Still more evidence of the awesomeness of Steely Dan

Under 30 Blog is gonna read more like Over 50 Blog today, seeing as how I keep writing about geezer rockers, but I have to give it up again for the awesomeness of Steely Dan, who just posted another snarky letter on its Web site. Now they are going after Wes Anderson, hipster favorite and friend of The Dan's first target, the Butterscotch Stallion.

Donald and Walter love Anderson's first movie, "Bottle Rocket," but feel his subsequent work has gotten progressively worse. Whether you agree, The Dan is funny and actually pretty insighful about Anderson's work.

You began, spectacularly enough, with the excellent "Bottle Rocket", a film we consider to be your finest work to date. No doubt others would agree that the striking originality of your premise and vision was most effective in this seminal work. Subsequent films - "Rushmore", "The Royal Tenenbaums", "The Life Aquatic" - have been good fun but somewhat disappointing - perhaps increasingly so. These follow-ups have all concerned themselves with the theme we like to call "the enervated family of origin"©, from which spring diverse subplots also largely concerned with the failure to fulfill early promise. Again, each film increasingly relies on eccentric visual detail, period wardrobe, idiosyncratic and overwrought set design, and music supervision that leans heavily on somewhat obscure 60's "British Invasion" tracks a-jangle with twelve-string guitars, harpsichords and mandolins. The company of players, while excellent, retains pretty much the same tone and function from film to film. Indeed, you must be aware that your career as an auteur is mirrored in the lives of your beloved characters as they struggle in vain to duplicate early glories.

Read the rest here.