Both of the trailers that preceded the screening I attended of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted featured burps as punchlines. Like, each one built to and then peaked with a bug-eyed animated creature’s belch. After the first burp the little kids a few rows ahead of me erupted in jubilant, little kid laughter; the second was met with bored silence. If even your short-limbed target audience doesn’t like being played for a chump, how to keep them entertained across two previews, much less two sequels?
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A week and a half after its world premiere kicked off the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom arrives Stateside this weekend in limited release. Starring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, acting novices Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward steal the show kids on the cusp of their teens who fall in love on an island off New England in 1965. To stay together, the couple make a pact to make a dash for the wilderness, but the authorities are on their trail.
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Whenever I throw away one of those large round plastic lids from an orange-juice jug, in my head I hear my mother saying, as she would have said to my 8-year-old self, “That would make a great table-top for a doll’s house.” As an adult I don’t have a dollhouse, but I still have a hard time throwing away those orange-juice lids; the mentality dies hard. So why — with one luminous exception — can’t I love the movies of Wes Anderson, the most dollhousey of all filmmakers? Why, specifically, can’t I love Moonrise Kingdom, a sweet-natured picture set in 1965 on a mythical New Englandy island, in which two oddball kids run away together and pledge undying love?
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You've seen the trailer. You've parsed the poster. Now study in the stern countenances awaiting you in Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson's Cannes-opening reverie for which a new "vintage team photo" is making the rounds.
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It is called Moonrise Kingdom and I have nothing to really say about it except that I'm somewhat intrigued by Anderson's discovery of the handheld camera and the unusual (for Anderson, anyway) 1.85:1 aspect ratio and that I wish it were Meryl Streep with that bullhorn instead of Frances McDormand; she was so infectious in Fantastic Mr. Fox and I want to see her and Anderson collaborate in live-action. And... and... Cool treehouse? I don't know. Your turn.
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