A couple small items of note on the Wes Anderson front. Not only is his new feature, “The Darjeeling Limited” having its premiere at the Venice Film Festival later this month, a new 12-minute Anderson short called, “Hotel Chevalier” will also screen out of competition at the fest.
Not a lot is known about the ‘Hotel’ short other than it stars Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman. Portman has a role in “The Darjeeling Limited,” but it’s small enough that she doesn’t have a credit on the poster or the trailer (apparently the role is a brief cameo).
Meanwhile, there’s been a lot of speculation (including our own) on the whereabouts of Anderson mainstay and composer Mark Mothersbaugh (who has scored all of Wes film’s up until now). We just heard from our inside source who confirmed that Mothersbaugh, will in fact, not be participating in this new Anderson film. As we’ve noted extensively, the ‘Darjeeling’ will use music from the films of Indian cinema legend Satyajit Ray and Merchant Ivory (whose early films were all set in India). Expect songs from Satyajit Ray himself as he began scoring all his own films after 1961. Our other educated guesses on the music by those aforementioned filmmaker you might hear can be read here.
