In addition to the Golden Globe nomination, yesterday Fantastic Mr. Fox picked up two screenwriting awards from west coast critics associations. Wes and Noah won the Best Adapted Screenplay for the film and it was also named the runner-up for Best Animated Film from the San Diego Film Critics Society. Similarly, The San Francisco Film Critics Circle awarded Fantastic Mr. Fox their prize for Best Adapted Screenplay.
It’s another good day for Wes and co., as Fantastic Mr. Fox continues to pick up critics awards. Announced this morning, Fantastic Mr. Fox won Best Animated Film, and was the first runner-up in both the Best Director and Best Film of the Year categories, with Wes as Director coming in second to Spike Jonze for Where the Wild Things Are, and Fantastic Mr. Fox coming in right behind Up in the Air for Best Film. Nice picks, Indiana. Full results here.
Also announced, Fantastic Mr. Fox won the Best Animated Film award from the New York Film Critics Circle. Full results here.
For those keeping up, the Golden Globes nominations will be announced tomorrow, and given that those are chosen by critics and press, it looks like the film might just have a shot.
Award season speculation from Variety (full story):
As has become the custom, there are still a few bad boys this awards season whose creations cannot be ignored, including the Coens (“A Serious Man”), Quentin Tarantino (“Inglourious Basterds”), Michael Haneke (“The White Ribbon”), Spike Jonze (“Where the Wild Things Are”) and Wes Anderson (“Fantastic Mr. Fox”). There’s also genre specialist Guy Ritchie, whose revisionist “Sherlock Holmes” is sure to raise a few eyebrows even as the director goes highbrow…
“The whole somewhat misbegotten notion of the auteur theory is that the director’s personality is itself an aspect of the movie,” says Christian Science Monitor critic Peter Rainer. “Most films from Hollywood, particularly these days, seem to be anonymously directed. And then you have Wes Anderson. Whatever one thinks of his movies, they definitely reveal the person behind the camera and a particular point of view — a way of seeing, a type of humor that is highly distinctive to him.”
“Wes Anderson sometimes seems to me the wise guy in your history class in high school,” adds author and Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel. “He’s articulate, he’s ambitious. And somehow most of his movies don’t seem to be quite up to his own expectations of them.”
Here’s a great conversation between Wes and former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell. If you listened to the show Mitchell did with Jason Schwartzman before the film’s release, you know how good these are. Take a look at that post for more background on the show and host and links to previous Wes appearances.
Elvis hosts producer-writer-director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) to talk about his latest film, the stop-motion animation feature Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the Roald Dahl book and featuring the voices of George Clooney, Jason Schwartzman and Meryl Streep.Anderson, who loved Dahl’s book, explains how he got permission from the Dhal family to use ‘Danny, the Champion of the World’ in his screenplay, and that he cast George Clooney, not because of his voice but because he’d always wanted to work with him. He reveals why he made the animals American and the humans British, and how he based the movements of Rat (voiced by Willem Dafoe) on the choreography of Bob Fosse. Finally, he discusses finding inspiration in Ray Harryhausen and the Brothers Quay, the importance of doing a stop-motion animation film with fur, and how this style involves more decision-making than a live-action film.
Listen the show or download a podcast at KCRW’s site.
As ever with the films of Wes Anderson—the best new American director of the last twenty years—love and death, comedy and tragedy, comfort and adventure, understanding and opacity, style and substance fuse in a modernism of personal and reflexive cinema and a classicism of grand and subtle literary emotion.
Wes appeared on Charlie Rose a couple of nights ago, and unfortunately due to a redesign, it’s nearly impossible to link you directly to the interview. If you can manage it, go to Charlie Rose’s website and in the search box indicated in the picture below, search for Wes Anderson and it should come up, or click on the recent shows tab. Definitely worth watching. You can also view a transcript here.
If anyone has any tips on how to emebed or even link directly to the video, please let us know.
And so Fantastic Mr. Fox’s award season begins. It was announced today that the film is nominated in three categories for Annie Awards (which you can read more about here), which as you might have guessed honor animated films. Mr. Fox receieved nominations for Best Animated Feature, Directing in a Feature Production, and Writing in a Feature Production. Congratulations Wes, Noah, et al.
The awards will be given out Saturday February 6, 2010 in Los Angeles.
