October 6, 2020

"The photographs in this book were taken by people I have never met, of places and things I have, almost without exception, never seen — but I must say: I intend to."

Said Wes Anderson, quoted in "When Life Looks Like a Wes Anderson Movie/An Instagram platform, now a book, documents real-life settings that look like frames from the director’s movies" (NYT).

Here's the Instagram page, for lots of cool photographs.

You can tell that the director's aesthetic has influenced many people to look at the world and see certain types of things and realize that they should be photographed and shared. Example:

20 comments:

rehajm said...

For me Wes Anderson sparks much joy. A not yet poisoned thing in a poisoned world...

rehajm said...

All the newly added covid/leftie signage has made the world look like the lobby of the Grand Budapest Hotel...

Fernandinande said...

Some of those pictures reminded me of the very strange movie "Vivarium.

Temujin said...

Wes Anderson's movies are always loved by the critics, but reach a consistent the level of disappointment to me. Maybe because his movies are always such unique stories, differently shot and acted- quirky is the word we often use. But all the quirk aside, I typically walk out thinking they fell short. The actual stories never hit as much as the quirkiness. And I never go back for a second viewing- which is the biggest tell to me.

I often confuse him with Paul Thomas Anderson who's movies I love. Both have very different approaches to telling a story. Anderson's is typically more...meaty.

Jack Klompus said...

Rushmore was good. Everything else not so much. Sri Lanka is beautiful.

Joe Smith said...

The countertop extending to the left saves this photo. Without it all would be centered and the photo wouldn't work as well.

Anderson is OK as a director but sometimes he tries too hard to be 'different.'

Look at how quirky I am...it seems forced.

tim in vermont said...

The Royal Tanenbaums is a good movie. I couldn’t finish Rushmore, and I am a fan of his. The Life Aquatic is awesome. Woody Harrelson called his movies “Just a little too precious” in one of his own movies, which is probably true, if you are one of the preciousness taste police.

mikee said...

There is infinite beauty in the world, just waiting patiently to be seen. Try to look for it all the time, your life will be better for doing so.

PM said...

Mr. Dead Center.

Anonymous said...

Owen Wilson doesn't get enough credit as a writer. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are all co-written by Wilson. He's way funnier than Anderson and their partnership was amazing. It's too bad they broke up. Anderson's art has suffered as a result. Now it's more fey than funny. And where did all the amazing music go?

daskol said...

Twee.

daskol said...

More twee than fey, I'd say. But agreed on Wilson.

TML said...

It's kinda cool that you just discovered this awesome IG account. Like Color Palette Cinema and Center Pivot Sprinkler, it makes you think for a bit about the picture. These are my favorite type of IG account.

Xmas said...

"Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is a nice movie. It loses steam after the "rescue" part of the story (I think that is the end of the second act, I can't remember for sure.)

His stop motion movies are pretty fun. "Mr. Fox" is an entertaining movie.

Ann Althouse said...

“ It's kinda cool that you just discovered...”

No. Didn’t just discover. Just thought the NYT article was a good occasion to flag it.

TML said...

Ahhhh...OK. Did you check out Color Palette Cinema? I find it oddly fascinating and soothing.

dustbunny said...

Thanks for posting this! His movies are wonderfully eccentric. I read that Angelica Huston says she often likes to keep some clothes from movies she is in but not the Royal Tanenbaums as her outfits were purposely made to be ill fitting and visually off.

Kay said...

I follow a lot of aesthetic blogs that post mundane photographs such as these, not always framed in the Anderson style, but still similarly beautiful. Never thought of Anderson as a forerunner for this sort of thing, but maybe so. There’s probably a few other directors too.

RobinGoodfellow said...

I limed Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but I can’t stand any of his other works. He has a style, but each movie is unique.

Maillard Reactionary said...

Looked at the pictures, didn't read the NYT article, as I have no clear understanding of who Wes Anderson is (and no desire to fix that). My favorite picture was the one from Portugal, labeled "Ascensor da Bica".

When I was briefly in photography school, a lifetime ago, the prevailing compositional aesthetic was to "confront the subject", i.e., photograph it straight-on, no angles, no cut-off corners, etc. It can work. It exploits the difference between the way the camera sees and the way we see. When one learns to see this way intentionally, and photograph that way, the camera can reveal essentially unseen things about the world that we miss because of our visual habits, e.g., geometrical and color relationships, random incongruities and poignancies, etc.

This was nothing new in the early '70s, by the way. See Walker Evans' work for a similar approach half a century earlier.

Still, many nice pictures, so thanks for the link.

Maybe Wes Anderson should blow the dust off his 35mm camera and put some film in it. You can still get that stuff, you know.