The World of Wes Anderson
The Guardian is running a piece on Tuesday about the importance of creative industries to Britain’s future. It includes an interesting little tidbit relating to Fantastic Mr. Fox:
Animation graduates from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) recently helped to complete the new Fantastic Mr Fox film. Despite starring the voices of Hollywood, it was made almost entirely by British hands in London.
I even found this old announcement at the university’s website. Very cool.
The fox is clearly out of the bag on this one, but we chose to respect BFI’s wishes to hold this story until midnight BST on Tuesday. Please excuse the delay.
Fantastic Mr. Fox will open The Times BFI London Film Festival in October. The film opens on October 23 in the U.K. and November 13 in the US. It is exciting to see that Wes has embraced his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1970 children’s book as a British film.
From the newswire:
London – Monday 27 July: The Times BFI London Film Festival is proud to announce that this year’s Festival will open on Wednesday 14 October with the world premiere of FANTASTIC MR. FOX, from visionary director Wes Anderson (THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, THE DARJEELING LIMITED).
Anderson’s first animated film, which he co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, uses classic handmade stop motion techniques to tell the story of the best selling children’s book by British author Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach). The film features the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Wally Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker and Helen McCrory. It is produced by Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin and Allison Abbate.
Wes Anderson, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman are expected to attend the opening night screening along with other members of the voice cast.
Mr and Mrs Fox (Clooney and Streep) live an idyllic home life with their son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) and visiting young nephew Kristopherson (Eric Anderson). But after 12 years, 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. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr Fox at any cost.
The film was shot at London’s Three Mills Studios and Twentieth Century Fox will release the film in the UK on 23 October 2009.
Sandra Hebron, the Festival’s Artistic Director comments: “Wes Anderson’s boundless invention and meticulous film making craft find perfect expression in this imaginative and hugely enjoyable version of a much loved story. We are delighted to open our festival with FANTASTIC MR. FOX, and thrilled to host its world premiere.”
On having the film’s world premiere at the Festival, director Wes Anderson adds: “FANTASTIC MR. FOX is a British film — based on a Roald Dahl book, set in the UK, produced in the UK — and so I am especially pleased to have been invited to be the opening night movie of this year’s London Film Festival. We had a wonderful experience at the LFF with my previous film, and I am eagerly looking forward to introducing FANTASTIC MR. FOX to the world in this wonderful venue.”
The full programme for The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival will be announced at the Press Launch on Wednesday 9 September.
The Festival runs from 14-29 October 2009
Shoe customizer Ken has been working on the perfect Team Zissou sneakers and has put a finished batch up for sale on EBay. While the real Zissou sneakers used the now rare Adidas Rom, Ken has chosen to use the Adidas Italia. We think the finished product is quite good.
Related items: Steve Zissou’s cool shoes prove tough to fill (USA Today) | How To Make Your Own Team Zissou Shoes (Instructables.com)
The real deal:
Update: more from Ken after the break…
The trailer for the Noah and the Whale film/album ‘The First Days Of Spring.’ The track featured is ‘Blue Skies’ and will be the first single from the album.
Please send any relevant news, photos, etc. to edwardappleby[at]yankeeracers[dot]org.
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
Ever since he asked stop-motion specialist Henry Selick to create exotic sea creatures for 2004’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson has been enamored with this painstaking process of animation.
But patiently posing puppets for a brief segment was nothing compared with doing an entire feature like The Fanastic Mr. Fox, one populated with a zoo’s worth of woodland creatures.
“I wasn’t really prepared for what it would take,” says Anderson, who began developing the project filmed in East London five years ago with Selick on board until he dropped out to direct Coraline. “I thought I would do the script, work on designs and with the actors. I didn’t think I would be so involved with the actual production. Just shooting is all-consuming.”
But with guidance from animation director Mark Gustafson, Anderson was able to mix his own eccentricities into the medium.
“In animation, the tradition is to make everything smooth and beautiful,” he says. “That wasn’t my instinct. Using puppets with fur appealed to me. It’s why I wanted to do the film in stop-motion. Usually fur is considered bad news. But I liked how it moves around by itself. It’s funny.”
The art form also allowed Anderson to indulge his fixation with just-so props, scenery design and wardrobe.
Take Mr. Fox’s tight-fitting suit. “Wes was very specific about the jacket,” says producer Allison Abbate. “He wanted a brown corduroy suit. I looked at him and said, ‘You’re wearing that.’ He got the fabric sample from the same New York tailor who makes his suits.”
Though the voice cast includes many Anderson regulars, such as Bill Murray as a lawyer badger, there are notable newcomers. George Clooney lends Mr. Fox his matinee-idol mystique and dry humor, and Meryl Streep is his loving if suspicious wife.
Why did the Oscar queen decide to speak for a she-mammal? As she says, “When else am I going to be Mrs. George Clooney?”
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
Imagine if Beatrix Potter’s cuddly storybook menagerie took a crash course in prep-school chic and picked up a few hints on guerrilla warfare along the way.
That’s pretty much what happens when the grisly delights found in Roald Dahl’s irreverent tales for children are melded with the fastidious aesthetic of director Wes Anderson in the stop-motion-animated The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which opens Nov. 13.
Anderson, 40, feels he was destined in a way to do a screen adaptation of the 1970 adventure, which recounts the relentless efforts of three nasty British farmers to halt the crafty critter (voiced with daredevil gusto by George Clooney) who brazenly poaches their poultry.
“It was the first book I ever owned,” says the auteur behind The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. “My brothers and I loved Mr. Fox and all the digging. We were obsessed with underground forts and tunnels.”
The earth does indeed move onscreen, thanks to the farmers, who use tractors in their manic pursuit, as well as the foxes and their subterranean neighbors (moles, rabbits, badgers and mice) as they burrow to elude capture. With the magic of animation, Anderson is able to present a side view of the tunnel, as if peering through glass at an ant farm.
The much-expanded plot has been tweaked to include many elements found in Anderson’s other films, including a dysfunctional clan and a male rivalry. The four Fox children in the book have been whittled down to one handful: Ash (Jason Schwartzman, channeling his Max character from Rushmore), a petulant social misfit who wears a superhero cape and resents his cousin Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson, Wes’ brother) for being good at everything.
Schwartzman, a veteran of three Anderson features, proclaims Mr. Fox as “the ultimate.” “It’s funny, but also visually beautiful. Instead of adapting his style of directing to animation, he brought animation to him. He made a Wes film.”
