A thread for Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited"

no no no no no

Hmmmm...

I have to say I probably won't see this.

and.... waht is this about again?

tea

moustaches

It looks like some Wes-tastic schlock, full of precious style hoping to be mistaken as content.

Of course, I'll see and love it.

x-post

it's about how QUIRKY AND DYSFUNCTIONAL these characters are and how great Anderson's music taste is

dude peaked with Bottle Rocket

man ILE be bitchy

I do like the distress Helvetica font

Wait wait, what does the fine print say before "Satyajit Ray and Merchant Ivory"?

I will see this. Is the soundtrack listed yet?

I place my bet that Donovan's "Epistle to Dippy" will be on the sdtrk.

i cant wait to see owen wilson hurt his head.

I don't mean to be bitchy (hopefully I wasn't), I even liked Rushmore when most people hate it, but I really could do without seeing any more Wes Anderson films, I think. And the poster really doesn't help. Also I like ensemble filmmaking but I wish he would try some more adventurous casting!

lol chaki

I don't know whether to consider it a good or bad thing that this appears to be his first movie with a prominent Caan/Murray/Hackman older male fatherly role (Murray's apparently in it but not enough to be mentioned in the poster)

See, I don't really like Owen Wilson in any other films except Wes Anderson stuff. His deadpan nature gets me every time. (I guess that can go for any of his characters, really)

schwartzmann and coppola helped him write it? this should be ...terrible

tombot perhaps sadly OTM? ;____;

"featuring music from the films of" Satyajit Ray and Merchant Ivory"

!

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2007/07/wes-andersons-darjeeling-limited-gets.html#links

lots of xposts

wait adrien brody is in this?

Remy to thread.

I imagine Anderson creating his characters by picking through random articles of clothing from a trunk at the foot of his grandmother's bed.

i liked roman coppola's movie

its funny - his stylistic tics don't annoy me as much as they seem to irritate other people. What I like the least about his movies is what Alex in Baltimore alludes to - the recycling of the dysfunctional family/daddy issues plotline.

Also, this post from Steely Dan, which had its own thread on here somewhere, is a must-read regarding Anderson and this film:

http://www.steelydan.com/heywes.html

well ditching mark motherbaugh and his harpsichord fixation can't possibly be bad

"featuring music from the films of" Satyajit Ray and Merchant Ivory"

OK, that's so not what I was expecting.

he should start acting in his own movies, or at least in owen's

His tics don't bother me either. I'm really looking forward to this! I do agree with the "where's my daddy" issues. But, perhaps this movie won't be a derivative of J.D. Salinger or Jacques Cousteau.

ok steely dan needs to stop sending open letters to random ppl.

i hope the movie is the complete opposite of the Life Aquatic in terms of awesomness, which the Life Aquatic was not

also, yeah fuck a steely dan

steely dan's letter is basically completely on point except for the "bottle rocket two" bit

also dear criterion, please stop sucking wes anderson's dick and get on the job of putting out any of the 73 movies i've emailed you about, jeez.

xpost life aquatic was terrible, i hated that movie :\

I think don and walter have just decided to recast themselves as achewood characters though

the poster reminds me of margate, nj's lucy the elephant, who i'd rather see a movie about:

http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/images/lucy.jpg

What I like the least about his movies is what Alex in Baltimore alludes to - the recycling of the dysfunctional family/daddy issues plotline.

yeah, pretty much otm! if he chucked that shit and just cut loose his films might be more interesting.

shit! i forgot to read achewood all week!!!!

I like "Life Aquatic". It was ridiculous and I have no problem with that.

i think if "ridiculousness" was the problem with that movie, i would have no problem with it either.

that movie was so ridiculous it was awful. except for the made up fish

LA was pretty great for a no-expectations netflix movie on a hangover day.

this was the only good part of life aquatic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKFqJdhRaIM

Wes Anderson's AmEx commercial >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The Life Aquatic

also dear criterion, please stop sucking wes anderson's dick and get on the job of putting out any of the 73 movies i've emailed you about, jeez.

Look at it this way: the money they make selling the Anderson movies might allow them to get to work on least some of those 73 movies.

wait. ppl BOUGHT copies of the life aquatic?!?!

(x-post)

That AmEx ad was awesome. Too bad the movie being made in it isn't his new one.

(x-post again)

yeah, I see used all the time! ;-)

The "Buckaroo Banzai" homage end credits were OK though.

XXpost

gotta say that Jason Schwartzman's mustache has me weak in the knees

I even liked Rushmore when most people hate it

I thought most ppl liked Rushmore, guess I'm looking in the wrong places.

Poster looks great, only thing which concerns me is the lack of Futura Bold in the typeface. Helvetica seems a little too bland for a movie set in India.

my favorite part of the life aquatic was when steve zissou named the three-legged pirate dog "cody"

everything else could very well be lost in the mariana trench for all i care

are some names ...crimes?

I don't mind his tics and the sole excuse for Gwyneth Paltrow's continued existence is Tenenbaums, but the submarine movie was basically the most half-assed movie ever. Like he knew that fanboys would love and accept reaction of shots of Murray as comic godhead, so why bother working hard at the rest.

fewer people on the poster, that's kinda promising.

http://www.impawards.com/1939/posters/gunga_din.jpg

I'm still waiting for the day when Wes Anderson casts Eleanor & Matt Friedberger and the world of post-irony collapses in on itself.

Most people I know loved Rushmore at the time and for at least a little while after Royal Tenembaums' release. It was only about five years ago we all decided to temper our enthusiasm.

let's try that again

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/d/d1/GungaDin.jpg

in related news there's a couple films coming out soon, Rocket Science and Charlie Bartlett, that seem very Rushmore derivative but intriguing nonetheless.

That Rocket Science poster even looks like one for an Anderson flick.

i'm partial to giving Charlie Bartlett a fighting chance with it's R-rating and Robert Downey Jr as the recovering alcoholic single-parent principle

People seem to reflexively accuse any movie or music video with private school uniforms in it as "Rushmore derivative" to the point that I have no idea what is or isn't anymore. Rocket Science looks like it, though.

Do you think Rushmore was derivative of "If..."?

when is wes going to remake the sailor who fell from grace with the sea (with kris kristofferson reprising his role)?

the daddy issues zing seems a bit 'ech'. it's by having consistent thematic obsessions that you get to be an auteur.

'life aquatic' bit the big one. 'tenenbaums' was pretty weak. i don't see how you can hate 'rushmore'.

yeah per my first post on the subject of father figures, I'm starting to think maybe the absence thereof in this one could be a bad thing, not so much thematically but because his movies usually benefit from someone like Gene Hackman or James Caan being awesome in them.

wo i totally agree. (xp)

ILX loved Rushmore

I'm starting to think maybe the absence thereof in this one could be a bad thing, not so much thematically but because his movies usually benefit from someone like Gene Hackman or James Caan being awesome in them.

I think that's a good point. Hackman was really the best part, I thought, of RT (Royal's character in general, but Hackman played it so well). For that matter, all those types were the best parts of his films: Caan, Murray, Hackman. Though even Murray couldn't have done much to save LA, which was pretty lame, completely overstylized, etc. (and I loved the stylizing in the other films.)

man this is depressing me. a year ago i was all set to be writing a book about owen wilson for a well-known london-based publisher best known for its poetry list. i was speaking to owen's PR's assistant and i had the most terrifying email exchange of my life with the PR herself. they made me write owen a letter. but the whole thing imploded from my end before anything really crazy happened. :(

People seem to reflexively accuse any movie or music video with private school uniforms in it as "Rushmore derivative"

Oh right, Harry Potter.

fucking owen wilson

a new novel by big HOOS aka the steendriver

x-post -- Description or desire?

Ned-zing FAILS: I would not mind seeing the alternate Rushmore in which robes are worn at all times

Owen Wilson co-wrote Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and Tenenbaums but not the last 2 = possibly the quality control that WA's movies need

I'm just sick of seeing him playing the same character in Wes Anderson's universe again and again.

That's no reason to fuck him

I think I am the only person who was rather non-plussed upon seeing Bottle Rocket.

Owen Wilson's character in Darjeeling Limited having some kind of explanation/backstory for his broken nose (if the poster is any indication) is a HUGE step forward for him as an actor.

Needs to be said-Schwartzman, O.Wilson, Brody=best cast of noses in recent memory.

because, clearly, the essence of good films is explaining away any scar or imperfection on its actors within the story.

They were filming this in Udaipur the day (In january) I was in the hotel all day with food poisoning. Maybe this movie will knock off Octopussy as the movie they show everywhere in Udaipur.

because, clearly, i was being completely serious with that post and you needed to raise your objections.

oooh I was bummed we missed Udaipur on my last trip

i'm sorry i found your joke unfunny! maybe you can collaborate on wes's next film with him ^_^

saying something silly and facetious /= aiming for huge knockout laffs. i'll try harder next time.

and anyway it was in response to HOOS saying he plays the same character in every WA movie

That Steely Dan thing is kinda annoying with all its quotes and copyrights all over the damn place.

rushmore the only really good one

I'm not sure that font is Helvetica...

oh it's not at all I mean it's full of holes. Also wrong capital R.

Needs to be said-Schwartzman, O.Wilson, Brody=best cast of noses in recent memory.

OTM!

Ocean's 13 had a bit in it where one of them wears an outrageous prosthetic nose called "the brody"

Yeah, it was a knee jerk ID because I was thrown by the "J"

Anyway, the Typophile people are zeroing in on Blue Highway as the font.

http://image1.myfonts.com/waterfall/81/81fb3dee4041aa1fb837b2687e9c0a07.png

darjeeling is my favorite tea, i hope they don't ruin its reputation

Yeah, but its based on something more mainstream. Its pissing me off. Its nice though, a bit too distinctive to use too much. The J is gorgeous. The life aquatic pissed me off, but I the royal tenenbaums is for me the best one, if only for how well he uses music in it, particularly the Nico song that plays when Gwyneth's character gets off the greyhound. I love the Gill sans (?) signage everywhere too.

futura

"I think I am the only person who was rather non-plussed upon seeing Bottle Rocket."

i think nonplussed was what they were going for!

yeah good one Shakey Mo Collier

I love the Gill sans (?) signage everywhere too

It's Futura

i think we discussed the meaning of nonplussed somewhere. i think shakey means 'bemused'.

OED sez

nonplussed

/nonplusst/

• adjective 1 surprised and confused. 2 N. Amer. informal unperturbed.

— USAGE In standard English nonplussed means ‘surprised and confused’. A new meaning, ‘not disconcerted; unperturbed’, has developed recently in North American English, probably on the assumption that the prefix non- must have a negative meaning; this is not yet accepted as standard usage.

— ORIGIN from Latin non plus ‘not more’.

(I intended the first usage - altho perhaps "surprised" is a little strong. I was definitely left scratching my head wondering why everyone thought it was so great)

oic. you were nonplussed by reaction makes more sense than nonplussed by film.

i saw it before it had a big reputation lol.

I saw Rushmore, then RT, then went back and watched Bottle Rocket and was all wtf this is not anywhere near as good as the other two

Ooh, Milano. That's a beautiful font choice. I think the uniform type thing is such a clever (Oh, Wes Anderson!) idea, just the way it wittily draws attention to itself is beautiful. He's so good at those things. There's this nice little radio documentary they include on the DVD about the paintings in the blonde wilson brother's character's room. The part I like is when the painter says the painting sounds like Heavy Metal but Wes Anderson says something like "*cue some speed metal* Yeah, it was painted with Heavy Metal in Mind, but I think Erik Satie accompanies it much better *cue Gymnopedies*" It's good.

i don't think wes designs posters.

Oh I doubt it, but I imagine it was at least his idea to use the same font in every example of typeface throughout the film.

yeah

For some reason, the poster makes me think Wes Anderson's adapting Amahl and the Night Visitors.

"In select theatres" sounds pretty sniffy. Is that on a lot of American film posters, I'm assuming for indier films.

Wes Anderson is about as Indie as The Arcade Fire

i saw luke wilson today walking into a hotel in west la today, he looked a bit bloated

Is that on a lot of American film posters, I'm assuming for indier films

Yeah. It's the standard line for "not in your suburb megaplex anytime soon"

Natalie Portman's in this?

click the link above

I will see this. Is the soundtrack listed yet?

Not yet, but apparently The Kinks' "Stranger" is the background song in the trailer.

Natalie Portman? Man, definitely don't want to see it now.

Trailer is out...

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/thedarjeelinglimited/

The good: Wes Anderson has two other cowriters.
The bad: Neither is Owen Wilson. It's Roma Coppola and Jason Schwartzman :(

I really want to see this.

I do wish, though, just for selfish reasons, that Wes would make another movie on a theme that's personally relevant to me. The stuff of his past two films (and it seems this new one) - father-stuff, brother-stuff... There's nothing there that I struggle with or which resonates strongly with me. I'd much rather revisit the loneliness and romantic-love issues of Rushmore and Bottle Rocket.

nice-looking trailer.

no laughs tho.

there was father- & motherstuff in Rushmore, y'know

According to boxofficemojo.com, The Royal Tenenbaums is the only Wes Anderson flick to turn a profit in theaters.

I'd take ten of Wes Anderson's laziest crappy-dad over-stylized harpsichord-plucking efforts over something like Rise of the Silver Surfer, which I saw over the weekend and have not fully recovered from.

there was father- & motherstuff in Rushmore, y'know

oh, well, sure & duh and stuff. i'm not saying i'm looking for certain themese *exclusively*. but just that there are some movies that just shake around all inside of you, and some that are more like poignant escapist vignettes, and for all their strengths/weaknesses i don't feel like tenenb's or aquatic ever had a shot at the former, for me. (see also: the squid and the whale)

how many schwartzman and r.coppola scripts has El Tomboto read?

OMG ARDIEN BRODY NO

I CANNOT WATCH A MOVIE W/THAT MOIST TISSUE IN IT

wes anderson seems to be spending his time since rushmore and tenebaums trying to prove everyone who said bad things abt them right

wes anderson seems to be spending his time since rushmore and tenebaums

in other words, ONE FILM that you've seen.

(which was a mess but had its virtues)

re: Copolla - CQ was fairly entertaining

no morbs im already writing this one off cause its got adrian brody in it see

oh if only it was someone like Seth KnockedUp.

but his nose is not big and long

chill, cap'n save-an-auteur

I think the reason you guys tire of youngish actors so quickly is you go out and see every INEVITABLY BAD BIG MOVIE they're in after they become "hot." (ie, I skipped that Ryan Gosling thing w/ A Hopkins, and thus avoided feelings of burn when next RG might make something good)

well maybe but this is differnt - i just really hate adrian brody - he acts like a fish mostly.

hey leave Seth Rogen alone!

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Events/1337/AdrienBrody_Vespa_320645_400.jpg

U R PUNCHING UR MONITOR NOW

Those two Kinks songs have already got me on this film's side.

Adrian Brody has the mega-hottitude. Kind of an ideal archetype for a male.

Takes all kinds to make a world, tho; don't get me wrong.

OMG PUKE

According to boxofficemojo.com, The Royal Tenenbaums is the only Wes Anderson flick to turn a profit in theaters.

-- Kerm, Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

these days theatrical runs sometimes serve as mere advance promotion for lucrative DVD sales..

am i the only person who is going to point out that jhosh referenced two films, not one?

ok the trailer doesn't make me nauseous. It actually looks like it might be pretty good!

That poster reminds me of the photoshop I can never find that Sean C. did for something called The Whole Kitten Caboodle.

I read "ONE FILM that you've seen" as a reference to the one movie he's had out in theaters "since rushmore and tenebaums" i.e. you can't really chart some huge downward slide after those movies since we've only seen one whole movie and a poster/trailer for another since those so far. (xpost)

Maybe movie is not meant to be funny.

no but the unseen one has adrian brody in it xp

yeah i mean i think his assessment is fair based on his own personal tastes anyway? why the fuck are you guys arguing with jhosh? dude hates adrian brody, what are you gonna do?

i have not hated an actor like this since michael douglas

adrien brody's funny nose and hummer

adrien brody = a brody

didn't he drop 45 pounds to portray a holocaust victim or something?
THAT'S ACTING

starving

at least he got to french halle berry in the end

which end?

make me feel goooood

i thought you stopped posting here, schef

some early views:

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/004512.html

Hotel Chevalier, that serves as a prequel and stars a very naked Natalie Portman.

"Wes Anderson, we love you, but you're bringing us down," sighs Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog.

oh fuck you trying to out-precious Wes Anderson w/yr indie rock quoting

how daaaaaaare she

hey its her right, but its lame writing

it's

roffle roffle

haha

shakey, dan and s1ocki in the best thread ever.

http://jurgenfauth.com/wp-content/uploads/darjeelinglimited.jpg
The Darjeeling's were shocked and stunned.

('s accidentally on purpose)

that bandage round his hand's a bit eerie isn't it? on the poster and that.

A poorly formated soundtrack review from the AMG

The Man In The White Bandage: A Darjeeling Comedy

With the title it has, I made the obvious assumption that it would be about the railway line.

Hotel Chevalier, the prequel short is now free on US iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=265079483&s=143441

Here is an article about it: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119059131017936814-OZZOI_tuNSFSpeesiCSjM_Wl0xc_20080923.html

Anyone know how I can see this without a US credit card?

it's free, bro.

Yes, but you still need an account, and to get an account you need a credit card with a US address, right?

Wait. Let me check.

"Your account is only valid for purchases in the UK store" (free or not)

This may still work:

http://rapidshare.com/files/58539516/NataliePortman.avi.html

the gist of that article: Wes Anderson made a self-financed Natalie Portman nudie flick, and just kept it on his laptop for over a year and barely showed it to anyone else.

selfish

that is quite crap

Link worked. Thanks.

Doesn't exactly make me want to see Darjeeling. Sounds like it wasn't meant to either. Just an excuse to hang out. Also, no muff = lame.

I just love how much it sounds like it could've been a total scam. "Hey Wes, it's Natalie...remember that nude scene we shot in your apartment...for two days...about a year ago? So, um...did you ever write the rest of that script or decide what you're gonna do with that footage? Oh it's...on your laptop? Yeah, I guess I can come over and watch it with you...I'll let you know next time I'm in town, sure."

from AO Scott's review:

“Hotel Chevalier” ...which visits Jack Whitman (Natalie Portman visits him too) at some point before the events chronicled in the feature, will accompany “Darjeeling” on DVD, but not when it opens in New York theaters tomorrow. It is worth seeking out, not only because it fleshes out part of the story of the Whitman brothers but also because, on its own, it is an almost perfect distillation of Mr. Anderson’s vexing and intriguing talents, enigmatic, affecting and wry. “The Darjeeling Limited” is an overstuffed suitcase. “Hotel Chevalier” is a small gem.

Basically, the shorter a post-Rushmore Wes Anderson film is, the less unpleasant it is to endure then? Sounds about right.

TJL is only 91 mins.

TDL

I just saw the AmEx commercial that's supposed to be "genius."

that is a really annoying commercial

That's how I feel about Day for Night.

It's only been called "awesome" and better than The Life Aquatic in this thread (which it is), not "genius" (which it isn't). It's just a knowing self-parody, which is kind of entertaining since I wouldn't really expect that kind of thing from him.

chevalier thing is like well done you're in paris w/ a crap ipod

Just try watching The Life Aquatic, with its matrix of impenetrable references to Jacques Cousteau, the French New Wave, and Owen Wilson’s penis size, and see how many minutes elapse before you want to hurl a brick at the screen.

Kelly is a moron. (Not for this in particular, but he was one of the local paper's film critics for a long time and may still be.)

if you get to the part where he big-ups Little Miss Sunshine after ragging on Anderson for being twee and affected, you'll see what I mean.

yeah he kinda lost me there

(amongst other places)

I don't get how Kelly can't find emotion in Rushmore, or that "Christmas Time Is Here" doesn't equal "heartfelt."

Or that this notion he has of "hipsterism" is synonymous with being a dork.

I basically agree with his conclusion but none of his logic or examples.

It seems like in order to prove his point, Kelly had to forget about the contributions of Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Kevin Smith, and Judd Apatow to this apparently damned filmworld.

the anderson ad is better than 'day for night' but that isn't saying much; one of truffaut's weakest, which is pretty weak.

wes anderson has made only three films since 'rushmore', one of which was complete shit, but that review is kind of unfocussed.

if you want to write about the Death of Sincerity, do that. personally i think there is enough sincerity going round? doesn't he also call anderson emo? wuht.

The sad thing is, by using the word "emo", Kelly has gone over heads of 3/4 of Texas Monthly's readers.

Also, in what way are Wes Anderson films like Arrested Development?

I've seen other critics mention a AD/Anderson connection before. IIRC, someone claimed that Ad was inspired partially by Royal Tenenbaums (eccentric family falls apart before falling together again).

the contributions of Kevin Smith

OH?

Even though nobody likes Smith anymore, I feel he's still influential on today's comic films. And for better or worse, that counts as a contribution.

the same could be said about Reagan's influence on the presidency.

i c, like Hitler

xp
goddamn you, Alfred

oh for fuck's sake

xpost yes. it could. indeed. that was grisso's point.

dr morbius repeats hitler analogy, alfred re-screens reagan reference, they skip off into the sunset, have two children, live happily ever after, ilx a distant memory. (please?)

i still laugh at "clerks" & "mallrats," and some parts of "chasing amy"

you know i don't think i've even seen a kevin smith movie and i probably won't, because that's the kind of catlady world i live in, but i'm glad his existence is an Issue to be Decided Upon. i won't see 'darjeeling limited' either, because it looks dumb and i don't care.

Sincere is a word I think could fairly be applied to Wes Anderson's stuff, whatever other words also apply.

yeah, the "irony" meme isn't entirely accurate.

he lost me at "the stuff film nerds call mise-en-scène."

not to mention smug dismissal of "gratingly twee" vince guaraldi classic as unworthy to exist in the same scene as something "heartfelt."

Somebody's got a beef with Vince Guaraldi? WTF?

I saw it last night. It was definitely a lot better than Life Aquatic.

The stuff I liked most about it was everything that didn't seem explicitly Wes Anderson-y about it. Every time the film made clear it was referencing 70s Indian cinema with a cheap zoom-in, every time someone walked slo-mo with a Stones or Kinks song playing, every time there was an oddball joke about the bald assistant with his ha-ha rare disease, I just gave less of a shit about the characters in the movie (not to mention about Anderson's directing style.)

I liked the performances, I liked the device with the short-story/flashback. I thought the episode in the village was well-handled, even though it hit you over the head with that "the spiritual journey begins when you stop trying to have a spiritual journey" sort of cliche. The grief and the relationships felt real, and they felt realer when Anderson wasn't spelling them out.

Incidentally, the film had a lot of crazy parallels to my wife's mother's family - her grandmother is a pretty narcissistic person who divorced her grandfather and traveled around India and then later became a kind of new-age guru, and she had three daughters whose relationship was kind of parallel to the three brothers in the film.

as Stephin Merritt once said of sincerity re music, it's about as important to filmmaking as it is to cooking.

Ed Wood was sincere.

Stephin Meritt sucks.

Anyway, I don't think sincerity is "irrelevant" to Anderson's films since they spend so much time playing with the idea of sincerity.

And I don't think emotional resonance and sincerity are the same thing.

(x-post) and Ed Wood is grebt.

and good food isn't lol ironic

obv Ed Wood has his kind of greatness -- but you know what I mean.

Give me a skilled filmmaker who can fake sincerity anytime. That's why art's short for artifice.

Irony is also irrelevant to cooking.

What, you never made a microwaved quesadilla knowing that you were above it?

Give me a skilled filmmaker who can fake sincerity anytime. That's why art's short for artifice.

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, October 4, 2007 2:46 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i pretty much agree with you here, but why not just use "sincerity" as shorthand for "fakes sincerity well"?

I don't even really understand why we're talking about sincerity. I didn't use that word.

Some people fake it badly.

xp

quesadillas: not yet.

Anderson's chief problem to date for me has been "preciousness" -- like building the sub cutaway in Aquatic and exploiting it only in one showcase scene -- but I've liked all his films to one degree or another, and I'll see this one as soon as there's a baseball playoff gap.

why not just use "sincerity" as shorthand for "fakes sincerity well"?

cuz that's not what it means?

rushmore was fresh because it broke away from a lot of the gen x conventions of so called "edgy" films aimed at young people.

last couple of films felt a bit forced. let's see, eh?

rushmore was fresh because it broke away from a lot of the gen x conventions of so called "edgy" films aimed at young people.

awesome fuckin views dude.

thanks, man!

I ususally am enticed by the trailers and teasers to Wes Anderson movies; everything I've seen and read about this one has been completely repellant to me. I think, at some point, Adrien Brody just fell into my "completely intolerable" pile and, because I've only actually seen him in "Summer of Sam", I didn't notice.

I liked Adrien Brody in this - probably best of the three.

Also, I am rather smitten with Amara Karan.

unfortunately there don't seem to be many linkable photos of her on the web, so I will post this (if it works):

http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/48/02/32/10p.jpg

lol

I know.

Here is a still:

http://ifc.com/ifc/img/09242007_darjeelinglimited_article.jpg

it was just not so compelling. i didnt hate it, not even adrian brody. the indian scenery was nice. it even had some potent moments with good supporting actors - sweet lime, dead kid's dad and anjelica huston were all great. but the three main dudes, none of them actors so much, in a story abt shallow depressed privileged kids becoming half-way human adults; they didn't move me.

dead kid's dad was one of the leads in The Namesake - he was great in that.

o fuk, I didn't even realize that was Anjelica Huston

http://i20.tinypic.com/2u5gp5i.jpg

lol xp

haha awesome

because I've only actually seen him in "Summer of Sam"

Thought you saw King Kong as well?

you really have to watch the pianist to experience full-on brody-hell.

too bad Polanski didn't cast Seth Rogen

clasique morbs brody/rogan dialectics

lol

too bad Polanski didn't cast Seth Rogen
Knife in the B0ngwater?

Thought you saw King Kong as well?

I wanted to see "King Kong" but never got around to it.

chinatown and geeks

Rogen Josh? Seth Simmers in Darjeeling

well i liked it, although the focus group thing i went to afterwards during which a number of fox gonks grilled us about whether or not to include the short in the uk cinema release, was arguably the most interesting bit of the evening.

and yes, sweet lime...her lips are remarkable.

also, "i love you but i'm going to have to mace you"

i just watched hotel chevalier and jason shwartzman as brooding ladies man is sooo absurd (that goes for darjeeling limited too).

too bad Polanski didn't cast Seth Rogen

-- Dr Morbius, Friday, October 5, 2007 3:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

christ, you're such a troll about your Apatow/Rogen hate that I feel like a troll for all the times I've pointed out you bringing it up apropos of nothing. or is this gonna be your "hen fap" meme?

the best part is he hasn't even seen any apatow/rogen stuff haha

truly crazy

morbs superbad is better than bringing up baby i swear

Mia Farrow IN Knocked Up by the Devil

thats the spirit!

Johnny Depp IN The 40 Year-Old Rare Book Dealer

Tom Hanks IN Superbig

ok I have to say the last part there is really kind of touching:

Owen Wilson returned to the public eye Thursday night, making an appearance at the Los Angeles premiere of "The Darjeeling Limited."

Owen Wilson, seen here in May, attended the Los Angeles premiere of "The Darjeeling Limited."

Sporting a shaggy blond beard and a dark jacket, Wilson was joined by fellow cast mates Adrien Brody, Anjelica Huston, Jason Schwartzman and filmmaker Wes Anderson. It was among Wilson's first public appearances since a suicide attempt in late August.

Before the movie started, Anderson introduced Wilson, his longtime friend and collaborator, saying, "I've never made a movie without him and I hope I never have to."

aww

Meanwhile Mr. Brody is all 'dudes check out my suit!':

http://stylescenes.latimes.com/fashion/images/2007/10/05/exclusi_eric_14918793_600.jpg

oh ffs

trying to out"shine" his co-stars hehehehe

I kinda respect Brody's outlandish sense of style. With a proboscis like that you got to stunt to make it work.

is that Duran Duran?

if so, I like how Nick Rhodes on the far right has finally accepted that he's a much prettier woman than a man.

I kinda respect Brody's outlandish sense of style. With a proboscis like that you got to stunt to make it work.

You've also got to commit if you're going to stunt; that is the epitome of half-assed "LOOKIT ME I'M WACKY!!!" bullshit. He should hire Li'l Mama's stylist.

trying to out"shine" his co-stars hehehehe

-- latebloomer, Friday, October 5, 2007 9:03 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

actual lols

ARDIAN BRODY: HOW MUCH DO YOU HATE HIM ???

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071004/REVIEWS/710040303

I gotta say, if Ebert never returns Roeper's met his match in Wilonsky, who's excellent in calling shit, tersely, when he sees it.

Adrian Brody <I>is</i> Jarvis Cocker in <I>Common Person: The Life And Times of Jarvis Cocker</i>.

lawl

The short will be running before Darjeeling when it expands this Friday.

meanders is a good observation - maybe it's a 70s road movie under all those (best-yet) production values. so is pointing to all the details - tenenbaums (and its predecessors?) was a very tied-up story about messy people. this may not be as good a movie, but its shaggy-dog-ness might make it ultimately more satisfying. I wonder who inspired the schedule card.

I liked Brody lots, but maybe not quite as much as the big O.

i think i like Brody too but for some reason he always makes me think of cameron in ferris bueller. actually, just when cameron fakes his dad's voice over the phone and contorts his face up and looks more gaunt than usual.

this was v. pretty to look at

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GwRLy_nD7mg

guys i just realized that this^^ is the awesome version of hotel chevalier

i just realized if u play '21st century schizoid man' for about 35 secs then start that vid on mute it is crazy trippy

who is ghost rider?

everyone in that photo is the same height why?

I really liked this! I don't think it was as well written as some his other movies, but the playfulness really made up for it. The ending was a little less subtle than I would have liked, but I'm really not sure how else it would have ended.

i drank & ate a lot before i saw this then, for some reason thinking i was still hungry, downed a med tub of popcorn at the theater before it even began. i vomited afterwards. thought it was just ok at first but it gets better as i let it sink in.

> everyone in that photo is the same height why?

They aren't, although they are much closer than they would be in real life, and why, because it look interes...no, it's because Wes Anderson is obsessed with symmetrical composition.

WORTH IT JUST FOR WILSON'S "LOOK AT THESE ASSHOLES"

Some of this flick was so fucking on the nose (lol noses) that I choose to believe that it was a winking joke.

The bandage removal scene: waht?

Also whatever jib/steadycam-thinger they were using moved the camera in a way that I really didn't like.

I have very mixed feelings about the fact that I've grown up just enough to not completely adore something Wes Anderson has made.

BAGGAGE, GUYES. THEY HAD A LOT OF BAGGAGE. THEIR DAD'S BAGGAGE. THEY HAD TO CARRY IT AROUND.

the bandage removal scene punchline was funny!

also had no problem with the closing scene.

o also ddb otm

http://www.collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Darjeeling_Limited/the_darjeeling_limited_movie_image_jason_schwartzman.jpg http://www.queermusicheritage.us/JAN2005/Parker-Dennis.jpg

i will like jason schwartzman as much as i like dennis parker when he writes a song 1/10th as good a "fly like an eagle"

it makes me sad in that interview that owen says he wishes it could be like "when we were all brothers" or whatever. also that wes anderson is such a prissy fucking douchebag.

that interview is pretty depressing, owen's obv still in recovery. at least he's putting himself out there. dont really get the wa hate though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9XUo4-ZxI&eurl=http://www.stuff.co.nz/4255661a1860.html

What about the other Dennis Parker, the one who played bass on "Show and Tell"?

my god I shoulda just went to the Jesse James movie.

tbf it was better than Zissou and it was very pretty. The end.

DDB OTM

I want to advance to the ddb level where I can hone in on exactly the most worthwhile part of something and just care about that instead of trying to care about anything else that is basically crap like "hey don't you think there was maybe too much slo-mo" etc

this was quite good, maybe my favorite of Anderson's to date. Definitely better than the Life Aquatic. It felt very small and compact, not a lot of wasted space or dialogue or extraneous characters - very economically constructed, good jokes ("look at these assholes", "I love you but I'm going to mace you", "If we fuck I'm gonna hate myself" - "that's okay with me", etc.) I don't have a problem with his slo-mo/mod song reference points, in this case particularly appreciated that all three Kinks songs were from "Lola vs. the Powerman". The short was included and made a nice touch - altho yeah Schwarzman as lothario is a bit of a stretch. He was probably my favorite overall though.

I don't have a problem with his slo-mo/mod song reference points, in this case particularly appreciated that all three Kinks songs were from "Lola vs. the Powerman".

One of the songs/slo mo came right before a funeral! Seemed like he was milking the moment too much. Lame way to get empathy or whatever he was going for.

ahh I thought it worked great lyrically - "Strangers on this road we are on/We are not two we are one"

I admit this film was a lot easier for me to like given my own experiences in India - there was a general personal identification that perhaps made me more forgiving than I would've been otherwise, just cuz so much of the backdrop seemed so familiar and engaging.

Making an Indian road movie also seemed to render his fetish for packing every shot with ludicrous levels of detail less obtrusive. Most of his flourishes seemed like they almost made sense this time, instead of like Life Aquatic where it felt like he was just fumbling around trying to be as quirky as possible.

in a weird way it felt like a more authentic portrayal of India as it really is than most Bollywood movies...? So much of Indian cinema is making constant attempts to be super-slick and hyper-stylized to the point that things - like that initial shot of a pedi-cab speeding through downtown, or old guys in quatting salwar kameez at the train station, or even just poor village shepherds - are completely obscured and in general not shown. (Satyajit Ray's another story, obvy.) Here, even tho they're explicitly through the eyes of tourists, at least these kinds of ordinary Indian things still made it onto the screen.

(btw don't get me wrong I love Bollywood stuff)

Also the americans loading up on druuuuuggggs. That seems like more and more a stock component of travelogues nowadays, is it HST's fault you think?

sort of like how "Paris, Texas" is a more authentic portrayal of America than "Bad Boys II"?

xxpost

haha sure Tracer that's a good one

Also the americans loading up on druuuuuggggs. That seems like more and more a stock component of travelogues nowadays, is it HST's fault you think?

that and the sexing-the-Indian-train-girl both struck me as kind of unrealistic, altho they made sense in the context of the characters and the plot. The "sweet lime" bit - it worked in the film and all but the sexes are super-segregated in India, and certainly single white men are not allowed anywhere near single young Indian women. IRL Schwarzman in all likelihood would've been thrown off the train and arrested and/or beaten immediately.

oh man this movie sounds even worse than i thought

no its good, really!

well, Anderson's thing is not exactly realism, right? I admit to being suspicious about the fact that this movie's set in India, but Anthony Lane's review of it gave an account for that that has nothing to do with exoticism. He said it was all about the train as a great movie setting, which is an idea I like. I can't seem to get myself to care enough to see this movie though.

"it worked in the film" = all that really matters

im not sure if tombot is serious but the loading up on drugs played no role but humor & character development (ie all equally pathetically depressed/desperate/anxious about the meeting); there was nothing even remotely 'fear & loathing' about it.

xp

there's never been a bad movie that was primarily set on a train

OK, I think the primary reason why most of you don't want to see the movie is because you cant help but compare it to his other movies. Had this been the first of his series of dysfunctional people films, I'm sure you all wouldn't have complained so much.

this article from esquire says the same thing: Wes Anderson Isn't So Good Anymore

I haven't seen the movie bust I must say that Life Aquatic was a great movie to watch on tivo (my favorite wes anderson flic). You could pause the movie halfway through so you don't fall asleep. Anyways, most people didn't like Life Aquatic so poo on them. Serously. POO ON THEM.

that guy's only complaint is that Anderson has stylistic tropes that he likes to use repeatedly. which is not a valid criticism of an artist in any medium, as far as I'm concerned.

now I have to defend life aquatic (one of my favorite movies - I only saw it once, I hope it holds up the next few times when I finally buy the thing).

Just try watching The Life Aquatic, with its matrix of impenetrable references to Jacques Cousteau, the French New Wave, and Owen Wilson’s penis size, and see how many minutes elapse before you want to hurl a brick at the screen.

-- C. Grisso/McCain, Saturday, September 29, 2007 4:36 PM (1 month ago)

I think the hipsters that hate on Life Aquatic don't understand how well he seamlessly played out that hipster stuff without it coming off as too fake or repungent. To tell you the truth, I think the hipsters that hate on Life Aquatic are generally cynical in nature and so anti-mainstream that they can't help but complain about a mainstream movie that actually incorporates hipster stuff in a humorous light. I think these people rather keep the public in the dark with their stupid trends and stupid interests. Finally, the last reason I think people hate on Life Aquatic is because its long, occasionally boring, and the people don't get the writer's sense of humor. Oh, and did I mention that many ilxors are cynical in nature?

One last thing, if your life was put to film, how many references to French new wave and your penis size would there be? I think you might be touchy about these issues. The movie is supposed to be a relatively light-hearted romp out in the ocean dudes.

One last thing, if your life was put to film, how many references to French new wave and your penis size would there be?

Do I have your permission to start a poll about this?

hahaha please do

it is long, often boring, seems to go nowhere and bill murray can't carry it after owen wilson gets gratuitously killed off. It just seems really blundering and lacks the wry comic payoff that all his other work provides at the end.

What El Tomboto said. Dull-ass film.

i like life aquatic because its constantly acknowledging its own failures--murray cant make a new film and neither can anderson, so they try to get the old gang together and nothing really pans out in the end except for the sea creatures.

but... the sea creature looked fucking stupid. Otherwise Tombot OTM. It just kinda flailed about, tried to do too much.

Which, by comparison, is maybe why Darjeeling Limited works better, its much smaller in scope.

the whole gunfight/pirates sequence = Wes should not try to do any action scenes

actually, that's true, i thought the mace/fight was one of the dumbest things about Darjeeling.

the whole gunfight/pirates sequence(s) - this is cool, whats going on, awesome.

the whole over-critical ilxors - loosen up

im not sure how literal tombot is being with 'the end' but i think the majority of his movies end more w/ poignancy or even sadness than anything wryly comic. including bottle rocket, which is probably his funniest movie to date. i guess i just disagree about bill murray being able to carry the finish, since though i had pretty much the same reaction as everyone else to the film on the whole, the scene in the sub kinda made me tear up a bit. i was very stoned though.

royal tenenbaums & rushmore are both pretty joyous at the finish admittedly.

xp jesus christ do que & shakey not get humor or something?? or is anderson just really shit at slapstick & i just happen to find really shitty slapstick really funny. latter's probably more likely actually.

in both cases the way the fight scenes sort of acknowledge their own total crappiness was pretty funny and charming, like max fischer's plays.

I thought the fight w/mace in Darjeeling was funny, but it was def. shot in a weird way (the principles fell out of the frame rather abruptly...?)

as far as slapstick, hey I love it, but in Life Aquatic the violence ends with one of the main characters being killed. That is not slapstick.

x-post

er principals

good slapstick/bad fighting (i.e. "these people don't know how to fight")Arrested Development

bad slapstick, like not even funny, just stupid=mace scene on TDL

Also, it really isn't as boring as you all think. Stoner stuff and shoegaze probably are above you people that keep complaining about being bored to tears. It really wasn't that boring. And if that is your complaint, you shouldn't be reviewing the movie at all. It's like a guy reviewing a drama instead of an action flic.

dood I am a huge stoner

well, getting upset over owen wilson dying is stupid. It's one of the many things that surprised me when I watched the movie. Unexpected is good.

Do you actually have any defense of the film besides "shut up I like it?"

people being maced in the face on film is almost always funny. as are people running fullspeed into glass doors. anyway, it got one of the biggest's laughs at the theater i was at & i can see why.

as are people running fullspeed into glass doors.

No, i agree, this was funny!

Do you actually have any defense of the film besides "shut up I hate it?"

do u know englishe

guys I think Captain Lorax is a troll? or 13?

I think both.

Anyway we should be continuing these arguments about the life aquatic on another thread, like this one:
This is the thread where you come anticipate 'Life Aquatic' w/ me

Or maybe you have French new wave and penis size issues. This is sad. I am out of here while you contemplate new ways to hate me.

another one driven way!

hoorah

as for the death in the pirate attack scene (which tbh i dont recall), im pretty sure we're made aware of it after the fact - so if that negates the funny of that scene, then ya cant be loling at owen's line in tdl.

I wasn't aware the whole movie was supposed to be funny. OK I'm leaving. I shouldn't have to explain these things to you.

ner ner

yr favorite movie stinks

owen wilson died?

not in this one, in life aquatic.

in both cases the way the fight scenes sort of acknowledge their own total crappiness was pretty funny and charming, like max fischer's plays.

this is what i liked about life aquatic. except for the whole movie, not just the fight scenes.

I couldn't really take it for that long.

anyway I liked the movie this thread is about.
I have high hopes for his next one but Mr. Que and I were talking about it and if it took Tim Burton three years to make ANBC I don't even want to imagine how long it's going to take Wes Anderson to make a stop-motion flick.

what is this stop motion flick he's making, I haven't heard about it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Mr._Fox_%28film%29

hmmmm - I think Selick's great in general, but greatness of film will depend entirely on the script (James and the Giant Peach is awful, for ex.)

This (and Aquatic, come to think of it) felt like one of those odd 1960s Tintin films - an awkward live-action adaptation of an essentially cartoon universe.

This movie was okay. Not as funny as Anderson movies Owen Wilson helped write, Schwarzman will be Max Fisher until someone beats it out of him, slo-mo walking has to be stopped. Owen Wilson carries the whole flick pretty effortlessly. I would like to see Anderson explore some new themes, instead of retreading Daddy Issues with increasingly obvious metaphors. (as someone else said BAGGAGE DO U SEE etc.)

He said it was all about the train as a great movie setting

except they get off midway.

yes, 'twas OK. I though it was better than OK for awhile -- I found Brody, and Owen's unbandaging, particularly touching -- but he really has to try to make ONE film w/out slo-mo to a '60s pop tune (esp that awful sub-Donovan thing thatw as also in the short). Also, shoulda maybe lost the whole flashback to Dad's funeral?

SPOILER

After playing somewhat nurturing moms in the last two, I kinda like the way Anjelica abandoned them, which ya should see coming when she starts to list A-B-C steps like Owen does.

See, I really liked the flashback. I'm not sure why, it just worked for me.

But it was creepy they way they all stared into each other's brothers eyes and Mommy's eyes to "Play With Fire." Eeeeek.

I liked the flashback filling out the allusions to Schwarzman's short story

also worked contextually - going to one funeral, cut back to the last funeral they were at

I liked the flashback as well. I kind of thought Anjelica's character really highlighted Anderson's tendency to turn women into the Other, although I'm unsure whether it was intentional (and a criticism of his male protagonists).

OMG "the other." I haven't heard/read that in years

I liked the flashback too. But any ideas why "Luftwaffe Automotive"?

jason schwartzman as brooding ladies man is sooo absurd

At least until he flashes the chest hair (woof).

I thought the "I'll hate myself/That's OK" exchange was the best thing in "Hotel Chevalier," so it was deflating when it wa srecounted in TDL.

I loved this movie.

the song in Hotel Chevaliar IS terrible, but I thought it was made into a good running gag when Schwarzman breaks it out to seduce "sweet lime" on the train

I mean the song is really there to point up what a cheeseball schmuck Schwarzman is

yeah, i thought that was supposed to be kind of obvious from the getgo - "what the hell is this music?" i think a lot of haters here either dont get or dont like wa's sense of humor.

i like this movie more & more when i think back about it. id like to see it again when not ill.

i love the slo-mo in all his movies.

i just love slo-mo wherever you find it!!!

sports broadcasts for example

Shakey OTM. He's not the ladies man, he's some brooding jerk who over-reads his relationship with Portman's character and has about two tricks. I didn't believe for a moment his "development" moment at the end where he tacks a line about not going to Italy on to his story.

I dunno, I suspect WA thinks the song is "good" on some level.

Have you guys seen Renoir's The River? You should, tho I don't see a lot of direct inspiration ending up in this film despite his citing of it in the media.

I thought HC was really lame.

oh, Brody crossing himself in holy place was a good laff.

btw I'm glad I don't read shit in advance bcz I was delighted to see Murray and he certainly did carry Aquatic. The man is an axiom of American cinema now.

Hotel Chevalier was really awful but that might be because I'm not a fan of Natalie Portman.

I was really glad NOT to see Murray for longer, because I am fucking bored of his schtick.

BTW Knocked Up was better.

I thought Murray's thing was a funny meta-comment, i.e. missed the train = no role for him in this movie

xp: haha

what is his shtick, exactly? Particularly as he gets older he has a real gravitas and pathos about him, I think.

i think he definitely has a schtick, from rushmore on basically, but i think its a fantastic one.

world-weary father figure

(see also: that Jarmusch movie nobody saw)

(and Lost in Translation)

Yeah, frowny, tired eyes, lethargic speech, etc.

punctuated by occasional sarcasm/drunkenness

its not a bad schtick, I like it in general and am always pleased to see him on screen (altho Lost in Translation is pretty irritating)

I see the problems of this movie, most of which have been mentioned, but I can't hate it because I found it pretty enjoyable to watch, and that's still something.

Also, "I kind of raised us, didn't I? I need a power converter" was Owen Wilson gold, and possibly my favourite bit of the movie.

(see also: that Jarmusch movie nobody saw)

I liked that one.

me too.

WA's films are 21st-century screwball, but he needs most of all to change up on the Dad stuff.

agreed

he should make a shot-for-shot remake of some godard

he should remake Bringing Up Baby with Seth Rogan

xp

that last pan through the train is very Tout va Bien.

you guys have to keep in mind my weekend went like
Friday: Darjeeling
Saturday: Blade Runner Final Cut
Sunday: Alphaville

it's perhaps a little much to deal with all at once, but I still think my idea is sound. Esp Alphaville since it's futuristic and dark and I've been wanting to see what, if anything, WA could do with that sort of setting, certainly since Aquatic.

WA sez "space" is next for him

I thought he was makin that Mr. Fox film

lol roald dahl's famous space epic rendered in stop-motion

the mr. fox book taught me the word "belch."

Bill Mutha Fuckin' Murray

I liked this movie a lot. "Hotel Chevalier" was good too. I even liked that "sub-Donovan" song on the IPod.

Haven't read the rest of this thread, but I wanted to pop in and say I liked this more than I thought I would. The film is mannered without becoming precious, and I sort of admired how there was no real pay-off: Jack never meets back up with either his ex-girlfriend or the stewardess, Patricia runs away before her kids can resolve their issues with her, we never find out who Bill Murray is. Things just kind of fizzle out, instead of building up into iconic set-pieces.

Also, I love Irrfan Khan. I've seen him in three movies this year (this, The Namesake, and A Mighty Heart), and he's just got such a great face.

Ha, and for the first two minutes of the flashback, I thought the projectionist had put on the wrong reel. :/

I agree with those upthread who praise the short Bill Murray cameo. I for one am with Hurting about being fed up with the Bill Murray shtick. Talking of which, I'm getting fed up with the Wes Anderson shtick as well. Endless close-ups of his male leads looking gormless, the idea being that we're supposed to look at them and the longer the shot goes on the quirkier it's supposed to make them look.

I enjoyed some parts of Darjeeling - it was beautifully photographed, for example - but overall I found it evidence of a downward trajectory in his career. There must surely be directors who are better than him at deadpan; Kaurismaki, Hartley off the top of my head.

WA's films are 21st-century screwball, but he needs most of all to change up on the Dad stuff.

isn't that what this movie's about, trying to move on from all that? (hence the bill murray cameo, the Dad figure they and WA are leaving behind.) this is not my favorite Wes movie -- that's either bottle rocket or life aquatic, i guess -- but i thought it was sort of interesting as an attempt to will himself to grow up, stop obsessing over fantasy boyhood stuff and childhood trauma. i guess the big challenge for him will be to write a main character who's not suffering from arrested development.

I'm not the only one who came out of seeing this thinking about Hal Hartley movies then?

The Music - from other Indian/ India-set films - because the whole idea of going to India "to find yourself" is a western construct, so the music is from films that have been part of "our" version of what India (on screen) is. It's only when they stop pretending to worship at the temples that they actually find some actual "spiritual" side to their journey.

Sub-Donovan track? It's bloody Peter Sarstedt - For which there is NO Excuse!

well tipsy, we'll see next if WA has chucked his baggage.

the baggage thing was so clumsy that it almost worked on a whole unintended level, wes weighing the movie down with this lunkish metaphor that it can't get rid of. (the bags were v. pretty though.)

This whole movie (incl the hotel short) works as a self-deprecating joke, I don't think I could watch it again without assuming that intent

Hotel Chevalier - mediocre. David Thomson seems to think it's the best thing WA has done. I didn't want to hear 'Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?' once, especially not all the way through, and especially not twice. (It was on Saturday's R2 Sounds of the Sixties, for goodness' sake!) Schwartzmann did not look worthy of Portman. And the emotional meaning of their relationship, their separation, their encounter, escaped me.

The main feature - I have only seen 3 other WA pictures (out of 4?); this was surely the weakest. I think of WA as a master craftsman, nudging bolts and screws into place, timing and framing to perfection... this is so loose it makes The Life Aquatic look like His Girl Friday. So many drifting scenes - not drifting in the agreeable Cary Grant way, just drifting nowhere much. So the usual WA tone (and others have said, it's familiar territory in lots of ways) is not redeemed by movement, dynamism, construction.

It probably gets, maybe even deserves the old Lost In Translation criticism that it's fixated on white American visitors and makes the locals a sideshow - though here at least those locals aren't made ridiculous or thought contemptible. But that aspect doesn't really bother me; I just wish the central characters could carry it off better.

The taxi ride to the father's funeral reminds, I suppose, of that Salinger tale (Seymour? Roof Beams?) in which everyone's in the cab after a wedding that didn't happen, or whatever. But I don't like the silliness of their jumping out of the cab and faffing about with that broken-down car. This does not look to me like a responsible and thoughtful representation of grief.

Play With Fire - for goodness' sake, as if that period of Stones hadn't been so heavily gone over in that tent sequence in TRTs, we again get the track *twice* here. I thought Huston might bring some sense and maturity to the picture for a while, but the scene where she says 'let's try telling each other without using words' seems just to take the film down toward bad mawkishness rather than complex feeling. When we get CUs of them all at that point, it feels like a parody of Thomson's insistence that the thinking or changing human face is the great fact and sight that cinema has to offer.

The movie probably isn't really that bad. But it seemed a deal worse than I thought. Hard to believe that all the kids who for years have spattered their weblogs and pencil cases with casual declarations of love for TRTs and the rest will be able to endorse this very enthusiastically.

It probably gets, maybe even deserves the old Lost In Translation criticism that it's fixated on white American visitors and makes the locals a sideshow

This is at the heart of my irritation with the film. Not so much the politics/ethics of it but more the way in which Anderson makes his characters sit and stare and watch the world go by, not a flicker of reaction to, or engagement with, the world as it happens to them.

That's the characters' problem, not the film's.

It's only when they stop pretending to worship at the temples that they actually find some actual "spiritual" side to their journey.

This idea was delivered so heavy-handedly though! I could almost hear a movie trailer voiceover while I was watching the film: "Sometimes. The journey begins. Just when we think it's over."

This whole movie (incl the hotel short) works as a self-deprecating joke

i think this is true, that there's an element of "here we go again" to all of it. i guess the question is how good a self-deprecating joke it is, or even how much of a joke. i felt a little bit (like i also feel sometimes with david foster wallace) that there was some frustration, some "how do i move beyond this self-referential self-awareness?"

its true to an extent, but to assume thats the primary intent, & to view the movie through that lens, automatically makes it shit. i think tipsy's idea, that its up to something bigger - even if still irritatingly self-aware - is more accurate & makes for a more interesting viewing. and again, i think the baggage metaphor was simple, not heavy-handed or hamfisted, & if anything its crime was being too neat & tidy.

aight i'm seeing this this evening. proper forebodings now. the portman/schwartzman thing was aspirational bullshit. like an ad for branded booze from the 1970s.

as opposed to those moonshine/prison hooch ads from the 1970s

well, it was better than 'the life aquatic' in the end.

I was so bored by the whole thing that I didn't even notice the baggage allegory. Actually, I was more than bored, I kept drifting off to sleep for a few seconds.

I started thinking that what I (we?) once liked about Wes Anderson films probably weren't the things he was doing deliberately at all.

It was an unpleasant cinemagoing experience all round. Halfway through, the man sitting next to me answered his mobile phone and started having a conversation. I told him he couldn't do that and he hung up, but I was distracted by the whole event. To make things words, he was south Asian in apperance, and I resented suddenly feeling aligned with the three brothers, bossing Indians about.

"To make things words" - is this the new "another think coming"?

I am very distracted at the moment. When this happens my erroneous words are usually phonically related to the one I intended. There's some tedious psycholinguistic evidence for you.

ones. WHATEVAHH

Stevie, you're not really in the "another thing coming" camp are you?

It's a continuum

Wait actually it's not

Is that a Jason Schwartzman line?

I started thinking that what I (we?) once liked about Wes Anderson films probably weren't the things he was doing deliberately at all.

guess my theory: call the early ones 'wes anderson-owen wilson films'. down with directorial auteurism.

lovely rita

She plays a schoolgirl in the new St Trinian's, in case you're into that sort of thing.

just saw this this past weekend. i really liked it. i didn't go into it with many expectations, having found life aquatic not so good but having enjoyed tremendously his other films. so that helped me appreciate it, i think. the film also seemed much more modest and scaled down than 'life aquatic,' and i think that made it work much better.

somehow anjelica huston's role and the sequences with her didn't do too much for me (though she acted well, as always), but i did find the children singing that christian song hilarious and really cute.

the "look at these assholes" was awesome.

this was the first film since "summer of sam" that i've seen with adrian brody. but i thought he was great in this, by far the best actor among the leads.

i found the kinks/mod stuff didn't work as well in this film, just seemed really out of place, especially during the slo-mo funeral shot. but the various indian film soundtrack pieces were wonderful, especially that one that kept playing when they were waiting around the airport (i think i saw it's from 'bombay talkie' maybe?)

i can't believe all the wes anderson hate in this thread, though, especially the first 100 posts or so. christ, all the "shit i hope it doesn't suck." did you guys ever like his films or was this all 'life aquatic' backlash?

anyone read that slate piece on wa's "unbearable whiteness"? it was terrible. i don't feel like elaborating on it right now.

I was listening to an interview with Jason Schwartzman on Radio 4, in which he came across quite well. He said that the film was basically a fairly literal dramatisation of the trip he, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola took in India, "because they needed it", "to move on from some things" between them. It started out with Owen Wilson playing Anderson, Adrien Brody playing Coppola and he being himself, though he says it ended up getting more mixed up.

Interviewer: "To what extent did the incidents that occurred while you were taking this first train journey form the basis of what we saw in the film"

Schwartzman: "Well, mostly all of it"

also, anyone know of songs that sound remarkably similar to the "where do you go to my lovely" peter starstedt song in the film? i swear i've heard that melody and a similar voice, but it wasn't the song used in the film.

Better than Life Aquatic. Worse than all the others. More realistic characters than all the others except Bottle Rocket, in some way.

I thought the train stuff was working well, and I was kinda disappointed when they got thrown off. The stuff with the mother was awful.

the "look at these assholes" was awesome.

OTM. I was the only person in the cinema who laughed at this line, but I was drunk so I laughed very loudly. Good times.

I haven't read that Slate article, Mark, but I just looked at it and it did look kind of moronic, which is too bad because I think there's a critique to be made of Anderson on race. Jenny, if you're reading this thread, what's that article you forwarded to me about that?

"Look at the assholes" was by far the funniest line in the film, agreed.

these.

i went this way and that with it, if i'm honest. it kept almost being great, and in a lot of ways i preferred it to 'tenenbaums'. part of it was, it was really poignant owen. but there were moments of total shittiness. i thought the kid dying would change it up, but it kind of didn't...

owen it was really nothing.

also 'chevalier' is better than i initially thought. i was overcompensating coz david thomson said he liked it.

if wes anderson was less of a dick, persona-wise, his films would be easier to like.

he should have never made that credit card commercial, it totally ruined the ineffable "Anderson mystique" that makes his films so compelling.

o wait

lol

I saw it and liked it more than I thought I was going to.

"look at these assholes" was funney.

But I thought the funniest bit of dialogue was when Brody was saying how the father told him, as he lay dying, he was his favourite son and Owen Wilson reacts, totally perplexed and deflated, "How's that supposed to make us feel?"

but yuh, ok film.

Mark, "Where Do You Go To My Lovely" has a very similar melody to "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" by Leonard Cohen, could that be what you're thinking of?

Darjeeling is probably his most rewarding film since Rushmore (to me) and also just about his most unlikable. I didn't see Life Aquatic, tho.

Do not want Hotel Chevalier.

Life Aquatic was on TV here this week. That must be the worst film of the 21st century.

i never really got why everyone hated "the life aquatic"

it's no more pointless than "bottle rocket" and a good deal funnier

Do not want Hotel Chevalier.

do you not? I thought it was a thing of genius... the bit where the camera is panning around the room with everything it lights on being reference by the lyrics of the song was a classic of cinema formalism. I salute Wes Anderson.

woah there's no way life aquatic is funnier than bottle rocket. that was part of the problem w/ it!

Better than Life Aquatic. Worse than all the others.

agreed

The reason I ended up on Darjeeling's side is because Wes came pretty close to acknowledging the limits of his style and potential for irritation of his hyper-formalism. Hotel Chevalier, instead, revels in it. I guess if you're an unconflicted fan, then I could easily see being into the short, sweet, straight up bit of Wessianism. Not me at this point.

The reason I ended up on Darjeeling's side is because Wes came pretty close to acknowledging the limits of his style and potential for irritation of his hyper-formalism

Eric OTM. It's not enough for me to love the film -- it's probably his most taxing -- but the funeral sequences struck the perfect balance b/w a Tati film (these three assholes in the Indian countryside) and the storybook distance in Renoir's The River (unexpected deaths happen, but how does our Western concept of grief clash with India's?).

and wtf at the Adrien Brody hate? The fact that he doesn't look or act like Owen Wilson and Schwartzman's brother helped his performance; he pairs better with Angelica Huston than the others.

o brody is no bro

I avoided this film like the plague when it came out at theaters and I don't like Wes Anderson at all, but I saw it on DVD and I think it's great! His best movie.

having watched it again on DVD recently, yes it is his best movie

I was very touched by it

i definitely dont recall it being as funny at its funniest as bottle rocket or rushmore or royal tenenbaums were (basically in descending order there), but i need to rewatch it - not that that indicts it in any way, but i definitely didnt come away with the idea that this was his best or even close

when i see a group that's minding their own business, such as babies or geese, the first thing that comes to my mind is usually "look at these assholes."

No, it wasn't that funny. Maybe that's why it was good?

This really sealed the lid on the Wes Anderson Diminishing Returns Millennium Tour for me. Crucial section was the death of the kid, I thought maybe, just maybe, he's gonna switch it up and actually show some real emotion without resorting to his lazy distancing cliches... but no, the funeral scene comes around and bingo, one slo-mo tracking shot with semi-obscure reclaimed 60s rock anthem way up in the mix.

a fair point

i dont think any of his movies are that funny (even royal t which i do enjoy w/ minimal lolz) but this was a pretty, um, "touching" movie

made me nostalgic for bros

I thought the use of the music was actually much more engaging and relevant than in most of his other movies - the use of songs from Lola (the Kinks' post-psych album, full of post-colonial weariness and longing for escape), that horrible sub-Donovan song that Schwartzman uses to get into lothario mode, the Stones' "don't play with me cuz you're playin with fire" for the absentee mother - its like for once the songs were actually integrated with the stories and the characters, rather than being used as vague shorthand. I thought the slo-mo "Strangers"/funeral bit was really moving, even if it is a totally predictable Wes Anderson-type move. I don't begrudge directors they're stylistic habits, especially when they work well.

Where are you going I don't mind
I've killed my world and I've killed my time
So where do I go what do I see
I see many people coming after me
So where are you going to I don't mind
If I live too long I'm afraid I'll die
So I will follow you wherever you go
If your offered hand is still open to me
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
So you've been where I've just come
From the land that brings losers on
So we will share this road we walk
And mind our mouths and beware our talk
'Till peace we find tell you what I'll do
All the things I own I will share with you
If I feel tomorrow like I feel today
We'll take what we want and give the rest away
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
Holy man and holy priest
This love of life makes me weak at my knees
And when we get there make your play
'Cos soon I feel you're gonna carry us away
In a promised lie you made us believe
For many men there is so much grief
And my mind is proud but it aches with rage
And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one

as j0rdan S seen bottle rocket??

its a straight comedy w/ an anderson twist, basically

bottle rocket was the first one i ever saw and its probably my least favorite of his

^^^cosign

WEIRDOS

bottle rocket's the only one i rate, to be honest.

^^100% defensible position

Any resemblance
Real or imagined
People or places
Living or dead

Any resemblance
As-if or actual
Characters or circumstance
It's all in your head

Flying out to India
Trying to get into you
Old Bombay
It's a very long way
To chase a "bottlerocket" to©

Precise simulations
Possible parallels
Never intended
Co-incidentals

Persons and places
Present or otherwise
Comrades in comedy
Brothers in crime

Hiding out in India
Babycakes they're watching you
This is our latest -
It may be our greatest -
It's called "bottlerocket" too©!

Who pitched the story?
Who built the scenery?
Who raised the money?
Whose movie is it,
Anyway?

[Guitar Solo.]

i don't get the bottle rocket love, it's just not that funny at all.

thats, like, your opinion, man

My opinion

Rushmore
Darjeeling Limited
Bottle Rocket (would be higher but much too long, last half hour felt like the end of Return of the King)
Royal Tenenbaums
...
...
...
...
...
Life Aquatic

i don't get the bottle rocket love, it's just not that funny at all.

^^^^^

It's cute and all, but I didn't laugh much.

Just saw this and enjoyed it a lot, though as people have pointed out the Angelica Houston bit was pretty much guff. It could've ended quite satisfactorily with them getting on the plane the first time. Anderson's great at showing quite fucked up people expressing their (genuine) love for each other in horribly inarticulate and clumsy ways, and this is where the emotional truth of his work lies.

i really liked this, but i think the clumsy expression of love feels pretty lachrymose. like a syrupy, standard, end-of-disney-film reiteration-of-family-ness, but guarded by some self-conscious slant. i don't know. it's a good film though; i kind of understood what he was trying to do in terms of the colours and the camerawork more than with his other films.

I think what saves it from sickliness is the fact that Anderson recognises that familial love is often tinged with resentment bordering on hatred, and that these undercurrents can't ever truly be resolved, just accepted as part of the whole experience.

I watched Hotel Chevalier after and thought it was pretty pointless. He doesn't do romantic relationships nearly as well as platonic ones.

yeah; i agree, in that i don't think it feels at all cloying or whatever when you watch it. i think that maybe afterward, viewing it in the context of wes-anderson-makes-movies-about-dysfunctional-family-unit-love, it seemed sort of formulaic, disguised by its novel twist.

i really don't like adrian brody. i think he's got a really good face, and he just kind of displays it instead of acting.

xp i liked the short ... i think i would have liked it way more if it was standalone from the film.

there's no satyajit ray thread, so this is going here - does anyone know who actually composed the music for his films, specifically the thing that made it to the soundtrack for this?

I believe Satyajit Ray composed much of the music in his own films himself.

Anyhow, for Darjeeling Lmtd., you can find the composer's listed here, I think http://www.rhapsody.com/album/the-darjeeling-limited

thank you! that's useful/interesting. i actually listened to something on the way out and saw that a composer was specifically listed. some of the more upbeat incidental stuff's really beautiful, i'll look into him a little more. probably six months after everyone else did the same.

it's not a Great Movie, but this movie is so great

isn't Ravi Shankar credited with the original music for all 3 Apu films?

I saw Rushmore when it came out --1998, age 18--and it was a "revelation."

Just rewatched it for the first time in 11 years (golly) and was expecting to have a hearly lol at my sad, suburban naivete now that we live in an awful quirky post-Braff cuteiverse where quirky shit like this sells us insurance and had been ruining music and literature for a generation.

But I'll be damned if that movie didn't hold up. Not a shot wasted. Totally stunning. Loved it to death.

I'll stan for most of Anderson's output, but I'm with you there Whiney - Rushmore is his best film, and imo a picture where *every single performance* is note perfect.

i think i like tenenbaums the best; i like wes when he's in a small, self-contained world rather than aiming for some big epic road piece.

agree with weingarten on 'rushmore', had similar trajectory of feeling. if anything, i've liked it more since the first time. never felt the same way about 'tenenbaums', though it's grown on me a little, and don't like any of his stuff since.

anderson devolved into the worst kind 'awful quirky post-Braff cuteiverse quirky shit' from tenenbaums on, rushmore was never really like tht

i rly like 'bottle rocket' too and shd get the criterion dvd to encourage wes to stop sucking.

sidebar: what the hell happened to owen wilson?

hawn spawn, again.

May 5, 2010
HOO-RAY FOR BLU-RAY
Posted by Richard Brody
Word just in that Criterion is planning a Blu-Ray release of “The Darjeeling Limited.” It’s cause for rejoicing; the contemporary director whose attention to detail most repays macroscopic viewing of his films is Wes Anderson. Now I just have to get a Blu-Ray player; and to make it worthwhile, I’ll need a TV good enough and big enough for its heightened resolution to register; and to make room for that television, I’ll need a bigger apartment; and to do that… Thus is art an engine of change.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/#ixzz0n6MDUxWL

commencing eye-roll

macroscopic viewing

this is a typo right? I mean, in reference to "attention to detail"?

surely a typo.

can't defend the thematics/drama of this film too ardently but i love it. i just think it's a really impressive and gloriously beautiful refinement of his mannered style. great stuff with cluttered train compartment. like his attitude toward sexuality here more than in previous films.

Really amazing stuff in this film.

finally saw it and since i'm at least a year past my rmde @ wes anderson phase i was able to dig this. not great but certainly enjoyable.

Made me think about buying a decomissioned train carriage and putting it in the backyard as an extra room. Turns out that the carriages are surprisingly affordable, but the transport costs are $$$$$$$

i feel like this was the longest 90 minute movie i've seen in my life

apart from the slow-mo bit scored to the kinks this film has vanished from my memory, like 'steve zissou' before it

i feel like this was the longest 90 minute movie i've seen in my life

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipr-wS5iBv0 (Princess TamTam), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 09:00 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

apart from the slow-mo bit scored to the kinks this film has vanished from my memory, like 'steve zissou' before it

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 09:28 (1 hour ago)

maybe I am just stupid but idly watching this again the other day it occurred to me that the opening Hotel Chevalier sequence is a total fantasy, isn't it? It's alluded to as the story Schwarzmann is working on later in the film, but for some reason I always took the initial sequence to be the actual events, with the story having just been written about them. but the way "Hotel Chevalier" is staged - the pat dialogue, the way Schwarzmann gets to play the sullen, heartbreaking lothario skulking in the lap of luxury, Portman's sexual availability/acceptance of abuse - this is basically what Schwarzmann WISHES had happened, it's a film adaptation of the self-aggrandizing story Schwarzmann wrote.

Note the hearty approval of his brothers when he's finished. Otoh, what about the lady porter on the train?

the on-train romance struck me as deeply unrealistic, but it isn't set apart from the rest of the film the way the Hotel Chevalier sequence is. but I dunno... it does lend credence to the idea that he is actually a lothario.

but for real any white male tourist coming onto an Indian woman in that manner would get his nuts cut off fairly promptly imho

Yeah, probably so or at least lose his snake.

she does leave perfume in his case that he pulls out on the train though

also i think 'realistic' is the wrong approach to this film

also i think 'realistic' is the wrong approach to this film

hate this movie. hate the entitled characters, hate the film for coddling their entitlement, presenting it as the only possible focal point of the universe they travel in. hate the exhausted self-loathing that seems to permeate everything (perhaps a product of that narcissistic entitlement). zissou and the earlier films had similar issues, but made virtues of them ― or, in zissou's case, at least balanced the worst excesses with wit and crackle.

setting this navel-gazing festival of first-world problems in impoverished rural india ― without ever seeming to consider what that might mean ― just throws everything bad about it into massively unflattering relief.

without ever seeming to consider what that might mean

oh I think it considers it plenty

Gukbe OTM about the "realism" angle tho, I'll concede that point.

xp - I pretty much agree with all of that. It's definitely one of the worst possible films I can imagine from a "good" filmmaker, something that exposes all of his flaws like raw nerves, much like Death Proof. It reminds me a lot of high school art student bs where it's more concerned with weaving some sort of puzzle and leading the audience to focus on all the odd stylistic choices which seem more like means to a quirky end rather than asking itself why we care about certain characters or why certain types of scenes usually get cut out of 90-minute films.

Thank god he made Fantastic Mr Fox, otherwise I'd have reported Anderson to The Hague.

wtf Death Proof is great

xp

generally hate owen wilson films, but enjoyed this, i think largely due to owen wilson's native comic gifts and sympathy for adrian brody

such a slight film, tho, even given its modest pretensions. guess i will never understand accolades slung towards him and sofia coppola or any of these young people

generally hate owen wilson films, but enjoyed this, i think largely due to owen wilson's native comic gifts and sympathy for adrian brody

roops, supposed to read "generally hate wes anderson films". owen just ok with me

I entirely understand the hate but I didn't hate it though i will concede that Anderson's touch is best-served in something like 'The Fantastic Mr Fox'.

xxxp i have yet to really hear anything to redeem death proof, outside of the action scenes it's pretty much every bad thing anyone has ever said about tarantino rolled up into one movie

wtf Death Proof is great

death proof is massively flawed in a way that's very true to its maker, much like darjeeling ltd, so i buy the analogy. i like death proof better cuz it's more like zissou: a film where the good (most of the 2nd half and all of kurt russell) at least balances out the bad (most of the first half & extended dialog scenes).

fantastic mr fox is godlike, one of my favorite recent films, would watch it with all ILXes

my take on darjeeling is that it takes place at the nadir of anderson's romance with wealth and idle entitlement and therefore feels trapped.

like bottle rocket was about aimless, middle-class suburban kids slumming, looking down and killing time. it seems to represent youth, "summer vacation", the college years. it displays a fascination with but no real understanding of those who exist outside that gilded bubble.

rushmore is about the class aspirations of the excluded, about looking up towards wealth and status. it's the poor man's view of a rich man's castle.

tanenbaums is about living inside the castle, being trapped by the castle. here the aspirational "outsider" character presented as rather pitiful in his desires.

zissou is nothing but a bubble, a fantasy world that restates the aimlessness of castle-dwellers, but removes them from their proper context. it's at least half curdled, but still works.

and darjeeling hits bottom. it lazes in its ennervated entitlement and posits the "outsider" as the entire rest of the world. this would be interesting if the film itself displayed any interest in the situation of this larger world, but it doesn't. like the three brothers, anderson seems to view the unentitled world as little more than a colorful backdrop before which the characters he actually cares about can be placed. worse, there's no real joy left in any of it, just a tiresome and overdesigned pantomime of quirk.

worse, there's no real joy left in any of it, just a tiresome and overdesigned pantomime of quirk.

yeah, this is the real crime

I don't think this is joyless at all, completely disagree about the characters and their relation to India, etc. but whatever. I'm obviously not going to talk any of you into liking this film and have no real interest in doing so, revive was due entirely to my re-evaluation of how Hotel Chevalier fits with the rest of it.

I think the way the brothers perceive India is a big part of their characters and their inherent flaws. Wilson organizes all of these trips to local spiritual hot spots in the hopes of finding some kind of epiphany but it never comes. The closest anyone in the film gets to one is when they shut up and just look into their mother's eyes. I think it's quite critical of that Western view on the East in a way that something like Eat Pray Love isn't.

^^^yeah I don't get the impression that Anderson is approving or endorsing the characters' narcissism at all - they are held up as objects of ridicule on multiple occasions. this is not to say they aren't drawn sympathetically as well, but the film seems fully cognizant of their entitlement and their abuse of it, and this is mined for humor.

"look at these assholes" etc

Riffing on contenderizer's comments: there's family drama in all of his movies I've seen (didn't see zissou or Bottle Rocket) of one kind or another and the shallow brothers who can barely even see the India in front of them nonetheless connect, however tenuously, as brothers and kin.

the pater familias issues seem like a more consistent throughpoint in his films than the class stuff imho. Life Aquatic is a mess, dunno why contenderizer gives a pass to that one

cool fish + dafoe vs. murray

i get that darjeeling doesn't endorse (in fact criticizes) its characters' blikered narcissism. my problem is that the film itself seems to suffer from the same thing. it can only see those characters, because they are anderson's standard types and he's trapped in fealty to them. he doesn't know where to go next, and the old trick don't seem to be working. consequently, there's a sense of bored exhaustion to the whole thing. this makes the failure to really engage with the physical setting galling.

worst part was the boy's death. it's not the fact that the characters see this event in terms of themselves (they don't!), but that the film does. gave up at that point.

and, shakey, sorry for derailing thread into my bitching. your point about the imaginary nature of the hotel sequence is interesting, and makes me want to watch this again. i should, it deserves another chance.

it's not the fact that the characters see this event in terms of themselves (they don't!), but that the film does. gave up at that point.

maybe I don't know what you really mean here, but I don't think this is the case. narratively the film completely halts at this point, and switches gears with a sequence of (unusually silent) shots of the mourning and the funeral and the community. I'm not sure what you would have wanted to have happen instead - have the child been given a back story? shift the plot to center around how deaths impact small rural indian communities?

i think he's saying the kid getting killed probably should have just been cut out of the film

but... that "look at these assholes" line followed by the failed rescue/death is pretty perfect imho

it encapsulates everything about the characters - their narcissism (and the mocking of it), their basic sympathetic appeal, their blinkered attempts to engage with their environment

the film completely halts at this point, and switches gears with a sequence of (unusually silent) shots of the mourning and the funeral and the community.

yeah, see, i saw this as more (mere) "background color" with the cinematic emphasis firmlyon the brother's sense of their own place in this incomprehensible/alien (to them) tragedy. it struck me as cheap, an attempt to generate depth and pathos in an otherwise empty narrative, with none of the real emotional weight of, say, richie's suicide attempt in tenenbaums.

but like i say, i've only seen darjeeling once and clearly owe it another look...

their own place in this incomprehensible/alien (to them) tragedy

I wouldn't expect any community to react to the sudden death of a child in a flash flood as "comprehensible" or anything other than an alien tragedy. it doesn't matter how common stuff like this is, it strikes everyone dumb/numb when it happens, regardless of culture.

I didn't much care for it the first time I saw it. I saw it again about a year later and actually liked it. Because I'm a junkie for Criterions I picked up the Blu Ray (40% off!) last week and watched it the other night and liked it even more. It's got surprising legs for such a seemingly tossed off work. I think everyone on the train at the end is one of the best things Anderson's ever done.

I wouldn't expect any community to react to the sudden death of a child in a flash flood as "comprehensible" or anything other than an alien tragedy.

naw, man, i'm talking about anderson's cinematic emphasis, not the brothers' response. will shut up now, at least till i revisit the film.

fantastic mr fox is godlike, one of my favorite recent films, would watch it with all ILXes
― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Tuesday, June 14, 2011 5:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
yes! best american movie in years. ©2011 amateurist

worst part was the boy's death. it's not the fact that the characters see this event in terms of themselves (they don't!), but that the film does. gave up at that point.
― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Tuesday, June 14, 2011 6:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

kind of hard to argue w/ this, esp. lyrical slomo scored to kinks music during funeral that holds on 3 brothers. which feels like a kind of retrenchment after all the more 'documentary-like' (limpid, handheld) shots of the indians mourning.
that said i like this movie a lot. i like anderson's mannered, decorative style and i like that he takes it to extremes but also works some variations on it here (intentionally mussing it up w/ zooms and long lenses). and i like the weird, out-of-the-blue flashback sequence.

i also think this is one of the prettiest movies i've ever had the privilege of seeing in 35mm.

oops fucked up the quote mark stuff.

i think fantastic mr. fox is the best american movie in years. it is totally sublime. i was sort of on the fence after the first viewing, but i was totally sold on the 2nd. and subsequent viewings have made it one of my favorite movies ever.

i guess the appeal of anderson to me is 90% formalism and i appreciate them as aesthetic objects. i can only occasionally access them emotionally. i sort of see the emotion in fantastic mr fox but it doesn't hit me. in fact i think the things i love about the film--its visual density, obsessive patterning, crazy motifs, characterizations, etc.--kind of get in the way of accessing it emotionally. this is only somewhat true of rushmore, which i do find a bit emotionally plangent.

It's weird, because to me Anderson (for all his aesthetic virtuosity) is one of the few current directors really able to move me, in his continouous explorations of the themes of family and community.

yeah, that's a good thing -- he's different things to different people.

for me the bottom line with anderson is that when i like his movies its because i like spending time with his characters (rushmore, bottle rocket, tenenbaums to a lesser extent - clearly the beginning of the end) and when i don't it's because i want to get the fuck away from them (everything else)

mr. fox has amazing backgrounds and the human animation is very good, but the foxes are flat out bad and ugly, most likely because of the technical limitations he stupidly imposed on the world class animators he gathered for the project. also it really rubbed me the wrong way that the animals were the same cast of (incredibly poorly voice-acted) upper crust patrician americans that all his movies are about, aside from the badger guy who is his most likable character in years

kylie is awesome

xpost
apparently, he's really different things to different people.
personally I loved Mr Fox, limited animation and upper crust patrician americans included. :)

ade what do u think is some good stop motion animation of animals

http://www.kollewin.com/EX/09-16-01/wallacegromit.jpg

it struck me as cheap, an attempt to generate depth and pathos in an otherwise empty narrative

I used to write a lot when I was still in school, even filmed a few short movies, obviously I don't really know much about the writing process but it does strike me that there's just a time in which you realize that a certain story just isn't working, you try to save it or re-write it a bit but in the end the whole thing just needs to be scrapped. That's how I feel about this movie, but he never scrapped it, just added more and more quirks until the thing collapsed on itself.

actually i think the problem is really just the faces of the foxes. they're not very expressive, since they look like irl dead animals

I dont think Anderson was interested in modern day "professional" animation. There was more a certain degree of inspiration from those East European stop-motion films (Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman). Not everyone's taste, and I can understand it.

As for Darjeeling, certainly it is flawed and unbalanced, but in such a personal, even insular way to remain (at least to me) an interesting addition to his filmography.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/bagpuss/images/bagpuss_150_250.jpg

http://www.youngandpoor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/walter-potter.jpg

man, i really, really don't like wallace and grommit. or any of the other nick park creations. i used to walk past the studio every day on the way home from a job i hated and think 'man, those bastards are probably having great fun in their nominally creative jobs, making shit.' so.

i think the fact that the animals look slightly uncanny is a strength. also i think it's part of the film's whole thing about the mechanised and ersatz, & the opposition of same against the animal and real -- it's very self-aware about how corrupted the latter is by the former, and how as an entertainment of the sort it is it is not really on the latter's side, by default, whatever the narrative might suggest.

otoh 'self-awareness' isn't really number one on the list of things that define a good children's film for some people, for some reason

haven't seen fantastic mr. fox yet but I really dislike this trend of using famous actors rather than, say, professional voice actors. maybe it brings in the bucks but you're not supposed to think about the actors supplying the voices during these movies, which is pretty much all I can do

haha i dont know what "bagpuss" is but i love it

I dont think Anderson was interested in modern day "professional" animation. There was more a certain degree of inspiration from those East European stop-motion films (Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman). Not everyone's taste, and I can understand it.

― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 9:47 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i love the eastern european guys. not everything has to look like selick or aardman, though i dont think the trnka influence is palpable aside from the roughness. i just think this is the worst of both worlds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lol3fjAyoJw

ade bagpuss is the eponymous protag. of a fondly-remembered oliver postgate kid's show of the same name -- o.p. has a sort of mythic reputation as a peculiar, kindly old man who was making these things in his garage. i'm not sure how true it is, he might have been a misanthropic tv exec, whatever --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyNs27kxolM&feature=related

anyway that seems seven or eight times as much a direct precursor to anything the terrible anglophile wes anderson did than anything which happened in eastern europe, tbh

xpost -- watch my video first, it is better

man, i really, really don't like wallace and grommit. or any of the other nick park creations. i used to walk past the studio every day on the way home from a job i hated and think 'man, those bastards are probably having great fun in their nominally creative jobs, making shit.' so.

i think the fact that the animals look slightly uncanny is a strength. also i think it's part of the film's whole thing about the mechanised and ersatz, & the opposition of same against the animal and real -- it's very self-aware about how corrupted the latter is by the former, and how as an entertainment of the sort it is it is not really on the latter's side, by default, whatever the narrative might suggest.

otoh 'self-awareness' isn't really number one on the list of things that define a good children's film for some people, for some reason

― thomp, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 9:54 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

thats an interesting point. maybe the movie should've gone all the way and given them animal bodies too

ade bagpuss is the eponymous protag. of a fondly-remembered oliver postgate kid's show of the same name -- o.p. has a sort of mythic reputation as a peculiar, kindly old man who was making these things in his garage. i'm not sure how true it is, he might have been a misanthropic tv exec, whatever --

i think this gets at the heart of my problem - the reason the roughness of stuff like this is so charming and great is because it does feel like one guy in a garage doing the best job he can - wes anderson spent 50 million on experienced animators trying to emulate that feel and it seems tacky to me - 'authenticity' heh

but i mean, it's a mass-distributed high-budget studio-funded american movie with george clooney that happens to be about the demise of the real at the hands of global capital, in which the animals find a happy ending in joyous compromise with the system -- what else would be appropriate?

i think i have now made myself dislike this movie

in which the animals find a happy ending in joyous compromise with the system

should've ended with them becoming maoist third-worldists while killing bankers in the streets

Mr. Fox has it's own thread you know

sorry dude ._.

"its" doesn't take an apostrophe

cold

i was recently in darjeeling and whats weird is the actual train that goes there is known as a toy train in that it runs on a narrow gauge track and is abt half the size of a normal train, its totally adorable! one would think this is the sort of thing wes anderson would cream his pants over, yet the whole movie is just normal sized trains wtf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darjeeling_Himalayan_Railway

most obvious precursor to fantastic mr fox =

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz0wAD1o0gs

btw the whole movie's on youtube and it is dope. forward to 2:50 above for a treat.

love the mr. fox animation, was never troubled by its roughness or the ostensible resemblance of the characters to "irl dead animals". love watching the fur shift from shot to shot, the stilted weirdness of their running. i'm charmed by the artifice, and charmed too by the fact that its such deliberate and obvious artifice. can see why others might object tho.

nor do i have any problems with the story's political implications. the animals in question are us, really: the moderately comfortable first-world viewer. they're not the rogue wolf, freezing at the edge of polite society, however much mr. fox himself might fancy that romantic image. like us, they're fairly content in their compromise. this strikes me as simple honesty.

it's equally honest, btw, if you see them simply as animals. they ultimately must find a place for themselves in a world dominated by human commerce. that the film softens this message by giving them a happy ending that life probably wouldn't is AOK in my book.

"...the fact that it's such deliberate artifice."

oliver postgate has a sort of mythic reputation as a peculiar, kindly old man who was making these things in his garage. i'm not sure how true it is, he might have been a misanthropic tv exec, whatever

yeah this is starry-eyed mythmaking of the first order - he made them in his shed, and hired another dude to paint the backdrops.

i feel like this was the longest 90 minute movie i've seen in my life

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipr-wS5iBv0 (Princess TamTam), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 4:00 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark