Oh, the preciousness

Sometimes an artist's latest work can poison what went before; eg:

Like all kids (well, I was 27) in 1996-7, I loved the works of Elliott Smith. And when XO came out in 1998, I can remember being happy for ES as the first week numbers came back (when these things mattered) and the record had sold 20K copies or so. Then in, what 2000?/2001?, Figure 8 came out and, for a number of reasons, I hated it. Where had the songs gone?, I thought. Over-busy arrangements supporting not much, and BLAM!, right there, on the spot, my opinion of Mr Smith's works changed. The record I had abominated had tainted the previous releases for me.

Which brings me to The Darjeeling Limited. The movie itself had any number of problems, like: why are we supposed to care for these rich assholes who wear three thousand dollar loafers and generally act like spoiled immature brats, twee in the extreme? Yes, let's use a child's funeral for a set piece, and/or mere setup for an irritating flashback. And the McGuffin* of the three lead characters' relationships with their mother [admittedly, Anjelica Houston's eye makeup was amazing]? Let's cop out fully on that with just a sort of mystical hippie-kabal scene with no dialogue that even Oliver Stone would not try and then pretend we've all learnt something.

See, even at this point, as my love for previous Wes Anderson films started to gently wither on the vine in the face of the newest one, I was ready to still say, Oh, well, we all miss sometimes, and even in the face of such smug cultural imperialism, he can still bounce back...I was ready to say this, until I foolishly watched (or started to watch, rather) the special features...where I was treated to the sight of Wes Anderson wearing a white suit in India. I mean! It had to be 100 degrees when they were filming the scene with Adrian Brody running to the train and there's old Wes looking like a...well, an auteur wearing a white suit in India. As if Tom Wolfe had not already laid claim to the white suit with such an annoying deathclasp. Or Sam Clemens, for that matter.

And what sort of hypocrite am I, when in the very same four day period I had re-watched ...Tenenbaums for the umpteenth time and decided that I need pink pants a la Pagoda for summer 2009? What the hell is wrong with me?



* speaking of Hitchcock, back in the 50's Alfred was pumping out a movie a year at least, and sometimes they'd be a dud, like I Confess or The Wrong Man, but then, 10 months later he'd bust out Vertigo or Rear Window or the like. Nowadays, movies gestate for years, so W.A. will have to finish his nearly certain-to-be interminable Fantastic Mr Fox animated thing [songs by Jarvis Cocker, so there IS that], and then release it, then the DVD, THEN shoot another "real" movie. By then I will be seventy-one.