Wes Anderson Month…In Retrospect

Well, it’s come and gone. It was a lot of fun and also a lot of work, but Wes Anderson Month is over. When I first announced this project, I pretty much expected to fail at some point and not have time to write everything I hoped to write.

Shocking the hell out of me, I actually delivered on every one of my promised features, and even had the chance to post a few more.

We had…
– Friday Musical Interludes of “Here Comes My Baby” by Cat Stevens (Rushmore), “30 Century Man” by Scott Walker (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), “Les Champs-Élysées” by Joe Dassin (The Darjeeling Limited), “Let Her Dance” by The Bobby Fuller Four (Fantastic Mr. Fox), and “Zorro is Back” by Oliver Onions (Bottle Rocket).
– A Fun Deconstruction of the Moonrise Kingdom trailer.
– An Admittedly Biased look back at Wes Anderson’s films to date.
– A Revised Version of my 10 Most Affecting Wes Anderson Moments article.
– A Direct Response to reader David Black, who wondered whether or not Anderson’s obtrusive hallmarks might prevent his films from achieving greatness.
– …To Which Dave Responded with a defense of Fantastic Mr. Fox.
– We Compared the handling of cross-cultural romance between Bottle Rocket and The Darjeeling Limited, and had no difficulty determining which was more successful.
– We Spotlighted Anderson’s rightly adored coming-of-age tale Rushmore, and explored its hands and handiwork.
– We Deconstructed a Scene from the criminally under-appreciated The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, which we think makes us Blue Star Cadets by default. He’ll send us a red cap and a Speedo.
– And Finally we defended Anderson’s voice, and his desire to stay true to it. Some see it as a refusal to evolve. Whether or not that’s true, we’re perfectly happy where we are.

…alright, alright. I admit, I did not fulfill all of my promises. The month was meant to culminate in my review of Moonrise Kingdom, but — of course — it’s not playing anywhere near me. At all.

So thanks for sticking with me through this, and for being on-hand to revel in my inevitable disappointment.

We’ll resume regular noiseless chattering immediately.

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