No, read MY review of "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

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• Kurzleg says:

  March 7, 2014 at 2:43 pm

  “As much as “The Grand Budapest Hotel” takes on the aspect of a cine­mat­ic con­fec­tion, it does so to grapple with the very raw and, yes, real stuff of human­ity from an unusu­al but highly illu­min­at­ing angle.”
  I nev­er thought about “The Royal Tennenbaums” in these terms. Why does Anderson employ this approach seem­ingly over and over again? I think it’s to deny the “real” and “raw” that occurs of the power to define or debil­it­ate. In every Anderson film he acknow­ledges the real­ity of the these things and their impact without sur­ren­der­ing to them ultimately.

• bgn says:

  March 7, 2014 at 4:03 pm

  “But in terms of sheer bloody spec­tacle, “300: Rise of an Empire” gets a lot of mileage out of sheer venal spectacle.”
  Yes, but more import­ant, were there kitties?

• James Keepnews says:

  March 11, 2014 at 11:48 pm

  “…(300) looked as if it had been shot through lenses that had been smeared with dog feces pri­or to each take.”
  I’d always said 300 looked like it was being staged in Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, but you’re clearly far more on the money here. More mat­ter, less art.

• Oliver_C says:

  March 15, 2014 at 8:17 am

  A golden shower does fea­ture prom­in­ently in one of the Greek myths, but not *that* kind…

• Kurzleg says:

  March 18, 2014 at 9:03 am

  “As much as “The Grand Budapest Hotel” takes on the aspect of a cine­mat­ic con­fec­tion, it does so to grapple with the very raw and, yes, real stuff of human­ity from an unusu­al but highly illu­min­at­ing angle.”
  SPOILER ALERT
  Finally had an oppor­tun­ity to see TGBH and under­stand what you might have meant by this, Glenn. The whole “caper” aspect of the film ends up amount­ing to elab­or­ate and enter­tain­ing mis­dir­ec­tion. With all the threats to M. Gustave’s life through­out the film, it ends up being the attempt to main­tain “the illu­sion with remark­able grace” in the face of the gath­er­ing men­ace of that peri­od in his­tory that brings about his demise. I was sur­prised at how effect­ing that devel­op­ment was on me. It’s not at all what I expec­ted, and yet after the fact, it almost seemed inevitable.

• jbryant says:

  March 19, 2014 at 5:24 pm

  Glenn: Wasn’t sure where else to ask this, so – Have you heard about the film ver­sion of “The End of the Tour” that’s cur­rently in pro­duc­tion with Jason Segel as David Foster Wallace? Here’s a little art­icle about it (though they get the title wrong): http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/here-is-jason-segel-as-david-foster-wallace.html

• Don Lewis says:

  March 23, 2014 at 8:08 pm

  Great review, Glenn. Great movie too! I was hold­ing off on read­ing the Matt Zoller Seitz book on Anderson until I saw THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL but when I cracked it open the oth­er night, the Michael Chabon intro echoes your Nabakov com­ments. Or, yours echoes his. Anyway, Chabon said the same thing but in a dif­fer­ent way and that’s inter­est­ing as one would­n’t *neces­sar­ily” equate Wes Anderson and Vladmimir Nabokov, but it def­in­itely works.