Hiya

Let’s begin with a ton of True captures sent in by Jen. You can view them all over here but below are a couple of my favs. Thanks Pasha.

Pretty
Sloshed
Cute
Hulky
Happy
Warm
Leaking

Next up is a new Darjeeling/Chevalier review. You can read the full thing here but I’ve grabbed the important excerpts below. Thanks to Scoop.

The girlfriend is played by Natalie Portman, who really has nothing to with the movie but appears in a short film called Hotel Chevalier shown before Darjeeling at film festivals. The short is a sensual piece of work, Anderson’s first real attempt at eroticism. It’s ten minutes of awkward meetings and sexual preludes followed by the stripping of Portman by Schwartzman’s character and then some naked cuddling. It sets up the character of Jack nicely, so it’s unfortunate that it won’t be seen in theaters when Darjeeling is finally released. Instead Fox has announced that they’re using Chevalier as some sort of awful, viral marketing scheme. They won’t show it before the movie, but they feel it’s essential to the movie so they’re making it available online and recommending everyone go to their website and watch it. I guess they’re hoping Portman’s partial nudity in the short will generate online ad revenues or drum up interest in the larger film, but if they really believe it’s important to Darjeeling well then you have to wonder why it’s not being included with its theatrical release. Maybe they’ll change their mind.

…

As with every Wes Anderson movie, both Darjeeling and its accompanying short which no one will be allowed to see, are told with perfectly framed camera shots where Wes plays with color, shape, and seems to have a lot of fun experimenting with the best way to line the three brothers up according to height.

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I’m not saying Darjeeling isn’t good, it’s just not as good as Wes Anderson’s other work. It’s not just the look of the movie either, it’s the story, which sometimes doesn’t seem to know where to go and when it does, isn’t always able to connect on the emotional level that his other films have.

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Anderson’s talent has always been in finding humor and heart by turning the weird into the mundane and the mundane into the weird. He does it again in Darjeeling, but the film strikes a more muted pose than his previous efforts and doesn’t entirely fit together.

If you are interested in seeing Darjeeling there are going to be some free screenings next month. Go to the official site and scroll down till you see a button called “showtimes and tickets”, which will give you the cinemas, times, dates and cities (only US cities I’m afraid).

Finally, Tito sent in some banner fanart. Click here and here.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new poll.