The World of Wes Anderson
Along with a release date, Wes Anderson’s next film Isle of Dogs got a new poster today. In the poster a broken down fighter plane is depicted along with its pilot and some dogs.
The film will be released in April (About a year from the time of writing) as was the Grand Budapest Hotel, so it’ll likely first be seen at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival in February.
(Photo: Fox Searchlight)
Deadline reported today, that Isle of Dogs will be distributed by Fox Searchlight. A movie getting a distributor a day after being announced sounds like a world record. Deadline also reported, that the film will take place in Japan, and tells the story of a boy in search of a dog.
Set in Japan, Isle Of Dogs centers on a boy’s odyssey in search of his pup. The voice cast includes F. Murray Abraham, Bob Balaban, Bud Cort, Bryan Cranston, Greta Gerwig, Jeff Goldblum, Akira Ito, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Kunichi Nomura, Edward Norton, Yoko Ono, Koyu Rankin, Liev Schreiber, Tilda Swinton, Akira Takayama and Frank Wood.
The real Isle of Dogs, or Inujima is a small Japanese island with a population of 72. The island which gets its name from a rock resembling a sitting dog isn’t exactly a popular tourist destination, but it does house art projects. Wes Anderson has been known to come up with eccentric locations to base his films in, but this is the first time his world has collided with Japan.
From the Guardian, full interview after the break.
Portrait of the artist: Wes Anderson, film director
Interview by Laura Barnett
What got you started?
Filming thrillers and jungle chases on Super 8 when I was about 10. I was trying to imitate Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars and, above all, Hitchcock. Watching The Man Who Knew Too Much made me realise that there was such a thing as a director.
What was your big breakthrough?
Making my first proper short, Bottle Rocket, with Owen Wilson on 16mm film when I was 23. Nobody was interested in it except [director and producer] James L Brooks, who picked it up and let us turn it into a full-length movie.
What have you sacrificed for your art?
Well, I’m 40 and I don’t have children yet. I do want to have them: perhaps I already would, if I wasn’t so involved with these movies.
Bill Murray stopped by The Late Show with David Letterman again. As always, very entertaining. Though no mention of the Fantastic Mr. Fox DVD. Part 1 is below, part 2 after the break.
Dave Poland at Movie City News has a rather informal, half-hour interview with Wes on the Awards campaign trail. Click on the image below to find the interview, it will load automatically in Quicktime.
Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger sat down for a roundtable discussion with Wes, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray to talk about Fantastic Mr. Fox. The first part is embedded below, and it continues after the break. Unfortunately you’ll need to use the EW link to see part 3.
And for those who continue to see Mr. Fox over the holiday weekend for the first time (or second…or third) please stop by and leave us your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.
Continue reading “Entertainment Weekly’s Fantastic Mr. Fox Roundtable (video)”
Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club recently sat down with Wes to discuss working on Mr. Fox (of course) but also talked film. Very good interview, full version after the break.
Now six features into his career, director Wes Anderson has established himself as the most distinctive comedy auteur of his generation, with an instantly recognizable style that’s defined by crispy composed images, idiosyncratic pop soundtracks, and a tone that balances dry wit and deep melancholy. Though his debut feature, 1996’s Bottle Rocket, only drew a small coterie of followers—mostly on video, in the wake of his MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker—Anderson raised his profile enormously with his 1998 follow-up Rushmore, which revived Bill Murray’s critical reputation and influenced a wave of indie films that followed. From there, Anderson and a rotating cast of players have continued to make new variations on his themes of family and outsidership, including 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums, 2004’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited.
Though adapted from a Roald Dahl book and shot using the painstaking stop-motion animation process, Anderson’s latest effort, Fantastic Mr. Fox, seems right at home with the rest of his filmography. George Clooney voices the rebellious eponymous character, the head of a Tenenbaum-like family of foxes trying to balance civility with their nature as wild animals. When three mean farmers—Boggis, Bunce, and Bean—try to flush the thieving Mr. Fox from his underground hideaway, he and his cohorts embark on a wild adventure to protect their way of life. Anderson recently spoke to The A.V. Club about meshing Dahl’s voice with his own, directing the animation remotely, and what this film has in common with Where The Wild Things Are.
A brief interview with animator Brad Schiff on the detailed work of animating Fantastic Mr. Fox from the world renowned San Antonio Current. Full interview after the break.
OCD like a ‘Fox;
Yes, Wes is a perfectionist
By Cynthia Hawkins
Hand-knitted grass. Cotton-ball smoke. Bath-towel hillsides. Puppets wait on the verge of their next expression on this meticulously arranged set as a man reaches in from the dim periphery to tweak the gesture of a diminutive paw. This is Brad Schiff, animator for Fantastic Mr. Fox. “I often have that thousand-yard stare when I walk out,” Schiff says of his work. It’s a world in which, typically, minutia is magnified and the movement incremental, but in the hands of director Wes Anderson, even the details have details.
Schiff had just wrapped work on Coraline before joining Anderson’s first stop-motion animated feature-in-progress, which is based on Roald Dahl’s book. A sense of deliberateness marks Anderson’s well-established style — action meted out in theatrical set pieces, costuming oddly out of time, understated dialogue rife with pregnant pauses. Under his direction, everything from wallpaper to wristwatches somehow rings with intense purposefulness. Schiff assures that Anderson’s stylistic quirks remain intact in Fantastic Mr. Fox, the very quirks which make his choice of stop-motion animation, scrupulous and controlled, a perfect one.
Wes spoke to Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air earlier today. Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Fresh Air interviews are always worth a listen. The interview is great, probably the best Wes’ done for Mr. Foxthus far, we highly recommend it.
To listen to or download the interview, head on over to NPR.
Here’s Bill Murray’s full apperance on The Late Show with David Letterman from last week. They discuss Fantastic Mr. Fox in the second part, which you can see after the break.