Watching Everything the Oscars Nominated 01

As a challenge to myself, and because it would be really easy thanks to my internet provider, I've decided to watch most of everything nominated for the Academy Awards. It also helped that I've seen roughly 5 or so of what's there, and that a local film festival theatre is showing ALL the nominated shorts (both animated and live-action) in the upcoming week, so that'll be handy.

So tonight, I decided to try my hand at watching a film nominated for best screenwriting:

Moonrise Kingdom

Dir. Wes Anderson

It's the story of a boy and a girl who are roughly 12 or 13 living on a summer-camp/cottage island in 1965. They meet up, fall in love (as much as 12 year olds can), and decided to run away from their respective miserable living conditions, and adventures ensue.

Let me begin by saying that this is a Wes Anderson film and I don't understand Wes Anderson's humor - years ago friends sat me down to watch 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' (by Anderson) and I just didn't Get It (tm). The shots were great, the costumes wonderfully graphic, and the entire film looked like it was appealing. But it was lost on me. So for all intents I started watching this film while reading a book - I expected to pay half attention.

About 15 minutes into the film, I started actually paying attention. The characters were interesting, in a strange way. Yes, this film was about a 12 year old boy and girl falling in love and running away, and no, these two act nothing like actual 12 year olds, but instead like how 12 year olds think they're acting like when they are 12 and oh so mature and refined compared to their peers. Based only on the story summary and the poster, I could say the young boy looks a heck of a lot like Rushmore (another Wes Anderson film) but I haven't a real clue.

 The much more relate-able story is how the parents and adult characters act (which is to say, not nearly as refined as the young couple, and much more human and less a front) when faced with their daughter gone missing, and a boyscout in their charge run away from camp on a large and mostly unbuilt island. 

So screenwriting-wise, this works great. Cinematography-wise it looks lovely, and almost too put-together. Each opening shot looks like a storybook and being set in the 1960's the colors are bold while everything is under a sepia tone people like to think the 60's were always like before hippies and soft-filter came in in the 70s.

I enjoyed it. It's not taking my breath away, it's not changing my life, but I can say I saw it, and that's good enough for me, right now.