April 18, 2024
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” â some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it â I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury â he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” â and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging â I was with her at that moment â she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedâ” “Yeah, sure â you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iâm on the phone with you now, after all thatâs been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnât seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereâs not a case of that. He wasnât using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had â if that were what the accusation involved â the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iâm not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, âYou know, itâs not this, itâs thatâ? Because â let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, thatâs what it lacked. Thatâs what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
just downloaded the new radiohead: pretty good. only 3 songs in though đ
Doug Liman’s “Jumper” trailer is out…trailer interests me, Liman interests me, a Jim Uhls polish interests me, Hayden Christensen kind of interests me…looks promising.
So Noah’s review headline of The Darjeeling Limited has got me thinking about “genius” and how directors today rank around it.(yes, work is slow this week) Here’s my personal grading sheet for young famed filmmakers:
One-Trick Posers (those who put rock songs where scenes should be): Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Kelly, Baz Luhrmann, Eli Roth, Michael Moore (can I stop now?)
People I admire but want to see more of: Mark Romanek, Jason Reitman, Rian Johnson, Julie Taymor
Bears Who Are Smarter Than Average (fresh voices who take on old ideas): Liman, Nolan, Singer, Snyder, Abrams, Joe Wright
The Brilliant (those trying new stuff and succeeding): Greengrass, Fincher, PTA, Mendes, Payne, Jonze
The Genius (rewriting the language of film): Tarantino, Lasseter, Almod
only if you mean “rewriting the language of film” as copying in the case of tarantino.
See, Crow, I think that what you call “one-trick” could also be “artistic integrity.” You could easily look at the surface of many director’s films and recurring themes and surmise that they make the same film over and over again, but in Wes Anderson’s case I think Darjeeling is a very different beast from his other works. It has the theme of “escaping” and a family trying to come together, but it doesn’t do what I thought it might do and it went places that I never expected it to go. I think Sofia Coppola is another example of this (although I detested Marie Antoinette).
I think that having a style that is uniquely your own is different from being a one-trick pony. Everytime you throw on a Scorsese movie, you can pretty much guess that it is is a Scorsese film from a variety of factors including shot selection, music choices, recurring themes about honor and good vs evil, etc. I don’t think that makes him a one-trick pony; on the contrary, I think that makes him an ARTIST. I think the same applies with Wes Anderson.
But that is only my opinion and thanks, Crow, for bringing it up. I’d like to hear what others think, perhaps I’m in the minority here.
The new and final GOLDEN COMPASS trailer is here and all of a sudden it looks like a Best Picture contender.
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/thegoldencompass.html
How about ‘remixing’ instead of reediting? Because that’s what he’s doing.
Gotta disagree about the ‘smarter than average’ group though. Liman strikes me as your basic studio guy who’s made a bunch of movies that are, in retrospect, nothing special. Snyder (Zach Snyder?) tapped the zeitgeist with his last movie and knows how to please an audience, but he doesn’t actually have anything to say. Abrams is a TV guy.
And I think Wes Anderson deserves better than ‘one-trick poser’ territory. Jared Hess and Judd Apatow should be in the ‘smarter than average’ group, and Shane Carruth belongs in ‘want to see more of’.
Correct link
http://l.yimg.com/cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/242/embed-2007-08-28-1213/fullscreen.html?&seek=2.377&kbps=3797&eAutoStart=4451177&language=&shareEnable=0&popupEnable=0&detect=0&loop=0&preview=0
And all the CGI gimcrackery in The Golden Compass trailer made my eyes glaze over. I understand the books are fun, but I’m not convinced about the movie.
Wes Anderson is an artsy kid from Houston, Texas. And Bottle Rocket, his most energetic and American of films, is the only one in oeuvre that reflects it. Since then he’s been trying to convince us that he and his characters are Yankee neurotics with weird European hangups. And to me it comes off as phony (like a stockbroker pretending to be an Eskimo). There’s something deliberate about his storytelling. It never feels like there’s anything at stake. His characters are all the same. They talk the same. They like the same music. Have the same sense of humor. React the same to big situations… no real dynamics to chew one.
But it’s “peculiar,” so he’s a genius.
Michael Clayton is phenomenal, the best movie I’ve seen since Children of Men. That’s all I got.
But it’s “peculiar,” so he’s a genius.
is that about anderson? cause you didn’t list him as genius
tarintino is more of a hack than a genius
Crow, I can’t argue most of the specifics that you list, except to say that most of them are precisely why I think he’s a very good filmmaker, not a bad one.
mallick belongs in one trick pony group.
I’ve seen 60 movies this year so far, and have never once seen a trailer for “Sleuth.” Can’t believe it comes out this weekend– there’s been ZERO fanfare.
Obviously we’re all too highbrow to even acknowledge his existence, but of directors to emerge in the 00s, I’d put Rob Zombie way up there in terms of filmmaking skill and integrity of vision. Sure, you will scoff that one would even mention such a non-Oscar bait name, but the entirety of “Devil’s Rejects” and at least the queasy first half of his “Halloween” bear the inimitable stamp of a born filmmaker in total control of his material.
Commence mocking, of course.
But Crow, if you didn’t know that he was from Houston, would that make his films better? It seems like one of your biggest complaints is that he doesn’t just make movies about guys from Texas. That’s like being mad that Scorsese made Kundun or that Spielberg made any of the movies he’s made. What movies has Tarantino made that reflect what his upbringing was like, other than the copious references to all the movies he saw as a kid? That’s not a slight to Tarantino, but you can’t call Anderson a phony simply because he is from Texas and chose to make his last three films about folks outside of that state.
And I would argue that the specifics of these characters are very different. They share some of the same traits, sure (Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, the Darjeeling boys all live in a world of perpetual boyhood), but they have completely different perspectives. This much is made very clear in Darjeeling, as the three brothers have their very own idiosyncracies (much like the siblings in Tenenbaums).
I can’t help if you’re not a fan of Wes Anderson, but I think he is very much an artist who makes very different films. I mean, his movies must be different otherwise I wouldn’t have disliked Life Aquatic and loved Darjeeling Limited.
Anderson’s movies consciously take place in a sort of idealized fantasy world, and they’re about the characters and their emotional states and the mixing of music and imagery and what those evoke.
I would call Wes Anderson ‘unique’. i love his movies, but ‘genius’, to me, implies either a perfection of form or a variety of talents.
i don’t think he achieves either, but his films to me are flawed little gems and i love them all.
I tire of hearing the word ‘Tarantino’ and ‘genius’ used in the same sentence.
I hate it when people do this, but I’m gonna go ahead and do it anyway (and you can hate me for it):
Genius – an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work in science, art, music, etc
So, in this regard I would assume that Wes Anderson is a genius at directing films. However, I don’t know if this is “natural” or learned.
Either way, I agree with you anghus that the word “genius” is often used. I am guilty of this and I often jump to using the word as a form of hyperbole when I’m really excited about something.
Seanwithaw Can please tell me how to download the bloddy radiohead album? it might be my connection at work, but everytime i press something, it asks me for a password and confirmation. I fill those out, and it re-asks it as many times as i fill it out. Then if i enter 0.00 for the amount i want to pay, it goes back to password. its been 10 minutes of this shit.
Ian, Golden Compass could have been a surpise crowd pleasing best picture contender, but the emotional catharsis and thematic climax of the story (some footage of which can be seen in the trailers) has been castrated from the end of the film to be put at the beginning of the next film. Can’t have all those upsetting events like betrayal, death, and sacrifice go mucking up your polar bear fight action movie can you? Kids might sniffle, adults might be moved–all very uncommercial. I mean, think how much more money Fellowship of the Ring would have made if everything after the fight against the cave troll had been moved to the beginning of the Two Towers–that’s basically what they’re doing here. and it’ll work ‘better’ at the start of the Subtle Knife, because then you have a whole movie to distract the sad audience away from one relationship and move straight into the primary one.
http://www.hisdarkmaterials.org/news/the-golden-compass/a-message-from-chris-weitz-to-his-dark-materials-fans
Damn, you guys got my Aspergers acting up big time now. Guess I asked for it.
Say what you will about QT, all of his movies are different in some way than the previous. He CERTAINLY wears his influences on his sleeve, but his blending of them is, I’d say, completely original. (The only time I’ve seen him phone it in was his contribution to Four Rooms.) Even Kill Bill, which didn’t move me much dramatically, was nothing like Jackie Brown. And for the millionth time… Death Proof is an act of mad genius.
You can be tickled by Wes Anderson’s quirks all you want. (I actually liked Life Aquatic!) But let’s face facts, Brett Ratner takes more chances as an artist than he does.
(funny how Ratner’s becoming the “Hitler” of heated movie snob arguments)
Hotel Chevalier was tolerable.
Plus, if we’re breaking out the dictionary definitions, ‘hack’ is inaccurate in relation to Tarantino, who has never done a work-for-hire movie (except maybe Four Rooms again).
Ooooh, you lost me with the Brett Ratner thing. Wes Anderson doesn’t make films for the masses, unlike Ratner. A risk-taker is someone who actually takes a risk, not a guy who has made three of the same movies, a third title in trilogy, a remake of a Hannibal movie, a family movie with Nicolas Cage, etc.
Wes Anderson makes ORIGINAL films and that will always be more of risk than anything. And I think, like Tarantino, Wes takes a lot of stuff from 70’s films (I say as much in my review) and like Tarantino, he arranges them in a new and exciting way. I completely agree with you on Tarantino by the way, but if you break it down to the surface like you do with Anderson, you could argue that he makes the “same” films with his hip 60’s and 70’s era music, Elvis-loving characters, pop-culture speak, etc.
The point is that Wes Anderson and Tarantino are both good filmmakers, in my eyes, and that they both take chances. But they both have a vision and a style that is unique to them, making them BOTH artists and not one-trick ponies.
i concur that “jackie brown” is outside QT’s milieu. of course, it’s also an adaptation.
there is no substance to his movies, however. it’s all style, all flash. genius, to me, needs to hold some weight.
I think there is plenty of substance to his films, but I guess the question is, what do you (Hendhogan) consider to be ‘weighty’?
anyone watch Tarantino on Iconoclasts?
He talks about how he would be willing to die to pull of a shot in Resevoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, but didn’t quite feel that way about Jackie Brown.
From what it sounded like, it seemed like he didn’t have as strong a connection to the film, yet, it’s the only movie he’s made that has an ounce of honesty to it.
Not about to dip my toe into the genius/hack pool, but I loved the new trailer for GOLDEN COMPASS. A hundered times more interested in it than I was prior. JUMPER, on the other hand, looks absolutely headache-inducing. This is the first I’d heard of it, and though I can’t say I am not curious about it, I found it hard to sit through the trailer. Not a welcoming introduction.
Movielocke: moving endings around between books certainly didn’t hurt The Lord of the Rings pictures, did it? If the director thinks it makes COMPASS a better picture, so be it: by the looks of this new trailer Weitz certainly seems to know what he is doing.
The trailer looks like a cross between The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and those old Coke ads.
I notice Radiohead gets a lot of mention here, and I’d assume most of our regulars are between 25 and 45; Is Radiohead, then, one of the few bit “rock” acts that’s still acceptable for post-college adults to listen to publicly?
I’m 35 myself, and while I can respect the musicianship of a Radiohead, it’s just not my cup of tea, but the stuff that is– pop, hip-hop and metal– I’d surely look like a fool going to a concert of or blasting on the car stereo.
Again, I’m not deriding Radiohead or their fans, but I guess I’ve never taken “music” seriously enough as an artform to seek out acts of “integrity.” I’d rather hear something peppy, angry, or sung by a cute chick. I guess it’s also an age thing, but I’m past the point where I want to learn any “life lessons” from smelly bar hags in thrift-store clothes. For that reason, I almost find something generically poppy like Ashlee Simpson or Avril Lavigne to be as valid and profound as The Boss, Bob Dylan, Bono, or Radiohead– in other words, not at all.
Maybe it’s my bias toward film or literature, but the creative maestros of even SITCOM TELEVISION are often well-educated, classically-trained people. Street-smart as the most brilliant musicians are, again, they’re usually sweaty road dogs who take themselves way too seriously. So since I can write off their entire personas, why would I want to listen to “meaninful droning” over a cute popstar cooing or Slayer riffing at 200 mph?
jeff,
i like movies with solid characterization, functions on several different levels.
QT writes mostly uni-dimensional characters, mostly played at the broadest terms. they are driven by the action of the movie as opposed to the characters.
all of which make for a fun ride. mindless entertainment. but i never leave a QT movie being moved by what i saw. i never feel i’ve learned anything from what i saw. i was entertained. sometimes, that’s enough. and if you want to say he’s a genius at mindless entertainment, i’m there.
but he’s not a kubrick, scorcese or lumet
All I can say is that I disagree because I think there are rich characters in all of his movies and they all function at multiple levels. I don’t think the movies are mindless at all, they’re too intricate and multilayered.
I think he has more in common with the French New Wave except minus the overt politics. I also don’t think that a movie needs to ‘teach me’ something in order to be successful.
Who’s comparing him to those guys?
those directors fall into my genius catagory.
crow suggested QT was a genius. those guys are my standard and QT falls way below.
in that context, not talking about successful films. again, i was entertained. but when the “g” word starts to get used, i want more. you asked me about “weighty.” that was part of my reply.
i’m not going to request examples, cause i’m more than a little afraid of what i’ll get. you want to think there’s more there than meets the eye, more power to you.
I think there’s exactly what meets the eye.
I would be happy to give you an example or two but I don’t know what you’re not asking for.
well, there’s another good example of what i think is substantive. “more than meets the eye.”
SPOILERS!
Was anyone else as disppointed with Darjeeling Limited as I was?
I adore Wes Anderson’s first three films, despised Life Acquatic, but had big hopes that Darjeeling would be a real comeback.
But instead he just traced over the same ground of adults stuck in adolescence. I love Adrian Brody but am totally sick of Owen Wilson. You would have thought his “suicide attempt” would have actually informed and deepened Darjeeling, but it just made it seem all the more trite, as Wilson’s character had no charm and was just plain annoying.
I also found it sad that Anderson went to India not to see what India is actually like but rather to use it as colorful production design. I thought with the kid’s death and funeral that we might get something moving out of it, but instead the enitre sequence was just a dud.
There were some very nice scenes with Schwartzman (who I continue to like, here and in Shopgirl) and with the Indian stewardess, but in the end it was pretty vapid. And I loved the cameo with Bill Murray but it was just a quick moment. I went in not knowing that Anjelica was in the film, but after five minutes there was no doubt she’d be the mom at the end. Was she bad in the film? No, she was quite good. But the actual scenes were blah. It was as if the characters didn’t even care. And it felt so…repetetive. Haven’t we seen this in Anderson’s other films already? Was it really necessary to remake parts of his own films?
Yes, I thought Darjeeling was a lot better than the insufferable Life Aquatic. I’d give Darjeeling a 5, Aquatic a 1, and Anderson’s first three films somewhere between an 8 and a 9 each.
The question is, has Wes Anderson run out of things to say? Is he a one-trick poney as was suggested earlier?
It’s sad, becuase he’s so freaking talented, but after the last two films, it’s no guarentee I’m gonna see his next film in the theatre. Becuase I used to think Anderson was finding depth through very cool style, but now I’m not even sure he wants to make real characters, and am worried all he’s interested in is design and artifice.
Wes Anderson’s career at this point looks like one of the worst cases of someone starting out brilliantly and then just losing it completely. Peter Bogdonavich anyone?
Hendhogan, I misunderstood you. I took your phrase to mean that you thought I was seeing something in the movies that wasn’t there, so my response was that I think those things are right there for anyone to see.
The Life Aquatic is not worthy of a 1/10. That tells me you haven’t seen enough 1/10 movies, like Red Zone Cuba, The Chilling, or Psyched by the 4D Witch.
And is it just me, or does anyone else find disgusting the fact that Anderson keeps making films about impossibly rich characters with so much leisure time on their hands? Who can possibly relate to this?
The Louis Vitton bags or whatever the hell they were in Darjeeling…tossing these ridiculously expensive bags around a country mired in poverty is just the heights of arrogance. The film is shockingly indifferent to India, yet steals music from their most famous director. You might call it homage, but in Anderson’s context it is almost cruel.
Clearly I’ve become very disillusioned with this guy’s work. But it’s only because I care!
I’ll admit the 1/10 is on my personal scale, but I’m not in the business of paying to see 1/10 dreck. You’d never find me paying money to see The Heartbreak Kid for instance. I’m actually shocked to see people go into such depth about garbage like that. To me those “hit em in the groin” films are hardly worth discussing at all, much less putting the effort into it that Poland did in trying to figure out what it sucked. Though I have to admit Dave’s analysis was quite well put.
But to me, Life Aquatic is just terrible, no better than other recent horrible films that might have been good like Black Dahlia or Smokin Aces, other 1/10 films on my scale.
But we’ve already done the Life Aquatic thing.
What did you think of Darjeeling???
LexG, Radiohead’s only a rock act if you define “rock” as having drums, bass, and guitar. They haven’t been a rock act in the conventional sense since 1997 at the latest, with “OK Computer”, and I’d say since 1995’s “The Bends.” Others may disagree.
“Again, I’m not deriding Radiohead or their fans, but I guess I’ve never taken “music” seriously enough as an artform to seek out acts of “integrity.” I’d rather hear something peppy, angry, or sung by a cute chick.”
No cute chicks, but Radiohead can be both peppy and angry, sometimes on the same track. Not sure what you mean by “integrity.”
“Maybe it’s my bias toward film or literature, but the creative maestros of even SITCOM TELEVISION are often well-educated, classically-trained people.”
All the members of Radiohead went to university; all but one graduated. Not sure what relevance that has.
Anyway, get ahold of “OK Computer” and “The Bends” and listen to them. If you don’t like the music, you can go back to the cute chicks. I like chick music, too. But, er, not Avril Lavigne. High school ended for me a long, long time ago. About the same time it did for you, in fact.
I hain’t seen Darjeeling, but as long as it’s competently crafted (which it will be) it can’t go lower than 3/10 on my scale.
I’m just objecting to the hyperbole when there are movies out there that are much, much worse in every possible way than something like Life Aquatic (which I liked but didn’t love).
I don’t consider it hyperbole. I’m not exagerrating in the least when I say Life Aquatic is an unredeemable solipsistic piece of balooney made by a filmmaker that has forgotten about his audience completely. A satire of Jacques Cousteau? If that wasn’t pitched by Anderson, it would have been laughed out of Hollywood in a flat second.
But hot directors coming off hits, critical or box office, get a free pass a lot of times and get to do what they want.
To me, Life Aquatic is Anderson’s Elizabethtown or One From the Heart.
And by that, I mean a total disaster. Unwatchable dreck that only shows it’s director has lost touch.
But that’s me. I know people adore everything Anderson does. I did. Not anymore.
Jeff, go check out Darjeeling, curious what you think. Definitely see the short first, it informs the film in a neat way. I actually liked the short better than the film. It had soul, but the film was mostly soul-less.
If nothing else I give Anderson big props for doing the short/feature thing and releasing it the way he did. Like Radiohead, this is a guy ahead of the curve and inventing the “new distributions”.
I’m not arguing about Life Aquatic except to say that even “an unredeemable solipsistic piece of balooney made by a filmmaker that has forgotten about his audience completely” is still going to be better than hundreds of movies made every year. Even if you hated the storyline of TLA, it still had good music, cinematography, production design, and performances. A movie like, say, Turistas, has none of those.
But again, I’m not gonna pay to see Turistas because it looks like a piece of garbage.
Let’s just say I reserve zero on my scale of 10 for all the films I would never bother to watch because they look like shit from the get-go.
I will admit that the failings of an otherwise very interesting filmmaker are much more painful than a hack making another hacky movie.
I could give a shit about Michael Bay or Brett Ratner and for the most part don’t think those guys are worthy of discussion.
Wes Anderson on the other hand is someone I’ve really believed in, and so the fall is that much more painful.
“The Louis Vitton bags or whatever the hell they were in Darjeeling…tossing these ridiculously expensive bags around a country mired in poverty is just the heights of arrogance.”
But Carpetmuncher, doesn’t that have more to do with the CHARACTERS rather that the filmmaker? And doesn’t the help the ending more powerful, that these characters grow up and stop being so narcisstic? I respect your opinion, but I couldn’t disagree with you more. I think I stated all my reasons in the MCN piece, so I’m not going to rehash all of them. But when you ask, who can relate to these people? Well, I may not relate to their obscene wealth, but I can relate to a lot of what they are going through. And I don’t think the film is soulless at all and if you look at the film as a collection of short stories (like the ones that Jack writes), where each one informs a little bit of the whole, I think it’s an amazing achievement.
Sure, but even if you aren’t going to see those other movies, I think you still have to give a movie like The Life Aquatic credit for the things that it does get right which I listed above. A movie is made of many, many parts and you’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you don’t recognize those aspects.
For example, earlier this year I hated 300, but I would be happy to agree that it looks and sounds great and it stands as a landmark of sorts. So even though I loathed it, I still couldn’t rate it lower than 3/10.
Re: Radiohead. The MP3s have been encoded at 160kbps. I’m not one of those fanatics who insists of super-duper, 8 zillion kbps lossless compression, but even I think that’s rather lame. That’s lower quality than I use to rip my CDs. I haven’t downloaded the album yet, but now I’ll definitely be paying less than I planned to.
Jacques Cousteau is one of my heroes so Aquatic rankled, I hate to admit that it offended me, but it did. The Cousteau narration in Sponge Bob is more respectful.
I like doug liman and I hope no one queer-eyed him yet.
Jackie Brown is the best thing QT ever did.
I also love Jackie Brown. It’s the only QT movie that I feel a deep enough connection to to want to watch it repeatedly.
Someone else mentioned Carruth as someone they wanted to see more from. I second that, though I’m starting to wonder if he’s got a second movie in him.
“I don’t consider it hyperbole. I’m not exagerrating in the least when I say Life Aquatic is an unredeemable solipsistic piece of balooney made by a filmmaker that has forgotten about his audience completely. A satire of Jacques Cousteau? If that wasn’t pitched by Anderson, it would have been laughed out of Hollywood in a flat second.” Yeah. I will take that seriously. Sure I will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That aside; the new Golden Compass trailer is bollocks. The first one had a nice air of mystery and a bit mysticism to it. This one has BEARS IN CHAIRS and makes a fantasy film appear to be nothing more than a balls-out action flick. Good on you, Bob. Great way to sell it.
Finally, Lex, you have no respect for music. You actually have a superiority complex to music as well as believing there’s something more redeeming to be found in a sitcom than a song. You remind me of this Onion story from a few years back, that dealt with a 30-something who could not handle MUSIC anymore. Sorry you believe what you do because it is sorry, but it is your right to never understand the difference between pop music and the rest of music :).
I just saw DARJEELING and I’m writing a blog about it for Film Threat…but I’m with carpet muncher…it’s a terrible film. Terrible. Noah-I read your peice and admire your passion, but you’re way off.
I love Wes Anderson (and I think LIFE AQUATIC is better than TENNENBAUMS) but DARJEELING made me realize everything people have been saying about him is true. He has NO SENSE of characters or real life. And it’s not about being “surreal,” the dude is trapped at age 15. It’s like he lives in his parents basement and watches movies and just regurgitates them. I bet he’s still a virgin…and that’s not a knock or a dig, I honestly believe that.
To write about life and relationships and death…you have to live. Wes Anderson keeps going back to the idea of characters who are stunted in life because he’s stunted. it’s why RUSHMORE is the ultimate for him, it IS him. RUSHMORE is his Rushmore.
I wish I didn’t feel that way and I still love his quirkiness and his amazing production design, but he’s a grown man having a real life puppet show everytime he makes a film.
Well, Pet, I’m not going to be able to sway you if you feel that way, but I obviously disagree. I think he has a very good sense of “real life” in this film because the emotions were deeply felt by me. And I would argue that he’s a man who has lived. You’re making a lot of assumptions about his personality based on his films and maybe they’re accurate, but while I think there is a bit of him in every one of those characters, I think he’s probably a bit more complicated. As for the virgin comment, I remember that he dated Tara Subkoff for a few years, so you cannot honestly believe that.
Maybe you could elaborate a bit more about what exactly you disliked about the film instead of what you don’t like about who you think he is.
Blackcloud: Jonny Greenwood’s statement on the bitrate is that they wanted to make sure it was better quality than iTunes, which it is. Now you may feel iTunes is a ripoff anyway, but at least they’re suprassing what the largest site for downloads is giving you.
He said it’s never going to be as good as the CD, so I’m sure he’s aware that some people will pay less for the digital download, and perhaps buy it when it’s released in the stores. I paid about $8 for it, and I’m cool with spending another $10 when it hits Best Buy next year.
What I have a problem with was only having one price level for the discbox. I could give a shit about vinyl, and would have gladly paid $40-$50 for the book and the two CDs. But whatever, I’ll get the bonus tracks for free online once they’re leaked.
Oh yeah… I apologize for coming across overly snarky above, but asthma makes me way more direct then I should be. Nevertheless; back to back Anderson films guaranteed to lead to arguments for years to come! YAY! Freakin internet.
“Jackie Brown is the best thing QT ever did.”
How about hell YES! It’s one of the very best films of the 1990s too for that matter. There are things in that movie that are so amazing I can barely articulate how amazing they are.
I can’t believe the Wes Anderon discussion has persisted this far into the thread; Whatever his technical skillz, doesn’t WA make smarmy, smug, hermetic, pussy-ass movies for people with no appreciation for the visceral?
To cop an attitude from True Romance’s Clarence, Scarface is a movie; Platoon is a movie; French Connection is a movie.
Some smug, ironic, arch center-framed bullshit like any of WA’s movies is for thrift-store-clad snarksters who still have their out-of-state plates on their cars in the Arclight parking lot. WHOO-HOO, LOS FELIZ! JETRAG! VINTAGE CLOTHES! ARTISTES!
In other words, poseur-ass assholes who suck and aren’t hardcore at all, can’t relate to hardcore crime shit or inner-city shit whatsoever, and think the height of hilarity is a bunch of white-bread douchebags all geometrically framed for their arch irony. Same goes for the Coen Brothers– poseur bullshit for people with no intensity whatsoever. The day I respect Wes Anderson is when he directs a hardcore multiethnic inner-city crime film that legitimately depicts the world as it is… not a bunch of detached, pleased-with-itself white-boy irony that in its complete denial of societal reality just smacks of preppy entitlement.
Yeah, if only every director could be like Tony Scott.
I need to add this: I hope that after the mad rush of the hyperbole has passed, you do realize that the average “hardcore multiethnic inner-city crime film” is as much of a fantasy than anything Anderson has ever done, right? I hope you don’t think S.W.A.T. is the height of social realism.
S.W.A.T. rules, bitch!
Obviously I’m just being silly, but are you THAT lily-white that you don’t find something like that, or Domino, or Man Apart, a more realistic depiction of your surroundings as an Angeleno than some smarmy Anderson fantasy-land?
Not that either/or is a strict definition of quality cinema, and not that I give a shit about your seemingly myopic tastes, but you seem like the prototypical LA-transplant “geek,” all consumed with either smug irony or whiteboy horror, and generally condescending to anything that doesn’t match your strict, whitebread worldview.
In other words, you’re just kind of a douche.
Jeff; I got you on this one. Lex, I am going to throw my freakin SWAT dvd at your head. After that gets finished dinging you up. I am going to turn on the Ventures version of the SWAT theme, and beat you with the forthcoming CRITERIONS of Bottle Rocket and THE DARJEELING LIMITED! THAT’S HOW I ROLL, NUGGETS. We now continue our broadcast dau/
Lex, can I disregard ‘you’re just kind of a douche’ as another example of you ‘just being silly’? Thanks.
I would like to politely suggest that you don’t know very much about me or my tastes, and I hope that you aren’t really as consumed by ‘intensity’ ‘visceral’ and things that rawk as you appear to be. In other words, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren’t yourself a different species of poser whiteboy.
To answer your question, I don’t see what Los Angeles has to do with this discussion since Anderson has never set his movies there (and how do you know where I live?), and yes, even though Domino has non-white faces in it, it’s still thoroughly stylized and divorced from reality and, more important, from genuine human emotions of any kind. Are you attacking Anderson for being effete? That’s what it sounds like.
“Bottle Rocket,” incidentally, kinda blows. Never got the love for this half-baked, middling, low-rent movie. Compared to BR, “Life Aqauatic” is a fucking masterpiece. Reasons:
1) Isn’t “Bottle Rocket” in 1.85:1? WACK. That doesn’t even count as a movie.
2) It’s in shitty, wan, boring color.
3) The Wilsons’ hair is nowhere near as luxurious as it has been since. Boring hair = boring movie.
4) The hotel maid is UGLY and BORING; No way I’m buying that Wilson would invest that much time, let alone 2/3 of an ALREADY BORING MOVIE, hitting on such a physically repulsive chick; Shouldn’t these guys be out banging some A-list bombshell? In any case, the flick comes to a SCREECHING HALT anytime she shows up.
5) It wasn’t directed by Michael Bay.
OWNED.
Christ, Jeff, settle down; Please save your typical baiting and devil’s advocating for another time and place– you know, that thing you do (time and again) where you play dumb seemingly solely to encourage and prolong an argument, apparently so you can stay up all night debating worthless bullshit. Like, dude, go to sleep already.
“How do you know where I live?” Because you’ve mentioned it before (repeatedly, though I tend to assume any- and everyone here is in LA anyway), because you claim to be an aspiring filmmaker, and because in previous posts you’ve mentioned your precise relocation timeframe. Trust me, I’m not that interested. I just happen to remember it.
“Are you attacking Anderson for being effete? That’s what it sounds like.”
This is the quintessential jeffmcn post; Someone above tackled it better than I feel like attempting at this time, but Anderson’s milieu of smarmy priviledge is as boring to me as Whit Stillman’s or Noah Baumbach’s. That’s just my disposition– I prefer cops, thugs, gangs, coke, drugs, neon, and shaky camerawork. Apparently you don’t. Whatever– though it is only mildly interesting that above you taunted someone with some criteria why no one should dismiss W.A.– the cinematography is so good! The production design is incredible! The music is great! In my opinion, you could say that about any Tony Scott movie, which means even the worst, Toniest Tony oughta rank 3/10 on your cineaste’s scale, but you seem so dismissive of THE GREATEST DIRECTOR IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA– and yes, I absolutely believe that– that I doubt your own standards apply in this case.
I’m working a night shift this week, and I’m not ‘playing dumb’, I’m asking for clarification of your points, because I don’t want to jump to conclusions or put words in your mouth.
And yes, the worst Tony Scott movie does rank 3/10 on my scale. And seriously, GREATEST DIRECTOR IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA? That’s a pretty ginormous grain of salt you’ve just attached to everything you’ve ever said, so thanks.
I like Enemy of the State and The Hunger, though.
1. Tony Scott
2. Sergio Leone
3. Stanley Kubrick
4. Martin Scorsese
5. David Lynch
6. Woody Allen
7. Robert Altman
8. Sam Peckinpah
9. Clint Eastwood
10. Michael Mann
For your amusement, here’s my own hipster-irony-obsessed transplant list.
1. Alfred Hitchcock
2. Stanley Kubrick
3. David Cronenberg
4. Luis Bunuel
5. Steven Spielberg
6. Howard Hawks
7. David Lynch
8. Martin Scorsese
9. Jean-Luc Godard
10. Robert Altman
I am so confused right now.
Does Lex actually like Wes Anderson and Tony Scott or not?
Oh, and I saw Dave Poland on Aussie TV today. I was freaked out. It was about that whole “no women in Hollywood” thing.
Sorry, I wasn’t going to write anything and I know it is pointless, but I can’t help myself. The most ludicrous series of opinions ever expressed on this blog?:
“I guess I’ve never taken “music” seriously enough as an artform to seek out acts of “integrity.” What part of the 1000s of years of music history leads you to believe it isn’t a serious art form? Perhaps you just don’t understand music.
“I almost find something generically poppy like Ashlee Simpson or Avril Lavigne to be as valid and profound as The Boss, Bob Dylan, Bono, or Radiohead.” Ah, perhaps you are incapable of enjoying or connecting with music? I can understand if you find Radiohead whiny or boring, or if you can’t bear to listen to Dylan sing, but are you actually lumping all music into one homogenous mass of mediocrity? What about Chopin or Wagner or Beethoven? If it is all just a wash of white-noise to you, perhaps that partially explains your inability to emotionally connect with Wes Anderson’s films–exemplified by the use of “ooh la la” in the finale of Rushmore–an overwhelming moment to someone who can connect with music on a deeper level than “noise”.
“Maybe it’s my bias toward film or literature, but the creative maestros of even SITCOM TELEVISION are often well-educated, classically-trained people.”
Seriously? I think you find that music has a more illustrious academic history than even literature (which is not as old an art form (in its current state) than you may think). But perhaps you refer only to rock’n’roll? Even then, I hotly contest your statement that people who work in sitcom television are necessarily paragons of education compared to musicians.
“Street-smart as the most brilliant musicians are, again, they’re usually sweaty road dogs who take themselves way too seriously.”
There are definitely many musicians who are ill-informed and take themselves way too seriously. This is not exclusive to the world of music and is certainly present to just as great an extent in the world of film. To call even “the most brilliant” musicians “street-smart” or “sweaty road dogs” is the worst form of condescension. It would be like Norman Mailer calling all screenwriters “latte-drinking, spoiled, failed novelists”.
And now for something completely different!
On MCN, the link “The Sex Lives Of Elders: Jane Fonda, 69, Wants To Put It In Pictures” takes you to very, very hardcore gay-porn. I don’t know if it always did that (doubt it), but that’s what it does now.
I enjoy a stretched mangina as much as the next straight guy, but still…a little extreme…DP, perhaps you should pull it?
Oh, and if anybody wants to know, Jane Fonda is still one foxy lady, and at the age of 69 (the odds!) I’d tap that.
I can’t contain my happiness for Ratatouille. đ It’s made $247 millions outside of the US and has yet to open in the UK, according to the Guardian (http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2186877,00.html). The total, according to Boxoffice Guru is almost $450 millions.
I know that it still has $12 millions to go to catch with Cars, but I’m sure it’ll get there. I’m hoping it’ll make another $35 millions to be on par with Toy Stories 2.
No one has noticed the hypocrisy of Lex criticizing the unreality of Wes Anderson’s cinematic world, while listing Woody Allen in her Top 10 directors? The guy who appears to live in a dirt and minority-free version of New York? I love Woody to death, and he might be on my list, but his world is just as much of a fantasy as Anderson’s.
I can’t in good conscience call someone an idiot who has that much love for Sergio Leone, but jeez…tone it down.
I just noticed that Harry Potter V just passed IV domestically (did it internationally a while ago) to become the second biggest in the series. It’s really weird to see a series behave this way, going from strength to strength when you’re on the fifth film already. This has to be unprecendented, right?…has any film series ever had a fifth film really perform B.O. wise?
Closest I can recall is Rocky IV, but maybe somebody has a better memory than me.
In buying the Radiohead album, I clicked on the link to their currency converter. Knowing how much I wanted to pay (around $8US), I figured how much that was in euros. This was incredibly absent-minded, as the currency used for the album puchase is clearly in pounds. So the 6.45 I payed (includes credit card charge) ended up being over $13US. For a free album.
If there’s someone who wants the album while avoiding the slow site and currency rigamaroll, I’ll email it to them.
“For that reason, I almost find something generically poppy like Ashlee Simpson or Avril Lavigne to be as valid and profound as The Boss, Bob Dylan, Bono, or Radiohead– in other words, not at all.”
No offense, Lex, but I believe this to be the most ignorant thing I’ve read on any blog this year. Congrats.
It’s cool if you have no feeling for music, you clearly don’t, but to slag off an art form older than film or literature and one that is even more powerful seems willfully stupid.
Film is music. It has a words, rhythm, melody and a story to tell. Great directors use music the same way they use image, and the music often inspires them.
But you have placed a (I’ll be polite) craftsman like Tony Scott over Kubrick, Leone, Lynch, Allen etc. all of whom used music as part of their film’s templates. Capiche?
Tony Scott is the greatest director in the world?
No wonder you don’t like music. No soul!
i like the occassional tony scott film, but his brother is waaaay more talented
Thank you, government of California, more regulating my life MORE. I’m glad you’re telling me how to live.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California motorists will risk fines of up to $100 next year if they are caught smoking in cars with minors, making their state the third to protect children in vehicles from secondhand smoke.
But phone companies can pillage all they want from the “free market”…
SPOILERS!
So I just got to reading Noah’s Darjeeling review on MCN, but Noah, I gotta admit, I just don’t see it, and think you’re off on a number of points.
I strongly disagree about the funeral, which you equate with the very moving suicide attempt in Tennenbaums in terms of being an earned serious moment. I did think the boy’s death was shocking and well-put together, but Brody’s reaction – saying “I couldn’t save mine” – to me just about sums up why Andeson and his quirky characters have just about worn out their welcome. A normal person would not call the kid “mine” but rather say “I couldn’t save him”. But instead, to Brody’s character, this isn’t about the boy, but instead about himself. It has to do with Brody’s failure – not with the death of a boy. And I know I’m parsing the script’s words, but Anderson is nothing if not precice in his dialogue, and I can’t imagine he wasn’t intentianlly trying to do this. The point of a lot of his characters are that they are so self-centered that anything that happens only matters in so much as it affects them. The outside world be damned. And this “mine” moment really summed up Anderson and his character’s view of India in this film. It’s just there to play in. It has not reality of it’s own, it’s just more design.
I was truly disappointed with this scene and the ones that followed, because they were clearly an attempt to put something human into this film, an attempt to get past the artifice that is Anderson’s MO these days. But instead, the moment is cold, because not only is it not earned, but they way the film is structured, flashing back to their father’s funeral, there’s not even any attempt to show that these Americans care about this Indian boy, but rather that his death just forces them back even further into their own little worlds, and instead of mourning the Indian boy, they seem to mourn their own inability to get to their father’s funeral on time.
So clearly I really don’t agree that Anderson shooting in India was a “stroke of genius” – rather it seems like the ugly American looting a country of it’s great production design while ignoring the actual people of the country. I do agree that India has wonderful colors that look great in the film – but the fact that Anderson exploits this without really caring about the people who live there saddens me, and ties into the oft-stated and to me quite acute argument that Anderson has trouble making real charactes, because he is more intersted in their quirks than in their souls.
As for Owen Wilson’s performance, I’m not sure what you saw there that makes you think he’s capable of great performances. In Darjeeling, Wilson just pummels the audience and acts like a self-centered asshole, even to his brothers, his mother, his assistant, and everyone else who gets in his way. Now, I know this is the character, but Wilson exposes himself playing a character without charm, because in the end charm is really the only asset I’ve ever seen Owen have as an actor. For me, Brody and Schwartzmen offer so much more, and their presence also exposes Owen as a one-trick pony.
And is it me, or does every slow mo shot Wes uses now seem like cliche? Doesn’t he have any other tricks up his sleeve? Even at the beginning of this film, or in Hotel Chevalier, it’s like Wes uses slo-mo now as a crutch, because he is not confident that he can portray emotion in any other way.
I certainly don’t think Darjeeling is a disaster like I did of the previous film, but I hardly see it as being more than the sum of it’s parts.
Instead, I think it has a few nice parts, but as someone said earlier, pretty soon Wes might as well just make children’s films, because the adults-as-children stuff has worn out it’s welcome, at least for me. First it was adult-as-children in a fake NYC, then on a boat, now on a train in India. Next, is it adults-as-children in space??? Can’t wait.
Carpetmuncher, clearly we’ll never agree with each other on this. We viewed the movie through two very different sets of eyes.
Of course what happens in the film will have an impact on the main characters because that’s who we’ve been following throughout the whole film. Saying that you know how a person would react after the death of a child, I mean I don’t know how you could know what someone in that situation would have said. He seemed really flustered and frustrated and yes, it’s a movie and it takes place in the world of movies, so I didn’t really think him saying “I couldn’t save mine” felt out of place. I was moved by it, but clearly you weren’t.
You seemed to have a problem with the movie that Wes Anderson made, but the one he didn’t make. You wanted him to make a movie about the people of India? Well, that’s great, but he didn’t make that movie. And I think the scene where Adrien Brody walks through the cars of the train and through the different castes said more about India than any other film in recent memory has, including The Namesake which purports to be about Indian people but never mentions castes.
As for the funeral scene, they were mourning both. The funeral clearly reminded them of the last funeral they had been to and it happened to be of their father. I don’t think this makes them lesser people, that the death of someone they didn’t know reminded them of the death of someone that caused them to split apart and go their own way.
Like I said, if you didn’t like the movie then nothing I will say will convince you otherwise. But I don’t think Wes has done anything other than make a powerful film that happens to be set in India, and it’s about three brothers who find each other and themselves. If that sounds a little too pat to you, then this is clearly not a movie for you. But if you allow yourself to get swept up in Wes’ world, I think it’s wonderful.
And, really, we need to get beyond the whole “Wes Anderson makes the same film over and over again” bit. He has the same tendencies and a lot of the same stylistic choice that make all of his films uniquely his own, but they are different plots, different locations, different actors, different stories! You might as well complain about any director who has a unique style.
P.S. By the way, the slo-mo thing is a visual tactic that many filmmakers use. Film is a visual medium and if you can convey a point using pictures instead of words, then that’s the whole poitnt of movies. So I didn’t have a problem with that slow motion at all.
Turistas had good cinematography. Stockwell’s movies almost always do. And the underwater cave chase was stunning in the theater. The rest of the movie was somewhat boring. Not exactly the nadir of moviemaking though, JeffMCM.
Just saying.
Good morning. I disagree, I thought that while the daylight stuff was perfectly okay, the cave sequence was incoherent, murky, and I fell asleep. The only well-shot cave movie in the last few years was The Descent, in my opinion.
Maybe you saw it with better projection than I did.
But it’s a better movie than, say, Flyboys (2/10).
Anyone else see 30 DAYS OF NIGHT? Surprisingly good (I’ve not seen HARD CANDY, nor would I expect much from a modern horror movie adapted from a comic book) but BLEAK AS FUCK (which, I assure you, is quite bleak).
Also, WE OWN THE NIGHT is dull and plodding … I think I’ll see ELIZABETH II: THE REVENGE and MUCHAEL CLAYTON this weekend, and I hope everyone else follows suit.
Noah-
I’ve been thinking more about the film and you’re just totally unable to get past the fact that “I have brothers, it’s about brothers and it seems realistic to me, therefore it works.” I mean, films are all about a personal reaction but sometimes we like bad films because they speak to us on a personal level.
I’m 100% with Carpets POV…but again, I respect how passionate you are about the film. Wish I could see it through your eyes…
I don’t think it’s solely about the brothers thing. I think their interaction is realistic, sure, but I don’t think the whole film is. It is surreal and strange and takes place in a world that is strictly Wes Anderson’s and you either go with it or you don’t. It spoke to me and it doesn’t speak to you and that’s cool.
I think the other thing here is that if this film were directed by anyone other than Wes Anderson, it would be hailed as a classic. It’s only next to his other films that people don’t like it. The biggest complaint is “I’m sick of Wes Anderson’s style,” but if it weren’t Wes Anderson, then you wouldn’t be able to say that. I don’t know, I just think you should look at the film individually.
Either way, we will probably never come to terms with this, but I respectfully disagree and I appreciate your comments.
Noah, while I disagree with your assessment, I also respect your passion for Darjeeling, and, frankly, envy it, as I really was hoping to LOVE it the way I did Anderson’s first three films. But we all experience films in our own way.
I am very intested in seeing 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. I really liked HARD CANDY – Ellen Paige is fantastic – but what’s more remarkable to me is that a commercial/video guy doesn’t make a visceral film for his first gambit into cinema, but makes a two-hander that is only as good as it’s performances. But the perfomances were great. Slade is definitely someone to watch.
This weekend for me has got to be MICHAEL CLAYTON, but first I need to see CONTROL!!!
Thrice – I don’t know if you are the same person who e-mailed me about that perv link this morning, but thanks either way.
We are still trying to figure out how it happened. I am guessing, based on the timing of your post and the e-mail, that it was somehow switched this morning… not sure how or by whom, though we have a few more people with access to the front page than we used to.
Apologies to anyone who clicked on it.
what perv link?
One of the stories somehow ended up linked to a gay porn forwarding site this morning… surreal.
Any see Roger Friedman’s fingerprints on that porn link?
I kid, I kid!
Probably why Sinclair hasn’t been around here today. You know what happens once you start clicking on porn links…
*Shakes fist* “Frieeeeeedmaaaaaannnn!!!”
The comic book “30 Days of Night” is pretty awesome and I too love “Hard Candy,” should be good stuff!
“Blackcloud: Jonny Greenwood’s statement on the bitrate is that they wanted to make sure it was better quality than iTunes, which it is. Now you may feel iTunes is a ripoff anyway, but at least they’re suprassing what the largest site for downloads is giving you.”
Laz, that’s true, but their earlier albums are available at much better resolutions both on Amazon and at that English site that sells them (the name escapes me at the moment).
Of course, that shouldn’t be a surprise given today’s news that the regular CD is coming out in January, and that they’re in negotiations with the Big Four over who will release it. Turns out that the grand experiment was a marketing ploy more than less. I feel my skepticism was entirely warranted. Now, bring me that CD!!!
They are probably in negotiations with what stores will distribute it. If Pearl Jam and Ani Difranco can be sold at Target, so can Radiohead.
I remember in the UK record stores refused to sell Prince’s last album because a week before it’s release he gave away free copies of it in the newspaper.
the dude is trapped at age 15.
That’s the feeling I got with the last shot in Hotel Chevalier-the short actors and the slightly higher camera angle on the balcony-it looked like a couple of kids in a grownup world.
Here’s my blog on DARJEELING…now that we’ve beaten the horse to death:
http://www.filmthreat.com/blog/?p=876
Never never land…sadly, it seems appropriate.
But I must confess to not believing it’s fair to talk about the way Mr. Anderson dresses in reviews if his films. While I do think the personal is often reflected in the films, we tend sometimes to put too much into that, when we should really be looking at the films themselves and not the other stuff that I think is best treated as gossip.
Anyway, he dresses way better than I do, so even if I wanted to, I’d be the last to throw a stone.
Oh, hey…don’t get me wrong…if I could afford to dress that way (both financially and physically) I would. I just think his choice of style of late shows how detached from any sort of reality Anderson has become. Moreso than before if that’s possible.