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.

I hope all our Istabuli readers will be heading to the Istanbul International Film Festival (April 5-20) where The Darjeeling Limited will make its Turkish premiere. The Festival has an overall “‘68 Generation” theme and will be presenting some wonderful films (Godard’s Rolling Stones doc Sympathy for the Devil to Hopper’s Easy Rider). TDL will show in the “American Independents” category alongside The Savages and (Team Anderson collaborator) Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding. Two hundred films will be screened in all. If I am not mistaken, this is the second Middle East showing for TDL, after the Israeli premier earlier this year. So Bosporus bathers, don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!

(I meant to post this when the magazine arrived a few weeks ago, but better late than never.)

The latest issue of Paste Magazine (#39) includes the Paste Art House Powerhouse 100:

 Who are the power players in the world of quality cinema? What individuals and organizations make intelligent, well-crafted movies and have the profile, financial resources and/or critical esteem to attract discerning audiences? In short, we looked for those at the intersection of art and commerce who make independent film the viable and sustainable industry that we’ve come to enjoy (link).

Of course, some of our favorites were included:

Wes Anderson
{ RH: The Darjeeling Limited U: The Fantastic Mr. Fox} Scenes in slow-motion set to Kinks songs, overwhelmingly quirky production design, dramatic family rivalries—Wes Anderson just can’t seem to escape himself. But this is OK. Because underneath the deadpan humor of each of his movies is a true sense of melancholy and loss unmatched by any other filmmaker of his generation.

Cate Blanchett
{ RH: I’m Not There, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Notes on a Scandal, Babel U: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button } Like Meryl Streep, this Australian actress may be the best of her generation. All the auteurs love her: Scorsese, Anderson, Iñárritu and now Spielberg. Her performance as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There was not so much impersonation as repossession. Be afraid, Indiana Jones, be very afraid.

Natalie Portman
{ RH: Hotel Chevalier/The Darjeeling Limited; Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium; Paris, Je T’aime U: My Blueberry Nights, The Other Boleyn Girl } The buoyant former child star defies convention: She’s an even better performer now that she’s come of age—a Jodie Foster, not a Lindsay Lohan. Not that there ever was much doubt. Portman is fiercely intelligent and unafraid to take risks (stripping in Closer, rapping on SNL), which makes her a natural for directors as varied as Wong Kar-Wai and Wes Anderson.

Jason Schwartzman
{ RH: The Darjeeling Limited, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story U: The Marc Pease Experience } As Max Fischer he was ambitious and organized, but even Rushmore’s fans never expected Schwartzman would build on his deadpan, cerebral, hipster-geek image to become one of independent film’s most interesting leading men.

Noah Baumbach
{ RH: Margot at the Wedding, The Squid and the Whale U: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (S), The Emperor’s Children (S) } The Squid and the Whale took us by surprise with its refreshingly honest observation of a family in disorder. And now he’s done it again with Margot at the Wedding. Next up is a co-writing reunion with director Wes Anderson for the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox and an adaptation of The Emperor’s Children for director Ron Howard.

Bravo, Paste!

(Wes Anderson’s floating head courtesy of MarieClaire.com)

In an unexpected turn of events, I am referencing MarieClaire.com. (awaits rapture)

That said, Wes is one of their crushes of the month (theme: “Nerds!”). If nerd wasn’t a badge of honor, I would libel/slander these fine people. Not that I am one…

Moving on:

Wes Anderson and [Noah Baumbach, I presume?], the directors of The Darjeeeling Limited and Margot at the Wedding, respectively, drop Truffaut references the way most guys cite Animal House, and male lankiness and tweed-wearing hallmarks of sexy.

Help get/keep The Darjeeling Limited on the Yahoo! Buzz Index of most popular searches by clicking here.

Wes and Jason were on CBC’s The Hour last night (video). Wes promised that Hotel Chevalier will be added to The Darjeeling Limited print in Canada.

Ain’t It Cool has a great interview with Wes and Jason, including Wes’ confirmation of a Criterion Collection edition of Bottle Rocket. Some highlights:

[about this]. Roman said they are both very smart, and he really liked them. And the old man said that he liked these brothers, that the movie is from their point of view traveling through India. And she doesn’t like them, but she also felt that the film exploited people in India. And I always feel like, that makes me unhappy to hear anybody say that because we went to India because I was fascinated with this country. We fell in love with it. We are tourists there; that’s all we can ever be there. But we’re tourists who are very interested in this culture and learning about it. It’s a place where people who go there and like it tend to love it, and the people who love it tend to want to go back. There is more religion, more variety of religion, more practice of religion, more rituals there than any place else I’ve ever experienced. I think that’s why people go on pilgrimages there because it’s a place where, if you’re open to it and interested it will genuinely have quite and impact on you just because of the intensity of the place. I’ve always found that I had very emotional experiences there, but then you get sensitive and wonder if that sounds kind of naive. I don’t know. I just hate to sound self-protective and defensive; I’d rather just express our real feelings about it….

It’s taken us a long time to get this [Fantastic Mr. Fox] going, but we finally got it going. Noah Baumbach and I adapted it. George Clooney is going to play Mr. Fox. We’ve just started working on it in England, and it’s going. We have a guy named Mark Gustafson directing the animation. Henry [THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS] Selick was going to do it originally but over time that didn’t work out because Henry has his own thing he’s directing [CORALINE, based on Neil Gaiman’s novel]….

I think the closest thing to compare it to is that Eastern European stuff, because the animals are going to have fur, and the sets are meant to look kind of like real life. So it’s more in the vein….

[about the Criterion Collection DVD] That’s right. We just have to do a lot of work to prepare it, but that’s in the works. I was supposed to do a bunch of stuff already that I didn’t do yet, so I’m going to get on it though. But some of the stuff is at my mother’s house in Texas, so I have to go to Texas and dig through all my boxes, because there’s materials for the movies that I haven’t looked at in a long, long time. And we want to try and include everything that might be good….

Jason’s new album Nighttiming is available as an MP3 download on Amazon.com. Buy it here — it supports the site.

Noah Baumbach’s latest (out October 19 2007)…

URL: Margot at the Wedding trailer at YouTube*

* sorry, embedded videos aren’t working, for whatever reason

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.