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Darjeeling Limited on The Cracked Blog

Wild Speculation About Movies I Haven’t Seen

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Foxx, Garner, explody stories from the news!

Despite the path blazed by classic Middle Eastern action flicks like Rambo 3, I haven’t been able to get excited about The Kingdom. Maybe it’s that Jamie Foxx with a gun reminds me too much of Stealth, or that Jennifer Garner as a soldier reminds me too much of Jennifer Garner. It’s hovering in the low 50s on Rotten Tomatoes right now. For a comedy, 50s could mean anything, but for a political action drama with a conscience—the sort of stuff movies critics are dying to love—that’s pretty bad. I sort of want to love it but for a different reason: after exhaustive research (when is IMDB going to buy Rotten Tomatoes goddamnit?) I can confirm that the director Peter Berg, is also the guy who played “Irish” Terry Conklin in The Great White Hype, one of the most underrated comedic boxing performances this side of Rocky IV (Two Stallone sequel references in one paragraph, I’m on fire!).

Yes, but you're a QUIRKY stereotype. That's much better.

Also, The Darjeeling Limited is in limited release this weekend (damn you Wes Anderson for making film critics more redundant than they already are) and though it’s at 65%, the Cream of the Crop are giving it a rough ride. One critic who liked it said it’s “Somewhat funny, but in strange and subtle ways, even by Anderson’s standards.” I’m guessing this means the actors just think of a joke and the audience has to guess what it is. That’s really the only way things could get any subtler than The Life Aquatic, in which Bill Murray dressed up in a red cap and pretended like he was playing poker with the camera for two hours.

I’m guessing the Kingdom bombs (sub $10 Million opening) and Darjeeling does about what Aquatic did: make enough money to fund Anderson’s next celebration of sad people in weird clothes.

Posted in Darjeeling Limited, Movies, Rotten Tomatoes, The Kingdom | 2 Comments »

Owen Wilson: The Elliot to Wes Anderson’s ET?

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

In the aftermath of his recent suicide attempt, the media has focussed on Owen Wilson’s relationship with Kate Hudson, and ignored the more interesting relationship between Wilson and director Wes Anderson.

Wilson and Anderson were college roommates, got their big break together co-writing Bottle Rocket, and went on to collaborate on the scripts for Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, making their creative partnership responsible for three of the greatest comedies of the past quarter century. After Tenenbaums they stopped writing together, and Anderson’s subsequent film Life Aquatic, a gorgeous, humorless exercise in the quirky use of the color turquoise, was a Paul McCartney level disappointment of a solo project.

Being the sort of person who thinks too much about these sorts of things, I always suspected there was an element of truth in Wilson’s character Eli Cash, probably the funniest and most resonant in The Royal Tenenbaums. Cash was an approval-seeking author who got addicted to drugs after becoming suddenly and randomly famous for a ridiculous novel (”Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is… maybe he didn’t?”). The rumors of Wilson’s drug use were already circulating at the time, so it wasn’t a stretch to think that the character came from a place of truth, or possibly concern on Anderson’s behalf.

I was just reading an unremarkable statement issued by Anderson in the wake of Wilson’s suicide attempt when I came across something that gave me the chills. It said that in Anderson’s upcoming film Darjeeling Limited, a film Wilson stars in but didn’t co-write, “Wilson plays a distraught man — bandaged throughout the film — who other characters imply has attempted suicide.” Sort of creepy right?

All of this might not add up to much more than a couple of coincidences, but while everyone’s asking Kate Hudson if she saw the warning signs, it’s worth noting that like any romantic relationship, a good creative partnership requires that you lay yourself bare. Anderson and Wilson had one of the good ones and both have seemed lost since it ended.

The movies they collaborated on always told sad stories that ended on hopeful notes. The most hopeful ending I can think of to this sad story (and sad blog post, sorry, I’ll try to make my next one about penises with mustaches drawn on) would be to have Anderson and Wilson collaborate on another script at some point down the road.

Posted in Darjeeling Limited, Owen Wilson, Wes Anderson | 3 Comments »