The Fantastic Mr. Fox?

[w/o horse]

Will you send me a snippet, like a single page you really like?  I want a general idea.

[Pozer]

he pm'd me asking me to tell you no.

[w/o horse]

More like you're pmsing.

[Sleepless]

SPOILERS...SPOILERS...SPOILERS...SPOILERS...SPOILERS...SPOILERS...
Hmm... not quite sure having read the screenplay... seems a bit of an odd mish-mash. But I'm sure Wes knows what he's doing, and pretty confident I'll like his final product. Fox's dialogue seems to have been written with George Clooney in mind, and imagine Jason Schwartzman is playing the son, Ash. Murray would be awesome as Badger, but can't figure out who Angelica Huston will play. Fox's nephew - Kristofferson - I hope will be played by Owen Wilson. I could totally imagine his voice reading that character's speeches. Kylie (the opossum)'s dialogue seems to be based on Kumar's character in Bottle Rocket... Seems to be a lots of references to film devices throughout the script, lots of characters regularly use terms such as "sub-text," "scene," "plot" and "backstory" in their dialogue. Also, there is a lot of "adult" dialogue throughout the film but with the all purpose "cuss" replacing actual cuss-words. E.g.: "We're all cussing starving to death because of you, you mangy, cussing, little cuss."

And for w/o horse, a little scene to give an impression of the overall tone:


                                   FOX
                       Did I ever tell you about the time I
                       learned we were going to have a cub?

                                   ASH
                      In the fox-trap.

                                   FOX
                      Right. We were at gun-point, and your
                      mother --

                                  ASH
                      -- says she's pregnant.

                                  FOX
                     Let me tell it, OK? I had no idea how we
                     were going to get out of this jam, and
                     then it hit me: what do foxes do better
                     than any other animal?

                                  ASH
                     Dig.

                                  FOX
                     You're stepping on my lines.

                                  ASH
                     Keep telling it.

                                  FOX
                     So we dug. And the whole time I put paw
                     over paw, scooping dirt and pebbles with
                     your mother digging like crazy beside me,
                     I kept wondering: who is this little boy
                     going to be?

                                  ASH
                     Or girl.

                                  FOX
                     Or girl, right -- because at that point
                     we didn't know.

Fox grabs Ash by his shoulders and looks him in the eye.

                                  FOX
                     Ash, I'm so glad he was you.

[w/o horse]

Gracias.

Very excited.

[MacGuffin]

Murray Badgers Fox's Anderson
Source: SciFi Wire

Bill Murray is voicing a badger in Wes Anderson's upcoming animated film version of Roald Dahl's children's story The Fantastic Mr. Fox ... or at least he's trying to.

Speaking in an Oct. 3 press conference in New York to promote City of Ember, Murray provided a glimpse into the highly anticipated film, which is written and directed by Anderson.

The story follows Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney), who feeds his wife (Cate Blanchett) and children by routinely snatching food from one of three farmers: Boggis, Bunce and Bean. After blowing off Fox's tail in a near-miss, the exasperated farmers set out to put an end to Mr. Fox's poaching ways once and for all. But their efforts cause hardships for other digging animals, among them Badger.

"I'll be playing the badger," Murray said. "Unfortunately, I worked really, really hard, very hard, on a Wisconsin accent, because I thought that would be an appropriate badger voice. And I did the first couple of scenes [with that voice] ... " (Fans of the University of Wisconsin football team know that they're called the Badgers.)

But Anderson--who previously directed Murray in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou--apparently didn't love what he heard from Murray.

"But I did this Wisconsin badger voice that I thought was so funny," Murray said. "I did the first couple of scenes, and then he goes, 'Nah, I don't think so. I was thinking kind of a sad little road badger.' Who here has seen a badger walking down a road? Anybody? Yeah. That's what I said. But these are these new directors. You've just got to give them their, ... you know, let them hang themselves."

Murray confessed his unfamiliarity with the animation process being used to realize The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Anderson is reportedly employing several forms of animation, including the same stop-motion technique that he (and Henry Selick) used for the animated sequences in the otherwise live-action Life Aquatic.

"I have no idea," Murray whispered. "I don't know what it is. I don't know. I've seen some pictures of it, but I think it's old-fashioned, because it's taking them a very long time. But ... they're very excited." The Fantastic Mr. Fox will be released on Nov. 6, 2009.

[hedwig]

Goddamn, BILL MURRAY and WES ANDERSON TOGETHER AT LAST.

[modage]

from AICN interview with Henry Selick...

AICN: That's great. We'll spread the word on that for sure. We're getting the cut sign. Thank you so much for chatting with us, and for bringing Coraline with you. You know, this just popped into my head, back at the end of 2007, I spoke with Wes Anderson, and he mentioned that for the animated film he's working on now, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, that he'd originally asked you to be a part of that. Obviously you were busy.

Henry Selick: Yeah, he's doing stop motion. He's directing from Paris through his iPhone, shooting movies of himself as the characters for the animators to work with.

AICN: It seems like it would have been a natural fit for the two of you, since you'd worked with him before [Henry created the rare fish species in THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU].

Henry Selick: Oh, I was very interested in doing it and working with him, but when CORALINE got green lit, I had to go with it. This is my baby. [laughs]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39977

Of course he is!  Also: Wes Anderson has a video iPhone.

[modage]

Who's Got Some Anderson Fox?
Source: The Playlist

This weekend on Sunday, the first test screenings for Wes Anderson's animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" took place in Paramus, New Jersey.

Normally, the usual suspects like /Film or AICN would have an early report emailed into them from some fan, but it's mostly crickets out there. What gives? No word? We're just intensely curious.

The only "report" we've read so far comes from the always unreliable IMDB message boards (that seriously contain some of the world's thickest people and most ludicrous arguments... we digress).

    I'm a big Wes Anderson fan as it is, and Fantastic Mr Fox is such a great story that it would be very hard to screw it up, but from what I've seen so far, he's really done an incredible job. The film itself isn't out until the end of this year, and, at the moment, is only half finished. The version that I saw was as part of a viewer survery group, and only about 50% of it had been animated by that point, with the rest filled in with animatics and the odd inclusion of Wes Andersons voice popping up every now and again for a line that hadn't been recorded yet.

    Regardless of that, the film was very good. Even on an ungraded film reel, it still looked absolutely fantastic. I've had a quick scout about on Google, but I couldn't find one solitary screenshot of the film, so I'll do my best to describe the characters. It's done using stop-motion animation, and all of the models and backgrounds are intricately detailed. You can see the individual hairs on the foxes faces move about in the wind on close ups, and the action scenes that they had completed were both good to look at and fun to watch.

    The plot itself doesn't deviate from the book that much. At the moment they've changed the ending slightly from the book, but from the feedback we gave in the discussion at the end, it wasn't particularly popular (although I personally thought it was quite good), so they may do something completely different with it. Other than that, there's not too much I can say. The forms they got us all to scene was pretty strict with regards to what we could talk about, but if you've read the book, and watched a Wes Anderson film, you can easily put together what it's probably going to be like. I can say that I laughed a lot though. It's a funny film. Bill Murray is his usual brilliant self as Badger, and somebody who's name I can't say is brilliant as Farmer Boggis. Or is it Bunce? The one who makes the awesome cider.

So who's the ultra-secretive voice behind Farmer Boggis? Someone not announced yet? George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are playing Mr. And Mrs. Fox, yes? (Jason Schwartzman and Anjelica Huston also do voice work in the film). What about the music? We know that Alexandre Desplat is composing the score and Jarvis Cocker from Pulp has been writing some of the songs. No reports/word there?

That's all we have for now. Hopefully more informative reports will surface soon. "Fantastic Mr. Fox," is scheduled to open in theaters on November 6.

http://www.usaaudiences.com/MrFoxInvite.php

[modage]

A few release dates have been bumped around. The most notable for us is Wes Anderson's animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" that has moved from a November 6 released date back a week until November 13 release. Nothing major and nothing worth panicking about if you're an Anderson acolytes.

[modage]

Jarvis Cocker & Wes Anderson in Interview Magazine
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/jarvis-cocker/1/

excerpt pertaining to TFMF...

COCKER: I wanted to ask you something, actually. It's an obvious question, I suppose, but on your film that you're making right now, Fantastic Mr. Fox, you're using old puppets—well, do you call them puppets? What do you call them?

ANDERSON: I think puppets more or less covers it.

COCKER: So you're used to working with live actors. How have you found the experience of working with things that will do exactly what you tell them to do?

ANDERSON: Well, as it happens, they won't. As you know, the voices are recorded before it's animated, and that process is more familiar to me—working with actors in that way. So when we're recording the voices, there can be the same sort of excitement that working with actors normally has—there can be the same surprises and spontaneity. But then when it comes time to animate it, I'm working with people who each bring their own interpretations to it, even if we have very carefully determined what is going to happen in the scene. Sometimes I'll do a video version of myself doing what I think the puppet ought to do, and then I'll discuss it with the animator—and there are many different animators working on different stages all at once. But in the process of going one frame at a time to bring the puppet to life, the animator will sort of sculpt things out, and they have somehow trained their brains to sync in this ultra slow-motion way so there's a performance that they're giving. And so you can find in that process that you're very slowly being pleasantly surprised over the course of several days or weeks and saying, "Oh, look at what's happening here . . ." Or you can slowly see the shot falling apart right before your eyes and see that it's not working. So there's no real corollary in live-action movies, but it's interesting anyway—and fun.

COCKER: So the animators are kind of the nearest thing you get to actors in that process, basically.

ANDERSON: They're the nearest you get to working with actors, in a sense, yeah.

COCKER: Have you met the animators, the people who do the job?

ANDERSON: Yes, I work with them.

COCKER: Well, let me ask you this: Many of the characters in this story are animals—there are very few people. Do any of the animators resemble the creatures that they're animating?

ANDERSON: Well, it doesn't necessarily work that way because there are different animators with different levels of experience who will get different kinds of shots. And, you know, some of these animators can bring great subtlety into the expressions on the faces of these puppets, which are covered with fur but have little metal bones that move under their skin. There's an animator named Kim, for example, and she has great talent with the most emotional moments and details of the performances. And then there's another one named Jason, and he is particularly skilled with the main character—I think he understands what makes that character funny. That's the role that George Clooney voices, and I feel like he might be the one who is most connected to George in the performance. And then there's another animator named Brian, and it might just be partly the shots that he has ended up with, but his scenes have a bit more of a magical feeling. He brings something surreal to them. Now, I might be projecting some of these things onto these animators because of the material they're working with, but that's how I've started to see them. We have something like 29 units going at once, so we have a large number of animators working on all those sets, and they're each bringing something different.

COCKER: You wouldn't get that with CGI, would you?

ANDERSON: No, you wouldn't. But maybe you'd get some special computer programmers . . . I don't know. I almost doubt it.

COCKER: I guess the way you're doing that film with the stop-motion animation is kind of something that's not done so much anymore.

ANDERSON: No, it's not.

COCKER: I suppose the way that we recorded this album is somewhat similar to that. Generally speaking, when people make records now, they do it all on Pro Tools and then kind of pick the bit they want and then repeat it 25 times, or just pick 10 seconds from here and 10 seconds from there and put it together that way. And then I kind of thought that if you're going to bother being in a band nowadays and making a record, then the only real reason to do it would be to capture what happens when five people all play together at the same time—and the kind of discrepancies and the different sort of a performance that you get when you do that.

ANDERSON: A bit of what happens live.

COCKER: Yeah. So, basically, we're both working on outmoded, archaic forms.

ANDERSON: Yes, we're leftovers. Dinosaurs—but youngish for dinosaurs.

COCKER: Happy dinosaurs. Very happy.

[modage]

[Sleepless]

Huh. Not what I expected. But at least it might make money.

[polkablues]

Doesn't mean a thing until we see them in motion.

[picolas]