Politics can be a mean game no matter how big or small the arena. Take Netflix’s The Politician from Ryan Murphy, who dramatizes the lengths of which a very ambitious high school student (Ben Platt) goes through to run a perfect campaign to become president of the Associated Student Body. Of course, since this is a project from the man who has given us Glee, American Horror Story, and so much more, much of what we will see from the dark comedy will take place in a heightened sense of reality.

However, because we know how ruthless politics can be, there is a certain degree of believability. Check out the trailer here below.

Isle Of Dogs
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriter: Wes Anderson
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Kunichi Nomura, Ken Watanabe, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Nijiro Murakami, Harvey Keitel, Koyu Rankin, Liev Schreiber, Bob Balaban, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Akira Ito, Akira Takayama, F. Murray Abraham, Yojiro Noda, Mari Natsukim, Yoko Ono, Frank Wood
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Rated PG-13 | 101 Minutes
Release Date: March 23, 2018 (Limited); April 6, 2018 (Wide)

There is plenty of visually pleasing aesthetics to look at when seeing a film like Wes Anderson‘s Isle Of Dogs. The director’s latest stop-motion animation effort has all of his signature symmetrical, camera-panning style and deadpan humor. It also happens to be one of Anderson’s most politically charged films by addressing some very serious themes that affect us today. Unfortunately, none of that takes away from the fact that there is some appropriation going on, with the added white savior factor, and that the Japanese characters are playing supporting roles in a film set entirely in Japan.

Therein lies one of the greatest problems of this film. How much of it is Anderson paying homage to a culture by using the beautiful aesthetics and Akira Kurosawa inspirations, and how much of it is his signature being written over a culture? It’s the paradox that just keeps on giving. Check out my full review here below.

Stop-motion animation is a very taxing medium, but the pay off can be glorious if it is well-executed. Wes Anderson, the filmmaker known for quirky out of the box filmmaking, returns to stop-motion with Isle of Dogs. In the film, dogs are supposedly carriers of a disease and are all banished to a garbage dump known as Trash Island.

Now we are getting a closer look at how this film came to be from those who voice the characters in a newly released cast interviews featurette. The only thing is the cast is not speaking through their respective human forms, but through their cuddly canine characters. Quite a fun way to push a movie and get everyone interested. Check it out below.

Wes Anderson films are anything but conventional. He has a visual sense composed of flat cameras, snappy zooms, symmetrical compositions, hand-made art, and miniature feels, that give the film’s setting a sense of uniqueness. On top of that, he has a quirky and yet hypnotic soundtrack that often utilizes pop songs of the ’60s and ’70s. Then there is the dysfunctional family that takes center stage of the storytelling. And while all of that plays a huge role in his live-action films, Anderson has also dipped his hand into stop-motion animation. An animation medium where his skills can be put to good uses because of its use of practical hand made set pieces.

Which takes us to Isle of Dogs, Anderson’s latest directorial effort that uses stop-motion animation. And just wait until you hear who has lent their talents for the film. Check out the cast and trailer below.

Parents (Vestron Video Collector’s Series)
Blu-ray
Director: Bob Balaban
Screenwriter: Christopher Hawthorne
Cast: Randy Quaid, Mary Beth Hurt, Bryan Madorsky, Sandy Dennis
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rated R | 81 Minutes
Release Date: January 31, 2017

Directed by Bob Balaban (My Boyfriend’s Back), 1989’s Parents is a comedy about cannibalism against the backdrop of ’50s suburban America. Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt star as Nick and Lily Laemle who, along with their 10-year-old son Michael (Bryan Madorsky), chase the American Dream to a shiny new tract house in a quaint Massachusetts neighborhood.

Just a few weeks ago we saw Wes Anderson‘s holiday short/ad for H&M. So while it may have looked like Anderson took a long vacation, but the filmmaker has been hard at work. And he isn’t just releasing shorts.

We’ve known that he’s been putting together his next film, a stop-motion animated feature all about dogs on an island. Now we know who will star in the film as the director has announced the full cast and shooting location for Isle of Dogs. Check out the video announcement below.

The first trailer for The Monuments Men directed by and starring George Clooney has arrived. The film features Clooney leading a small squad of architects and artists into World War II battlefields to save, preserve, and steal pieces of culture that can otherwise be destroyed by the Nazis.

Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bob Balaban, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, and Hugh Bonneville will join Clooney on his fight to preserve history itself from destruction, and there is a chance you will get to see them shoot some Nazis. Based on the cast list alone, there is the potential to see these characters struggle through basic military training and figuring out how to handle a firing arm. Hit the jump to see the full trailer.

Moonrise Kingdom
Directed by Wes Anderson
Starring Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban and Harvey Keitel
Release Date: May 16, 2012

French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, a powerful influence in cinema and pop culture from the 1960s onward thanks to his radical films, depicted in some of his films the need for the adolescent or youth to maintain their autonomy in the process of society attempting to crush it and mold it for their own purposes. This is pure literary, but in cinema the right director can demonstrate explicitly the harsh tendencies of society.

In his newest film, Moonrise Kingdom, director Wes Anderson, with a script he co-wrote with Roman Coppola, is approaching that topic Godard had always wrestled with, and still is today. It is not easy to do, but with Anderson’s whimsy and vigorous style of direction, unerring in its constant infatuation with capturing perfection, we are able to witness two adolescents restlessly in love in a perfectly concocted world endure an environment that is stifling and stunting their growth.

Howl
Directed by Robert Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Starring James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, Bob Balaban, Jeff Daniels, Todd Rotondi, Mary-Louise Parker
UK Release date: February 25, 2011

16:10pm Screen 3 in the basement of the Cornerhouse, the missus and I alone in the dark, a screen no bigger than 15×10 feet, making this feel like a slideshow presentation and the film starts in greyscale, in a smoky basement cafe in 1955 San Fransisco…

In 1955, a 29-year-old unpublished poet realised the American Dream in a four-part poem called Howl, a poem that would become an obscene ode to the struggle of his displaced lost generation, post WWII when the creation of ‘teenager’ also created a whole slew of new problems for the new transition between child and man.

“What would my father think of Howl?” Ginsberg wondered, a typical notion of self examination and the constant need to prove to parents that, yes, you will find a job, even if it is not in their footsteps. Ginsberg would soon find out two years later in 1957 that it isn’t just what his father thinks, but the general public when the poem became infamous when his publisher was thrust into a court trial for the distribution of obscene materials.