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rabid kazook 
"Pushing the antelope"
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 Posted - 09/20/2007 : 20:46:11
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Mike D'Angelo says it's not all that and blames Roman Coppola's writing.
Any Wes Anderson haters here that are muahahahaing.  |
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randall 
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 09/20/2007 : 21:52:59
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| I'm gonna see it next weekend [not this coming] at NYFF, so I'll spill. |
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rabid kazook
"Pushing the antelope"
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Posted - 09/21/2007 : 14:18:06
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quote:
Originally posted by Randall
I'm gonna see it next weekend [not this coming] at NYFF, so I'll spill.
Cool... I can't wait to see it. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 09/29/2007 : 06:15:20
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And the survey says it was... [Ms. Randall and me, that is]
...beautiful to look at, faintly provocative, disastrously damaged by Owen Wilson's recent real-life troubles, because he's bandaged throughout and all you can think of is his alleged suicide attempt...
...gloriously set and photographed, the images deeper than the plot, especially with a frisson-making shot near the end which travels above several compartments in the train...
...preceded at NYFF 9/28 by a :13 "prequel" short with Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman, in which you get to see Ms. P starkers and certain payoffs from the feature are set up -- how can they show the feature WITHOUT this short? Why does Ms. P appear for only one second in the feature proper?...
...attended by Wes Anderson and most of the principals, including Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston...
...a wonderfully beard-scratching opening night for the 45th NYFF!
EDIT: For reference, the short is entitled HOTEL CHEVALIER. And I'm told it will appear on the DVD, for those of you who sit and wait for all things to come. |
Edited by - randall on 10/01/2007 03:06:48 |
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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Animal Mutha
"Who would've thunk it?"
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Posted - 11/20/2007 : 20:51:18
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I saw an early screening last night and have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed practically every frame. The 'short film' that Randall mentioned is still present and I can only imagine is an interesting device that is actually part of the whole film.
This film, more than any other I've seen this year, actually gave me visceral experience. Even though there are moments of melancholy the overall feel is incredibly uplifting (the slow motion shots set to thumping classics always set the hairs on my neck on end).
All the elements that let you know you are watching a Wes Anderson movie are here, the splashs of primary colour, ensemble cast (all of whom have interesting noses in this film), energetic camera work, etc. With the added bonus of an amazing landscape and cultural backdrop. the Darjeeling Limited's set is used to perfection by Anderson's frenetic camera choreography, reminding me of Steve Zissou's Belafonte.
As with most of Anderson's films, the plot is less important than the character's development, the journey rather than the destination. So when you get to the end, you feel that you care about and know the brothers and they are not the same people they were when they first set foot on the train.
As for Owen Wilson's personal life ruining his character, I had the benefit of seeing the film months after Randall, where as he saw it right on top of the event happening. Personally, it only crossed my mind as I was first introduced to the character and then I was so caught up in the adventure it didn't bother me again.
Safe to say I am a huge fan of Wes Anderson (believing that Royal Tenenbaum to be one of Gene Hackman's coolest performances) and this film is a more than acceptable addition to his body of work to date. I can't wait to see what he does with 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox'.  |
Edited by - Animal Mutha on 11/20/2007 22:42:43 |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 11/20/2007 : 22:24:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Animal Mutha
I saw an early screening last night and have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed practically every frame. The 'short film' that Randall mentioned is still present and I can only imagine is an interesting device that is actually part of the whole film.
Fascinating. If true, then Anderson has "gamed" the festival part of the film's promotion. Fest programs invariably list the feature, along with any short which will precede it. [Usually it's a different project by a different director.] If it's all part of the gag, it was performed perfectly at NYFF: short, lights up, lights down, feature.
If HOTEL CHEVALIER is actually on every print of DARJEELING [I would actually giggle over Anderson's audacity if that were true], that would explain my consternation over the bravura overhead shot at the end: why waste the momentary hotel-room frisson on people who haven't seen the short? Mutha, I hope succeeding posts from around the world tell us they saw the short too!
While I'm not as ardent an Anderson fan as you seem to be, I concur, here's an eminently artful movie that demands we sit up and pay attention. Cheers to anyone else who might want to take the journey. DO IT. |
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Animal Mutha
"Who would've thunk it?"
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Posted - 11/20/2007 : 23:41:41
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| I just watched a review on 'Film 2007'. The presenter said that British viewers will be "lucky" enough to see the short before the feature. So maybe it isn't going to be shown worldwide. Also he said it was all shot on a real train, which makes it all the more impressive. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 11/21/2007 : 21:51:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Animal Mutha
I just watched a review on 'Film 2007'. The presenter said that British viewers will be "lucky" enough to see the short before the feature. So maybe it isn't going to be shown worldwide. Also he said it was all shot on a real train, which makes it all the more impressive.
That particular shot I was referring to, toward the end? I can't believe that's a real train -- if so, how? |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 11/23/2007 : 23:56:38
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I had a dreadful day at work today (I was in a lot of pain and there is a lot of shit going on, not involving me directly but getting me down), but was really excited about seeing this. It did not let me down and even seeing the pretty lamentable Shrooms beforehand did not stop it from wholly lifting me.
I did think of Owen Wilson's suicide attempt (which ironically happened while I was travelling around a continent by train) while watching, but that just made it more poignant for me.
The 'short' was present in my viewing too. It had separate credits, but did not have a separate B.B.F.C. certificate, which shorts before features always do here. It makes a great set-up.
I had never noticed Adrien Brody's enormously skewed nose before the trailer for this film. If Wilson's weren't banadaged for most of the time, they would indeed look like a very odd pair. (Despite this 'explanation' of Wilson's nose, he has the same one in a flashback to before his motorcycle crash!)
A friend of mine is currently travelling round India and Nepal. That and my recent trip made me so envious of being in the film's scenario, laden as it was with golden colouring at every opportunity.
There's no point even giving any more detail. I just loved it. |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 11/24/2007 17:47:15 |
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 11/24/2007 : 01:43:03
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I liked it, not as much as Steve Zissou - which enchanted me from first to last - but it's another welcome whimsical chapter from Wes. This felt more like a small personal project somehow, a love letter to India maybe, with nothing to prove. My favourite part of the film was definitely the first 2/3 on the titular train - leading up to the funniest thing I've seen all year -the Pepper Spray incident, which literally had me crying with laughter and giggling for whole scenes afterward, but off the train and into overly-dramatic plot device territory I lost some of my patience. As they say it's not the destination, it's the journey, but I felt the journey was a touch too convoluted and unstructured from Anderson this time. Zissou had the chapters, the musical links, the sense of final destination and wonderful bookends at the film premieres - Darjeeling had the wonderful constructed train shot at the end and the repetitions of situation and script, but it felt less involving. Loved all three main performances - some wonderful character studies - I was most impressed with Brody. Or perhaps I was most intrigued by him.
Oh, and like Sal said, the "short film" is just a wheeze and definitely part of the main feature because it follows the main BBFC classification card. |
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 11/25/2007 : 04:56:09
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I saw it. The photography was incredible. The filmmakers made great use out of small, claustrophobic spaces as well as with the wide-open country giving them both a unique character and point of view not present in any other movie about India I've seen. It made me want to go on my own "spiritual journey." It is very difficult to light and shoot in spaces like the train, but Anderson, his photographer, his actors, and his boom operator were able to pull it off and make it look easy.
The three brothers were very good. Even though they didn't really look like they actually could be biological brothers, it didn't distract me because the acting was good enough for us to believe that they could be. However, the performance and character that made the greatest impression on the film was the mother played by Angelica Houston. She gets so little time on the screen and yet, the performance and the kind of hold the character has on the brothers' psyche is remarkable. A lot of that goes to Houston for creating a fully interesting and even sympathetic character out of what was essentially a selfish woman in such a short amount of screen time.
And, no, Owen Wilson's personal life did not affect my admiration for the movie, his performance, his costume design, or his makeup design. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 11/26/2007 : 09:17:20
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quote:
Originally posted by G-eightch-cool
they didn't really look like they actually could be biological brothers
I dunno - on the poster at least, they look very similar in the eyes. |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 11/29/2007 : 16:52:37
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some spoilers I guess
Long film train journeys always admit at least to the possibility that "the going is the goal," and Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited which he co-wrote with cousins Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, is no exception.
Of course there were cinema auteurs before the 1960s but that's when those rebellious graduates of Les Cahiers du Cinema stamped their individuality on international screens. America has produced a few of its own - Scorsese, the Coen Brothers - directors who leave their signatures all over their work as unmistakably as Van Gogh or Picasso.
Wes Anderson may not always succeed, but he's undoubtedly an auteur. It's something, of course, to do with his themes, with the unpredictability of the journies of his characters, with the coterie of actors he trusts, with some trademark camera angles. But mostly it's to do with what I'm going to somewhat pretentiously call a visual-voice. You know how of all the voices you're familiar with in your life, when some one of them phones you can instantly recognize who it is although all they've said is "hello."
Though he gives you plenty of such familiarity to hang on to, he also plays with your expectations of how people are "supposed to be," getting far closer, of course, to how they actually are.
With The Darjeeling Limited Anderson even plays with formal expectations of the cinema-going process itself. The film has been conceived in two parts. Part One, Hotel Chevalier - its title evoking both a horseman or knight and a famous French entertainer - is a kind of prequel and takes place in a Paris hotel; it features Schwartzman, small in stature but bulging with sensual appetite for music, food, colour, and, it turns out when he's visited by his ex, sex. He's also presented as one of life's observers, which sets him up nicely as one of the stars of Part Two in which we learn he's a writer.
Part Two is the stand-alone main section of the latest Anderson experience. It's set on a train journey through India organized by Owen Wilson, eldest of three Whitman brothers and probably the best he's ever been onscreen. He's a bit of a control freak, our Owen, a trait both resented and expected by his younger brothers played by Adrian Brody and our Jason; he's organized the train-ride, he reveals to his brothers - who've been out of touch for over a year ever since their dad died in a car crash and their mom disappeared - so they can re-bond, re-connect to each other and in a spiritual sense, to themselves.
It all sounds a bit iffy and uncertain, and somehow - much as you might want there to be some - this isn't the kind of charming fun that oozed from Little Miss Sunshine. Which certainly isn't to say it's dour or morbid - though it certainly is a tad too long. There are the kind of wry-smile moments that graced Anderson's previous works, especially The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic.
Darjeeling is less complex than either of those, but still bravely confronts basic human truths about what's individual, alien, and totally recognizable within the context of family life. These are the kind of philosophical questions all intellectually curious thinkers have always pondered.
Needless to say Anderson has no answers. Why should he? That's not his job. His job is to ask the questions as engagingly as he can in his own voice. And he certainly does that.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 11/29/2007 16:56:33 |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 11/30/2007 : 07:26:22
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| While I've come to be a bit bored with Owen Wilson and after seeing him interviewed by Jon Stewart, worried about his mental health, this is one film I pray gets to Israel, since from the first time I heard about it, I really wanted to see it. And from what you're saying here, sounds like I'm right. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 11/30/2007 : 14:16:20
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quote:
Originally posted by ChocolateLady
While I've come to be a bit bored with Owen Wilson
And your taste is so good in general!   |
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The Darjeeling Limited
