From elloh’s Etsy store.

These are so fantastic. I hope you buy some.

From reader Michael:

Ahoy,

I randomly stumbled across this just now, not sure if you’ve seen it…

I’m submitting this because a) I hadn’t seen it before, and I’d up until now been fairly certain I’d read literally every interview Anderson conducted in promoting Darjeeling, and b) I’ve been visiting your website at least once a day since I found it, which was some time a few months before Darjeeling was released.

Here’s the pertinent bit for your convenience:

“Noah [Baumbach] and I started working on a…story for a movie without really realizing we were doing it. It wasn’t ‘The Life Aquatic.’ It was something else that we haven’t even finished writing. Whenever we would go to dinner or something, we’d just start making up scenes for this thing and then we just started writing them down because [we realized] that we’ve got a lot of stuff now.”

Best, and thanks for all the work. It’s a great site, and I appreciate the good writing.

From Cotter:

I thought you guys would appreciate this.  I was reading the hard-to-ignore coverage of the Governor Spitzer prostitution situation and was amused to find one of our old friends is Ms. Dupre’s court-appointed legal counsel.  Here’s a quote from the Post:

“If she’s made that much money in that short amount of time, that would certainly make her ineligible for taxpayer-supported legal fees,” defense attorney Steve Zissou said.  “That should be brought to the attention of the judge. Certainly she is capable of paying her own legal fees.”

NY Post, March 15

ZISSOU!

The AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD (suburban Washington, DC) is screening four of Wes Anderson’s films over the next two weeks! The Wes Anderson Retrospective is a really exciting series — an opportunity to see the films of Wes Anderson on the big screen.

Bottle Rocket
Sunday, Dec. 30, 3:00; Monday, Dec. 31, 2:45; Tuesday, Jan. 1, 12:45, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 7:00

Rushmore
Friday, Dec. 28, 7:30; Saturday, Dec. 29, 7:45; Tuesday, Jan. 1, 9:45, Thursday, Jan. 3, 7:00

The Royal Tenenbaums
Friday, Jan. 4, 7:00; Saturday, Jan. 5, 7:00; Thursday, Jan. 10, 7:00

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Sunday, Jan. 6, 12:45; Tuesday, Jan. 8, 9:20; Wednesday, Jan. 9, 9:20

In other news, ION Cinema has chosen Amara Karan (Rita, The Darjeeling Limited) as one of their Top Ten “Foreign Femme Fatales of 2007.” 

2007: She played lovely Rita – the damn cute Indian girl poking her head in and outside of the train in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited.

2008: It was just released in the U.K and I’ve got no clue if it will make its way here, but she has a role in Barnaby Thompson and Oliver Parker school girls rule/remake called St. Trinian’s.  (link)

Sigur Rós (“Starálfur” from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) just released a new dual-disc album called Hvarf/Heim.

Hvarf/Heim is the companion album to Sigur Rós’ new documentary “Heima,” which was filmed during their 2006-’07 tour of their home country, Iceland, and shown at this year’s Madison Popfest. Hvarf/Heim is not exactly a soundtrack, but an unveiled, down-to-earth approach to their renowned transcendental sound…. Disc two, Heim, is even better. Recorded live during their tour, the lack of electricity forced Sigur Rós to go entirely acoustic. Without the dissonance, Heim has a very natural feel. The string quartet and piano materialize familiar ethereal melodies such as “Samskeyti”—also “Untitled 3” off ( )—and “Starálfur”—the familiar song from “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” but this version makes it harder to imagine a large yellow submarine and animated sea creatures (UW Daily Cardinal)

(Mp3 download also available)

A funny episode of “Guerrilla Drive-in,” The Life Aquatic at Dudas Diving Duds. And, yes, you do need to read it for the title to make sense.

Be sure to send any media leads (TV, print, online) about Wes and The Darjeeling Limited to edwardappleby @ yankeeracers.org (no spaces).

Preface: We have no affiliation with DeepDiscount.com, so we make no profit from this plug.

DeepDiscount.com, a site probably most famous for their free shipping, is having a buy one, get one free sale on posters (mostly 11″ x 17″ reproductions). And, they have a very nice selection of Wes Anderson posters.

Search for…

• Bottle Rocket
• Rushmore
• The Royal Tenenbaums
• The Life Aquatic

I have neglected to post Ed Hardy’s most recent article in his Wes Anderson blog-a-thon, UNDERCLASS OVERACHIEVER/WEARY FORMER SUCCESS: Character Types in the Films of Wes Anderson. Through this admission, I am countering my own act of neglect. Well played.

A little teaser:

The two lead characters in Wes Anderson’s first film, Bottle Rocket (1996), Anthony and Dignan, established two main character types that have been articulated through the remainder of his films. Dignan, played by Owen Wilson, represents the Underclass Overachiever, and Anthony, played by his brother Luke Wilson, represents the Weary Former Success. Depth of character and variety of experience has made for a stunning series of characters throughout Anderons’s films, culminating in Steve Zissou, who is a synthesis of the two main types and is, in many ways, presaged by Royal Tenenbaum.

Ed Hardy, Jr. has posted another essay in his series on Wes Anderson, titled “Aspects of It Seem Slightly Fake.”

Some more reviews of The Darjeeling Limited with snippets by Yankee Racer “leeroy”:

• Ain’t It Cool: “Well, not only did I like the film, but I am here to tell you that it is simply the most entertaining thing I have seen in my time here in Venice. The movie had me laughing out loud more than once. The cinematography is great with the use of color to underline anything that is going on. And the acting is superb. . . I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
• Telegragh (U.K.): “Director Wes Anderson’s films (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) share a languid, calculatedly offbeat charm, but their characters often seem to belong to a cool, tight little clique, with an array of private in-jokes. Audiences can easily feel excluded. All this is true of Anderson’s new film The Darjeeling Limited: happily, its charm trumps its shortcomings.There’ s a genuinely sweet-natured feel to The Darjeeling Limited that makes this screwed-up trio engaging rather than irritating.” - David Gritten
• Financial Times (U.K.): “The jokes are good, the saffron-filtered visuals even better” - Nigel Andrews
• Guardian Unlimited (U.K.): “It’s a sensuous experience, gorgeous to look at and gently comic but, as it touches on family bonding, heirlooms and hereditary traits, it develops a delicately moving mood. One to savour when it closes the London Film Festival in November.” - Jason Solomons

David Poland wonders:

Is The Darjeeling Limited Fox Searchlight’s secret weapon of 2007 or just a happy Wes Anderson comedy? (link)

Jake Coyle, writing for the AP, argues that the last decade of film has been far better than the AFI Top 100 suggests:

According to the American Film Institute’s new list of the 100 greatest films, the last 10 years have produced only four great ones: “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (No. 50), “Saving Private Ryan” (No. 71), “Titanic” (No. 83) and “The Sixth Sense” (No. 89).

I get bloated just typing those titles. Granted, the last 10 years have been a historically weak period for films. They can’t touch Hollywood’s golden era of the ’40s, or the heralded ’70s, when maverick directors roamed the studios.

But surely, there’s been more to see in the last decade than Haley Joel Osment whispering “I see dead people.” (Pssst: I’ve seen better movies.)…

Wes Anderson’s classically quirky comedy “Rushmore” is far more than a cult flick. In a long comic lineage of oddballs, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) tops them all.

Many others that weren’t on the ballot are also deserving. Two that could sit comfortably on the shelf next to “Rushmore” are “Election” and the Coen brothers’”The Big Lebowski.” The latter rises to the level of classic — after all, its whole premise is film noir held up to the funhouse mirror of “The Dude.” (link)

Jeffrey Wells dished up some harsh criticism of Wes in relation to his sometimes-collaborator Noah Baumbach. You can read it here, if you’d like. I would like to hear your comments over on the message board.