I’ve seen Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel (Fox Searchlight, 3.7) twice now. (Here’s the rave review I filed from Berlin.) I’d love to see it a third time at tonight’s special members-only screening at Santa Monica’s Aero but I’m told there are no seats. I should have attended Monday’s screening of Rushmore, and in the bargain said hello to Matt Zoller Seitz, who’s been making the rounds to promote “The Wes Anderson Collection,” a four-and-a-half-pound, 336-page tribute & evaluation book. I’m hoping to lay my hands on a copy tomorrow or the next day.
Seitz first ran into Anderson and Owen Wilson at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, where their Bottle Rocket short had its debut. Seitz is the only journalist I know who goes back that far with Wes and Owen besides myself. I asked him earlier today about doing a phoner. Plenty to kick around here.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is definitely a step in the right direction for Anderson. It delivers a humanistic theme and partially liberates him from that hermetic Dalmation-mice style box he’s been operating out of for 15 years. But I still believe in a Wes Anderson remake of Jean Luc Godard‘s Weekend, which I had a dream about seven years ago and which I never forget (which is pretty unusual — how many times in life does a dream have such an impact that you’re still thinking about it years later?