Uncle Phillip: doing better; Kumar: just fine.

Put this on the list of phone calls you never want to get: Mom called on Thursday to let us know Uncle Phillip was in the hospital with serious kidney problems. According to whatever kind of test they run, his kidneys were functioning at 2% capacity. The good news is that he's responded well to dialysis and is back home. We're all relieved to know things have stabilized, but there's no denying that we're still concerned and are hoping and praying for the best.

On a lighter note, Michelle and I watched Bottle Rocket (1996) again this week. It was Wes Anderson's first feature film and we had watched his latest film (The Darjeeling Limited) a couple of days before. The Darjeeling Limited was, I think, a disappointment. A great premise, some great locations, some great actors. But the film was more grating than great. All the Andersonisms® were there: the offbeat late 60s soundtrack, the slowmo scenes that want to let the music do the talking, the funky, oversaturated set pieces, etc. He's come under some heat for continuing to scratch some of his itches--beginning with The Life Aquatic (2004), I think--and I certainly see the point of the criticism. But I must admit that the Andersonisms® never really bothered me much before. Bottle Rocket was refreshing to watch: the script is studded with gems. Cowritten by Anderson and Owen Wilson, it's enough to make you forget that Wilson is a great writer and it's kind of a shame that his lovable doofus persona sometimes obscures the fact that writing may be his strongest suit.

Michelle tried, unconvincingly, to persuade me that she loved the Luke Wilson character because he's such a good guy. Yeah. And it doesn't hurt to have the look of a sensitive heartthrob with puppydog eyes (and a director enamored with long, patient close ups). We talked about Bottle Rocket as a heist film concerned with the creation of an aesthetic object (kudos again to my friend Daryl Lee, who's teaching a class on this theme): the point of the thing, of course, is not so much the robbery that Dignan and the gang try to pull off, but the loving preparation that goes into it, as if the crime itself were but an afterthought to its own planning. The quirky notes here and there--the love affair with the Paraguayan (not Mexican but Paraguayan!) hotel maid and the easily distracted old Indian safecracker Kumar--haven't yet become mannerisms and they work very well. I think the films to come, particularly The Royal Tenenbaums [2001] (maybe his masterpiece so far) and The Life Aquatic are also very, very good.