“I understand what you’re saying and your advice is valuable, but I’m going to ignore you completely.”

This weekend the babe and I finally got the chance to see one on the films we’ve been waiting for since we first heard Wes Anderson was taking a crack at a Roald Dahl book (My favorite was “The Witches”).  Part of what seems to be an increasing number of children’s book adaptations from young and heavily stylized filmmakers, Wes’ Fantastic Mr. Fox takes us to the places that Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are only dreamed of (You can find my review for that film here).  While not as flashy as this year’s earlier stop motion wonder Coraline, it takes a decidedly retro approach to the style and what we get is less experiment and more a believable backdrop to the (a)typical Anderson quirkiness. Wes’ use of stop motion animation not only caters to every idiosyncrasy of his imagination, look no further than the badger mural in the picture above, but the dialogue,  the soundtrack and the pitch perfect family dysfunction in Mr. Fox are, well… Fantastic.

The movie is best described as a collection of meticulously designed scenes, each of them threatening to overwhelm the viewer but always in a way that is clever enough to push the story forward. In fact the reason the film is so good is this approach to filmmaking that Anderson pioneered with Rushmoore and played to hard in The Life Aquatic. What was a demanding and cluttered scene in live action becomes a beautifully crafted testament to his own handiwork and imagination, with many inside jokes along the way for those with a keen eye.  Though the trailers put me off on the idea of an entire feature length film in this retro-esque stop motion style, after the first ten minutes I had failed to notice it at all and by the end on the film I found it enjoyably quirky, which I guess was the point all along.

Like all “Andersonian” films this one takes place is it’s own exclusive world but one that brims with father/son angst, a search for significance and the highly nuanced neuroses that plague his characters.   At many times Mr. Fox feels like an animated version of The Royal Tenenbaums but what keeps it a from being a repackaged film is the perspective that Anderson frames it in. Whereas Tenenbaums was, very simply, a child’s interpretation of an adult story, the drama in Mr. Fox is an adult’s view into a children’s story which makes it so endearing.

Go see it, sit back and enjoy. I guarantee you will walk out with a smile.

No not the blog, the wife and I are moving much closer to the heart of St. Louis!

Ironically, for the last two decades I’ve been trying to get out of school and now we’re going to be living in one, weird I know.

The Eugene Field School was built as an elementary school in 1901 and landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The building was designed by William B. Ittner and was iconic of the Colonial Revival Style of the early 20th century, it got it’s name from the St. Louis born children’s poet, Eugene Field, who wrote “Little Boy Blue” and ”Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”  (After a bit of digging I found out that Tennessee Williams attended Elementary school here and that we’re only a few blocks from T. S. Eliot’s childhood home)

In 2005 the building was renovated into loft living space, the unit that we have is part of what used to be the kindergarten room.

From the moment we walked in we loved it!

There will be more pictures hopefully soon, needless to say, we’re both pretty excited!

“This is not a love story; this is a story about love”

Yesterday Cara and I picked up some screening passes and hit up the theatre with Courtney and Tom to see (500) Days of Summer, we’d been looking forward to it ever since we’d seen the previews a few months back. Here’s a few of my thoughts…
(500) Days of Summer is not a romantic comedy. (there were however, many times during the film where I would have said this is a love story between Zooey Deschanel and the camera) The story starts by introducing us to the two main players in this tale; Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Tom is a young and idealistic twenty-something who spends his days writing greeting card prose (ironic?) and his nights as an unabashed romantic, with a capital “R.” Summer is his Juliet. She is an enigma that is impossible to pin down, really though, she’s just the quirkinessthat is Zooey Deschanel, no new ground but tried and true. Tom has convinced himself that Summer is the girl of his dreams, maybe even more so, and Summer has told Tom that she’s not interested in anything serious… Tom and Summer are equal parts of a relationship that is destined to fail.  Two souls that are perfectly in-sync across several levels but missing that thread that brings it all together.  They are the kind of “love” that hurts the most.

I don’t want to say too much as to ruin the film for you so I’ll just say it’s probably the best “Anti-Romantic Comedy” that you’ll see all year.  The script is well written and the soundtrack is extremely well tuned. (giving as much significance to Morrisey as it does to Hall and Oates) Gordon-Levitt is fantastic as the bright eyed, star-struck lover who encounters every emotion from love to fear with just the right amount of transparency, taking you along for the emotional rollercoaster.  Zooey Deschanel, though not as good as her performance in All the Real Girls, is a terrific counterpart to Levitt and really makes their relationship the kind you want to cheer for.. even though you know it will crash sooner or later.

What really makes 500 Days pop is the director’s (Marc Webb) knowledge of relationships and the tiny quirks that make them work, or in this case, destine them to failure. He presents the film in snapshots, memories, not bound together by time in a linear story but rather in context, much like how we would naturally remember our own past experiences: each memory linked intrinsically to another leading to a story that grows as each new memory is reflected upon. The film will likely be embraced as Gen Y’s take on When Harry Met Sally and it is (though thankfully without the pop-culture “wit(?)” and indie references that drove Juno into the ground), with perfectly appointed showrooms from Anthropologie and throwbacks to pre-Godard New Wave French films, but if you scratch away the kitschy veneer and put Zooey’s 60’s throwback wardrobe back on it’s hanger you get a story about love. It reminds you, sometimes shamelessly, of the pain that comes along with real relationships, the hurt that can come along with being honest with both yourself and the one you want to be with.

It’s a tale about the love that isn’t yours but was so connected to who you are that it will forever live on the self with the rest of your memories, first dates, and heartbreaks.