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JohnShade wrote:Sad to see Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson not on the list

Granted, their roles in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" were rather pointless (they were more like cameos for the sake of it -- as was Bill Murray's role). I'm generally not a fan of major actors being cast in very minuscule parts; I'd have more respect for Anderson if he just told them 'Ya know, I just don't genuinely have a part for you in this'... which perhaps he actually DID do for this film.

I think you're right about their roles in that film, especially Murray and Wilson's case. But of all films for a little cameo role, animation makes more sense than a rumination on time mixed with a caper set in an invented central European country. I'm pretty sure Adrian Brody was the mouse in Fantastic Mr. Fox and had maybe one line of dialogue. Either way I'll see anything from this crew at this point and will probably like it...This one looks a little different in tone than FMF, but I'm saying this based on two photos and I'm sure it will have all the Anderson marks.

whaleallright wrote:Countdown to misguided online accusations of "cultural appropriation": 3... 2... 1...

We don't know if these accusations are misguided until the film comes out, anyway. I trust Anderson to do this correctly, but why are we meeting premature nonexistent accusations with premature dismissals?

Because we've read the internet in the last five years? It's a valid presumption

It's funny, because as I recall The Darjeeling Limited was defended from charges of exoticism by Nothing, of all people.

Was the Darjeeling Limited accused of "cultural appropriation" when it was released?

Yep, because the guy who gets accused of making films with just white people making a film with a few prominent Indian characters is now appropriating. He can't win with that crowd.

dda1996a wrote:Was the Darjeeling Limited accused of "cultural appropriation" when it was released?

See the post directly above yours; our Darjeeling Limited thread. The Indians in the film were certainly used to draw a contrast between the main characters' handling of their father's death and their own quiet and dignified mourning, and there were some callous one-liners - I can certainly see why some were sensitive to that film. I adore it, but I wouldn't run into a burning building to defend it against those accusations, either.

Well Tony Revolori is Latino, so he is improving, unless mixed relationships are also frowned upon

mfunk9786 wrote:

dda1996a wrote:Was the Darjeeling Limited accused of "cultural appropriation" when it was released?

See the post directly above yours; our Darjeeling Limited thread. The Indians in the film were certainly used to draw a contrast between the main characters' handling of their father's death and their own quiet and dignified mourning, and there were some callous one-liners - I can certainly see why some were sensitive to that film. I adore it, but I wouldn't run into a burning building to defend it against those accusations, either.

I would, after Jose Canseco is done

Plus there's been the quietly brewing "where are the black people?" sentiment that reared its head during Grand Budapest Hotel's release that I could see playing into people's fears here. I expect Anderson will be using the Japanese cast here to play all the Japanese characters, and the dogs themselves are voiced by everyone else.

Well, I don't think there were many "black" people in Europe during world War 2, and those that were there were sent to concentration camps by the nazis.

dda1996a wrote:Well, I don't think there were many "black" people in Europe during world War 2, and those that were there were sent to concentration camps by the nazis.

This conversation is going well.

Wow this conversation took a turn. I'm with mfunk about Darjeeling, and even made that point in my first post here, defending that film all these years later especially against the then critically acclaimed Slumdog. I'd save my copy of that blu ray if my house burned down too.

I don't quite understand Knives' point, and I don't get Domino's reference to Jose Canseco.

I will say that I remember on the Fantastic Mr. Fox commentary Anderson said that he had, I guess before that film, explored all the works of Miyazaki, preferring Porco Rosso, then even visiting the Miyazaki museum in Japan. I think an element of this film is going to be a kind of homage to whatever he learned from Miyazaki and Japanese animation in general, so I'm not worried about appropriation--we'll see as has been said.

dda1996a wrote:Well Tony Revolori is Latino, so he is improving, unless mixed relationships are also frowned upon

It's still frowned upon, but then, what isn't these days?

domino harvey wrote:Because we've read the internet in the last five years? It's a valid presumption

Can we agree, at least, that pre-emptively defending a movie we haven't seen against charges that haven't yet been made isn't less tiresome

dda1996a wrote:Well, I don't think there were many "black" people in Europe during world War 2, and those that were there were sent to concentration camps by the nazis.

This is it, the very worst post

JohnShade wrote:Wow this conversation took a turn. I'm with mfunk about Darjeeling, and even made that point in my first post here, defending that film all these years later especially against the then critically acclaimed Slumdog. I'd save my copy of that blu ray if my house burned down too.

I don't quite understand Knives' point, and I don't get Domino's reference to Jose Canseco.

It's a reference to an episode of the Simpsons (which, incidentally, would probably manage to rank above most of Anderson's work in things I'd risk my life to save, though I do love Anderson dearly.)

I think that Darjeeling takes place in a very unreal version of India- Renoir's dream India from The River, maybe- which is consistent with Anderson's other work, but centering white dudes who themselves live in an unreal bubble within that world and contrasting their absurd extravagance with the poverty in view there heightens the effect. I don't think appropriation is the right word- Slumdog is surely more vulnerable there- but it's hard not to think of Anderson in terms of 'erasure', insofar as Darjeeling I think represents the crisis point where he'd erased almost everything except the inside of his head.

I think he's moved past that crisis, and I think in the context of his larger filmography (and his pretty clever not centering of the white character in Grand Budapest) it's not really the biggest concern in the world, but I also think it's a conversation that's worth having. Will a similar conversation be interesting about this movie? Who knows! We've had duller ones!

matrixschmatrix wrote:I think that Darjeeling takes place in a very unreal version of India- Renoir's dream India from The River, maybe- which is consistent with Anderson's other work, but centering white dudes who themselves live in an unreal bubble within that world and contrasting their absurd extravagance with the poverty in view there heightens the effect. I don't think appropriation is the right word- Slumdog is surely more vulnerable there- but it's hard not to think of Anderson in terms of 'erasure', insofar as Darjeeling I think represents the crisis point where he'd erased almost everything except the inside of his head.

I think this is a good take on the "appropriation" issue. Anderson would never suggest that he is trying to represent anything other than an imaginary India concocted from his own brain. This is the whole-cloth invention of the "Orient" anatomized by Edward Said in his work; the "Orient" is something that colonial whites needed to see. Anderson is a generous, benign, thoughtful artist and obviously not an imperialist, but the process of imagining is the same, and his visions are difficult to decry as "appropriations" because they in no way, shape, or form approximate an India experienced by a South Asian, nor would Anderson make any claims toward that end. Similarly, his vision of New England in Moonrise Kingdom in no way represents an actual experience of that area; his consistent aesthetic signature makes this explicit, to the point that there is more in common between Moonrise Kingdom and Darjeeling Limited than there is between the second movie and an India grounded in history and the experiences of people who live there. He is the opposite of someone like Kathryn Stockett, who uses realism to make claims about the black experience on which she in no way has a claim, either ontologically or epistemologically.

His films are definitely fantasies in the manner of Belgian comic books which is a good point when discussing appropriation. With regards to erasure, and I have said this before, I find it insane that he gets the brunt of this when his films in a way over represents minorities given the milieu of his films. Plus he just came out with a film all about the sense of other that minorities feel as applied to a very specific historical moment which admits to its fantasy and is far more empathetic than the norm. There are much better targets out there than Anderson.

First of all I wrote black in quotations because I hate referring to anyone by their skin color, but I had no alternative. Second, as someone who lost more than half his family in the holocaust, I still see no problems with what I said. It is a known fact that Jews, blacks, gypsies and homosexuals were rounded up to be killed by the nazis. Thus, since the film obviously takes place during that time, there was no logical reason to have a "black" character unless you would change the whole story. I think there needs to be a big difference between creating and endorsing more ethnically diverse films, and creating more minority centric art, but not to have a minority character just for the sake of it. I can't seem to remember any "white" characters in both Fences and Moonlight, and I don't see the slightest problem with that.

God knows we can't have a Wes Anderson film that doesn't resemble the real world

I thought twice before posting my "joke," and now I wish I had thought three times.

When I wrote it I had in mind things like this or this: stuff that in the past might have rightfully been considered "cultural exchange," now condemned as "cultural appropriation."

Or, what domino harvey said. A good rule of the internet is that any opinion that can marshall a few dozen clicks is an opinion that will be expressed and shared. Maybe we're wrong; I'll check back in a year and see.

So, how many dogs does Wes kill in this one?

Gave me the damn chills. Looks great.