The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

[poliphilo]

The critics gave this one a hard time, but I thought I'd like it and I did.

It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but it keeps up a constant drizzle of tiny, small absurdities and sight gags. And of course it stars the great Bill Murray, who gets quieter and more mesmerisingly watchable with each succeeding film.

Wes Anderson (too many Andersons in Hollywood already!) is a great stylist. He creates zany, alternative universes, only a little off to the side of the one we all know and love. You could lose yourself in this one.

If Life Aquatic isn't eventually elevated to the status of cult classic I'll eat my patented Zissou diving helmet with special built in bunny aerial for the reception of music underwater.

Comments

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

i've never (i'm horribly ill-read, you know) read salinger, so i guess i missed that aspect of tenenbaums. but that is interesting to know. i should read more.

life aquatic seemed to me to be, in the context of wes anderson's other films, wholly UNoriginal-- a mismash of bottle rocket, rushmore, and the royal tenenbaums, like he went through a cafeteria of past plotlines and character quirks and picked out a sufficient quantity to make into a film. there didn't seem to be any reason for anything (i don't mean reason in a logical sense, but that nothing seemed earned)

as for the cold, perhaps it was the thought of all that ocean water, but i found the characters a lot less likeable than in any of his previous films--maybe because i didn't feel that they were genuinely developed?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My friend Judy bullied me into reading Franny and Zooey. I was glad she did. It's a very strange little book.

I haven't seen Rushmore. (Memo to self: must see Rushmore!) but it didn't strike me that he was stealing from himself. I just thought; this is his world, we've been here before and now we're seeing the underwater bit.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for any movie that has pirates in it!