Wes Anderson Royal Tenenbaums" was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an "Empire" poll as the 159th greatest film ever made. Anderson's next feature was "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004) about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Bill Murray. It serves as a classic example of Anderson's style, but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films, and its box office did not match the heights of "The Royal Tenenbaums". In September 2006, Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen released a tongue-in-cheek "letter of intervention" for Anderson's artistic "malaise" following the disappointing commercial and
Wes Anderson critical reception of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", proclaiming themselves to be fans of "World Cinema" and of Anderson in particular. They offered Anderson their soundtrack services for his "The Darjeeling Limited", including lyrics for a title track. "The Darjeeling Limited" (2007) was about three emotionally distant brothers traveling together on a train in India. It reflected the more dramatic tone of "The Royal Tenenbaums" but faced criticisms similar to "The Life Aquatic". Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film the movie partly as a tribute to Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, whose "films have also inspired