You know you have an identifiable film-making style when even a stop-motion animation movie has the look and feel of a Wes Anderson movie! This looks “fantastic”:
Wes Anderson does stop-motion animation? Clooney, Murray and Streep voice characters? Ya, that could work… Check out the trailer:
Wonder no longer. John Woo, Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson all get jabbed at here, but its very well done. The John Woo parody is a bit over the top, but still hilarious and the Smith and Anderson parodies are borderline perfect. The clips were created by a comedy group called the Landline, I’d love to see some more of these!
I love Wes Anderson and his last film, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ was one of my favorites this year. That being said, I can’t wait for his next movie, the animated ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, to see what he does with something completely different from his past efforts. Here’s a great interview from RottenTomatoes.com:
Where did the idea for the film come from originally?
Wes Anderson: Initially I had two ideas; one that I wanted to make a movie in India and the second one was that I had this idea about a movie with three brothers on a train together. I mixed them together and they became The Darjeeling Limited.
The other main idea I think was that I thought I’d like to write with Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman and I think the movie we wound up making is really the combination of all three of our points of view mixed together.
Your movies are renowned for their fantastical edge, but when you think about them the stories you tell are always quite down to earth. Does the fantasy come after the idea?
WA: You know, it all sort of happens together I think. The movies I make tend not to be quite reality but the characters are inspired by real people and they’re always very personal. This movie, for instance, is a very personal movie; everything comes from my experiences, or Jason’s or Roman’s experiences. That was really our goal and it’s always been important to us that’s it’s both personal to us and hopefully personal for other people. That’s the idea!
I can’t imagine seeing the film without having seen Hotel Chevalier, your short prologue, first. Why didn’t it proceed the film in the US?
WA: Well it’s just been added to the print in the US from this week, actually. And I think that’s just as well because the short gives you some information and clues. Questions that get answered within the movie. In America I thought people would get to see it on iTunes - I thought everyone who wanted to see it would get to see it - but it’s just been a sort of puzzle for me.
I believe you’re entering the world of animation for your next project.
WA: Yes, we’re doing an animated film; an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book The Fantastic Mr. Fox. We’ve just started it and George Clooney plays Mr. Fox. We’re making it here in London and it’s stop-motion adaptation. I wrote the script with Noah Baumbach who made The Squid and the Whale. It’ll take some time!
It’s a new area for you to explore; how are you finding it?
WA: It is and I like it, it’s fun. It’s fun to do an animated movie and I really enjoyed writing the script with Noah. The thing with animation is that you record the actors like a radio show and then the animators become actors in their own way because it’s their job to take this puppets and make them seem alive. They bring their own personalities to the way they move these puppets.
You’ve always seemed very open to experimentation on your films and it seems like some moments happened spontaneously on set. How does that work in animation?
WA: Well for this film we recorded all the voices on locations. We went out in a forest, we went in an attic, we went in a stable. We went underground for some things. There was a great spontaneity in the recordings because of that, I think.
And then the animators bring their own spontaneity to it as well, because when they do a take of a shot it really is like just one continuous activity for them. They launch into it and do it, and they’re not even quite sure how it’s going to turn out when they’re doing it. They’re sort-of sculpting their way through a scene and trying to make this inanimate object alive.
So while it seems more rigid, you actually get two passes at that spontaneity.
How involved are you in the actual animation process?
WA: My job is first to write the script, and then to record and edit the voices. And then I’m responsible for designing the environment and I have an art director I’m working with on that, costume designers and character designers. There are different people who are in charge of these departments. And then I work on planning the shots and the storyboards. There’s a guy named Marc Gustavson who’s the director of animation, and he’s the one who really will take this puppets and make them seem alive and he oversees a team of animators. So i have my own ideas about what to do there, but he brings a great deal of experience into that and he’s really the guy who’s in charge when the puppets start moving around.
From shooting on a moving train to a fully-fledged animation project; are you always looking for the next challenge as a director?
WA: I don’t really look for challenges as much as I like adventures. Other than that I’m just trying to find stories I want to tell. This one is about foxes and badgers and so it has to be animated in one way or another. India, I just wanted to work there. They bring their own challenges. The hardest project I’ve done was The Life Aquatic; working at sea is a huge challenge.
Very interesting… Read more HERE
Can you tell I’m excited about this movie? I posted the trailer last week, but here’s the official one sheet and a link to the new teaser website they’ve set up. The movie hits theatres in limited release on September 29th and has also been selected as the opening film for the New York Film Festival.
Official site: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thedarjeelinglimited/
THE DARJEELING LIMITED, starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, is an emotional comedy about three brothers re-forging family bonds. The eldest, played by Wilson, hopes to reconnect with his two younger siblings by taking them on a train trip across the vibrant and sensual landscape of India.
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola
Produced by: Scott Rudin, Lydia Pilcher, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Cast: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman
Wow, this movie looks amazing. Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman starring can only mean good things and it seems to me that Wes Anderson just keeps getting better. Have a look at the trailer:
PLAY
