It’s official:

Animated Film:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

I have seen 1, 2 and 5 – excellent competition. Good luck, Wes!

Also:

Best Score
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Hurt Locker
Sherlock Holmes
Up

via Vulture

From Richard Brody’s blog at the New Yorker:

I remembered this passage from the F. Scott Fitzgerald story “The Freshest Boy”:

He had contributed to the events by which another boy was saved from the army of the bitter, the selfish, the neurasthenic and the unhappy. It isn’t given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.

—and it occurred to me that more than everything else—more than all the things in his stories that I have been inspired by and imitated and stolen to the best of my abilities—THIS describes my experience of the works of J. D. Salinger.

1. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Wes Anderson): Pure animal wildness plus an exquisitely controlled expressive frenzy; one of the most visually generous movies ever made, comparable in detail to Jacques Tati’s “Playtime.” You have to see it twice to see it once.

via Vulture

I’ve seen it many, many times since that press screening two years ago. It has not only held up but gotten richer; each viewing yields fresh wonders.

Anderson and His Friends Bring “Fox” to the City

 by Eugene Hernandez

“I’ve been spending a lot of time in France recently, but this is the Paris that I remember most in my life,” filmmaker Wes Anderson said last night, standing in front of the screen at New York City’s Paris Theater on 58th St. in Manhattan. Across the street at Bergdorff Goodman’s, the windows of the famous 5th Ave. department store were filled with scenes from his new movie, “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Small figurines, adorned in detailed clothing, played out scenes from the animated film about the Fox family.

“This was the first story that stuck in my mind,” praised Anderson, talking about author Roald Dahl’s book “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which he has adapted for the screen (from a screenplay with his friend Noah Baumbach). Before unveiling the film at a gala screening organized by Peggy Siegal, Anderson brought down cast and crew to join him: Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and his brother Eric Anderson, all of whom contribute their voices to the characters in the film.

Told in stop-motion animation, “Mr. Fox” features a family of foxes who are increasingly at odds with nearby farmers. The elder fox, voiced by George Clooney, has a sly history of farm crime and is having a hard time going straight. He moves his family into a big tree where they live in only momentary tranquility. With an outcast son, who characterizes himself as “different,” Mr. Fox finds an ally when his agile nephew moves in and he returns to a life of wiley theft. But the young Ash Fox, aiming for the affection of his dad, and at odds in his relationship with his cousin, becomes a part of the intrigue. As do a neighboring badger, rabbit and others.

Ophelia Dahl, the daughter of acclaimed author Roald Dahl, saluted Anderson and company, and their re-working of her dad’s book, a story that she said was one he began telling her as a young child. “It was his imagination that made these characters come to life,” she said, recalling how the tale evolved as he told her the story over the years. Ophelia Dahl also pointed out her mom, Patricia Neal, in the audience and the noted actress received a warm, extended applause from the full house crowd.

The event welcomed an eclectic mix of bold-faced names, from designer Zac Posen and author Jonathan Ames to performers Rosie Perez, Bob Balaban, Woody Harrelson, Olivia Thirlby, and filmmakers Bennett Miller, Nora Ephron, and James Toback. With plenty of kids roaming around for the showing, some folks walked the red carpet outside Bergdorff’s windows wearing velcro neckties fashioned after a fox tail.

At the party later, at Rouge Tomate around the corner on the Upper East Side, we had a brief moment with actor Willem Dafoe, who is currently on screen in two movies that feature talking foxes, Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist.”

“The truth is, my name probably means ‘the fox’,” Dafoe explained briefly, “It’s probably a variation of a French or Flemish name that means ‘the fox’.”

Anderson’s film debuted as the opening night film of the recent London Film Festival. “I love this book,” Anderson said, in London at the opening, “As a child, it was the first book I ever owned, and obviously my introduction to the work of Roald Dahl, who became one of my heroes. We wrote the script, in part, at his house. And we shot the film at Three Mills Studios in East London… So for me, it’s a British film, and it’s a great pleasure for me to have it premiering at the London Film Festival. Having said that, I’d like to introduce some of my colleagues who helped us to make the film, and they are almost, every last one of them… American.”

More photos at IndieWire.

1968 photo of the Rolling Stones by Phillip Townsend

You can see the top 10 list after the jump, but check out the great scene descriptions (& many of the scenes themselves) over at Spinner!

Spinner’s Top Ten Music Moments from Wes Anderson films:

• The Who, “A Quick One While He’s Away,” Rushmore
  Elliott Smith, “Needle in the Hay,” The Royal Tenenbaums
  Love, “7 and 7 Is,” Bottle Rocket
  The Rolling Stones, “I Am Waiting,” Rushmore
  The Stooges, “Search and Destroy,” The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
  The Kinks, “Nothin’ in This World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl,” Rushmore
  The Ramones, “Judy Is a Punk,” The Royal Tenenbaums
  The Proclaimers, “Over and Done With,” Bottle Rocket
  Sigur Rós, “Staralfur,” The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
  Nico, “These Days,” The Royal Tenenbaums

via Spinner.com

Enter our Third Annual Wes Anderson Halloween Costume Contest. We are giving away three Fantastic Mr. Fox prize packages, courtesy of our friends at Fox Searchlight:

• A Fantastic Mr. Fox tie, as featured at Comic-Con 2009
• A Fantastic Mr. Fox theatrical poster
• Plus, hopefully some to-be-determined goodies from our pals at Searchlight

The winners, and a few runners-up, will win the CD/DVD set of Noah and the Whale’s latest album/film The First Days of Spring, thanks to the great kids over at Sneak Attack Media.

There are several ways to enter this year:

• Upload your photos to Flickr and tag them “rushmoreacademy2009″ (registration required)
• Tweet them @rushmoreacademy using TwitPic or yfrog
• Upload them to our Facebook page gallery or post them on my wall
• E-mail them as an attachment to edwardappleby@yankeeracers.org

There are three categories this year:

• Most Fantastic Mr. Fox costume, for any costume based on a character in the new film
• Best individual, non-Mr. Fox, for lonely trick or treaters
• Best group/couple, Mr. Fox or not, for a pair or more of costumed hipsters (you will have to fight amongst yourselves over the prizes)

The editorial staff of the Rushmore Academy will select no less than ten (10) finalists. Winners will be decided by the readers.

Who will you be? Mr. Fox? Peter Whitman? Max Fischer? Steve Zissou? Wes Anderson himself? Bob Yeoman? Dart Boy? Check out some of the entries from previous years.

Legal mumbo-jumbo
By entering the contest by the means described above, you are
a) confirming that you are eighteen (18) years of age or older, or that you have the permission of your parents or guardians to enter, and/or that it is legal for you to post your picture and participate in the contest in your locality/state/country
b) grant the Rushmore Academy full permission to publish your entry on our website without restriction
c) agree that the contest rules, prizes, and/or stipulations may be changed or revoked at any time

The contest submission period ends Friday, November 6, 2009 at midnight U.S. Eastern time.  Note that we cannot control the content of Flickr.com. Please report inappropriate entries to the Flickr administrators. Direct inquiries to edwardappleby@yankeeracers.org.

You may enter the contest if you reside outside of the United States if legally permitted in your locality. Some prizes (t.b.d.) cannot be mailed outside of the United States and/or North America. Winners from outside of the United States will be responsible for additional shipping costs.

Filmmakers

@edgarwright Fantastic Mister Fox? Fantastic.

@edgarwright You’ll love it. It’s one of Wes Anderson’s best. Brilliantly paced. Really funny. Looks beautiful. As good as the Aardman features.

@markromanek FANTASTIC MR. FOX is beautiful and funny. The attention to detail is just astonishing. Perhaps the most “Wes Anderson” film of all.

@edgarwright FANTASTIC MR FOX also has one of the choice soundtrack picks of 2009 with a brilliant use of The Beach Boys ‘Heroes & Villains”.

Critics

@hitfix Fantastic Mr. Fox is cussing great

LFF Attendees

@shoebird woke up thinking what a great little movie the fantastic mr fox is

@loop_pool Absolutely loved Fantastic Mr Fox. Funny and original. Kids at the screening loved it too – plenty of jokes for kids and for adults.

@richardtid fantastic mr fox is absolutely amazing, wes anderson is just sooo good

@anghazardlights Fantastic Mr Fox was – for want of a better word – well, fantastic

By e-mail:
mrfoxlondon@yankeeracers.org

On Twitter:
@rushmoreacademy

(photo from @bfi)