14th
Matt Zoller Seitz beautifully closes his five-part series on Wes Anderson, “The Substance of Style,” with an annotated video of The Royal Tenenbaums prologue. He makes some excellent, if at times obvious, points about how Wes Anderson synthesizes his influences into a style uniquely his own.
The focus on style does draw away from what makes Anderson truly unique and special (that all these “quirks” derive from deep emotional wellsprings of each fully realized character, giving his movies a sense of lived-in warmth and heart so lacking in the Age of Disaffected Irony), but it is great to see all of these touchstones collected in one place. Start at the beginning here or jump to the end.