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.
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.
Noah Baumbach is of course the co-writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the director of the Wes produced The Squid and the Whale.
Greenburg is scheduled to be released on March 12, 2010 from Focus Features.
Monday, 9 November 2009
7:00 p.m. Celeste Bartos Forum
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building $25 general admission
LIVE from the NYPL presents an evening with director WES ANDERSON (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) in conversation with screenplay co-writer NOAH BAUMBACH (The Squid and the Whale) about Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s first animated film. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson utilizes classic handmade stop-motion techniques to tell the story of the classic children’s book by ROALD DAHL. Mr. and Mrs. Fox (George Clooney and Meryl Streep) live an idyllic home life with their son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) and visiting young nephew Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). But after twelve years of quiet domesticity, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr. Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community… The film is produced by Allison Abbate, Scott Rudin, Wes Anderson and Jeremy Dawson.
Schwartzman elaborates on his use of music in preparing for his roles, his appreciation for great writing, and working with Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson. He also discusses his character in Bored to Death, a Brooklyn-based lovelorn writer-turned-private detective.
You can stream the show and download a podcast of it at KCRW’s website, where you can also listen to past shows with Wes Anderson (1999, 2002, 2004) and Noah Baumbach among many other great filmmakers. (KCRW also talked to Jason about some of his favorite songs last year, you can listen to that here.)
Prodigious director Noah Baumbach has quietly started shooting an untitled film in Los Angeles
starring Ben Stiller as Roger Greenberg, a man at a crossroads who ends up housesitting at his brother’s home in Los Angeles. It’s there that he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his brother’s assistant Florence (played by reta Gerwig), an aspiring singer. Rhys Ifans, Mark Duplass, Brie Larson, and Juno Temple also star.
Baumbach wrote the script based on a story he conceived with Jennifer Jason Leigh, who co-stars and is co-producing with Baumbach and Scott Rudin. After Baumbach’s first film THE SQUID AND THE WHALE was nominated for an Oscar, the man was widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s hottest young directors. But after his next film MARGOT AT THE WEDDING suffered from a lukewarm reception, the boy wonder was left reeling. Early buzz on this next film is decent, so lets hope Mr. Baumbach gets back on track and lives up to the hype, LeBron James-style.
These are said to be the press notes and credits for Fantastic Mr. Fox. I cannot absolutely confirm their authenticity at this point but have no reason to believe that they are are a fabrication.
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Based on the beloved story by Roald Dahl, the film tells the tale of the noble, charming and fantastic Mr. Fox, who uses his wits and cunning to outfox three dimwitted farmers who tire of sharing their chickens with the crafty creature.
“Boggis and Bunce and Bean. One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean.”
Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited) directs the stop-motion animation of Roald Dahl’s much loved children’s book. Fantastic Mr. Fox is voiced by George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Michael Gambon, and scheduled for release in the fall of 2009.
I randomly stumbled across this just now, not sure if you’ve seen it…
I’m submitting this because a) I hadn’t seen it before, and I’d up until now been fairly certain I’d read literally every interview Anderson conducted in promoting Darjeeling, and b) I’ve been visiting your website at least once a day since I found it, which was some time a few months before Darjeeling was released.
Here’s the pertinent bit for your convenience:
“Noah [Baumbach] and I started working on a…story for a movie without really realizing we were doing it. It wasn’t ‘The Life Aquatic.’ It was something else that we haven’t even finished writing. Whenever we would go to dinner or something, we’d just start making up scenes for this thing and then we just started writing them down because [we realized] that we’ve got a lot of stuff now.”
Best, and thanks for all the work. It’s a great site, and I appreciate the good writing.
I hope all our Istabuli readers will be heading to the Istanbul International Film Festival (April 5-20) where The Darjeeling Limited will make its Turkish premiere. The Festival has an overall “‘68 Generation” theme and will be presenting some wonderful films (Godard’s Rolling Stones doc Sympathy for the Devil to Hopper’s Easy Rider). TDL will show in the “American Independents” category alongside The Savages and (Team Anderson collaborator) Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding. Two hundred films will be screened in all. If I am not mistaken, this is the second Middle East showing for TDL, after the Israeli premier earlier this year. So Bosporus bathers, don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!
I hope all our Istabuli readers will be heading to the 
