{"id":6765,"date":"2018-03-30T19:53:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T23:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=6765"},"modified":"2018-03-30T19:56:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T23:56:32","slug":"wes-anderson-isle-of-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/03\/30\/wes-anderson-isle-of-dogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Anderson\u2019s \u2018Isle Of Dogs\u2019 Is A Funny, Melancholy Cartoon About Wounded People Fearing What They\u2019ll Do If They Let Anyone Get Close Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A \u201cdog flu\u201d is rampant among the canines in the Japanese city of Megasaki. Mayor Kobayashi, leader of a dynasty of inveterate cat-lovers, orders all the dogs banished to Trash Island\u2014beginning with his family\u2019s dog, Spots. Well, actually the dog of his orphaned nephew, Atari. The 12-year-old boy absconds with a propeller plane and crashes it on the \u201cexile colony,\u201d the only person brave\u2014or foolish\u2014enough to try to recover his canine friend.<\/p>\n<p>So begins director Wes Anderson\u2019s great new film \u201cIsle of Dogs\u201d (sounds like \u201cI love dogs\u201d if you say it aloud), an epic stop-motion puppet animated adventure. The setup can bring to mind our present political moment of strongmen (or wannabe strongmen) and bigotry and deportations and refugees. Though those subjects rest mainly in the background. In the foreground, this is another of Anderson\u2019s melancholy fables of bad dads and their sons who stumble along trying to piece back together their broken hearts.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dt__kig8PVU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Let\u2019s stipulate that if you\u2019re not a fan of the way Anderson collages together references and influences into rococo Joseph Cornell dream-box nostalgia extravaganzas this film will not change your mind. If you are a fan, you\u2019ll want to nominate this confection for Oscars. It\u2019s a moving and funny film that\u2019s also entertaining to little kids.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cIsle of Dogs,\u201d a pack of five scruffy misfit mutts (voiced by Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum and Bryan Cranston) find the boy. \u201cAre we eating him or is this a rescue?\u201d former little league mascot Boss (Murray) asks.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a rescue. So instead of continuing to squabble over trash bags of rotting food, they set off on a \u201cDirty Dozen\u201d\/\u201cSeven Samurai\u201d journey across the post-apocalyptic island\u2014strewn with references to \u201cGodzilla\u201d as well as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. They set off to help Atari track down his lost dog\u2014if Spots is still alive.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2Lxqzem01IU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anderson conceived \u201cIsle of Dogs\u201d with Kunichi Nomura (who voices the mayor), Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman. The dogs speak English and the Japanese characters speak Japanese, but somehow the film doesn\u2019t feel very diverse. Some Japanese-speakers have criticized Anderson\u2019s references as stereotypes and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/movies\/la-et-mn-isle-of-dogs-review-20180321-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Japanese dialogue for being simplistic<\/a>. But you don\u2019t have to speak Japanese to sense the problem. At the center of the cast\u2014an excellent cast\u2014is a group of older white dudes. Female characters are sidekicks, mates, consciences, like the sexy showdog (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) who urges a rebel mutt to be more kind. And, goodness, must the Japanese city\u2019s savior be a little white exchange student from Ohio? I generally love Anderson\u2019s films\u2014this one included\u2014so I wish I wasn\u2019t worrying that the pleasurable nostalgia he conjures wasn\u2019t also somehow maybe betraying a longing for a return to a bygone whiter, maler America.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BOKzXQdA4Nw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So \u2026 \u201cIsle of Dogs\u201d is a boy adventure story\u2014of self-discovery and self-sacrifice. Chief (Cranston), the stray dog who rejects all masters (\u201cI\u2019m telling you I don\u2019t fetch\u201d), confesses that when he was caught once he tried to connect with a boy whose family took him in. But he ended up biting him instead. Who knows why?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI bite,\u201d Chief says repeatedly. Early on, it comes across as a snarled threat. Later, it feels like a warning to keep away because he\u2019s so lost and broken that he doesn\u2019t know what bad things he might do. The film is a story of wounded people fearing what they\u2019ll do if they let anyone get close again.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xCBOiaJEoFw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The pack finds menacing robot dogs, buzzing drones, cruel animal experiments, long-lost siblings, dastardly conspiracies, tasty dog treats, puppies. There are separations and reunions, reversals and revelations, humor and delight (one scene has to be a shout out to \u201cHarry the Dirty Dog\u201d), changes of heart and even a satisfyingly happy ending.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow does it feel to be a former stray?\u201d Chief gets asked at the end. He replies in the bruised but hopeful language of 12-step recovery: \u201cI take it one day at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A \u201cdog flu\u201d is rampant among the canines in the Japanese city of Megasaki. Mayor Kobayashi, leader of a dynasty of inveterate cat-lovers, orders all the dogs banished to Trash Island\u2014beginning with his family\u2019s dog, Spots. Well, actually the dog of his orphaned nephew, Atari. The 12-year-old boy absconds with a propeller plane and crashes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,116],"tags":[329],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6765"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6770,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions\/6770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}