An online commonplace book
Found this one late. Will add to the original list of seven.
The decay of the body is irreversible. Death is non-negotiable. After that, what’s left? Stories. But not just the stories as the story tellers remember them and then recounted them to others. The stories that people adapt from other people’s stories which then are retold, remade, and handed down until only their essence remains.
Matt Zoller Seitz
All seven eight video essays adapted from the book: The Wes Anderson Collection.
There are few perfect books. The Wes Anderson Collection is one of them.
Enjoy.
Almost two decades after the production of Bottle Rocket he (Wes) speaks of the movie with great affection, as well he should. It’s a special movie. Audacious yet gentle. It’s got a loping rhythm that reminds me of what it’s like to stroll around Dallas in the early summer at dusk. Everything is kind of turning all blue. You can hear the cicadas whirring.
– Matt Zoller Seitz
There are few perfect movies. This is one of them.
– Matt Zoller Seitz
The Royal Tenebaums works because as hilarious as it sometimes is, in its heart it’s a drama rather than a comedy. And it’s not remotely kidding about the traumas that it shows us. There is a very specific darkness at the heart of this film, divorce. The bomb that detonates in the prologue.
– Matt Zoller Seitz
It feels lived in. Why? Maybe because it treats all of its characters as if they were real people. People whos dreams and fears actually matter.
– Matt Zoller Seitz
It was in the reign of George III that the the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now
Barry Lyndon
In all of these moments you’re aware that you’re seeing something that was made by people, and the movie is ok with that. It not trying to fool you. There’s nothing smooth about these stop motion animals. Wes is not taking his cues from Pixar here. He takes his cues from Willis O’Brien the stop motion animator who created King Kong. He takes his cues from Ray Harryhausen, who followed in Willis O’Brien’s footsteps. Jason and the Argonauts were a big one for Wes growing up.
The movie carries itself as a knockabout comedy-romance, a mere diversion, but it lingers in the mind, by communicating that the right choice is one based on empathy and attention and understanding. Not mindless obedience to ritual or an ostrich like evasion of unpleasant truths. The relationship between tradition and innovation. The old guard and the new. Is ongoing, never fully settled. Sam and Suzy’s ardor is funny because they aren’t fully grown yet, but it’s powerful because they’re doing almost everything else right. Each one is headstrong but not averse to bending if it will make the other person happy. It can be likened to a negotiation, or better yet a dance.
Matt Zoller Seitz
The decay of the body is irreversible. Death is non-negotiable. After that, what’s left? Stories. But not just the stories as the story tellers remember them and then recounted them to others. The stories that people adapt from other people’s stories which then are retold, remade, and handed down until only their essence remains.
Matt Zoller Seitz
MZS: How do you work out ideas for costumes before they’re sewn? Do you draw rough versions of them in a sketchbook and then have somebody do more elaborate illustrations when the ideas have settled a bit?
MC: On the other two movies I did with Wes, The Life Aquatic and the Darjeeling Limited, I applied traditional sketching methods to design the look of the characters. On this one, our illustrators used both Photoshop and traditional sketching to incorporate Wes’s and my own ideas. With Photoshop we could get very close to the actors’ likenesses, and then easily do variations and send them to Wes via e-mail. The actors were very pleased because they could relate easily to how their character would look. Having worked on two of Wes’s other movies, I had already worked with some of his “ensemble” actors and it was interesting to change them again to these other characters. Wes had decided that all the men in the movie would have moustaches or beards, save for Jopling and the nasty sergeant in the train. I loved this idea, and it is curios that hardly anyone notices this detail–but it gives a style to the men’s looks.
Zoller Seitz, Matt. The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel. New York: Abrams, 2015 (see page 89)
Costume design is an overlooked art form. When done well it’s hardly noticed, but adds to the world as a character. The 2017 American film Lady Bird is an excellent example. Anyone who grew up in 90s suburban America will recognize that movie and say yes! Yes! That’s exactly how a pre-teen leaving mass would dress 30 years ago.
As we explore different graphic design pieces, we can’t ignore the book page layout.
This introduction page from Matt Zoller Seitz‘s 2015 book The Grand Budapest Hotel is an excellent example of contrast and framing.
First the color contrast.
You have grandma’s pea soup green (hex code: 594f20ff) located in only two places on the page. In the 1,418 – Word lettering, and the W drop cap. The rest of font color is standardish black (hex code 0f100fff). It’s enough of a color contrast to guide the eye, but not distract the reader.
My favorite piece of the layout though, is the framing.
Designer Martin Venezky uses the word INTRODUCTION to lead your eye down the page while simultaneously framing in the first paragraph. He does this by breaking INTRODUCTION vertically at the C. Of course Martin may have made that choice for an entirely different reason, but that’s how I interpreted it.
Visually this book feels like your thumbing through a cast member’s exquisitely assembled film-shoot scrapbook.
It’s a true page turner in both prose and design.
Floodlights and Goalposts 