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Personally speaking, I've been a fan of Jason Schwartzman since he and writer-director Wes Anderson collaborated on Rushmore and created what I still think is a definitive portrait of the beautiful torment of teenage life. While of course Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson conceived the ideas, Schwartzman fleshed them out both literally and emotionally, offering a character that was weird and idiosyncratic but also remarkably relatable, not the least of which because it seemed like the actor was going through many of the same things as his on screen counterpart.

Eleven years later, Schwartzman has matured into one of the most versatile and interesting actors in Hollywood, even if, as he himself puts it, he isn't yet able to "get a part like someone can order a pizza." His latest film reunites him with Anderson for the fourth time, playing another kid who's growing up way too fast in Fantastic Mr. Fox. In addition to talking about tackling another coming of age story, Schwartzman discusses his own Hollywood story, and offers a few insights about the interesting filmmakers with whom he works so frequently, and so closely.

Cinematical: You've worked with a number of filmmakers, such as Sofia Coppola and David O. Russell, who have very specific visions for their films. How is Wes different, whether it was just on Fantastic Mr. Fox or in general, that makes your collaboration more satisfying?

Wes Anderson's movies have entertained and enchanted audiences for more than a decade now, offering a singular and yet strangely universal point of view time and again about oddballs and outsiders who simply want their creativity to connect with others. This week, Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox arrives in theaters (in limited release), and while we've already fallen in love with the his latest work (thanks in no small part to his particularly fertile adaptation of author Roald Dahl's source material), it seemed appropriate to go back and revisit his first film, the oft-forgotten Bottle Rocket, to remind ourselves where the writer-director started, if not where our love affair with his work began.

As longtime fans of the filmmaker (I remember reviewing this in 1996 when it was first released, and later declared his follow-up, Rushmore, one of my all-time favorites), this is one of his only movies I haven't seen what seems like a hundred times. Thankfully, Criterion's stunning Blu-ray, released late last year, not only offer the best-ever presentation of the film, but a bounty of extras to add context to Anderson's indefatigable creativity. But as for the movie itself?

It's not hard to like any movie that uses the Beach Boys' music, but Wes Anderson makes it especially easy. As Hollywood's foremost purveyor of hipster drama, his pedigree as a reliable selector of appropriately wistful, poignant and all-around unforgettable songs is virtually unrivaled, but Fantastic Mr. Fox exceeds even the work of his earlier films, using "Heroes and Villains," and later, "I Get Around" as populist punctuation that manages to be both specifically relevant and substantively rousing.

As an animated opus, the film is by necessity his most controlled to date, a painstakingly-designed dollhouse where he no longer controls just the music, sets, and costumes, but the performers themselves. Ironically, however, it feels like his loosest as well - a gloriously unwieldy comedy of manners submerged in the minutiae of Anderson's madcap creativity. All of which makes Fantastic Mr. Fox a celebration both of its stop-motion medium and Anderson's aesthetic, while still managing to fully document the spectacular fun in original author Roald Dahl's daffy, distinctive imagination.

Every once in a while my brain returns to 1998, the first full year I worked as a film critic. What happens is that something will remind me of a movie that has aged particularly well, something like The Big Lebowski or A Simple Plan, and I'll notice that there were quite a lot of good movies that year, and that many of them didn't get much love at the time. But then I'll start thinking about all those movies that did get lots of love -- especially Oscar love -- and how they haven't aged well at all. By looking at the Oscars and the box office list, you'd think it was a terrible movie year, but in reality it was a great movie year. How does this happen?

One of the things I ask myself is: why wasn't Jeff Bridges nominated for Best Actor for The Big Lebowski? And come to that, why wasn't Jim Carrey nominated for the otherwise highly acclaimed and beloved The Truman Show? Or Warren Beatty for Bulworth? How about George Clooney for Out of Sight, Robert Downey Jr. for Two Girls and a Guy, or Johnny Depp for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Or, heck, why not the 14 year-old Eamonn Owens for his astonishing performance in The Butcher Boy? The answer is, of course, because the Academy had to make room for message movies, war movies and Holocaust movies.

To celebrate the impending release date of one of this year's best films, Cinematical has been given this exclusive clip of Juno's star Ellen Page and screenwriter Diablo Cody discussing their all-time favorite movies. And let me just say that Cody jumped up several notches on my People Who Are Awesome list for listing Rushmore among her favorites. Page, on the other hand, is a tad more random in her selections -- although I just about lit up when she mentioned Amelie (one of my personal favs).

In case you weren't already aware, Juno stars Ellen Page as a sarcastic teenager who accidentally gets knocked up by her best friend (as played by the very witty Michael Cera). After deciding to hand the baby off to the seemingly perfect couple of Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner, all sorts of shenanigans occur. This is one film you'll definitely want to check out. Oh, and feel free to bring along your recently sexually-active ("what does that even mean") daughter -- she might learn a thing or two. Juno hits select theaters tomorrow and opens nationwide on Christmas Day.

Today we salute the military veterans who have either served in wartime or in peace. I think technically Veteran's Day specifically honors war veterans, but I don't see why the non-combat military personnel needs to be excluded. Still, in the movies, it's the war vets that are most memorable, and on this holiday, I'd like to present my list of seven favorites.

Obviously this list isn't comprehensive -- in fact, I don't feature any examples of the now-stereotypical Vietnam vet character, which would include Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July or Gary Senise in Forrest Gump. This is just a list of characters, positive and negative, that I prefer and which I think somewhat represents the wide and diverse scope of war vets.


"Homer Parrish" from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

About fifty years before Robert Zemeckis was digitally removing Gary Senise's legs to make him the disabled vet Lt. Dan of Forrest Gump, William Wyler directed a real amputee veteran named Harold Russell as the handicapped character Homer Parrish in this movie about the difficulty of coming home following World War II. Russell actually won an Oscar for his performance as Parrish, a former high school quarterback who returns to his childhood sweetheart, with whom he's engaged and for whom he no longer feels good enough. The actor/character has hooks for hands and appears in some sappy, obligatory scenes where he has trouble with them, but he ends up a guy that is beloved more than pitied, and it's almost easy to forget he has the handicap, especially after hearing him play piano with the false limbs.

It's about time. And, well, a little late. It would have made perfect sense to release a Criterion Collection DVD of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket last year, when it quietly celebrated its tenth anniversary. But hey, better late than never, right? While promoting his latest film, The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson told MTV Movies Blog that he's begun work on a Criterion edition of his debut feature. The director said there's a lot of stuff to go into it, including a lot of footage that was left on the cutting room floor. And certainly he will have to put his original black-and-white short, also titled Bottle Rocket, on there. For those Anderson fans who haven't seen it, the short is basically just early versions of scenes that ended up in the later film, including the part in which Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke Wilson) rob Anthony's parents' house -- with the soundtrack set to jazz rather than Love. When I first saw it -- Lincoln Center screened it with The Royal Tenenbaums on the eve of that film's release -- I thought it was a little bit funnier than the full-length. But looking at it now, I just think it's a neat curiosity for the fans. You can check it out on YouTube if you aren't willing to wait to see if Criterion includes it.

Bottle Rocket can feel pretty slow and uneven compared to Anderson's later releases, all of which have already received the Criterion treatment. But the crime caper comedy does feature a younger, funnier Owen Wilson, back when he was even more wide-eyed and excited than we're used to now. And it does at least have the obligatory homages to J.D. Salinger (think of Anthony as a grown-up Holden Caulfield) that links it up with the rest of Anderson's work. The main thing missing, of course, is Bill Murray, who has appeared in all of Anderson's films after this one. Maybe, as I suggested last week, somebody can do a special alternate version in which Murray is inserted into the film, possibly replacing James Caan. That would be a fun bonus feature. Or maybe Anderson and Murray could stage some fake auditions (like the real ones on the Criterion Rushmore) where Murray tests for each of Bottle Rocket's characters. Currently there is no release date, nor any news on the Criterion site, for Bottle Rocket, but hopefully we'll hear more about it soon.

Newcomer Anna Kendrick (Rocket Science, Camp) has landed her first big-time role (if you consider starring alongside Ben Stiller big-time) in the comedy The Marc Pease Experience. Pic, which looks to be a more commercial, Stiller-esque version of Rushmore, marks actor Todd Louiso's (Love Liza) sophomore directorial effort; Jason Schwartzman also stars. After being nominated for a best actress Tony for the musical High Society, Kendrick has made a fairly smooth transition to the big screen, and was already nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her debut performance in the indie hit Camp.

In The Marc Pease Experience, Schwartzman plays a guy who's stuck living 10 years in the past, back to when he was the star of all of his high school's musicals. The entire film takes place over the course of one day, while Stiller (who plays Schwartzman's former teacher/mentor) is preparing to unveil the school's latest production. Kendrick enters the picture as love interest to both Schwartzman and Stiller's characters. This is one of those films that I'm very much anticipating; back in high school, I spent four years in one of those drama classes, watching these types of kids demand all attention. Not only that, but my drama teacher -- who also happened to be the guy in charge of all the staged productions -- supposedly liked to seduce some of his students. Needless to say, I'm a tad close to the subject. Since I'm also a huge Rushmore fan (and you can't help but notice all the similarities here), I hope Louiso and co-writer Jacob Koskoff give us enough of a fresh take so that us Wes Anderson nuts don't leave the theater and immediately cry foul.

Jason Schwartzman has been in some very funny and unusual films during the past few years. I'm particularly fond of his work in the terrific Rushmore, I Heart Huckabees and the recent Marie Antoinette. He's also a talented musician and songwriter, in additional to being an actor -- his former band, Phantom Planet, being one of my favorites. But as much as I like Phantom Planet, I'm glad Schwartzman chose to devote his time to acting instead of music. That way, I can continue to enjoy his work in some new upcoming films.

According to Production Weekly, after Schwartzman finishes up working on Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited opposite Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody (which our own Kim wrote about before) he will segue into a co-starring gig opposite Ben Stller in director Todd Louiso's Marc Please Experience. The film, written by Louiso and Jacob Koskoff, will feature Schwartzman in the title role of Marc Please and as details on the plot are somewhat scarce at the moment, I'll go out on a limb and say that at some point during the film, Schwartzman's character needs to experience something -- perhaps provided or motivated by Stiller's character? And maybe he even needs to face conflict and some sort of crisis that needs to be resolved? Or, something like that.

I may be off on the details, but judging by director Louiso' last film, Love Liza, I expect this new film will be more of an intense drama and less a feel-good comedic romp. Although, his film before that was a comedy short called The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, so I guess anything's possible. No matter what, we'll eventually find out the real story as production on Marc Please Experience is set to begin in March. As always, when more details emerge we'll bring 'em to ya right here at Cinematical.