Could we be clear on this? It's the writing. It's not like he is some whiz-bang camera nerd with super-fancy tracking shots. If it weren't for the amazingly well thought-out scenes and totally heartbreaking dialogue in "Rushmore," it would be kind of average, cinematically speaking. Even "The Royal Tennenbaums," which is not my favorite movie, is two thousand times better-written than 99% of the movies you can see in theaters these days.
And OK, he supports this writing with good filmmaking craft, of course, but the point of my rant here is that our appreciation of craft and visual style is fast supplanting our interest in story (probably 'cause reality is so much more crazy than fiction these days anyway) to the point where we praise Wes Anderson for the mystique of his technical filmmaking skill, when it's actually his writing skill that sets him apart from all the other filmmakers who take cool shots that become stupid movies.
Or maybe it just seems that way because I live in Los Angeles.
No comments:
Post a Comment