Category: Films

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?”

(read the article at USAToday.com)

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.”

(more and all of the photos at USAToday.com)

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New photos

We will post them once we confirm that they are official. Merci to Richard!

We have confirmed that the trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox will be revealed the week of July 27th, debuting in cinemas on Friday, July 31st! We have been told it will be attached to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the Twentieth Century Fox animated film that was released on July 1st.

Also note that we have removed the image of Mr. Fox leaked by JoBlo.com at the request of Fox Searchlight and Wes Anderson. Its release was unsanctioned, and we respect the wishes of the studio and Wes. Word has it that we will have much better images in the very near future.