate his set design and the aesthetics, it's all very impressive (tipsy excellent post you really get at what's cool about it) but they all leave me cold in a way

his last couple left me cold in that way but everything up thru moonrise kingdom hits

to me the Wes Anderson appeal is sadboi feelings crossed with high adventure settings. royal tennenbaums fails to deliver on the second so my least fave Anderson.

Ah OK. My literal first thought was "No Bill Murray, no credibility."

Think you're probably gonna have to get used to no Bill Murray in the future, from what I've been hearing.

due to health or bad behavior?

his last couple left me cold in that way but everything up thru moonrise kingdom hits

Recently re-watched Grand Budapest and it held up, one of my favorites

The latter:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/11/bill-murray-settlement-inappropriate-behavior-being-mortal

And on an Aziz Ansari set, jeez

This one looks good. Anderson’s style has evolved in an interesting way at least for me, just because it’s so much his own and so starkly different from what anyone else is doing. If anyone else tried to copy him it would be a total disaster. I’ve got total respect for his thing, just bc he’s clearly not aiming for awards despite being a “prestige” filmmaker, he’s just telling the odd and sometimes complicated stories he wants to tell. The mix of deadpan humor and slapstick and well earned pathos/tragedy works well for me, and despite the films seeming artificial I find them a lot more moving than most of the flicks out there that really strive for something more realistic.

The dollhouse approach produced The Grand Budapest Hotel, his best live action film since Tenenbaums.

it's fun to see actors from outside his world come in and see how they fit or not...like Bruce Willis being my favorite thing in Moonrise

I likewise thought Ralph Fiennes too brittle for Andersonland.

I liked (Charged)GBH the best out of the current era. French Dispatch was dogshit.

spent hours reading a circa 1960 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia

This was me ages 8-12 (80-84 or so), exact year as well (I remember it said JFK had just been elected).

Ha, funnily enough I recently ordered a two-volume set of World Book Encyclopedias specifically about the British Isles, originally published in 1968; my folks had it when I was young and I remember poring over it quite a bit in the late 70s/early 80s. Oddly enough, they don't remember owning it at all, and it does indeed provide a very specific 'this is how I learned' vibe for me, though it's just an artifact now in many ways.

Skipped The French Dispatch, so enough time has elapsed that I'm looking forward to a return to Wesland.

tipsy's observations are 100% OTM. I guess the contemporary equivalent would be teens listening to their parents' CD copies of Rumours?

I agree with ums - Anderson always had tendencies, but his characters stopped being even remotely lived and became wholly something out of the imagination of a precocious 12 yo.

curious that WA's output has ramped along with progress in AI

Ten iconic directors shoot the World Cup. More experiments with Midjourney & AI.

1. Wes Anderson pic.twitter.com/sxGSaVi63I

— Mason London (@masonlondon) March 27, 2023

lol at the Michael Bay one

Wes always seems to be finding the new Michael Cera

think my problem now is that UK adverts have adopted his aesthetic so heavily that I'm unable to enjoy his work for what it is

I liked (Charged)GBH the best out of the current era. French Dispatch was dogshit.

UK adverts have adopted his aesthetic

Boots ads are pastel now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iHT_pxHtHY

no need for AI to see Wes Anderson fitba coverage

I like his trailers better than his movies, honestly 3 minutes of this guy is really all I need

I liked (Charged)GBH the best out of the current era. French Dispatch was dogshit.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, March 29, 2023 12:25 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

french dispatch would be a good name for a street punk band

I like his trailers better than his movies, honestly 3 minutes of this guy is really all I need

Btw this is not a unique observation, but watching the recent Fire of Love documentary (about two quirky French volcanologists, narrated by Miranda July) was extremely Anderson-esque. Down to the red hats. He had to have seen some of that footage, right?

yeah the red hats got me thinking the same thing

the hats are a Jacques Cousteau thing, as in TLAWSZ

Hope Davis is everywhere nowadays

I have a friend who leads a marine biology group on St. Martin and they very consciously copy the whole Life Aquatic look and vibe (obviously originally from Cousteau, but I'm positive they were inspired by the Anderson film)

This looks good and might even be great but posting just to say that it is really amazing how he moves steadily deeper and deeper into his thing with each movie. Don't think he's ever even attempted to pivot from the stereotype of a Wes Anderson movie, just embraces it progressively more wholeheartedly. you go, auteur

I generally agree with this but I can think of one big exception: at one point a stereotypical Wes Anderson movie would have had wall-to-wall needle drops of 60s/70s pop songs. He really tapered that off starting with Darjeeling. (Could be related to the fact that that was his last human-populated movie ostensibly set in the present day?) I'm sure a lot of people think of this as a positive step in his progression, but man, I'd like to see him go back to that well at least a little more often. He's never topped the "A Quick One" sequence in Rushmore as far as I'm concerned.

first impression from Belgian newspaper's reviewer at Cannes: "a collection of great looking tableaux, but doesn't grab you"

Who'da thunk?

Reviews of this one seem to be mostly vv positive

Think I might try to see, since I’ve been sitting him out for so long.

yeah I'm still watching it, I don't always agree with movie reviewers :-)

"a collection of great looking tableaux, but doesn't grab you" is EXACTLY what The French Dispatch was.

Richard Lawson said it was his favorite since Moonrise Kingdom, which made me perk up bc that was the last one I liked, too. (Actually, I haven't seen Isle of Dogs, but Grand Budapest and French Dispatch both left me cold.)

"a collection of great looking tableaux, but doesn't grab you" is EXACTLY what The French Dispatch was.

The thing I liked about the trailer was Last Train To San Fernando

Yeah, Moonrise Kingdom, as with Fantastic Mr. Fox before it, re-ignited my waning interest in Wes Anderson

this one looks the closest in style and tone to moonrise kingdom, at least from the trailer. that's the foundation of my excitement

Saw this yesterday. Definitely the weirdest Anderson film I’ve seen, but in a good way. Seems like he’s having fun and making movies exactly how he wants to.

I’ll take that as a recommendation.

making movies exactly how he wants to.

when hasn't he?

Saw it earlier. Seems to attempt the same meta layering as The French Dispatch but not as sprawling so it felt somewhere between that and Moonrise Kingdom. Great spectacle and kid actors as ever but the story's another hot mess and it could be funnier.

Pleasant. Also the first film of his I've seen in twenty years and honestly I'll be fine with another twenty, but it looked nice.

Yeah I guess he’s always followed his own muse. Maybe it’s just more obvious now that he’s following it to an extreme which is more obviously uncommercial though to be fair I haven’t seen his prior two films so this may be old news. There is a fairly large if casual potential fan base that knows him mainly as the inspiration for a popular instagram hashtag which he could have pandered to. This is the first of his films that I’ve seen in the theater since Darjeeling. I guess I always like them better on the big screen.

Kind of bummed Ned hasn't seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, or Grand Budapest Hotel.

Isle of Dogs my favorite of his late career tbh

xpost Those are my three faves, probably. Though I dunno, I rewatched Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and Tenenbaums recently, and they were all great, too, but those aforementioned three feel like, I dunno, his mature renewal after a brief fallow period. But didn't particularly like Isle of Dogs, for whatever reason never got around to seeing French Dispatch. I'd love to see him make something other than another human diorama exhibit, kind of like when the Coen Brothers gave being the Coen Brothers a brief break and made "No Country for Old Men," which kind of refreshed them after making a couple of misfires.

Isle of Dogs could be a sub-board of Isle of Everything.

Our 13 year old has become a fan so we’re rewatching these. So far I like the Life Aquatic more than I remember and the Tenenbaums a little less. But i’m a big fan, I like ‘em all a lot. I don’t remember Darjeeling very well though.

Moonrise Kingdom may be my current fave. He has a great touch with kids.

Kind of bummed Ned hasn't seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, or Grand Budapest Hotel.

Level of interest: none. My folks like Moonrise Kingdom, and I'll probably get them this new one for Christmas, they'll appreciate the 50s setting as that's their youth.

I've never rewatched any Anderson films and don't plan to, so it's hard to compare with the early stuff, but to me Asteroid City is the best thing he's done since at least Tenenbaums. I thought Moonrise Kingdom was slightly disappointing, and Budapest was a slight return to form. This new one to me feels like a bigger break from his past work.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this especially since I hated The French Dispatch.

Was gonna say the box-office returns thus far are really encouraging ... until I reminded myself of what The Grand Budapest Hotel netted.

i've always liked his films, i have yet to see one i wasn't at least mostly onboard with. his aesthetic is so specific and easy to parody and clown on but it's also really refreshing to have a guy like him around.

and yet, he still couldn't resist having at least one asshole dad figure in this

I quite liked it, my favorite WA since 2014, but...I'm confused why critics I respect are rhapsodizing: an emotional breakthrough for him or something.

Also: you're making a mistake not watching Fantastic Mr. Fox, still his best.

Ned is, that is.

I wouldn’t call it an emotional breakthrough. More a matter of consolidating his strengths. Much like the freight rain celebrated in the song that plays over the titles, it is notable for its speed. The beats are perfectly spaced for a screwball comedy. He has also forgone trying to portray 3-dimensional characters, with the exception that proves the rule being the Schwartzman character, and even there the attempt at depth becomes part of the joke, with the director of the “play outside the play” critiquing his performance. Anderson films at their best are pure escapism. The only genuine emotion that should exist in the film is regret that the fun will have to end at some point, and the most effective emotional moments are allusions to that realization.

I think he did that in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Yeah he started moving in that direction. Just feel like this one went a bit further.

It helps that he also jettisoned the requirement to have a coherent plot.

Anderson films at their best are pure escapism

My sister's review was succinct: she fell asleep.

Tbf, she also said, "Shit sandwich."

lol this thread will blessedly reach consensus -- or sanity.

will NEVER lol

see?

i think i made my peace with wes anderson when i was watching the french dispatch and it dawned on me that ALL his movies are kid movies! not to sell him short. a decent kid movie is still just as hard to make as any normal movie. and i'll still take his kid movies over tim burton's kid movies. or YA movies, whatever. YA people are still kids. movies for brainy kids whose parents read the new yorker. kid movies that parents can be bemused by. it struck me that all the dialogue in his movies sounds like a play that a kid wrote at their country day school and who then got to get everyone to perform it instead of Our Town. which is probably why i'm most fond of rushmore because it stays true to that vibe so well without making me feel like an idiot for sitting through ridiculous fairy tale acting and hammy dialogue readings. do i wish that the snicket generation had more depth and darkness a la roald dahl? no, not really. i'll just read roald dahl and watch guillermo del toro movies. #hellboy4ever

French Dispatch had a lot of pubes for a kids movie.

This was ... even worse than The Whale. My college years are truly over.

Nah. We're as one on that thing.

I enjoyed myself!

i’m about to do that thing where someone watches a film & then critiques it by inventing their own version of it BUT i would have loved this if there weren’t for the whole meta layers of it being a TV broadcast of a play or whatever. all the parts that were the “play” felt to me like a top notch version of the stuff that he does really well in his signature way. i connected emotionally with those scenes, in particular many interactions between the kids, the kids and the adults, and the scenes with scar jo & schwartzman’s characters. all the black and white cranston stuff was distracting at best imo, that whole aspect felt unnecessary to me. i think it would have been a wonderful little film without those diversions. maybe even his best since fantastic mr fox — it’s hidden in there somewhere — but with what it is in reality i can’t get there

Yeah, I kinda agree. Need a rewatch, but from a first viewing it feels like that framing is there entirely because Anderson wanted to play in that format/era, not because it ties in to the rest of the film emotionally or thematically. The balcony scene was good tho.

The framing is the product of roman coppola imo

We saw it yesterday, I liked it more than my wife did, neither of us loved it. The deliberate distancing of all the meta layers, combined with the murmury flatness of the performances, had what I assume was their intended effect — conveying the emotional deadening and sublimation that can come with grief and pain. But also obviously the effect of keeping the viewer's emotional engagement low too. I thought ScarJo handled all that well and still managed to convey some emotional depth. Schwartzman was (as the movie itself notes) more of a collection of mannerisms. Again, clearly intentional, but a bit too clever. Still, what I liked: the intricacy of the setting, as always; the kids were all pretty good, the three little girls especially; Tom Hanks kind of surprised me, a nice little performance; the alien stuff was pretty well handled.

Overall for me, a mid-level Anderson.

I've been surprised at the number of critics I respect praising his emotional maturity or something. I thought he achieved whatever that means in 2014 or even 1998?

Yeah I felt like GBH was the biggest move there, in terms of a "mature style." French Dispatch and Asteroid City aren't exactly regressions, but they're more interested in formal experimentation it seems to me. Which is fine, he's always been interested in narrative form and different layers of storytelling, I don't begrudge him following his own curiosity. Just not as engaging for me as a viewer, even though I admire the mechanics. He doesn't seem like he's phoning it in or anything, he's putting a lot of effort and thought into it.

As entertaining and engaging most of his movies are, GBH might be the only movie of his I've ever really given any thought to. Often I find his modestly Brechtian artifice and, yeah, mechanics maybe too successful.

GBH is maybe his most "political" film in that it seems to be saying something about the position of the artistic/aesthetic life in the face of totalitarianism or fascism. I think that The French Dispatch is reaching for something similar but gets overwhelmed by all the silliness, while GBH strikes a better balance.

I've had a chance to watch GBH once a semester (most recently last Wednesday) with my students, and it hasn't bored me yet: those witty tilts and pans, the wedding cake look of the hotel, and, for once, a relationship between a POC and a white man interrogated in a Wes Anderson film. And Ralph Fiennes gives probably the best central performance in any Anderson joint

I feel the emotional core of GBH loses a lot once you read enough Stefan Zweig to see how much of it is pastiche.

On the contrary! That sense of loss drifts through the hotel lobby like a stagnant breeze.

“actors playing actors playing people” is generally my impression of the characters in wes anderson movies, and he obviously turned that to 11 in this one…but I was surprised to find myself enjoying this as much as I did, it’s charming and well-paced, and anderson’s control over the camera is undeniable. but for me there’s always this tenderness I’m missing in his movies

le nerd est nerdy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynyFwKXSwB8

What kind of an accent is he putting on there?

Enjoyed this a lot, thought that he didn’t handle the framing device well

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/why-is-wes-anderson-s-star-studded-asteroid-city-crashing-onto-digital-after-3-weeks-in-theaters/ar-AA1dFTzy

I'll probably still drag myself out to a theatre in the next couple of weeks. As you can tell, I expect to and even want to hate this.

I liked this quite a bit, but definitely agree that the framing device felt fumbled a little bit. I did like the scenes with Adrien Brody living on set, but even those felt tacked on just because. Would have just as happily lived in the actual Asteroid City for the entire film.

I know I’m getting old, but the rapid fire robotic monotone line delivery was so ott in this that some of the dialogue was lost on me

While I do like the majority of WA films, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore have always seemed in a class by themselves to me bc unlike the films that came after, they still appear to take place on a planet that is recognizably similar to our human homeworld of Earth, which counts for a lot in my book re: “emotional maturity”

Yeah, I like those less for basically the same reason. What I want from my Anderson is deep melancholy within a super stylized boy's adventure setting. So Moonrise Kingdom is my fave, I have a lot more patience for Life Aquatic than most, and Tennenbaums does nothing for me.

While I do like the majority of WA films, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore have always seemed in a class by themselves to me bc unlike the films that came after, they still appear to take place on a planet that is recognizably similar to our human homeworld of Earth, which counts for a lot in my book re: “emotional maturity"

I agree completely; Rushmore (my favorite film when I was in high school) has what I love about Anderson but it’s still at the level of whimsy rather than full-on. I still enjoy his later work but do wish he’d do his equivalent of an Ed Wood—i.e., a return to a more subdued film.

I think I've seen Bottle Rocket significantly more than any of his other films.

Never really understood the appeal of Bottle Rocket tbh.

I don't either.

It's a funny, low-stakes heist movie. Very quotable and more charming than most '90s indie films of that ilk.

Yeah, Rushmore is the first Wes Anderson™️ movie for me, tho I like Bottle Rocket just fine

The chase scene at the end where Owen Wilson's is haplessly fleeing the cops while "2000 Man" plays on the soundtrack is the most Wes Anderson™️ scene in it — and I love it. But definitely true that Rushmore is where his style/shtick really comes together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcx0slK4FfE

It's a funny, low-stakes heist movie. Very quotable and more charming than most '90s indie films of that ilk.

Rushmore his peak purely because of

"These are OR scrubs"
"O r they?"

I was surprised that Steve Carell was in this movie when Jason Schwartmann seems to be doing a Steve Carell impression throughout - so it made a lot of sense when I read that the Steve Carell role was supposed to be Bill Murray before he caught Covid / "caught" "Covid"

Rushmore his peak purely because of

Schwartzman: "What's that supposed to mean?"
Cox: (mockingly) "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Were you in the shit?"
"I was in the shit."

My fave bit in Bottle Rocket is when Owen decides they should all wear band-aids across their noses, just to throw off witnesses.

"Why are you all wearing Band-Aids?"

"Exactly."

Also, " they'll never catch me, because I'm fucking innocent" pops into my head a lot.

Tbf, I saw Bottle Rocket first, when it came out, so there may be some sentimental attachment. I also don't really think of his output as something I could honestly rank; for better or for worse, they are all very much of a piece. But I do like the first two movies a lot because they are kinda about odd people trying to find their place in the (more or less real) world, rather than affected weirdos living in their own stylized worlds. I suppose Moonrise Kingdom fits this mold as well.

Almost goes without saying, but the poignancy of Rushmore was all about the overwhelming desire to live in an aesthetically perfect snowglobe pocket universe, and the ties that bind to a sadder, more complicated world outside. Asteroid City seemed like his most determined attempt to disavow any outside - almost a Derridean dedication to Il n'y a pas de hors-texte. It's all theatre, all the way down. Particularly the scene where Augie says "I need some air" and is told "you won't find it", and ends up escaping the theatre to the balcony where he meets the Margot Robbie wife character who was written out, on her break from another play. There's a vertiginous thrill from the infinite meringue nest of fictional frames - reminded me of At Swim-Two-Birds! - but I found it suffocating.

The haunting (at least to me) conclusion of Grand Budapest Hotel stems from the conflict between the insular movie world and the "outside" real world as well. A lot of his movies seem to be about creating carefully orchestrated fictions within the movie, with various motives and varying recognitions of the real world.

"These are OR scrubs"
"O r they?"

"we went to harvard together" "that's great. i wrote a hit play and directed it, so i'm not sweating it either"

god that whole scene....

other weird stuff that made me laugh - the kids turning the AC up all the way when they get in the car

Part of GBH's poignancy is that no outside Real World exists: it's frame over frame over frame.

I like and appreciate most WA films. Aesthetically I appreciated a lot of this. But most of the story ultimately seemed to go almost nowhere. Even the alien visit did almost nothing and withdrew its own intervention. The film was oddly less satisfying than I had thought it would be.

I love WA's pastiche of 1950s TV (?) mode in the b/w framing level, but this level also came to confuse me. I couldn't well understand what the Brody, Norton, Dafoe characters were doing by the ehd. The balcony scene with Robbie was certainly striking and possibly poignant.

But my single greatest problem with this film came with the final credits, seeing that Cocker had been in a band in the film and then hearing his much too familiar, still much too current English voice singing over the soundtrack of this retro Americana work. Cocker's voice does not belong on this film. It killed the effect. It also suggests worryingly bad and slack judgment from WA - 'hey, it'll be cool to get my new celebrity friend to sing on the credits', rather than what works artistically.

Aesthetically I appreciated a lot of this. But most of the story ultimately seemed to go almost nowhere.

I reviewed the film for a magazine and described it as like a Chuck Jones Roadrunner cartoon, full of spectacular scenery, cute sight gags and an awesome catalogue of ACME gizmos, but without a Wile E Coyote.

I loved this meticulous exercise in Wes Anderson-ness. Half expected him to appear on screen after the credits, Lars Von Trier in Riget/The Kingdom style, to impart some mysterious info that would require a rewatch/rethink.

Here is where I admit that when Bottle Rocket came out my friend told me I had to see it because the Owen Wilson character reminded him of me.

Went to see this today, generally enjoyed it but wasn't quite sure what to make of it. The distancing devices - I don't know, I generally feel like his diorama style serves as enough of a reminder of the artificiality of what he's doing, and here it kind of felt like "hey, just in case you were getting too invested in the emotional stakes..." I did really like the scene that was cut for time, which seemed to add to the movie, open more doors, in a way that set it apart from a lot of the rest of the framing. Completely missed Jarvis Cocker until the credits, kind of delighted by it just because I happen to have been listening to Pulp more in the last week than I have in years.

I wonder how a Wes Anderson movie with Nicolas Cage would be, not in a "lol so crazy" way, just to have an actor who might push against Anderson's style and find his own way of moving through the film.

Good question, since Cage typically operates in the manic extremes, either nuts or hangdog sedate, the latter of which would suit Wes.

i really loved this, framing device worked for me in all the ways the really similar one in french dispatch didn’t (i like theater made by and starring weirdo auteurs and hate the new yorker i guess)

I am not sure that I understood everything in the film. But I reflect now that the whole concept of "we missed a scene from the story because the actor had walked off the set and was on a balcony" is quite aesthetically daring. The fact that we miss this material may be one reason that the central story is unsatisfying.

It's slightly comparable to that rare category of songs that fade out while new lyrics are still going.

i really really loved this … but i think i need to see it at least two more times to explain why lol

I haven't seen this yet but want to and wonder if Anderson set this in the SW as opposed to CA to connect it to 4H and a broader American audience with science fairs that are reminiscent of county fairs with outrageous food and butter sculptures and games and prizes and haystacks. Why does Anderson want to be child like?

Among other visual qualities of the southwest it's the UFO lore.

Pretty much what I expected from the trailer, and as I posted above, I'm no longer objective. The thing I find most appalling is the way he takes a lot of people I generally find quite engaging--Schwartzman, Johansson, Norton, Hanks earlier in his career--and deadpans them into nullity. He's probably more disconnected from the world at this point than Kubrick or Lynch at their most hermetic.

Is this the play Max Fischer was destined to write or direct? No--Max was very, very much alive.

He doesn't actually work with early career Hanks in this if that's any consolation.

I wanted him to get Hanks to reach down deep inside and find the guy who made That Thing You Do!

Wes Anderson’s Bosom Buddies

Worth a read:

https://slate.com/culture/2023/06/asteroid-city-wes-andersons-new-movie-explains-wes-anderson.html

That article is quite good, intelligent, informed, well written. But it doesn't - as I may have briefly hoped - much clarify the film for me. Indeed it admits the unclarity (for instance re why the character deliberately burns his hand).

ppl sometimes self-mutilate in times of deep depression and grief, didn't go beyond that for me

U reached the same conclusion. It's not that big a deal, pinefox!

U=I

The movie is enjoyable, no need to hurt oneself trying to figure out what it all means. I would lokke to see it on streaming or Blu-ray, there's a lot of quick pans and thngs in the background that I missed whilst seeing in the theater.

I wanted him to get Hanks to reach down deep inside and find the guy who made That Thing You Do!

Just when I was about to finally say "I agree with clemenza" ...

I must be old, because I still think of 'Early Hanks' as Bachelor Party and The 'Burbs.

Asteroid City would have been much improved by Hanks tapping into the same energy that gave us his heartbreaking portrayal of alcoholism in that one episode of Family Ties.

Actually if I do have a theory of why the character burns his hand, albeit from one viewing perhaps not grasping everything, it's that the character or actor was looking for a way out of the fiction - the shock would burn him out of the drama, say, and into the real world or next level of fiction - where he also seeks to escape the theatre for a time.

hmmm I like that.

i do too! that's why the "you can't wake up if you don't go to sleep" scene makes the movie for me, it's like stepping out of the dream ("asteroid city"), into "reality" (the behind the scenes scenes, which are as constructed as the dream), which it turns out only yanks the movie further into the dream (the conversation between augie and the character deleted from the movie)

(That was a joke, Eric.)

Where's that "jokes vmic" thread?

I liked the theory I read that we're not just seeing the character Augie burn his hand in that scene - the actor Jones Hall is actually burning his hand too, out of some reaction of grief for the dead playwright. That's why Scarlett Johansson is so shocked - "that really happened!" she says - that's Mercedes breaking character that Jones really burned himself.

(That doesn't actually explain why Augie burns his hand, admittedly)

many xposts to pinefox: i like that theory! & it fits with the nested construction

i loved ScarJo’s Liz/Marilyn combo, so goddamn perfect & at times v moving

Also idk maybe everyone is onto this already but i read that Kubrick was an inspiration for Schwartzman’s character of Augie & thats why he’s a war photographer, wears a safari jacket, has a big beard, is completely impassive etc

David Ehrlich’s review comes pretty close to capturing my feelings abt the movie

love the final para
Will Augie ever see his wife again? It’s hard to say. But somewhere in Asteroid City, or in the play called “Asteroid City” within the play called “Asteroid City” within the television show whose title we either never learn or instantly forget, he will come to appreciate that death is just another of the great unknowns that we all have to live with in the waking dream we share together; a mystery both as cold as a meteorite at the bottom of a crater, and as infinite as the stars in the night sky above.

https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/asteroid-city-review-wes-anderson-1234866295/

also i rewatched it again tonight & i still love it

the tupperware funeral for the mom in the motorcourt is so <3

remember, if you look directly at the ellipses rather than thru your refracting box, not only will you not actually see the effect, but you will burn the dots straight into your retina, probably permanently. i know that for a fact because they're still burned into mine from when i was 11 going on 12. that's when i realized i wanted to be an astronomer.

this was great. very funny. best alien. it's about infinity. which includes entertainment, if you let it (although as people have said above, this is double-edged)

the seeming infinitude of the star cast adds to the effect ofc

this was great. reminded me of John Barth more than anything else.

I loved this. Love French dispatch too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RdncisZ_QA

All new on Netflix, based on Roald Dahl stories:

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (41 minutes)
The Rat Catcher (17 minutes)
The Swan (17 minutes)
Poison (17 minutes)

What a strange, fascinating movie this was

i loved it, think it's his best film. definitely the one I've thought about the most after watching, anyhow

I really liked this. Nobody does <ABSURD> like Anderson.

Also got a kick out of the actor Schwartzman character being named "Jones Hall" after the symphonic hall in downtown Houston

And they running gag of the hot rod car chase

AND THAT ROADRUNNER

yeah i really loved this

I had my doubts and admittedly didn't watch it all in one setting, but it does seem a rich well of ... whatever it is up to. And I'm equally unsure of exactly what it is up to as I am of whether I would ever watch it again, because I feel like I got it, I soaked in every scene and every line of flat dialogue and all of the little fleeting in-jokes and winks and subtle exchanges of glances and ... I'm still not sure I get it.

I never saw his last one, either, "French Dispatch." I guess I should. It's remarkable that Wes Anderson has gotten so much out of such a seemingly limited style/approach. I also like how his acting troupe of regulars just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I wonder what it's like to be directed by him?

I'll have to check this out. I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel, but had mixed feelings about Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch - some great set pieces, but it also felt like his limitations were becoming more apparent with little to say that made up for it. I skipped this one after hearing some very negative reactions from people who were otherwise Anderson fans, but I just caught up with The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and thought that was excellent.

From what little I know about Asteroid City, the most substantial characteristic it shares with The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (besides the usual elements you'd find in Anderson's work) is how they're set up with a matryoshka-like structure of a story within a story within a story, etc., calling attention not just to story creation but interpretation as well. It'll be interesting to see how that works with Asteroid City when it's an original work rather than an adaptation like The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar or, in the case of The Grand Budapest Hotel, a story that heavily draws from the work of Stefan Zweig.

I look forward to hearing what you think, because, yeah, it is like that - story within a story, kind of - but like I said, it's ... strange. It's hard for me to discern which story is the story within the story, and what that story is, exactly. Compared to "Grand Budapest," which does something different and maybe more ... safe (?) with the story within the story conceit?

I’m not sorry I saw this, but … am not in a rush to see it again? Like JiC noted above: I kinda got it, you know?

The French Dispatch I liked better.

(Haven’t seen any of his other movies but would like to get to The Royal Tenenbaums sooner or later though.)

It's good! They're all pretty good. In fact, the only ones my brain tells me were at all disappointing ("Life Aquatic" and "Darjeeling," and "Dogs" I thought was dull, too) I still see cited by some as favorites, so I feel like I have to see them again.

Schwartzman in the Criterion Closet, mentions the Clu Gulager influence on his performance in Asteroid City.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92yxBp7tce4

What sort of a name is Clu Gulager?

Clu Gulager was born William Martin Gulager in Holdenville, Hughes County, Oklahoma. His nickname was given to him by his father for the clu-clu birds (known in English as martins, like his middle name) that were nesting at the Gulager home at the time Clu was born.