The Darjeeling Limited

[ElPandaRoyal]

Jack has sex with the train's attractive Indian stewardess (Amara Karan), no doubt because Schwartzman had a hand in the screenplay.

This is the kind of criticism that makes some film critics sound plain stupid.

[MacGuffin]

'Speed,' 'Darjeeling' take early Venice nods

VENICE, Italy -- Ed Radtke's coming-of-age drama "The Speed of Life" won the Venice Film Festival's first Queer Lion award while Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited" took home the Golden Lion Cub, an award selected by school children.

Radtke's film -- about a group of New York youths who steal video cameras and make films from the tapes inside -- screened in the Venice Days sidebar for up-and-coming directors. The story was judged to have featured the most accurate portrayal of a gay character out of the 57 new feature films screening in Venice.

The Venice Gays jury, which awarded the prize, issued a statement calling on the festival to include more films that portray gay characters in a truthful way in future editions.

"Darjeeling Limited," a comedy about a trio of brothers on a trip across India, was awarded its Golden Lion Cub by a jury of local youths studying at the Agiscuola, near Venice's Lido. In 18 previous editions, the school children have correctly picked the winner of the festival's top prize -- Golden Lion -- seven times.

In other prizes announced Friday, the City of Venice Award for a director from an underdeveloped country went to India's Murali Nair, the director of last year's acclaimed drama "Unni."

"Redacted," the Iraq War film from Brian DePalma, won the Digital Award from the Future Film Festival, as the Venice event's best film made using digital technologies.

The main prize-winners will be announced Saturday

[picolas]

According to trade reports, the short will only be shown during festival screenings and will not accompany Darjeeling when it hits theaters on September 29th. I can't say I understand the logic of not including the short in the theatrical release, it's not like Wes Anderson fans would not be willing to sit in their seats for 17 more minutes -- if anything, the addition of the short could help generate a little extra buzz for the film. Although some are saying that Natalie Portman goes nude -- in the flesh -- for the first time, but the film is already rated R so I'm not sure that' *rereads last sentence, abruptly dashes away from keyboard to get to a festival*

[children with angels]

Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited" took home the Golden Lion Cub, an award selected by school children.

Wow, that is some serious damning with faint praise.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

I had my hopes on the short being included... but I'm not surprised that it won't.

[MacGuffin]

On the Bittersweet Road to Oscar, Again
Source: New York Times

TAKE a handful of damaged characters. Put them on a road to some unexpected place, like the Central California wine country or the never-never land of a kiddie beauty pageant. Squeeze for laughs until everybody hurts.

And you might have the sort of movie — like "Little Miss Sunshine" last year, or "Sideways" two years before — that has twice brought Fox Searchlight and its allied producers within heartbreak distance of a best-picture Oscar.

If this is finally to be the year for the robust specialty unit that was formed by 20th Century Fox some 13 years ago, "The Darjeeling Limited" is likely to be the film to make it so.

Directed by Wes Anderson and written by Mr. Anderson with Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, the latest happy-sad road trip from Fox Searchlight is set to make its American debut at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 28. It will be released commercially the next day.

"Darjeeling" carries Mr. Anderson's distinctive mark: As in his films "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," familiars like Anjelica Huston and the recently hospitalized Owen Wilson populate a bit of space made personal by its crosshatching of eccentricity and family ties. But it also sticks closely to some conventions — the road trip, the bittersweet comedy — that have done well for its studio. This time around the damaged heroes are a trio of brothers played by Mr. Schwartzman, Mr. Wilson and Adrien Brody. They travel by train through the Indian subcontinent in search of a mother, Ms. Huston, who has become a nun. Along the way they inflict a fair amount of pain on one another.

But the real jolts come from encounters with the alien universe around them, perhaps lending just enough scope to let Fox Searchlight work its magic once again with voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Peter Rice, the studio's president, declined to be interviewed for this article. Still, some who have worked closely with Fox Searchlight noted that Mr. Rice and his team have followed one basic rule with their best picture bets in the past: Let the audience lead.

"They don't try to sell what's not there," said Albert Berger, who with his partner Ron Yerxa was among the producers of "Little Miss Sunshine." The Fox Searchlight method, Mr. Berger said, has been to let a picture "explode, if it was going to, into academy consideration."

Ten years ago the company's first best-picture nominee, "The Full Monty," did exactly that. A modest British comedy about unemployed steelworkers doing a striptease act, it had no major stars and was directed by the relatively unknown Peter Cattaneo. But it turned into the art-house equivalent of a blockbuster when it scooped up $46 million at the United States box office during an unusually long eight months in theaters.

Academy voters got on board about halfway through that run, nominating the picture, along with its director, screenplay and music, for Oscars. (Only the last was a winner, as "Titanic" swept the awards that year.)

Something like that pattern repeated itself with "Sideways" and "Little Miss Sunshine," Fox Searchlight's only other best-picture nominees to date. Both of those started as critic- and crowd-pleasers. Both carried what many in Hollywood are beginning to see as the ministudio's trademark bittersweet comic sensibility, a signature that has emerged during Mr. Rice's nearly eight-year tenure with the unit, which he took over in early 2000.

"People do matter, as much as those who run big corporations want to think otherwise," said Mark Gill, a producer who was previously at Warner Independent Pictures, referring to the personal mark that Mr. Rice and other executives have put on their respective companies.

Miramax, Mr. Gill noted, has shown a bent for Anglocentric fare like "The Queen" and "Becoming Jane" under its president, Daniel Battsek. And Sony Pictures Classics, under Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, was long an outpost for foreign-language films, like the 2001 best-picture nominee "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and last year's "Lives of Others," both of which won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

Fox Searchlight's soft spot for off-center comedy has gotten the studio on tiptoes but never quite kissed come Oscar night: voters may love their beautiful losers, but serious pictures like "Crash" or "The Departed" tend to go home with the prize.

When it comes to awards, however, Mr. Anderson has some history on his side. Together with Mr. Wilson he was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay in 2002, although the prize went to Julian Fellowes for "Gosford Park."

One of Mr. Anderson's producers, Scott Rudin, has been involved with several recent Oscar contenders. Last year Mr. Rudin was an executive producer of "The Queen" and "Venus," Miramax releases that captured seven nominations between them and a best-actress Oscar for Helen Mirren. Fox Searchlight's "Notes on a Scandal," of which Mr. Rudin was a producer, received four nominations.

For the Fox Searchlight formula to work, the audience will have to get on board with "Darjeeling Limited," something it has not really done with Mr. Anderson's past work. Of his previous films, only "The Royal Tenenbaums," which took in about $52 million at the domestic box office when Disney released it in 2001, has approached the commercial success of "Sideways" and "Sunshine."

But Mr. Rice can always turn to "The Savages," another tragicomic trip he has tucked in his hip pocket for the year's end. This one is written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, whose husband, Jim Taylor, shared an Academy Award with Alexander Payne in 2005 for writing "Sideways."

It finds the damaged heroes Laura Linney (an Oscar nominee for "Kinsey" and "You Can Count on Me") and Philip Seymour Hoffman (a winner for "Capote") rushing from Manhattan and Buffalo to the off-center environs of a retirement community in Sun City, Ariz., and back, in the service of a mentally deteriorating father played by Philip Bosco.

In the way of these things, a good time, and bad, is had by all.

[SoNowThen]

Review: The Darjeeling Limited
Bottom Line: A train ride without laughs or charm.
By Ray Bennett; Hollywood Reporter

VENICE, Italy-- The whimsical and insightful charm that Wes Anderson and his filmmaking pals have displayed in such films as "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" curdles ruinously in the Indian sun that shines so brightly in their smug and self-satisfied new film "The Darjeeling Limited."

But when current affairs are in such a parlous state, it's almost unforgivable to make a film about stupid American men traveling abroad with not the slightest awareness of or reference to anything that's going on in the world. The film is overly pleased with itself and the characters are way too self-absorbed. There's never a man-eating tiger around when you need one.

What an incredibly dumb cunt. NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO MAKE A MOVIE NOW WITHOUT A REFERENCE TO CURRENT POLITICAL AFFAIRS -- and characters can't be self-absorbed, because NO ONE is actually like that in real life... yeah, nice one.

Fuck you, Ray Bennett. Why do newspapers and magazines have such little respect for films as an art form that they send douchebags like this to review movies?

[Bennett -- walking into a Picasso exhibit]: "How come none of these look like the people I saw outside? Geez..."

I hope there is a seriously torturous level of hell for fucks like this.

[Pubrick]

thanks for highlighting that review, i don't know how i missed it. it is fucking stupid.

what kind of statement was he looking for? instead of looking for huston they end up looking for osama? is he SERIOUSLY proposing that every movie must have a reference to the politics of the time?

ray bennett, you're going on the list.

[Kal]

These are the moments where I dont understand fucking critics... I mean its so subjective... who the fuck cares about some idiots opinion? The fact that he has watched a billion films does not make him an expertt in judgement. I mean, look at Pubrick

But seriously, I realized I NEVER, EVER read reviews before going to a movie. I may watch trailers, read some opinions here and there, but that is never a factor for me to see it or not. They are wrong so many times, that for me its not even fun to read them and it does not influence my decision on what to see at all.

For some reason though, I'm not excited about this. I've been dying to go to India and make a trip like these guys for years, so I was very much looking forward to this (especially after Life Aquatic, which I loved). I'll still see it but I'm not as excited as before... I think the trailers didnt do it for me.

[pete]

I don't think the dude was looking for osama in wes anderson's films - I mean, he did love Rushmore and Tenenbaums.  I'm Wes's biggest fan, but it is certainly possible that he's made an indulgent film with self-centered characters told from a smug, hipster POV.  And when you put that smug hipster POV in another part of the world, it might come off as a younger, hipper versions of dumb Americans.  I mean, everyone here should know what film I hate more than the devil himself, which'd definitely exhibited the same ignorance even though it was made by and starred respectful people.  Wes Anderson is awesome, but he's not above such criticisms.
I still doubt what the guy says is true though.

[Stefen]

I hope it's as good as lost in translation. It probably won't be though. Nothing is.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

I hope it's as good as lost in translation. It probably won't be though. Nothing is.

Adding insult to injury eh... :p

[MacGuffin]

Exclusive Featurette: The Friendly Skies Of 'Darjeeling Limited'

What happened when castmates Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman attempted to film their scenes in a busy Indian airport? Find out by watching the video below.


http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2007/09/13/exclusive-featurette-the-friendly-skies-of-darjeeling-limited/

[Pozer]

there's a screening tonight.  really wanna go but im sick as a dog.  at the moment, only chair meal bee would get me out to a movie in la.

[ponceludon]

there's a screening tonight.  really wanna go but im sick as a dog.  at the moment, only chair meal bee would get me out to a movie in la.

There is? Where? Do you have to be someone famous to go?