I had given this to Frank but he's gone so I shall post it now.

::Movie of the Week::

The Life Aquatic - Wes Anderson



::Plot Synopsis::

ala Amazon.com

"In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, director Wes Anderson takes his familiar stable of actors on a field trip to a fantasy aquarium, complete with stop-motion, candy-striped crabs and rainbow seahorses. And though Anderson does expand his horizons in terms of retro-special effects and a whimsical use of color, fans will otherwise find themselves in well-charted waters. As The Life Aquatic opens, Zissou (Bill Murray), a self-involved, Jacques Cousteau-like filmmaker, has just released a documentary depicting the death of his best friend Esteban, who was eaten by some sort of sea creature--possibly a jaguar shark. Zissou’s troubles also include his waning popularity with the public, and a nemesis (Jeff Goldblum) who hogs up all the grant money. Hope arrives in the form of Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), an amiable Kentuckian who may be Zissou’s son. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for fatherhood, Zissou welcomes Ned--and Ned in turn saves Zissou’s new documentary (in which he seeks revenge on the jaguar shark) in more ways than one."

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First off, I want to say that if you have seen any previous Wes Anderson films, and did not find yourself laughing or cracking a smile, don't bother watching this movie, you will absolutely hate it.

This polarizing film directed by Wes Anderson tries the patience of many, and maintains a cult status among the remaining. The reviews range from stupid, retarded, nonsense to a movie I would marry if I wasn't already married to my sister. The Life Aquatic love-in is something that seems to appeal to the hardcore Wes Anderson family of fans. The subtle humour is often seen as out of place while the plodding plot and long movie length turns people off. I can understand peoples hate of this movie, because if you don't like Anderson's style, or the extremely deadpan humour you may see this movie as two hours of meandering nonsense. Lines like "But I let you call me Stevzie" or "Where'd you come from, you're pregnant" don't recall classic one liners, or memorable quotables like Anchorman (whether you like it or not) or other over the top comedies. These lines, in their delivery and timing, helped by the fact that Bill Murray has an innocent seriousness to him in this movie, make these moments hilarious, to me at least. Perhaps my favourite part of the movie is the section where Murray says,

"Supposedly Cousteau and his cronies invented the idea of putting walkie-talkies into the helmet. But we made ours with a special rabbit ear on the top so we could pipe in some music. "

then procedes to do an awkward little dance with his arms and torso while a pinging, bleeping underwater beat is piped in through his antenna. I feel like this moment is the encapsulation of Anderson's comedic style, accented through amazing use of music.

Seu Jorge is one of the main contributers throughout the film, playing guitar during various sequences. Jorge is a Brazilian born musician and actor. He can be heard playing a couple of David Bowie covers during the movie, which add to the offbeat atmosphere of the movie.

Overall, the movie combines interesting art direction and cinematography (animated, colourful, cartoonlike creatures exemplify the feeling of the film), a wonderful array of music (Seu Jorge singing Bowie in Portugeuse), subtle physical humour and deadpan delivery, and jokes that don't have a convential punchline served up.

Zissou sums it up in some of the final lines of the movie saying "This is an adventure". It's an encompassing mash-up of the Anderson-esque film eccentricities' with a compelling, character driven plot that pulls you into a surreal, dreamlike world.

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::Note::

Ebert had an interesting quote in a review of the movie saying,

"My rational mind informs me that this movie doesn't work. Yet I hear a subversive whisper: Since it does so many other things, does it have to work, too? Can't it just exist? "Terminal whimsy," I called it on the TV show. Yes, but isn't that better than half-hearted whimsy, or no whimsy at all? Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is the damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it."

Granted, Eberts taste is extremely varied, and oftentimes questionable, but it perfectly illustrates the divide the movie created on those watching it.



Opinions?

i fucking love it

just watched this again the other day. great film, great soundtrack. I love the early scene when life on mars is playing and bill murray walks up to the front of the belefonte for a smoke or joint after ned talks to him. also the scene where bill murray fights off all the pirates is hilarious. thought it was gonna be a dream first time i saw it, but nope. and like tenenbaums the ending kinda makes me happy despite there being some sadness.

lots of good little quotes throughout.

just watched this again the other day. great film, great soundtrack. I love the early scene when life on mars is playing and bill murray walks up to the front of the belefonte for a smoke or joint after ned talks to him. also the scene where bill murray fights off all the pirates is hilarious. thought it was gonna be a dream first time i saw it, but nope. and like tenenbaums the ending kinda makes me happy despite there being some sadness.

lots of good little quotes throughout.

I want the shoes.

one of my favorite comedies ever. love it.

Wes Anderson's movies have never really done much for me. I was left cold by Rushmore, I like Tennenbaums. But this movie, I don't even know what to say. HUGE disappointment. I'm not sure I really liked anything about it. Not the characters, not the dialogue, not the "plot". I always hate Anderson's resolution at the end, but this one was particularly unsatisfying.

Oh, I did like the African guy singing the David Bowie songs. That was the highlight of the movie for me. I couldn't wait for the next one.

Perhaps this is why this movie was a step down from Anderson's prior films...

http://www.slate.com/id/2123292

The O Factor
Was Owen Wilson the key to the Wes Anderson phenomenon?
By Field Maloney
Posted Tuesday, July 26, 2005, at 6:15 AM ET
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Once upon a time, a young filmmaker from Houston, Texas, put together a yellow submarine of sorts—an enclosed cinematic world with a style and affect that was entirely his own, peopled with his friends and screen heroes. USS Wes Anderson delivered a couple of films that were small-scale but brilliant in a modest, eccentric way. They had what fiction writers call "voice"—a coherent and distinct cinematic language and sensibility. Anderson seemed poised to become the next major American director. Certainly, the eyes and hopes of a generation of sneaker-wearing, thrift-shop dandies, young men and women who cultivate affectlessness but have sentimental hearts, were fixed fast upon Anderson and his merry band.

True, USS Anderson had some nagging tics, and each film seemed more enclosed in the storybook boundaries of Anderson's fantasy world than the one before. After being rescued by Gene Hackman's performance in The Royal Tenenbaums, USS Anderson finally ran aground last winter, with The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Rather than develop as a storyteller, Anderson appeared to have floated off to an adolescent never-never land where everyone wears Lacoste, colorful and quirky toys abound, and a vintage emo soundtrack gets piped in whenever a little poignancy is required—a Michael Jackson ranch for the Salinger set.

The disappointment was widespread, yet the critics at the major papers and the hipster blogs all overlooked one important fact: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was the first Wes Anderson film in which Owen Wilson didn't share the writing chores. What if Owen Wilson, America's resident goofy roué with the broken nose and the lazy nasal drawl, was the rudder keeping USS Anderson on course, steering its captain away from solipsism and ironic overload?

Owen Wilson has always been taken lightly. The shaggy blond hair, the slightly dazed stare, and his careless, surfer-dude mien make him easy to underestimate, both in terms of acting talent and brains. Yet, there's something wolfish about Wilson, a sharp-edged intelligence gleaming underneath the chilled-out Texas veneer. For a recent example of Wilson's verbal counterpunching, see the letter he wrote to The New Yorker in response to a takedown of Ben Stiller. [Owen Wilson is a GENIUS - PD]

It's not surprising that so little is known about him as a writer. Even while the Anderson/Wilson writing partnership was extant, it was mysterious. Barry Mendel, a producer of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, told a reporter, "Frankly, I have never seen them working together." Luke Wilson, who lived with his brother and Anderson in Los Angeles, and who appeared in all three Anderson-Wilson films, once said, "They're like one of those couples that you wonder, 'Are they really together?' It was kind of a closed-door affair sometimes. I get the feeling they both toss out names, ideas, fragments. But I couldn't tell you. And if I can't, I think probably nobody can."

But there are clues. The Criterion Collection DVDs of Rushmore, Tenenbaums, and the recently released The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou contain revealing audio commentaries, especially Rushmore's. Both Anderson and Wilson—neither of whom went to film school—come off as formidably conversant in cinema, Blockbuster autodidacts for whom a camera angle or line of script conjures up a stream of movie references. And both men are appealingly generous but unshowy with their knowledge, demonstrating copious wit and insight and sensitivity. Of course, we've long been told all this about Anderson, but it comes as a surprise how much it's equally the case for Wilson.

Ben Stiller once described Owen Wilson as having "a library in his head," and hearing his Rushmore commentary bears that out. He calls Max Fisher a "James Gatz" figure, which is the kind of Great Gatsby reference dropped by people who have actually spent time with the book. But for the most part, Wilson's references are cinematic, not literary. Unlike Anderson, whose film vocabulary is impressive but top-heavy with auteurs—Jean Renoir, Truffaut, Michael Powell—Owen Wilson draws on the rich mine of the American middlebrow. When Max, facing expulsion from Rushmore Academy, asks his headmaster: "Can you get me off the hook? You know, for old times sake?" Wilson points out that it's a Godfather reference. When Max, alone in a classroom with his love object, the beautiful young teacher Ms. Cross, gets up, mid-conversation, to stick a pencil into an electric sharpener, Wilson recalls a moment in Terms of Endearment when Jack Nicholson, driving in a convertible across the beach, runs his fingers through Shirley MacLaine's hair and shouts, (according to Wilson): "Wind is in the hair, lead is in the pencil!"

But the most telling moment in the Rushmore commentary comes later, during a long, panning group montage shot—a Wes Anderson trademark—that segues into a scene of an angry and frustrated Max finally confronting a just as angry and frustrated Ms. Cross, who finally tells Max off:

Ms. Cross: "Do you think we're going to have sex?"

Max: "That's kinda a cheap way to put it."

Ms. Cross: "Not if you ever f----d before, it isn't."

The first voice, commenting on the group montage, belongs to Anderson:

"There's a storybook feeling, something about trying to create these insular worlds in these movies. I don't know exactly why we're doing this, but …"

Then, cut to the classroom scene, where we hear Owen Wilson in the background. "In Bottle Rocket and Rushmore there's an innocence to the characters," Wilson says. "This scene feels very real in a movie that in a lot of places seems sort of dreamy. This scene has a cringe factor to it because the movie has an innocent feel and this sort of breaks through that. It makes you uncomfortable, which is appropriate because it has to puncture Max's make-believe world."

Telling lines, and, one can't help suspect, somehow indicative of the larger system of checks and balances in the Anderson/Wilson partnership.

Wes Anderson's new screenwriting partner is Noah Baumbach, the youngish filmmaker behind the slight but sharp indie films Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy. Life Aquatic, the first film he co-wrote with Anderson, doesn't bode well for their creative duet, and the two are working on another script, for a movie based on the Roald Dahl children's book The Fantastic Mr. Fox. In a clubby touch, Baumbach and Anderson conduct the DVD commentary for Life Aquatic over dinner at Bar Pitti, a hip restaurant in Greenwich Village. Baumbach's first movie reference is to Fellini's 8 1/2—part of the canon, of course, but not as much of a gut-punch as Terms of Endearment.

One of the good things about old friends is they never tend to be that impressed with you, because they knew you way back when. Judging from the DVD commentary, Baumbach seems a little in awe of Anderson, his superstar director pal, or at least more inclined to second Anderson's vision than to challenge it, as Wilson had seemed to. You're left thinking that the Anderson-Baumbach partnership is not letting much new air into Wes Anderson's world.

Wilson, for his part, seems to be the one who dropped out of the writing partnership with Anderson. Wilson's acting career took off, and time became scarce. He told a reporter a couple of years ago that he preferred acting to writing because it was more social and spontaneous—you could always improvise lines in the moment; whereas to him, writing a script felt like holing away on a term paper. Fair enough. (Most writers, when confronted with the same choice, would follow Wilson's lead in a finger snap, if only they could.) And Wilson's improv approach to comic filmmaking—an approach shared by his coterie of pals (Stiller, Ferrell, Vaughn, et al.)—has yielded some gems. The best line in Wedding Crashers, hands down—"Scientists say we only use 10 percent of our brains, but I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts"—was reportedly a Wilson original.

And the Wilson-Anderson writing collaboration didn't always sound easy. Wes Anderson once described the producer James L. Brooks' role during the writing and revising of the Bottle Rocket script as partly "refereeing our head-butting matches, Owen's and mine." Brooks put it this way, "Wes is very opinionated and very stubborn. And Owen, who does not think the same way as Wes, is also stubborn." Just as you can't blame Lennon and McCartney for going their own ways, neither can you begrudge Wilson and Anderson. But for those for whom watching USS Anderson's first three movies was like, for another generation, hearing Sgt. Pepper's for the first time, Owen Wilson's shore leave can only dishearten.

This is probably my favorite dialogue of the film:

Eleanor Zissou: Your cat's dead.
Steve Zissou: What? Which one?
Eleanor Zissou: Marmalade. I'm sorry.
[lighting cigarette]
Steve Zissou: What happened?
Eleanor Zissou: A rattlesnake bit it in the throat.
Steve Zissou: [pause] Goddammit, Elanor, why do have to say it like that? You couldn't try to break it a little bit nicer?

Anjelica Huston's deadpan delivery is fucking comedic gold.

Honestly, this is a pretty good summary of my feelings on this film. I enjoyed it, but I haven't revisited it since the first time I watched it, and I really like the Royal Tenenbaums. Maybe I'll check it out again soon.

hahaha good run there... the whole goddamn movie is deadpan delivery

You're obviously crazy.

I can't ever remember being able to relate to any of Anderson's characters. In addition, I don't like any of them.

go back to N&D fella!

Seriously though, I've never met anyone who is anything like any of Anderson's characters. I've never felt the way they feel. I've never even hated someone like them. They're just absurd for the sake of being absurd, and even in their absurdity, I don't find them illuminating any aspects of the human condition for me. They seem to take the human condition and turn it on its ear in a sometimes entertaining way. I feel no sympathy or especially empathy for these people though. They are completely detached from my reality. I feel more akin to a character from Lord of the Rings than I do to Wes Anderson's world.

if this is true, i might shat....

My favorite movie.

actually, i've heard a similar argument about WA's writing style and characters, and you're right, they are absurd for absurdity's sake... I think that's why i like them so much

i know i've posted this before, but in response to the O factor article.

At the beginning of the movie Steve's best friend is eaten by the shark while making the movie. This is clearly a reference to Owen wilson getting taken up in the world of Hollywood and leaving Wes high and dry. So he tries making a film without him and ends up finding Ned a young possible son who always looked up to steve, I see this as a reference to Noah Buhmbach the new writer he's working on. Then they go off after the shark, which one could argue is a big hit movie. Since Jaws was a film that set the standard for a blockbuster in Postmodern Hollywood. I think these autobiographical notes which probably came into the film subconsciously add depth and insight not only to the film, but also to wes anderson as a person which is worth looking for when watching this film.