the Addison Recorder

Pop culture dispatches from the Great Lakes

  • About
    • Authors
      • Travis J. Cook
      • -J.
      • Meryl Williams
      • Karen Martin
      • Christopher Walsh
      • Christina Brandon
      • Alex Bean
      • Andrew Rostan
      • PK Sullivan
    • Round-Ups
    • Submit to the Recorder
  • Arts
    • Films
    • Television
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Games
    • Culinary Arts
  • Books
    • Books and Literature
    • Comics & Graphic Novels
  • Sports
    • Baseball
    • Basketball
    • Football
    • Hockey
    • Other Sports
  • Chicago
    • Events
    • History
    • Op/Ed
  • Podcasts
Pop culture dispatches from the Great Lakes

Wes Anderson

Mr. Rostan (and Mr. Bean) at the Movies Present the Special Oscar Nominations Edition: Magnificence and Dick Poop

January 16, 2015 by Andrew Rostan 6 Comments

Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on either current pictures or important movies from the past. Today he’s joined by fellow film student Alex Bean to opine on the 87th Academy Award nominations.

There's something wrong with this picture.

There’s something wrong with this picture…

[Read more…]

Posted in: Awards Season, Films Tagged: Birdman, Boyhood, Dick Poop, Oscars, Richard Linklater, Selma, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson, Whiplash, Women in Film

Our Own Special Place: Thoughts on Moonrise Kingdom

June 25, 2012 by Alex Bean Leave a Comment

I am incapable of neutral feelings when it comes to Wes Anderson.

Since the Recorder is a magazine devoted to opinions, that’s not going to get me in any trouble, but I wanted to throw it out there anyway. I lack objectivity in this piece because it’s about my thoughts on the new Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom. To make a long story short, I loved it to death, but where’s the fun in making a long story short?

I first encountered his films when I saw The Royal Tenenbaums with my aunt and uncle sometime during Christmas break my freshman year of high school. Tenenbaums is a big, grand movie, messy and alive with laughter, compassion, and deeply felt sadness. I was delighted and intrigued. My aunt and uncle hated it as much as I liked it. The next time I went to Hollywood Video (remember that place?) I checked out another film, Rushmore, by the same director-writer.

Over the course of the three-day rental, I watched Rushmore four times. First by myself in the basement on Friday night, again the next day with my 11-year-old sister who mostly found it baffling, and twice more on Sunday with and without the commentary from Anderson, his co-writer Owen Wilson, and the star Jason Schwartzman. By the time my dad drove the DVD back to the store on Sunday night I was hooked. Something in that little 90-minute tale about a lonely, weird high school boy’s unexpected connection with two equally lonely souls lit me on fire. Too wry and idiosyncratic to be mainstream, but funny in such unexpected ways and expressionistic that spoke to me in ways that art, literature, and religion never had. Rushmore was a tiny, beautiful world unto itself. It was made whole by Anderson’s devotion to detail and made worthwhile by its acknowledgement that life could be hard and dispiriting, but you should certainly come out the wiser.

 I scoured the internet for something, anything I could find about Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Anderson, or any other person or thing related to those films. This continued unabated for at least a year and a half, and had the inadvertent effect of throwing me headlong into the world of cinema. Since I was a devotee of Anderson’s work I tracked down the films that inspired him. I convinced my parents to let me rent The Graduate and Jules et Jim. When I saw those I turned around and found more movies related to them. I found that film was a vast, undiscovered country filled to the brim with the emotion and thoughtfulness that seemed in short order in my high school life. Cinema, and the cinema of Wes Anderson in particular, became a safe haven, where I found people who felt as broken and adrift as I sometimes did. Fast forward 10 years to today and, that still rings true. My obsession with cinema did not wane in the months or years after I first saw Rushmore. It grew exponentially into a full blown career path, and, well, here we are.

[Read more…]

Posted in: Films Tagged: Wes Anderson

Share

Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on Facebook
Facebook

Addison Recorder on Twitter

Addison Recorder
  • Andrew pays tribute to George Martin, producer without peer, and keyboard maestro Keith Emerson. https://t.co/I3N5iKiMXY 01:00:56 PM March 14, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • 90 minutes to #Oscars so one more time - Alex, Andrew, and Travis make their picks. https://t.co/X23YYQ4J3i 06:59:57 PM February 28, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • The annual Oscar Picks column is up! Alex, Andrew, and Travis tell the cold, hard truth about the nominees. https://t.co/X23YYPN7EI 01:21:01 PM February 26, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • T-minus two hours to the @TheGRAMMYs - more than enough time to revisit Andrew's Album of the Year recap. https://t.co/BhUdmb97Wi 05:59:46 PM February 15, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • Andrew previews the @musicboxtheatre 70mm Festival starting 2/19 and recommends some essential films! https://t.co/C2S6y3gkgq 01:04:12 PM February 12, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
@addisonrecorder

Recent Posts

  • The Smartest Guys in the Room: Remembering George Martin and Keith Emerson
  • Oscar Picks 2016
  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: 70 Millimeters of Sheer Adventure
  • The Claustrophobic Folklore of The Witch
  • 2666 at the Goodman Theater

Archives

Follow Us!

Follow @addisonrecorder

Recent Comments

  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: 70 Millimeters of Sheer Adventure on Alex and Andrew Debate the Sight & Sound List: Part One
  • The Claustrophobic Folklore of The Witch on The Horror of Metaphor in It Follows
  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Catching Up With Oscar on Our Month in Pop Culture: May 2015
  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Catching Up With Oscar on Oscar Nomination Reactions – 2016
  • War Damn Peter on Celebrating 50 Years of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 the Addison Recorder.

Church WordPress Theme by themehall.com