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?!?!

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