Wes Anderson

When I first watched a Wes Anderson movie, it was “The Grand Budapest Hotel” because his movie color is very attractive to me. I chose the three movies “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” to compare to each other. While comparing his movies, I found out the character of his movies, so I will talk about color, symmetrical and center composition of shots, typography, characters, and slow motion endings.

Why do Wes Anderson movies make me happy and look so pretty? The answer is color. Most of the color in his movies is made by pastel tone that makes it look dreamy or inside a fairy tale book. Using blurry color, the director makes nostalgia for the past. I cannot tell the exact century of the color scheme, but this kind of color of pastel has a retro feeling. His color palette is very important in his movies with a fantastic shade of color and space, the audience loses the sense of time in his movies. His color schemes are different depending on the background in the movie. For example, “Moonrise Kingdom,” has a lot of green color because it has lots of forests and mountains.

In his movies, many scenes have a centered and symmetrical composition. Placing the character in the center of a room is a little uncomfortable to some people but it is very helpful to getting the audience to concentrate. The flat composition can seem boring but Wes Anderson overcomes this by color and a central structure. I really like the symmetrical shot with pastel tone color from his movies. It makes me comfortable.

He usually uses “Futura” font on the movie credits and property because this font is not bound by the flow of the time. This font is a really basic font and shows geometrical beauty. The wide range of fonts gives interesting rhythm based on classic handwriting. I think this font goes really well with the style of the movie because you cannot assess time in his movies. 

He likes to use dry humor and describe many people with flaws. It is also a defect among the wealthy and working-class sectors. The characters in his films were not perfect, but seemed to reflect  his childhood days when he was not constantly receiving a sense of togetherness. However, if the movie character has normal and universal ideals they will be really flat and not fun. The character who has flaws is more charming. In his interview, when he was turing 8 years old, his parents got divorced, and that moment was most crucial in his life. 

All of his movie endings are in slow motion except for “Darjeeling Limited.” I feel like while watching his movies  you are riding a roller coaster repeatedly, really fast, and then stop landing, and the ending is like slow and cool down moments. 

I am always inspired from his movies. The color and symmetrical composition is really beautiful and always attractive to me. For this comparison of his three movies, I learned many thing from him and his ideas. I need to watch all of his movies. 

Class Discussion: Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch

Character similarity

Tone of this movie

point of view

theme

Dead man, Mystery Train, Down by Law

• In the movie characters all travel
• I feel all of the movie character and landscape have emptiness, even the movie shows city it doesn’t look like city no people not busy. 
• Most of the script is poetic
• In this movie, he usually represent the international person’s point of view how they see American. He like to use unfamiliar point of view. He like to show unfamiliar America, so use international actor, different language, and different race.
• Focus on poverty 
• The character come from a different place and they survive in different area 
• he push being uncomfortable setting the characters like even no privacy and not filter some scene
• All three characters have fantasy of what they want and expect in life, but reality is totally different. 
• Through the all of the character’s point of view is what Jim Jarmusch felt in America. 
• Music is very important. 

Interview with a Vampire

The first fantasy book about vampires I read was Twilight. In the book the description of a vampire is strong, beautiful, immortal life, never old, and hates sunlight. Those things are enough to make a romanticized vampire. By the way, it was a very different description than I had read first in a vampire history book. The original book was about vampires being monsters that eat human’s blood, and are dark, white, and look creepy.

The movie of “Interview with a Vampire” is dark and shows a vampire’s life. First, it seems like having a great life because they never grow old  and have an immortal life. Honestly, it is not because they have to eat live human blood as their food. Also, they cannot stay in one place as long they want because people will know their identity, and never growing old means vampires  cannot grow up. In the movie, Claudia is a young girl who turns into a vampire at a young age. Her actual age is over 50 so she always wants to grow up but she cannot. People associate the word vampire with a cool and great life but the reality is a lonely and cruel life. 

I love the “Interview with a Vampire” movie  because the costuming associated with the time period is really attractive to me, as well as the beauty of the vampires. It is enough to show a vampire’s life and the tone and mood is also perfectly matched. If I re-create “Interview with a Vampire,” I will do a more modern feel to match the current day which people can understand more. I would like to keep the mood dark and dreamlike to support the mystery around vampires. I would also make the ending happier because I think that the audience would like that more. The vampires are described as very powerful, but they are lonely, so I feel pity for them. I think that letting the vampire Lestat have a family of vampires would help make a happier ending. I would like to emphasize his struggles in creating a family because it shows a unusual part of a vampire’s life.

Goose Father

Goose Father by Krys Lee

Short Story Turned Into Visual Scenes

Who: Gilhou and Wuseong

Where: outskirts of Seoul, South Korea

When: 1990

• Scene of inside condominium located in Seoul, South Korea; urban area
• New tenant, Wuseong, sitting on doormat with suitcases and goose
• Close up shot of goose with a birthmark on the cheek
• Gilhou; main character, welcomes new tenant inside the space
• Visuals of family pictures everywhere
• Goose is kept on the balcony with the garden
• Next morning, tenant cooks traditional Korean breakfast
• Scene talking about poetry

MONTH PASSES

• Scenes of the two getting to know each other; talking, reading, cooking
• Intimate conversation about the goose being Wuseong’s mom
• Gilhou gets frustrated at Wuseong’s silliness

     

     TWO MONTHS PASS

• The two visit the song room
• Scene of Wuseong singing romantic song to Gilhou
• Scene of Gilhou getting close to Wuseong then slaps him
• Wuseong runs out of the song room and goes missing
• Gilhou returns to the condo; thinks Wuseong’s in his room sleeping
• Gilhou goes to sleep

NEXT MORNING

• Gilhou notices Wuseong’s missing along with the goose
• Madly scavenges through his room
• Roams downtown looking for him frantically
• Eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner alone for the next couple days

COUPLE DAYS LATER

• Gilhou ends up going out with friends to a bar
• Brings drunk friend home
• Wuseong shows up with goose
• Gilhou confronts Wuseong about where he’s been
• Drunk friend tries to pluck goose
• House quiets down, everyone goes to sleep
• Gilhou wakes up in the middle of the night, there’s a full moon
• Goes out to the balcony where Wuseong is accompanied by a woman
• The woman has the same birthmark on her cheek as the goose did
• The goose has transformed into Wuseong’s mom
• Gilhou feels guilty for not believing Wuseong
• Gilhou realizes his love for Wuseong
•          Leans in for a kiss 

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson’s movie. I was inspired a lot after watching ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel.’ He makes beautiful compositions, dreamy moods, and color themes. After watching his movie, I just fell in love with what he created. Before taking literature class I did not know that Wes Anderson brought many elements from Stefan Zweig’s book which is ‘Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman.’ Both the novel and the movie have many similarities between them. 

The characters of the movie, the old lady Madam C and M. Gustave, are the same as from the novel. In the movie, Wes Anderson did not put as much information as the novel about the Madame C but the novel describes how Madame C and M. Gustave met and how she came to the hotel. Stefan Zweig wrote the novel from the narrator’s point of view, so the reader can understand and know about not only her thoughts and feelings but also details about the situation. Therefore, I can draw the picture in my brain and understand easily. Stefan’s storytelling seems like a diary. He describes the date very specifically, as well as what situation and people surround the characters at that time. Also, the character of Gustave is same as the novel and movie. He is still charming, attractive and nice to people. Also, the narrator seems like a young writer in ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel.’ 

There is a lot of similarity between novel and movie. Through reading the novel ‘Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman,’ I recognized many parts similar with movie and Wes Anderson was inspired a lot from this novel and created his own version of the story. Stefan Zweig wrote many great novels but his life was very tough because of Nazis’s pressure, and he chose death. I’m really thankful to Stefan Zweig for writing such great novels.