Adrien Brody in InAPPropriate Comedy (YouTube)

Obviously, this will be an outstanding feature, remembered in the pantheon of films as being "like the Scary Movie franchise, but way worse."

Weirdly, this is not even the first spectacularly bad comedies that Mr. Offer has made. (See: Underground Comedy.) How he ever got the funding to make another, and stock full of B-listers like Rob Schneider, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan and Ari Shaffir as "The Amazing Racist"?

Wait, Lindsay Lohan? Guess that infomercial industry is paying dividends in cocaine these days.

Brody.

Detachment is the latest curiosity from London-born singer-songwriter-painter-film director Tony Kaye, whose first film, a violent exposé of neo-Nazism called American History X, caused a minor sensation in 1998. This one is about a month in the life of a different kind of tortured, alienated soul—the substitute teacher. It opens March 16 but like a flight to nowhere, it’s already available for preboarding on television, where you can catch it anytime on Video on Demand.

Adrien Brody, one of the weirdest looking actors of the millennium, plays Henry Barthes, a man so emotionally blocked by a lifetime of disillusion that he cannot connect with any other human being. He hides from life by moving from teaching job to unemployment check, never stopping long enough in one place to become attached to students, colleagues or even an occasional one-night stand. The title of the film comes from Camus (“Never have I felt so detached yet so one with myself”). He is a metaphor for the restless souls who can’t do, they teach. Sometimes they drift into classrooms to fill something missing in themselves. Some think they can make a difference in others. In a series of brief documentary-style interviews, one man confesses he wanted to be a rock star until reality said otherwise, while another tried giving it a year’s try and stayed for years. For Henry, teaching is a reason to not go home to a bleak, antiseptic apartment with an empty refrigerator. We catch up with him in a school that makes the setting of Blackboard Jungle look like Kukla, Fran and Ollie, where a distinguished cast is largely wasted as various cynical faculty members. Marcia Gay Harden is the hard-boiled, sarcastic principal who went from being an educator to being a cop. James Caan is a wretch who pops amphetamines to get through the day. Blythe Danner stops at the water cooler on her way to staff meetings but doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing there. Lucy Liu is a burnout. Tim Blake Nelson has a nervous breakdown. The students spit in their faces and threaten them with gang rape. You get the picture.

Although Mr. Brody plays a lost, unfocused, blank blackboard of a man who structures his lesson plans to avoid contact with real life, he somehow manages to touch the lives of his students—and one fat, suicidally depressed girl in particular, played by the director’s sister, Betty Kaye. Her predicament elicits sympathy, but he has too many problems of his own to offer much help—no relationships, no furniture, no music, no feelings and no nutritious home-cooked meals, but only the memory of a mother who committed suicide, a grandfather with Alzheimer’s who is being neglected in a retirement home, and a homeless, underage prostitute with AIDS he rescues from the streets. In the dreary screenplay by Carl Lund, all of these episodes are fragmented, like shards of broken glass, adding up to nothing more than a shoebox of corrosive decay.

Maybe dedicated teachers can occasionally save the future of the world from hopeless despair, if they don’t end up in a straitjacket first. But I doubt if real teachers will find much to identify with here. Detachment drives a coffin nail through a noble profession with such ruthless virulence that it makes no point at all.

rreed@observer.com

DETACHMENT

Running Time 97 minutes

Written by Carl Lund

Directed by Tony Kaye

Starring Adrien Brody, Betty Kaye and Marcia Gay Harden

1/4

Despicable Me

What's the story: Otherwise known as the 3D animated movie that isn't Toy Story 3. Or Shrek Forever After. Universal's entry into the Summer of Animation feels a bit mysterious, if only because the trailers remain fairly vague. But here are the basics: Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is a supervillain who gets thwarted in his attempt to steal the moon when three orphaned girls come into his life. Touching life lessons and hilarious 3D effects ensue. Jason Segal, Russell Brand, Will Arnett and Julie Andrews provide supporting voice work. If you have kids - and don't feel like seeing Toy Story 3 for a fifth time - this is your winner.

Who should see it: Buzz and Woody.

Predators

What's the story: Have you been sitting there waiting for a sequel worthy of the 1987 endlessly quotable Arnold Schwarzenegger action romp Predator to hit theaters (sample dialogue: "Get to the chopper!")? Well good news! Producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal -- real name, fyi -- bring you Predators, which despite the presence of three other Predator sequels appears to be the heir apparent to the original film. Adrien Brody leads a motley crew -- Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne -- as a group of criminals and hardened military types try to outwit a bunch of massive alien monsters who can become invisible at any moment. The reviews have been solid -- calling Predators a midnight movie classic in the making. Hey, Brody didn't win that Oscar for nothing, right?  

Who should see it: Arnold.

The Kids Are All Right

What's the story: The best reviewed movie of the summer -- non-Toy Story 3 and Inception division. Lisa Cholodenko's Sundance favorite has found near unanimous critical approval -- our Rex Reed gave it three eyeballs -- and it seems to be the one-stop-shop for all your summertime Academy Award withdrawals. To wit: Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as a lesbian couple raising two children (Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson) who have their life upturned when their sperm donating father (Mark Ruffalo) comes back into the picture. Expect new age family values and a whole lot of bathed-in-sunlight California vistas.

Who should see it: People who already saw Cyrus.

The brothers in the title are Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody), masters of the con, who pool their larcenous talents to make an eccentric doodle-brain heiress (Rachel Weisz) their next victim. Orphaned and bonded in childhood and mentored into crime by a degenerate Fagin figure named Diamond Dog (Maximilian Schell) until they set out on their own to become gentleman thieves, the “brothers” have polished their act into a fail-safe formula. As adults, Stephen creates elaborate plots with a fiendish glee, and Bloom is the heart of the operation, playing the straight man in the setup. Stephen is driven from one escapade to the next; Bloom is moody and wants to retire after every narrow escape.

Implored to do one final job, Bloom forces Stephen to dissolve the partnership after its completion. Their mark is an eccentric, harp-playing epileptic named Penelope who makes cameras out of watermelons. (Would I make this up?) The con involves rooking the lonely heiress into investing in a scheme involving the smuggling of an ancient book from the underground catacombs of Prague Castle. She takes the bait, on one condition: that she accompanies them on the adventure. Naturally, the perfect mark turns out to be crazier than they are. The whole thing turns into a globe-trotting road movie, wafting from New Jersey to Russia to Greece, Montenegro and Tokyo while the wacko heiress gets so caught up in the con game she turns into a cross between Nancy Drew and Mata Hari as she swindles the swindlers. They travel by train, boat and caravan, joined by the brothers’ sidekick, a mute bleach-blonde Japanese femme fatale obsessed with freaky fashions and explosives named Bang Bang (played by Rinko Kikuchi, from Babel), while Bloom betrays his brother by falling in love with Penelope’s ditzy charm. I guess this is all supposed to be a comedy, but it’s so busy knocking itself out trying to be different that it only succeeds in being annoyingly hammy and trite.

As the plot twists accelerate, the movie literally chokes on the narrative contrivances that pile up like junkyard salvage. The dialogue defies analysis (“The perfect con is the one where everyone involved gets everything they wanted”; “There’s no such thing as an unwritten life—just a badly written one”) but inspires plenty of rude laughs. The slapstick sight gags and potholes in the plot just make it look silly, and the allegedly romantic finale has no impact at all. Rarely have I witnessed a bigger, sadder waste of talent. It all looks and sounds like they made it up as they went along. Scam movies don’t work unless the whole audience is scammed in the process, and The Brothers Bloom won’t bluff you for a New York minute.

We think even Don Draper would object to the ad campaign for The Road. John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bleak, end-of-the-world novel doesn’t come out until October 16th (up against New York, I Love You and Where the Wild Things Are—can you say counterprogramming?), but the trailer was released yesterday and it seems borderline criminal. As put together by the Weinstein company, The Road looks like an apocalyptic thrill ride that mixes equal parts I Am Legend and Day After Tomorrow; but according to Esquire’s Tom Chiarella, who has seen The Road and calls it “the most important movie of the year,” many of the scenes in the trailer don’t even exist in the finished film. Equally amusing is the treatment of Charlize Theron, who appears in a couple of flashback scenes as the wife of Viggo Mortensen’s nameless character, yet looks to be a co-lead. We understand having to sell the audience on something they already like—nuke porn is so hot right now—but this is ridiculous! You don’t release a movie like The Road and expect it to be commercial; if the Weinstein Company wanted I Am Legend 2, they should have just gotten into the Will Smith business. Three movies hit theaters this weekend, and there is nary an apocalypse to be found. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

Angels & Demons

What’s the story: The most-anticipated least-anticipated blockbuster of the year? Perhaps. Tom Hanks reprises his role as Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon—this time sans mullet—in the Ron Howard adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling, airport-ready novel. While Mr. Brown actually wrote and released Angels & Demons before he shot to fame with The Da Vinci Code, the events of the screen version—which include murder, Papal conclaves and the Illuminati—take place after everything that happened in the first film; no prequels here! We barely remember reading the book, but, if memory serves, it was way better than The Da Vinci Code. Do with that information what you will.

Who should see it: Pope Benedict XVI.

Management

What’s the story: Jennifer Aniston pulls her “dressed down” look out of storage as a traveling saleswoman who ends up being stalked/loved by Steve Zahn’s lonely hotel clerk in this indieriffic little title from first-time director Stephen Belber. The reviews for Management have been solid yet unspectacular—our own Andrew Sarris says the film offers “sunny but not entirely silly escapism”—but since we’re suckers for Ms. Aniston when she plays small (see: The Good Girl, Office Space, Friends With Money), we might give this one a shot.

Who should see it: John Mayer.

The Brothers Bloom

What’s the story: Director Rian Johnson’s follow up to Brick finds Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo starring as the brothers Bloom, two con men looking for one last score at the expense of Rachel Weisz’s rich heiress. Needless to say, entanglements, both romantic and otherwise, ensue. That The Brothers Bloom premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, but only sees the light of day now—after going through multiple release date shifts—makes us a bit apprehensive about its quality. However, based on the seven minutes that premiered online last month, we’re expecting The Brothers Bloom to play like Wes Anderson by way of Paul Thomas Anderson. Color us excited.

Who should see it: Sawyer from Lost.

Cadillac Records

What's the story: Adrien Brody sighting! The Oscar-winner stars as Leonard Chess, founder of Chess Records, which was home to many great R&B artists during the 50s and 60s, including Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright) and Etta James (Beyonce). The trailer is very earnest but, honestly, we can't take the musical bio-film genre seriously ever since we saw Walk Hard on cable a couple of months back. Still, the reviews have been pretty solid, especially singling out the forever under-rated Mr. Wright as the one to watch. Mostly, we're just excited to see Talk Radio's Eric Bogosian back behind the mic. In Cadillac Records he plays disc jockey Alan Freed.

Who should see it: GM CEO Rick Wagoner.

Punisher: War Zone

What's the story: Because you didn't ask for it, here comes a sequel to The Punisher! Neither Thomas Jane nor John Travolta return for this go-around; instead, the cast is filled with a cavalcade of C-list talent including Rome's Ray Stevenson as the titular hero. About the only thing of interest in War Zone is director Lexi Alexander. A female action director? We've been waiting for an heir to the throne of Kathryn Bigelow since Strange Days.

Who should see it: People who can't wait until the January DVD release of Max Payne.

Frost/Nixon

What's the story: If it's a weekend in December, you can bet your bottom dollar that an Oscar contender is getting released. This week brings us Frost/Nixon, the highly pedigreed new film from director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan (adapting his own play). Frank Langella jumps from stage to screen as Richard Nixon, while Mr. Morgan's go-to-muse, Michael Sheen, portrays interviewer David Frost. Other cast members include O2 favorite Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon, adding a few more degrees of separation to his ample resume. The reviews have been uniformly gushing and we can't wait to see this film. Expect Frost/Nixon to figure prominently at the Oscars in February.

Who should see it: George W. Bush.

According to a bunch of well-dressed people, the Lower East Side's Chloe 81 is becoming the "Biggie to [the] Beatrice's Tupac." [Grub Street]

Sienna Miller and Balthazar Getty are not back together because it turns out they never broke up in first place. [P6]

Beyonce and Adrien Brody seem to have enjoyed making out with each other on the set of Cadillac Records. [R&M]

Donald Trump is "fuming" at his brother Robert, who is currently in the middle of a divorce battle with wife Blaine, for failing to arrange a prenuptial agreement and for using ex-wife Ivana's old divorce lawyer, Robert Cohen. [P6]

When she’s onstage, no one owns it quite like the 27-year-old Ms. B: She stalks and struts and uh-ohs-uh-ohs those famous hips, belting the big stomach-clenching notes out of the park. In person, however she couldn’t be less of a diva. Friendly and quick to laugh, she happily showed off brand-new Alexander McQueen black button ankle boots that she had purchased the day before, then turned around and picked up her hair so a reporter could check the label (also McQueen) on her fitted black denim frock coat. She wore it over a plain James Perse white T-shirt (“my uniform,” she said, “seriously, I have like 50 of them”) and black leather leggings.

Beyoncé has loved fashion since childhood, thanks to her mother, Tina Knowles, who owned a hair salon. “I looked at her like a therapist and a makeover queen—­the perfect glamorous smart woman,” said the young star. “People would walk in, talk to her and tell her their issues and they’d walk out feeling and looking like a new woman.”

Tina taught her daughter the importance of being creative; how you didn’t necessarily need a lot of money to make style statements. “She’d get us little jackets and we’d go to an art supply store and we’d get stones and glitter and we’d personalize a lot of our clothes,” Beyoncé said. “I look at some of the pictures and I’m completely mortified. But she taught me the importance of looking good and feeling good but also that beauty comes from within. Because it fades.”

Tina Knowles and Beyoncé started a ready-to-wear women’s line, House of Deréon, in 2005 and are introducing a new jewelry line in early 2009. “I’m an accessories queen,” said the younger woman. “I collect a lot of vintage jewelry—a lot of vintage Chanel. I love it because you know no one else has it. Sometimes I don’t even wear it—I just like to look at it.”

Beyoncé started shopping in vintage stores as a teenager growing up in Houston and is still drawn to the classic lines of an earlier, less confusing era. “I will love always the cut from 1940s,” she said. “Because I’m a curvy woman, that’s the best silhouette on my body.” She admires but avoids the trends that she knows won’t flatter her figure, like the loose and flowing bohemian dress that engulfed Manhattan last summer. “It would swallow me and I’ll look heavier,” she said. “There are certain things I can do, but I have to show my waistline and stick to things that look good on my body. I know what looks good on me and I think that’s half the battle.”

The next few months will be hectic for busy B.—her third album, I Am ... Sasha Fierce, will be released this month, followed by a return to the big screen in December with Cadillac Records. In it she’ll play the legendary blues singer Etta James—“the first African-American woman to cross over,” Beyoncé said reverently, “I wouldn’t even have a chance”—just a few years after portraying a Diana Ross doppelgänger in Dreamgirls.

The new movie, which affirms James’ influence on popular white singers of her day, co-stars Adrien Brody and Jeffrey Wright. “It was the most challenging and rewarding film I’ve ever been a part of,” Beyoncé said. Not that there wasn’t some initial hesitance. “I was like, can I do this? Am I ready for this? People are already so critical of singers becoming actors.”

She was inspired in part, she said, by Ross as Billie Holiday in 1972’s Lady Sings the Blues (“one of my favorite performances”)—and, of course, by James herself. “She was so fearless and bold. She was always Etta,” Beyoncé said. “She didn’t care or try to conform to what people thought she should be. It actually gave me the strength to take more risks for my record.”

I Am ... Sasha Fierce, which includes the singles “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” and “If I Were a Boy,” takes the singer in new directions. “I’ve always challenged myself, but that fear I had—that anxiety I had when I started the movie—I knew it was time for me to take that chance with my music,” Beyoncé said. “I’ve done so many things, I’ve accomplished so many things, I’ve been really, really blessed. But, there comes a a time when artistically you’re bored and you want to show that there’s more to you than what people expect.”

PHOTOGRAPH: Robert Erdman
STYLIST: Freddie Leiba
Hair by Kimberly Kimball;
Makeup by Francesca Tolot;
Manicure by Lisa Logan

Indeed, high-profile New Yorkers have recently taken to remodeling their homes to make them more livable. Some have even taken to acquiring (additional?) weekend homes to get away from all the negative talk of the economy around the city. 

Adrien Brody bought his girlfriend, actress Elsa Pataky, the Stone Barn Castle in Cleveland, NY for her 31st birthday last year, reported Cityfile. But only now is the couple finally decorating and moving in. (Interiors of the couple's "cocoon" are by Armani.)

Also on Cityfile are photos of Woody Allen and wife Soon-Yi's newly redecorated townhouse on East 70th Street. And as far as the analogy to nesting goes, this one probably comes the closest: There's a cozy grandpa feel to the whole place, which features rustic country furniture, rocking chairs, and quaint wallpaper. 

Meanwhile, the Times has come out with a story about a rise in people buying vacation homes as people look to have weekend escapes from the city. (The lead example is a modeling agent at Wilhelmina.) And a separate story in the paper provides a slideshow of Tim and Nina Zagat's newly renovated country farmhouse near Millerton, N.Y., where they drive up on Thursdays from their Central Park West apartment. 

While this may not seem like the ideal time for wealthy New Yorkers to be redecorating, as everyone starts to avoid the airports, restaurants, and maybe even the decadent New York parties, perhaps the city's recognizable faces will all begin to go into hibernation. 

The luggage epitomizes “Wes World”—which is how the actress Anjelica Huston described the timeless, quirky aesthetic of the director’s films to The Observer. Variously shaped, Mr. Jacobs’ suitcases, realized to Mr. Anderson’s exact specifications, are at once both elegant and absurd.

The director’s fifth motion picture, Darjeeling tells the story of the three Whitman brothers who—armed with enough painkillers and cough syrup to fell a parade of elephants—roll through the Indian desert in the peculiar luxury of the eponymous train. In true Anderson form, the three men (played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) have little in common other than a surname; ultimately, they learn to celebrate the bonds of blood. Throughout the unfamiliar locale, the Whitman brothers’ bulky harlequin luggage, which had belonged to their recently deceased father, serves as a kind of security blanket. “They’re on this spiritual journey,” Mr. Jacobs said, “and it’s sort of like they’re carrying the remnants of their father’s life with them wherever they go.”

The director envisioned the bags “right down to the color of the lining and the sort of fixtures within the luggage that held a tennis racket or tennis balls and types of pockets that these suitcases should have,” Mr. Jacobs added. “Wes couldn’t have been more specific.” Mr. Anderson also asked the designer to speckle the luggage with playful drawings of palm trees and safari animals by the former man’s brother Eric, whose whimsical artwork is also featured prominently in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Slideshow

Greetings From
Wes World

In addition to creating courier sacks, trunks, suit bags and valises for the film, Mr. Jacobs outfitted the three Whitman brothers. Drawing from a palette of soft earth tones, pale pastels and a broad range of gray, he bedecked the trio in a more-or-less uniform fashion. In their oxford shirts, pajama tops and bespoke suits, they were dressed a lot like Mr. Anderson himself.

Mr. Jacobs said that he has long considered the filmmaker “an incredibly stylish and clever man,” citing Mr. Anderson’s appearance on Vanity Fair’s 2005 best-dressed list. They became friends a few years ago, after being introduced by the designer’s sometime muse, director Sofia Coppola.

And since 1996’s Bottle Rocket, Mr. Anderson’s films have had an unmistakable look, thanks in part to a loyal group of industry wizards who “get” his taste. Indeed, some might call it an exclusive clique. “I’d love to think that the world sees what I see in Wes’ movies, but I think in fact they’re very, very particular. I don’t know if they do speak to everyone, which maybe is a really great thing in a way,” Mr. Jacobs said. Of the 11 actors in Darjeeling’s primary cast, six have worked with Mr. Anderson previously. (The beleaguered Mr. Wilson has collaborated on all of his films.) Darjeeling’s chief costume designer, Milena Canonero, has also worked with the filmmaker before, garbing the madcap seafarers in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Before working on Darjeeling, she won Oscars for Chariots of Fire, Barry Lyndon and, more recently, Ms. Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

“She’s integral now to whatever [Mr. Anderson] does,” Ms. Huston said of Ms. Canonero. Ms. Huston, who has appeared in the director’s last three films, plays the Whitman brothers’ mother, Patricia, in Darjeeling. Having fled Manhattan after the death of her husband for a Catholic monastery in the hills of India, Patricia’s newfound humility is echoed by her closely cropped gray hair and simple white tunic, which is usually cinched by a tool belt (“a very Wesian touch,” she said).

Ms. Huston prepared for the role by visiting an ashram in Rajasthan, where she observed nuns tending to the local poor and infirm. “Patricia Whitman was something less traditional, but I wanted her to be on the frontier,” she said from her office in Venice, California. “I think Milena and I thought very concurrently about how she should look, and Wes has very clear ideas about what he likes and what he doesn’t like. He constantly challenges himself and therefore the people around him. I think he creates an artistic atmosphere and pushes us to do our best … at least our best in his eyes.”

Still, shooting on location in Rajasthan apparently relaxed Mr. Anderson’s grip on Darjeeling’s visual effects somewhat. “We reacted a lot to the place,” said Marc Friedberg, the production designer, who also worked on The Life Aquatic (“he’s just perfect for Wes, because he never says no,” Mr. Schwartzman said). “For Wes, that was quite a departure, where we were O.K. with happy accidents,” Mr. Friedberg continued. “Rather than obsessing about his shot and making it perfect, the actors rarely left the set. We were allowed very little time to light and to prepare. It was really about ‘Keep the energy moving! Keep shooting!’”

Inevitably, Darjeeling’s version of India is that of an outsider’s: volatile, romanticized, slightly precious. “I think he encouraged and welcomed unpredictableness. Is that a word?” Mr. Schwartzman chuckled to The Observer. By contrast, 1998’s Rushmore, which featured Mr. Schwartzman in a more pubescent state, was shot at Mr. Anderson’s high school in Houston, a place the director knew intimately. “We were foreigners in India,” Mr. Schwartzman, who plays Jack Whitman, said. “Anything could happen, and trying to control that or trying to create the things he envisioned, exactly as he envisioned them, might just be harder there. He said to me early on, ‘If we write in the script that the three brothers get picked up in a red car, and when we get there to shoot it there’s a blue truck, we shoot the blue truck.’ I think India kind of co-directed the movie with Wes, and I think he liked that.”

As the Whitman brothers traverse the arid landscape of northern India, they not only wear Marc Jacobs suits, $3,000 loafers with hand-painted stars and constellations and $6,000 belts “made special for me,” but they also don, in turns, bright flower necklaces, handmade slippers and gold-threaded head scarves. The local extras also had to dress like Wes World citizens. Throughout Darjeeling, shocks of spotless, fierce neon fabric dance across the screen: geranium-colored turbans, acid green saris and vests in fire-engine red.

“A lot of [Ms. Canonero’s] work was looking at the palette for quite some time and trying to develop costumes that looked like they were a part of the set,” said Mr. Friedberg, speaking—how apropos!—from an Amtrak train that was shuttling him from Washington, D.C., to New York. “We reacted a lot to the place. When we were working in Rajasthan, [Mr. Anderson] was really taken with the local craft, and a lot of Rajasthan is textile work and it’s highly patterned. There were also fantastic artisans there, and in some cases, we kind of just let them go,” he said.

But happy accidents aside, The Darjeeling Limited’s look and feel remain part of the Anderson continuum. The director seems never afraid to play his own muse—from the train’s fanciful compartments, which echo those on The Life Aquatic’s seaborne Belafonte, to Jack Whitman’s Acqua Di Parma-yellow bathrobe in Hotel Chevalier, a 13-minute related short (featuring Natalie Portman and her naked bum) that will appear on the Darjeeling DVD; the robe looks like a hand-me-down from Royal Tenenbaums. “For the most part, “ Mr. Friedman said, “I think he references himself.”