Wes Anderson
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“I Don’t Want to Sound Negative About Digital”: DP Robert Yeoman on NAB Show, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Shooting Film
From April 11-16th, more than 100,000 tech heads and industry professionals will descend upon Las Vegas to gorge themselves on the latest cameras, lights and gadgets at the annual NAB Show. Nestled among this digital idolatry, you’ll find at least one psalm to the archaic when cinematographer Robert Yeoman takes the stage to talk the miniatures, stop-motion animation and 35mm photography of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yeoman will be featured as part of NAB Show’s Creative Master Series on April 13th in a conversation with American Cinematographer managing editor Jon Witmer titled “Checking into The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Sponsored by […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 8, 2015 -
Watch: “Red & Yellow: A Wes Anderson Supercut”
You can’t say that Rishi Kaneria doesn’t know what he’s interested in when he makes his supercuts. Following logically on the heels of “Stanley Kubrick: Red,” which looked at that director’s use of the color, now we have “Red & Yellow: A Wes Anderson Supercut.” Red’s on the left, yellow’s on the right, and there’s an oddly disproportionate emphasis on his 2007 short Hotel Chevalier.
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 26, 2015 -
Watch: Melancholy and Loss in The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson’s detractors often delight in taking umbrage with the filmmaker’s “twee” aesthetic, claiming that his formal specificity undermines the emotion his films ought to inspire. This video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz, one in a series adapted from his book The Wes Anderson Collection, dismantles that claim through the lens of The Grand Budapest Hotel, and its myriad melancholic layers of loss and thwarted re-invention. With respect to Zero, Seitz notes that “The most important parts of a story are the parts people omit, the abysses they sidestep,” and how Agatha becomes a vague, distant cypher — both narratively and through Yeoman’s […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 17, 2015 -
Watch: :: kogonada on Wes Anderson’s Symmetrical Compositions
We’re big :: kogonada fans here at Filmmaker Magazine and are still catching up with his past work. This video focuses on Wes Anderson’s penchant for symmetrical compositions, dropping a line down the middle of the screen to better see on what is and isn’t exactly symmetrically balanced in his frames.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 30, 2015 -
Watch: Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel Q&A
This post-SXSW screening Q&A for The Grand Budapest Hotel is a few cuts above average. For one thing, Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman and music supervisor Randall Poster get to have Richard Linklater as their moderator, which makes for a higher class of question and a more relaxed rapport between two sympatico filmmakers. Native Texans who’ve both worked with animation, Linklater and Anderson are equally ready to discuss the films of Max Ophuls and which Stefan Zweig books in particular they have or haven’t read. Other highlights: Poster talks about how they arranged to record with a full balalaika orchestra, Anderson […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 4, 2014 -
A Breakdown of the Special Effects in The Grand Budapest Hotel
It’s no surprise that Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel was a technically complicated production, and a video posted this week by VFX house Look Effects, Inc. breaks down exactly how complex putting the movie together was. In a nearly-five-minute reel that can’t be embedded (you should definitely take a look here), a variety of post-production work is highlighted, from color correction of the typically fastidiously coordinated hotel to the mechanics of the dizzying climactic downhill mountain chase. There are surprises big and small, including the amount of physical “snow” used on-set (thereby avoiding the usual hazy look of CGI […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 25, 2014 -
Wes Anderson on Using Throwback Ratios, Romantic Worldviews, and European Reconnaissance to Craft The Grand Budapest Hotel
For all the ways his work speaks to today’s Generation Irony, Wes Anderson is an unmistakable romantic — a man who grew up with a great love of classics, be they in the realms of cinema, literature or art. All of those things converge in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s sweeping, nostalgic, and career-topping new film, which sees him confronting history on a global scale — in his own way, of course. The movie takes place in a number of eras, most notably 1932, when, in the fictional yet familiar land of Zubrowka, wars are brewing and lives are changing […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Mar 8, 2014 -
Wes Anderson Motifs in GIFs
Each and every frame of a Wes Anderson film is readily distinctive, and not just because of his anachronistic aspect ratios. In the lead-up to the Texan’s Berlinale-winning The Grand Budapest Hotel, an interior design company called Terrys Blinds has fashioned a series of GIFs that showcase six stylistic themes across the directors’ work. Among the GIFs are Anderson’s point of view shots — imbued with a childlike wonder; his use of isolation and contrasting side-by-side staging; and of course, his typefaces. Check them out at the link.
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 3, 2014 -
Watch Wes Anderson’s Charming Prada Short Castelo Cavalcanti
I’m not totally optimistic about Wes Anderson’s upcoming The Grand Hotel Budapest — which will open the Berlinale early next year — but watching his latest offering has somewhat raised my hopes. Castelo Cavalcanti, a short film made for Prada, is a charming, self-contained little effort about a racecar driver (Jason Schwartzman) who crashes in the tiny Italian village of Castelo Cavalcanti, which just happens to be his ancestral home. Written and directed by Anderson, it was shot by Darius Khondji and filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà.
by Nick Dawson on Nov 13, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson’s sensibility has, I suppose, always been somewhat “European,” so it’s not a big stretch for him to be extending his storytelling realm to include one of the great cities of Central Europe in The Grand Budapest Hotel. And he certainly seems to be having fun with this star-studded, 1920s-era romp, which may be the most visually lavish and designed film of his career to date. On the surface, the film looks like a companion piece to Jiri Menzel’s I Served the King of England, which tackles similar subject matter but with a comic bite and political engagement that […]
by Nick Dawson on Oct 17, 2013
