The World of Wes Anderson
Back in October (or thereabouts), Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody assembled their own Darjeeling Limited playlists for the iTunes Store. While old news to many, this is new news to us! Thanks to Owen for the lead. Track listings after the break.
Continue reading “Wes, Jason, and Adrien offer up their own Darjeeling Limited playlists”
I hope all our Istabuli readers will be heading to the Istanbul International Film Festival (April 5-20) where The Darjeeling Limited will make its Turkish premiere. The Festival has an overall “’68 Generation” theme and will be presenting some wonderful films (Godard’s Rolling Stones doc Sympathy for the Devil to Hopper’s Easy Rider). TDL will show in the “American Independents” category alongside The Savages and (Team Anderson collaborator) Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding. Two hundred films will be screened in all. If I am not mistaken, this is the second Middle East showing for TDL, after the Israeli premier earlier this year. So Bosporus bathers, don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!
Paris fashion week is in full swing and Marc Jacobs, as usual, has been impressing the critics. We of course know that Marc Jacobs (creative director for Louis Vuitton) had a close working relationship with Wes Anderson on The Darjeeling Limited with the creating of the spectacular luggage and suits used by Francis and his brothers. But in the Guardian piece it seems that the film that “most influences” Jacobs his The Royal Tenenbaums:
Louis Vuitton only started making clothes 10 years ago under the aegis of Marc Jacobs, almost 150 years after the label first knocked out the ubiquitous bags. But its fashion division has become a credible player and last year the label achieved record growth. As if to rub in the American-ness, Jacobs has said that the film that influences him most is not Breakfast at Tiffany’s but The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson’s offbeat film about a dysfunctional family.
Anderson was also in attendance at this show (as was Sofia Coppola and many others).
It’s out! (yesterday!) Where have we been? Well, watching it.
Visit the Yankee Racers forum. Share your thoughts on the film/DVD and your adoration for Wes.
Buy it and support the site, if you haven’t already.
The Darjeeling Limited is out on DVD this Tuesday! Buy it here from Amazon.com, and support the site! Thank you.
From Hypebeast:
To commemorate Wes Anderson’s award nominated The Darjeeling Limited film, French fashion label APC teamed up on a t-shirt. The simple tee design features the movies named printed on the chest in two different color. Available February 29th at APC locations in Japan.
Wonder if these will be available at North American locations?
Update (Sun, 24 February): MoviesOnline.ca is giving away TDL on DVD:
To enter this contest send an email to contests@moviesonline.ca with the subject Darjeeling Limited and include your name and address. We will then pick a bunch of winners and announce them here on the site!
(no idea if this contest is open to non-Canadian residents… but I tried anyway?)
February 25, 2008, DVD review by Richard Brody (link)
It’s unjust that the Academy didn’t nominate Wes Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited” (Fox) in any category, but inexplicable that they didn’t invent a special one for it: Best Luggage. An exquisite set of suitcases, credited to Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, plays a large role in this blissful, loopy comedy of family anguish and sublimated tenderness.
The film’s subject is coming home, and it’s a sign of Anderson’s comic genius that it takes a picaresque jaunt through India by three brothers, estranged since their father’s funeral a year ago, to do so. The domineering Francis (Owen Wilson), who is recovering from a motorcycle accident, has convened the other two—Peter (Adrien Brody), a regular guy in a panic over the impending birth of his first child, and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), a literary romantic trapped in a troubled relationship—for a “spiritual journey,” which he plans down to the minute.
The trip brings odd misadventure, off-kilter romance, and sudden danger, but the real story involves coming to terms with a lifetime of ingrained resentments plus grief of more recent vintage. For Anderson, such troubles are too big to blurt out without bathos and ridicule. Following other Wasp modernists such as Hemingway and Howard Hawks, he relies on high style, sly gestures, and arch pranks to evoke intense emotion with bite and grace. His tight, sketchlike structures bring out the best in his actors, especially Schwartzman (who co-wrote the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola), a Dustin Hoffman for our time, who doles out Zen wisdom with a carnal leer. In Anderson’s world of brothers without sisters, the ribald rituals of male bonding suggest the unfathomable otherness of women—including the trio’s mother (Anjelica Huston), whose life haunts them no less than their father’s death and who turns out to be the real reason for their trip.
Where people prove elusive, material things play an outsized, totemic role. The brothers’ grudges emerge in their wrangling over their father’s relics—glasses, keys, toiletries—but pride of place goes to his luggage. Dark tan, finely tooled, and adorned with a faux-naïf intaglio of wild animals, it follows them around on their journey at great inconvenience, a perfect, literal metaphor for their heavy emotional baggage.
The film begins with a neat dose of backstory: a short preface, featuring Jack holed up in a luxurious Paris hotel before his passage to India, where he receives a surprise visit from the woman he adores (Natalie Portman, chomping a toothpick, her hair cropped martially short). Movingly, stoically, whimsically, Anderson suggests the difficult self-restraint and self-mastery that the most intimate relationships demand. Love, in his book, is tolerance and acceptance—facing up to pain in order to take the pleasure that’s given.
Fox Searchlight, a division of 20th Century Fox that focuses on “Indie” films, had a good 2007. Three of the eleven films they produced last year have been nominated for Oscars: Juno, Once, and The Savages. Four of the Oscar nominations went to Juno (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Screenplay). Fox Searchlight also produced The Darjeeling Limited, which has no Oscar nominations. I thought it would interesting to take moment and take a closer look at TDL and Juno in particular.
Many reviewers picked up similarities between Juno’s Director Jason Reitman’s style and Anderson’s. Some saw it as Reitman “channeling Bottlerocket/Rushmore era Anderson” or as employing Anderson’s “subtly Sardonic eye on American life”.
Others have seen Anderson’s influence on Reitman as a hindrance to overcome, most notably in the San Francisco Weekly. A December 18th 2007 review states that Juno only gets good “once you get past the early-going rough patches that are more Wes Anderson than even Wes Anderson could imagine. With the Kinks’ “Well-Respected Man” blaring on the soundtrack in the first 15 minutes, you’re likely to get the indie-film shakes.” TDL was criticized perhaps most heavily for Anderson’s “inability” to overcome his style.
(ed’s note: Welcome to our newest contributor, South Paw!)
As “The Darjeeling Limited” is nearing the end of its Australia run, it’s time for us to take a look at how the film has fared. Jason Schwartzman took a promo trip down under a short while ago, and though we can’t take a trip ourselves, we’ll soar the internet skies instead. Below is a look at what the Aussies have been saying about Mr. Anderson’s latest. A couple of these links have been posted before, but have been included again here for your convenience. Enjoy!
The charmingly-named Wollondilly Advertiser (Wollondilly Shire is just south of Sydney in New South Wales and supplies the city with most of its waters) reviewed TDL in its January 22, 2008 Edition in “Oh Brothers, What an Amazing Journey”. The WA described TDL as “unpredictable and “impossible to categorize”, but also that it “has elements of a travel adventure, it is partly family drama, it is often funny and sometimes downright bizarre.” Overall a positive review, “breath of fresh air” for audiences and the good people of the Shire.
Continue reading “The Antipodean Anderson”
(link)
Seems like our Censor Board has certainly gone green, if its latest action is anything to go by. The release of critically acclaimed Hollywood flick The Darjeeling Limited has been prohibited by the Indian Censor Board, which claims that the filmmakers failed to get adequate clearance before shooting Indian flora and fauna.
“A stay has been put on the film’s release until the filmmakers get a clearance from the Animal Welfare Board. It is something that they still haven’t produced before us,” said a Censor Board member who did not wish to be named.
The film has some wildlife scenery, shot in Rajasthan. While this footage was okay with the Censor Board (animals in the wild), what was not okay with them was a snake in a cage. So they demanded that the producers present a clearance certificate from the Animal Welfare Board. And a venomous request it turned out to be, for the producers drew a blank. “It turns out that free wildlife is not offensive if shot on camera.
However, for something like snakes or other animals in cages, clearance from the Animal Welfare Board is crucial, since we need to know that no wildlife was harmed during the process of filming a product. We are awaiting what the Animal Welfare Board has to say on the footage of the same. Until then, the release of the film is stalled,” said the source.
The film was to release today in theatres across India. The Darjeeling Limited, produced by Fox Searchlight, is a comedy that traces the journey of three estranged brothers in India, after their father’s death. The journey proves to be therapeutic as they resolve the fault lines in their relationships. Starring Hollywood heavyweights Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, the film also features Irrfan Khan and Jason Schwartzman.
What is going to truly bite the producers here is that the snake in the cage scene is a rather crucial one to the plot, from what viewers at preview screenings have noticed. A bad snakes-and-ladder move for studio execs; they just didn’t anticipate such a bad slide.