It looks so detailed I imagine it’ll be even more impressive in person, but we like it.

Pre-order the DVD here and the Blu-Ray here. For specs on the set take a look at our earlier story, the DVD and Blu-Ray will be out on October 10th.

Update: You can view a hi-res version of the cover over the Criterion Cast.

The Criterion Collection has announced their fall releases, and as we previously reported The Darjeeling Limited will finally be making it to the collection.

No  cover art yet, but we do have info about the 2 Disc set, which you can find after the break.

The film will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in a 2 Disc set that will include:

• New high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Wes Anderson (with DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)
• Anderson’s short film Hotel Chevalier (part one of The Darjeeling Limited), starring Natalie Portman, with commentary by Anderson
• Audio commentary featuring Anderson and cowriters Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola
• Behind-the-scenes documentary by Barry Braverman
• Anderson and filmmaker James Ivory discussing the film’s music
• Anderson’s American Express commercial
• On-set footage shot by Coppola and actor Waris Ahluwalia
• Audition footage, deleted and alternate scenes, and stills galleries
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Richard Brody and original illustrations by Eric Anderson

We of course loved the Ian Dingman cover for the Bottle Rocket DVD (and our gorgeous banner), but we’ve also loved Eric Anderson’s art for the other DVDs, so we look forward to that.

The set will be out on October 12, and you can pre-order the DVD and Blu-Ray now at Amazon. And remember, by using our links, you’re helping to support the site.

Though it is still without a firm release date, you can now pre-order The Criterion Collection edition of The Dajreeling Limited on Blu-Ray at Amazon.

Remember, by ordering through our links you’re helping to support the site and keep us up and running.

It appears Darjeeling is one of the few Criterion titles with a pre-order page that hasn’t already been officially announced, so hopefully that means we can expect a release date soon.

Over at Salon, Matt Zoller Seitz (freelance critic, and author of one the earliest and best profiles of Wes, and this incredible series of video essays from earlier this year) has been taking a look at some of the most influential directors of the decade in an on-going series of essays. Seitz’s latest examines the work of Robert Zemeckis and Wes Anderson.

An excerpt:

That’s where Wes Anderson comes in. The director of “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” (2004), “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007) and this year’s Roald Dahl adaptation “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is as much a train-set filmmaker as Zemeckis, Jackson and Lucas, and like Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson (“Punch-Drunk Love,” “There Will Be Blood”), Zemeckis and Spielberg, he’s one of the few prominent Hollywood filmmakers working in the ’70s auteur tradition — and doing it with a style so distinct that it can never be stolen, only imitated. He’s notorious for fretting over every aspect of his movies, from the texture of the clothes to the precise geometric motion of each shot and camera movement to the choice of on-screen font (he prefers variations of Futura). Detractors describe his style as fussy, overcomplicated, even airless — and if one prefers a messier, more spontaneous kind of filmmaking, or a more “invisible” style of direction, Anderson is almost certainly the opposite of fun.

I won’t mount a defense of Anderson as an exciting, imaginative and important filmmaker in this article, because I’ve already done it in a series of video essays.I mention him in this piece because of two particular aspects of his art. One is his commitment to analog moviemaking. He shoots on film and prefers to do everything, special effects included, on the set rather than create them after the fact. Even when he employs digital effects or processes, he calls attention to their artificiality; think of the obviously stop-motion sea creatures in “Aquatic” — or, for that matter, the unruly, roiling fur on the creatures in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” — which the director insisted be fabricated with hard-to-manage animal hair rather than more controllable synthetic hair, because he just liked how it looked.

Be sure to read the full piece at Salon, and leave your comments below. It’s a great essay, and well worth the read.

From Richard Brody’s New Yorker blog, where he ranked TDL the second best film of the 00s:

As ever with the films of Wes Anderson—the best new American director of the last twenty years—love and death, comedy and tragedy, comfort and adventure, understanding and opacity, style and substance fuse in a modernism of personal and reflexive cinema and a classicism of grand and subtle literary emotion.

I’ve seen it many, many times since that press screening two years ago. It has not only held up but gotten richer; each viewing yields fresh wonders.

Waris Ahluwalia, with co-editors Mortimer Singer and Tina Bhojwani, have put together a beautiful and interesting scrapbook called To India with Love: From New York to Mumbai.

Ask people who have been there, and they will all tell you India is like no other place in the world, a land that stirs every one of the five senses and stays in your heart forever. It is this India that brought together three friends, Waris Ahluwalia, Mortimer Singer and Tina Bhojwani to raise funds, spirits, and awareness for the victims of the attacks in Mumbai in November, 2008.  The editors set out to create a scrapbook collecting personal photos, stories, and memories from people who, like themselves, love India. The contributors include Wes Anderson, Adrien Brody, Francesco Clemente, Anthony Edwards, Jeanine Lobell, Natalie Portman, Yves Carcelle, Jean Touitou, Owen Wilson, Laura Wilson, Cynthia Rowley, James Ivory, Matthew Williamson, Rachel Roy, Tory Burch, Padma Lakshmi and Shobhaa De. This book declares to Mumbai and the whole country that we are all thinking of them and support them: hence To India, with Love: New York to Mumbai. Profits from the sales of the book will go to support families affected by the attacks. This book can truly make a difference, by opening eyes to the wonders of India and by once again letting the pen or a camera dominate the sword.

It is featured in the New York Times “The Moment” blog.

Photo by Wes Anderson

As we mentioned yesterday on Twitter, there’s a great new profile on Wes in this week’s New Yorker by Richard Brody. Click on the thumbnails below to read the article and let us know what you think in the comments.

And here’s Fox composer and voice actor Jarvis Cocker on last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.