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Thread: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)

  1. #1
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)

    Last edited by Henry Gale; 03-09-2018 at 04:16 PM.
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  2. #2
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    A treasure trove of imagination, charm, morbid humour, beautifully played text jokes, and a lot of heart in between.

    I never warmed to Fantastic Mr. Fox and found it too self-aware, smug and with unevenly, thickly layered artifice to it that was overall impenetrable to me in my one viewing of it back in 2009, and as a result it unfortunately remains my least favourite Anderson film. But the amount that Isle of Dogs worked for me, especially in it leaving me considering how highly I'd rank it in Anderson's oeuvre, has now left me reconsidering and keen to revisit Fox. Because Dogs is just oh so good.

    It's gorgeous, hilarious, sneakily poignant and sometimes just outright wild in its impulses. So, you know, just one of the most quietly refined and talented directors of modern times reminding you how good he is, shushing all the goofy parodic ideas about his perceived schtick and eccentricities by just making yet another excellent piece of film to add to his slowly astonishing filmography. No big deal.

    **** / 9.2
    Last edited by Henry Gale; 03-09-2018 at 04:59 AM.
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  3. #3
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    It probably won't because of the goddamn mouse house, but I hope this blows away A Wrinkle in Time at the box office once it opens wide.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  4. #4
    Here till the end MadMan's Avatar
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    This is my most anticipated film of 2018.
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    And everybody wants to be special here
    They call your name out loud and clear
    Here comes a regular
    Call out your name
    Here comes a regular
    Am I the only one here today?



  5. #5
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    It probably won't because of the goddamn mouse house, but I hope this blows away A Wrinkle in Time at the box office once it opens wide.
    I mean, I would love to dream similarly, but in terms of pursuing family audiences.. this is hard PG-13 arthouse fare that would've been R if it was live action. I can't imagine any marketing targeting kids. All its money will likely have to be made on Anderson's name alone.

    But then again Grand Budapest was his biggest ever (making $174 million worldwide), this is his first movie since, and Wrinkle could bomb and further scare Disney away from non-franchise movies, so who knooooows!
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  6. #6
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    It probably won't because of the goddamn mouse house, but I hope this blows away A Wrinkle in Time at the box office once it opens wide.
    A Wrinkle in Time is kinda bombing. There's hope for the future of humanity yet!
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  7. #7
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    I burst out laughing at the "staring: Zooms"

    Trying to find tickets for this. Apparently it's not opening until the 28th around here.

    Twitch / Youtube / Film Diary

    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  8. #8
    This is breathtaking in its visual detail and a delightfully told story. Having watched the video above, I chuckled as characters explained elaborate plans (twice!). I think we can give up any hope that Anderson will ever go outside his comfort zone. In fact, he seem increasingly more precious about his aesthetic with each successive film. With that expectation in mind, Isle of Dogs is definitely an upper echelon work in his total oeuvre and creative evolution from his most similar work, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'm not sure if it will play well for kids, but it's a darn good "Wes Anderson movie."
    letterboxd.

    A Star is Born (2018) **1/2
    Unforgiven (1992) ***1/2
    The Sisters Brothers (2018) **
    Crazy Rich Asians (2018) ***
    The Informant! (2009) ***1/2
    BlacKkKlansman (2018) ***1/2
    Sorry to Bother You (2018) **1/2
    Eighth Grade (2018) ***
    Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018) ***
    Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018) **1/2

  9. #9
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    The only cringey bit is Greta Gerwig's white exchange student brow beating every Japanese person around her into revolution. I'd give Anderson the benefit of the doubt and say her character could be a satire of the "worldly" white social justice warrior type, but it does thread a very fine needle. Other than that, the accusations of "cultural appropriation" here seem as silly as criticizing Wong Kar Wai for "culturally appropriating" Americana in My Blueberry Nights or the infinite number of Europeans that have made movies in America. Film is a global medium, people. Plus it's co-written by a Japanese guy (Japanese-Japanese not Japanese-American). Also, that criticism feels misguided considering the film itself is quite obviously a fable about immigration and Otherness.

    But, yeah, it's a beautiful and heartfelt piece of work.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  10. #10
    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    The only cringey bit is Greta Gerwig's white exchange student brow beating every Japanese person around her into revolution. I'd give Anderson the benefit of the doubt and say her character could be a satire of the "worldly" white social justice warrior type, but it does thread a very fine needle. Other than that, the accusations of "cultural appropriation" here seem as silly as criticizing Wong Kar Wai for "culturally appropriating" Americana in My Blueberry Nights or the infinite number of Europeans that have made movies in America. Film is a global medium, people. Plus it's co-written by a Japanese guy (Japanese-Japanese not Japanese-American). Also, that criticism feels misguided considering the film itself is quite obviously a fable about immigration and Otherness.
    Except, obviously, there's an asymmetrical relationship between the West and Asia that makes claiming it's all equally cultural appropriation as much a denial of basic reality as tweeting "All lives matter." That doesn't necessarily make Isle of Dogs a bad film (although for me it's probably Anderson's weakest since The Darjeeling Limited, coincidentally his previous Orientalist adventure), and I'm as sick to death as the next person of braindead liberal pundits who see the task of evaluation as simply sorting cultural artefacts into one of two categories--good, progressive ones and bad, conservative ones, as if there were no qualitative difference between, say, Dostoevsky and the Roseanne reboot, except that the latter is infinitely more important because "real" Americans are watching it--but that does not mean one should not be sensitive to the issue.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  11. #11
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    Except, obviously, there's an asymmetrical relationship between the West and Asia that makes claiming it's all equally cultural appropriation as much a denial of basic reality as tweeting "All lives matter."
    I don't know what metrics you are using. If you are talking about population, China and India have the US beat. If you are using GDP than, yes, US is #1 for now (with China coming up strong at #2, Japan being #3 and India at #7). The "cultural appropriation" is a bit more nebulous, although certainly Hollywood has a foothold on the world's entertainment, much more than other countries (although it should be noted that aside from Black Panther, the #2 and #3 worldwide top grossing 2018 movies are Chinese). I don't think I need to tell you this, but Hollywood has always had foreign filmmakers, since the only thing they care about is $$$. Is John Woo "appropriating" American culture when he makes Face/Off? Was Fritz Lang when he came to Hollywood to make the very American "crime" pictures (later dubbed 'film noir'). So no, I'm not especially concerned about the "cultural appropriation" of Wes Anderson working with a Japanese screenwriter to produce an animated film about talking dogs in Japan.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  12. #12
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    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    Plus it's co-written by a Japanese guy (Japanese-Japanese not Japanese-American).
    There's a 90% chance of me loving this film, but I never get this kind of defense, even back as recently as some pointing out Japanese people being fine with the Ghost in the Shell remake as proof that it's ok. The majority of the Isle of Dogs' prominent (and mostly measured) takes about this, which have gotten some aggressive pushbacks against them personally, have been from Asian American critics, which sound about right.
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  13. #13
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    I gotta admit, when I first saw it, I didn't even think of Gerwig's exchange student as necessarily being white, since despite her blonde hair (which, even then, other characters had coloured and uniquely styled hair), the fact that her facial design reads as no more "western" than any of the other Japanese characters, and that her English is delivered in the same non-regionally-pegged American English as Frances McDormand's translator or any of the speaking dogs, my mind assumed she could've just as easily been mixed race or from a partially Asian-American family. (Also am I crazy in remembering a line of her saying she's living in Japan with her aunt? I mean she later speaks to her in Japanese, but I did see a lot of movies that week so maybe those types of details might have blended together between other things.) Looking online now, her character's last name apparently being Walker doesn't help my optimistic assumptions here.

    So yeah, the fact that she's maybe the one and only white American character is a little icky, but I feel like Atari is much more of the audience's main human connection throughout the story and she's meant to just easily propel us through the takedown of the governmental forces on the other side of the story. And as it generally stands in symmetrical storytelling terms, I do like the balance of someone who's speaks the language of the majority of the human characters to sneak onto the island to attempt to save the dogs (or at least his own) and destroy the structures there, and then on the other side you have a human who speaks the language of the dogs (as we hear them) to find their way into a situation to ignite a revolution and uprise against the oppressive in their land. But yeah, I wish it didn't have the capacity of reading like a vital white saviour B-story because she is (and I will still asterisk this by saying "potentially" because I still feel there is a layer of ambiguity in animation as far as design, and particularly her's here) the only white character, even if that didn't occur to me until others started to point her out at such.

    And it kinda sucks because I really like a lot of Tracy's scenes and especially the comedy that comes from a lot of the characters for the protest movement she embarks on. It's admittedly tricky, though.
    Last 11 things I really enjoyed:

    Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
    Safe (Haynes, 1995)
    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
    Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
    Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
    What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
    Diva (Beineix, 1981)
    Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
    The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
    Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
    Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

  14. #14
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Peng (view post)
    There's a 90% chance of me loving this film, but I never get this kind of defense, even back as recently as some pointing out Japanese people being fine with the Ghost in the Shell remake as proof that it's ok. The majority of the Isle of Dogs' prominent (and mostly measured) takes about this, which have gotten some aggressive pushbacks against them personally, have been from Asian American critics, which sound about right.
    It's because Japanese people know more about Japan than 2nd or 3rd generation Japanese-Americans. It's like how certain Irish-Americans get obsessed about all things Irish, meanwhile actual Irish people merely shrug their shoulders and are like "meh, whatever."
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  15. #15
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    Many of us who live in mostly homogenous Asian countries aren't the best sources (by which I don't mean to dismiss us entirely though) to come for racial/cultural takes, especially those that concern directly between western and eastern, and we are also not affected in our own country by how a part of one's identity is presented on screen to a diverse audience (and that's why I stress the importance of listening to Asian American voices). I can tell all about Thai stuff to an American director for them to use but that versimiltude doesn't tell you anything about the approach that it will be used in the director's story. Being correct about a culture sometimes doesn't mean the same as telling that culture well.
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  16. #16
    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    I don't know what metrics you are using. If you are talking about population, China and India have the US beat. If you are using GDP than, yes, US is #1 for now (with China coming up strong at #2, Japan being #3 and India at #7). The "cultural appropriation" is a bit more nebulous, although certainly Hollywood has a foothold on the world's entertainment, much more than other countries (although it should be noted that aside from Black Panther, the #2 and #3 worldwide top grossing 2018 movies are Chinese). I don't think I need to tell you this, but Hollywood has always had foreign filmmakers, since the only thing they care about is $$$. Is John Woo "appropriating" American culture when he makes Face/Off? Was Fritz Lang when he came to Hollywood to make the very American "crime" pictures (later dubbed 'film noir'). So no, I'm not especially concerned about the "cultural appropriation" of Wes Anderson working with a Japanese screenwriter to produce an animated film about talking dogs in Japan.
    The metric I'm using is political and economic power, not population or box office receipts; that is to say, the United States clearly has more influence over Japan than Japan has over the United States (as has been the case since the forcible opening of Japan by the American navy in 1853). To claim that there's no difference between, say, Kitano Takeshi making a film in Los Angeles and Wes Anderson making a film about Japan (with or without the input of any local people), is to be willfully ignorant of history. After all, as Edward Said wrote, "The Orient was almost a European invention," and whatever its merits, Anderson's film belongs to a long tradition of artworks by Westerners inventing and reinventing a semi-mythical East. Indeed, the fact that Anderson uses Japan (or "Japan") as a colourful backdrop to an animated film about talking dogs only makes his project more dubious, not less.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  17. #17
    This article about the reception of Clint Eastwood's films in Japan is perhaps relevant to the current discussion.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  18. #18
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    This article about the reception of Clint Eastwood's films in Japan is perhaps relevant to the current discussion.
    The French love him too. Check out Cahiers du cinema's top ten lists from the 90s-00s.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  19. #19
    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    The French love him too. Check out Cahiers du cinema's top ten lists from the 90s-00s.
    That's certainly true, but I think the way Japanese reviewers (or at least male Japanese reviewers of a certain age) faun over Eastwood's every film (even the ones French reviewers describe as shipwrecks), needs to be understood as a symptom of the asymmetric power relationship between the two countries.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  20. #20
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    That's certainly true, but I think the way Japanese reviewers (or at least male Japanese reviewers of a certain age) faun over Eastwood's every film (even the ones French reviewers describe as shipwrecks), needs to be understood as a symptom of the asymmetric power relationship between the two countries.
    Using that as a metric of "asymmetric power relationship" is as absurd as me citing some American film dweeb fawning over Miyazaki or Kurosawa or Miike as "proof" of an "asymmetric power relationship" of Japan over the United States.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  21. #21
    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    Using that as a metric of "asymmetric power relationship" is as absurd as me citing some American film dweeb fawning over Miyazaki or Kurosawa or Miike as "proof" of an "asymmetric power relationship" of Japan over the United States.
    Except I'm not using it as a metric to prove the existence of an asymmetric power relation between the US and Japan; I'm using the fact of an asymmetric relationship which has existed for over 150 years (and therefore surely doesn't need to be proven) as an explanation for the reception of Eastwood's films in Japan. That is to say, if you accept the premise that, for a certain generation of Japanese film reviewer, Clint Eastwood is America, the praise his films get there kinda makes sense.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  22. #22
    Also possibly relevant to this discussion is Daisuke Miyao's fascinating book on Sessue Hayakawa, which touches on the power relationship between the two countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  23. #23
    Cinematographer Mal's Avatar
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    its alright. lotta... "choices" by Anderson in this one. But the core story of the doggies is pretty great despite that. Really loved the voice work in this.

  24. #24
    The core story about the relationship between dog and master, dog and self, and dog and dog is really lovely and brought me to tears, in no small part due to exquisite framing and incredible animation. Cranston's performance as Chief is a great middle-aged Anderson lead. The incredibly cartoonish villainy failed to engage or entertain me all that much and I found the fantasy Japan-like space more baffling and distracting (and somewhat troubling) than inspiring or thrilling. The film feels like it has two distinct halves and they never quite make the case for how well they go together. Ultimately, a lot of it left me cold, but there's a warmth in the center that I admired very much. I'm interested to see how a rewatch treats this contrast for me.

    Please note that the above paragraph is more or less an overly verbose rephrase of what Zac Efron said right above me.

    This and Fantastic Mr. Fox are by far my least favorite Andersons. And I'm pretty confident saying Anderson is my favorite American director of his generation.

  25. #25
    This piece by Alison Willmore does an excellent job of unpacking the power and fantasy of the orientalism in Isle of Dogs and American filmmaking in general: "Orientalism Is Alive And Well In American Cinema." It's about

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