Well, I don’t think “The Grand Budapest Hotel” was particularly “hipster” – while it had some of the Wes Anderson moments to it, it’s nice to see that he’s developing as a filmmaker and not just trying to make yet another version of “The Royal Tennenbaums” which a lot of his movies (like “The Darjeeling Limited”) seem to be.
I also don’t think “American Sniper” was all that pro-military. It wasn’t explicitly anti-war, true, but that’s not the same thing.
“Hipster” is just a lazy way of trying to impugn anything that has the trappings over-affectation. The word is typically levied in such a way as to reduce the merit of the object, idea, or person. Thus, artisanal beer-jam could be called hipster (if it is just generic jam with hops and a fancy label), or a person who insists on riding a fixed-gear bike even though they have a sizable hill to climb on their daily commute and end up pushing the bike, or any music with a Banjo for no good reason (it’s the new Glockenspiel! I still own both), and on and on.
Wes Anderson films, however, are not really Hipster. They have a carefully considered and consistent design ethic that exists to support strong character-driven narratives. One can say they don’t like his work as much as others, but falling back on the invocation of “hipster” as a pejorative label is, as I said, just lazy.
Correct! The proper pejorative label to use when discussing Wes Anderson is “twee”.
Eh, I see more and more people using it as a “everyman’s artsy” descriptor too. A way to describe those things that are too different to be openly enjoyed with your stereotypical drinking buddies, but not so “pretentious” or snooty as higher artistry. A hipster is someone you could be related to that would still have a beer with you at Thanksgiving while the high artist wouldn’t come at all.
The parody in the posters is so lazy that I have trouble believing their creator actually watched a single one of these movies.
They thought a film that explicitly accentuates the deleterious effects of PTSD and the hellish nature of that particular theatre of war was a recruitment tactic?
I knew the armed forces were into their psychology but damn! Is that a quadruple bluff?
My beer lists keep everyone coming at Thanksgiving, thank you very much
I watched AmSnip, and while it’s a solid production, I have to say that it is a pro-war movie (not surprising considering the director’s politics). I would have really preferred about 45 minutes less war and 45 minutes covering Kyle’s long and difficult recovery from PTSD. Read The New Yorker’s article from a few years back, for example.
And one particular point – the movie makes it look like he kept going back to make sure he got the one SuperBadSniper, which is good thriller plotline but not a good representation of his internal motivation.
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