Culture Skulter

Here's a digest to "make up" for a few absent days chez blog.

DARJEELING LIMITED: Not bad. If you can get over Wes Andersonian clichés (e.g. slow motion file of main characters, self-conscious introduction of background music), you'll love the story.

I went in fully anticipating disappointment and maybe even disgust (re: Slate's lambast of Anderson's orientalism), but what surprised me were a. Jason Schwartzman cast as the romantic lover (in the most carnal sense of the word), b. the overwhelming message that spirituality is an escapist joke, and c. the amazing actor they cast as the main train steward. If the movie was orientalist (which it most certainly was in the same way every film in the world is doing something wrong), I at least, was able to ignore it.

YOSHIOKA TOKUJIN: He's a design polymath. About a month ago I went to a "furniture opening" for his Panna Chair - The concept is genius: Yoshioka designed a chair that bakes to full form. Hence the name "panna," Italian for bread.

Of all the kinds of openings and events out there, design-centered ones have to be the most interesting. On the one hand, everyone's behind-the-scenes. On the other, it's super lucrative, so there are no misgivings about where people are headed. Unlike publishing and theater events...

TEKKON KINKREET: I have to admit a slight personal agenda in bringing up Taiyo Matsumot's masterpiece bildungs-manga. I wrote an opinion piece about it for PW. Go get it.

AMERICAN MASTERS, CHARLES SCHULZ: It aired last night on PBS, and should have been split in two sections: Part 1: Martyrdom: The Joyce Schulz Story, and Part 2: Martyrdom: The Charles Schulz Story.

And...someone please get me this.