Wes Anderson's free-if-you-have-iTunes short The Hotel Chevalier has been posted to Rapidshare for those of us who don't have the necessary. I'll keep you up to date on any changing links.
{EDIT: The above has apparently been truncated. There's another version available that hasn't been and, well, I'd recommend you go for that one]
Choose from hi-res, 480p, 720p or 1080p versions of the first The Darjeeling Limited trailer. Some of the more arch camera moves made me clench up a little but, generally, the compositions are far less troublesome than Anderson had been serving up for the last half decade or so. Generally. And this looks to be the most comfortable, least excessive lighting and colour design for a few films too.
On the other hand... "Featuring Music from the films of Satyajit Ray and Merchant Ivory"? Oh dear... he's being 'clever' again.
Overall, I'm hopeful for this one. Cautiously hopeful.
Below you can see the poster for The Darjeeling Limited. I assume that as you're here, at my site, the platform for me to present whatever I chose and comment on it how I wish, you're at least expecting me to share my opinion on it.
I think it is every bit as bland and predictable as the Life Aquatic poster. At least the Royal Tennebaums poster came early enough to sneak out before this limited visual style had been fully mapped five times over. Yawn.
Rushmore was, by and large, great. Before that, Bottle Rocket was pretty promising. Everything else Anderson has dropped on us has been indulgent, confused, often meandering, self-obsessed tripe. I expect more of the same from this. Anderson is like Woody Allen at his worst but in the grip of some utterly frustrating, narrowing and self-defeating visual and verbal fetishes. What he can do well is misapplied anyway, so his films end up having a very limited reach.
Oh, and, if you were wondering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ends with the boy wizard turning into a bowl of geraniums while Rincewind the wizard curses the Statue of Liberty and damns Atticus Finch to hell.
- You can watch Four Eyed Monsters online now, for free. For every viewer to register, the filmmakers receive a dollar. 'Only' 100,000 viewers will cover the film's budget.
- Brett Ratner is to direct Playboy, a Hugh Hefner biopic. Hilarious. For a long time, Oliver Stone was attached, but not any more. Even more hilarious.
- Laura Albert has lost her law suit with Antidote. To cut the long story short: Albert was the author of the books allegedly written by J T LeRoy, and she was only unveiled once LeRoy was shown not to exist. Antidote had optioned Albert's book Sarah, believing it to be a memoir, not complete and utter fiction, and once the curtain was pulled back they had no interest in the film any longer and let their option expire. They've now been awarded 116,500 dollars in this fraud suit.
- JoBlo are hosting an excerpt from Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno script, as published in Entertainment Weekly. [Or try going a page earlier]
- More EW scanning over at SlashFilm where they've some stills from Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited.
- Matt Dillon is joining Robin Williams, John Travolta and Kelly Preston in Walt Becker's Old Dogs.
- The latest wave of John Rambo stills are quite straight and lifeless.
There's a March 4th 2007 draft of The Fantastic Mr. Fox online. The main credit is given to Roald Dahl with Anderson/Baumbach tucked away at the bottom of the front page. I found the link at BigScreenLittleScreen.
I don't expect the script to stay around too long, so download it now if you're keen.
Megan Fox, on the other hand, hasn't been leaked as a pdf, but she is all over MaximDotCom at the moment and they e-mailed me to let me know. I'll stick with the Dahl, personally - and I haven't liked a Wes Anderson film since Rushmore.
That's right - it's a confirmed fact. Paul McGuigan, the director of Wicker Park, Lucky Number Slevin, Gangster No 1, The Acid House and another handful of similar turkeys, is the latest director to tackle Spider-Man. Personally, I think Wes Anderson would have been an amusing choice for this job...
What's more, you can see McGuigan's take on Spider-Man now. There's a video up on MySpace.
Let me explain: McGuigan has directed the video to Snow Patrol's Signal Fire, as featured on the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack. The clip shows a school play with kids recreating scenes from the Spidey films. Rushmore fans will now understand my Anderson comment.
It seems we'll be having character posters for Wes Anderson's next. Here's Mereditch Canterbury, incarnated as Natalie Portman.
This poster, it transpires, is a fake. I did think it was atypically interesting for an Anderson film poster - they've really fallen into a formula. Shame that they won't be using it because, having read the script, this image is surprisingly effective at giving information without labouring it.
Maybe the tricksters behind it should get into poster design?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are to provide the voices for Mr and Mrs Fox in Wes Anderson's animation/live action co-mingle, The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Surely this film was a job for Tim Burton? Have you seen his fox sketches from his time at Disney, working on The Fox and the Hound? They're worth the price of Burton on Burton alone.
Amara Karan was a student here at Oxford University in 2002, when she came in University's Runner-up position in the Shoestring Shorts competition. Now she's acting in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited and might just be on the verge of big things.
Now Anderson's film has wrapped it's location shoot in India and we're wondering if he could possibly have dragged his filmmaking career back on track, why not preview Ms. Karan in that Runner-up film, By Myself and strain for clues?
Here's a snap of the three leads from Wes Anderson's next disappointment, The Darjeeling Limited - from left, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody and each of them can be clicked upon to make the whole dang thing bigger.
This is why I spend hours searching the blogosphere: to bring you stuff like this.
