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Post by Remi on Mar 2, 2005 11:11:58 GMT -5
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Post by letters2dorian on Mar 2, 2005 15:36:14 GMT -5
thanks remi!!
I never heard of this before!! That would've been funny!
Someone posted this same quote on the "Fantastic Mr. Fox" thread on IMDB, which means that they'll be doing voices, or will be actually starring, in the film! That'll be really exciting!
Jason Schwartzman is one of my all-time fav actors! ;D
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Post by Pollyanna on Mar 7, 2005 23:04:45 GMT -5
Found this article from The Australian on Google as TLA is about to be released in NZ and Australia Click Here for article
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Post by letters2dorian on Mar 21, 2005 20:39:21 GMT -5
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Post by Librarian on Apr 11, 2005 20:26:58 GMT -5
Thanks everyone. Those are some great finds!
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Post by WilsonFreak on May 8, 2005 9:10:43 GMT -5
Hi Friends! I haven't found any articles worth putting up lately, but this one seems quite favorable and I found it interesting! Also, with The Life Aquatic coming on TUESDAY!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!! I find it is a great time to 'immerse' ourselves in the Life Aquatic thoughts to prepare! Enjoy!
***************************************** Immerse yourself in 'The Life Aquatic'
Julian Satterthwaite / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Three and a half stars (out of five)
Dir: Wes Anderson
Cast: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston,
Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe
Wes Anderson's films are never quite as funny as you think they're going to be. In Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and now The Life Aquatic, the director creates fascinating little worlds peopled with eccentric but believable comic characters, raising expectations of hilarity to come. But it doesn't quite work out that way, the films delivering more grins than guffaws.
That doesn't matter too much, however, because belly laughs don't seem to be the objective. The Life Aquatic--an affectionate parody of marine scientist-cum-adventurer Jacques Cousteau--is less a straightforward comedy than another vehicle for Anderson's offbeat musings on family life.
Where Tenenbaums had Gene Hackman's scheming patriarch, the new film has Bill Murray as Steve Zissou--boss of "Team Zissou," an extended family of explorers, fans and hangers-on.
Already a pretty dysfunctional bunch--Zissou's estranged wife Eleanor (Huston) is the reluctant "brains of the outfit"--the team is further destabilized by the arrival of Ned (Wilson), who may or may not be Zissou's son from a long-forgotten fling.
Worse still, Ned arrives on the scene as the group is still reeling from recent tragedy. Zissou's best friend has just been eaten by a "jaguar shark"--a previously unknown animal that the scientist swears to hunt down and kill in a Capt. Ahab-like quest.
What follows is a quirky, quixotic pursuit, not just of the shark, but of various notions such as fatherhood and family.
"I hate fathers and I never wanted to be one," Zissou says, admitting he wants Ned's respect, but not the responsibility of looking after him. The scientist really prefers fans to sons.
What this tells us about Anderson's relationship with his own dad, I don't know, but I'm willing to bet it's a complicated one, given that Tenenbaums too was all about a father who couldn't or wouldn't accept his responsibilities.
But if Anderson's screen dads are rogues, or at least awkward customers, they're also charmers, particularly when played by Bill Murray.
Deadpan as always, Murray is the undoubted star of Life Aquatic, despite a cast of stellar rivals. Typically understated, he does a beautiful job of portraying Zissou as a weary old man who remains a little boy at heart. Always ready for one more adventure, the scientist can't quite accept that his buccaneering days are over.
And Anderson's drily funny script could not be better delivered. "I know I haven't been at my best this past decade," Zissou admits to Eleanor in dialogue that could have been and probably was crafted with Murray in mind.
For all Murray's greatness, this is an ensemble work, however, with every member of the cast bringing something to the party. Huston's Eleanor is majestically composed. Owen Wilson convinces as an otherworldly, almost angelic Ned. Jeff Goldblum gets some of the biggest laughs as Zissou's archrival--the more successful, high camp and "half-gay" Alistair Hennessy. Even Cate Blanchett's bizarre upper-crust English accent seems spot-on in a world where everything is a little off-kilter.
Indeed, what Anderson does best is the creation of self-contained worlds that are much like reality, only one step removed. Here the impression of a small alternate universe is reinforced by frequent use of a set that slices through Zissou's ship, the Belafonte. As the camera tracks through the set, characters in different compartments can be seen at the same time, the ordinary life of the ship carrying on around the action.
Contributing further to the air of staged unreality is Anderson's fondness for carefully staged composition, with groups of characters arranged around a static camera in artful tableaux. In another era, it seems the director might have been a painter, not a moviemaker.
For some this will all seem a little too much like eccentricity for eccentricity's sake. Those who found Anderson's previous films smug, slow, smart-aleck and short of plot are unlikely to be converted by Life Aquatic, which certainly has charges to face on all four counts.
What saves it is the obvious warmth of the parody. One senses that Anderson grew up watching reruns of Cousteau's films, fantasizing about leading his own life of adventure on the high seas.
The Life Aquatic is the celluloid expression of those boyish fantasies, with some very adult themes weaved into its gleeful accumulation of odd characters and unlikely events.
Sit back, immerse yourself in it, and Anderson's artificial world becomes a very pleasant place to spend two hours. The Life Aquatic may not deliver the big laughs, but the grin almost never left my face.
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Post by Remi on May 29, 2005 7:38:28 GMT -5
Bud Cort has some really nice things to say about Wes (and Owen) in this article. "But Cort - The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" (that's not my typo... ) Full Article
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Post by bunnypanda on May 29, 2005 13:17:20 GMT -5
OH MY... PRINCE WES fights to save PRINCESS SCULPTY Wow thanks Remi, the interview is interesting. I love the part he talks about how Wes asked him to learn the lines in Filipino when he had already learnt them all in Indonesian How very Wes. But Cort seems to be very funny. Many of Wes's friends are funny Owen is the funniest like Wes himself said
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Post by sculpturedsound on May 29, 2005 13:41:33 GMT -5
OH MY... PRINCE WES fights to save PRINCESS SCULPTY Princess Sculpty would be sure to give Prince Wes a reward for his valiant efforts!
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Post by Librarian on Jul 26, 2005 16:29:15 GMT -5
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Post by Gage51 on Jul 26, 2005 19:50:23 GMT -5
Thanks Librarian. This was a very interesting article. Beth
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Post by bunnypanda on Jul 26, 2005 20:31:07 GMT -5
Thank you very much Lib This indeed was very interesting in many ways. I am sure I am not the only one who is looking forward to seeing where the Owen & Wes partnership will go in the coming years. Not just they are both extremely talented (sometimes in the same things and other times in different things), but also their friendship has definitely come through what would have done some irreparable damage to many friendships. They are certainly more distant from each other now than they ever were, but the way they firmly support each other's career (both when they work together and when they work on separate projects) and the way they seem to think of each other and their experience together often show us the warm friendship that keeps developing. They may write together again, they may work as a writer/director and an actor as they did in TLA, or they may do something new. Whichever way they take, I am really looking forward to seeing their future collaborations. They are both the filmmakers who excel on putting their life and emotions into their works, which makes what their friendship gives to their works even more interesting and wonderful.
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Post by bunnypanda on Jul 28, 2005 19:55:18 GMT -5
I have had more thoughts after reading the above article and posted the following on another board (because the same article was posted there too).
I wanted to share my thoughts with you all here too, so here it goes...
I think Wes' stubbornness is one of the things that make his movies so good. He has said quite often that he worries about what critics say and he has been hurt by criticism, and I think he is telling the truth, but he seems to always go ahead and make what he wants to make anyway in the end. This doesn't work for many people - filmmakers and artists alike - but it certainly works for Wes. What he wants to show in his movies touch people in many different layers...Not so for everyone, but for many people his movies mean a lot, as you all know.
It is very possible Owen and Wes will never write together again. But I feel that certain part of Wes' identity as a writer will always have Owen in it, and vice versa. In the commentary of TRT Wes said that even when he was writing some scenes on his own, the way he wrote was as if he had had Owen there with him to make conversations with - that his writing was always formed on the meeting of his perspectives and Owen's. So I feel that, even if they keep writing separately in the future, they will always influence each other. This is something I am really looking forward to seeing.
Having said that, I remember Owen saying in one of TLA interviews that he had something he was thinking of writing and he might "get Wes to help out", so it is also very possible we will see them writing together again.
Sweet Owen & Wes.
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Post by bunnypanda on Aug 16, 2005 3:12:18 GMT -5
When TLA opened in London on February 18th this year, I went to a cinema in Leicester Square and was very pleased #bunny2# to see several people with Team Zissou red caps on their heads enjoying the movie with me. But this easily tops that (please click on it to view it LARGER): Man, it is spectacular, spectacular! #bow# Click here for the full article.Click here to view other pics.
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Post by Mrs.Sylfian on Aug 16, 2005 5:21:00 GMT -5
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