The Fantastic Mr. Fox?

[AntiDumbFrogQuestion]

"I didn't find anything excessively quirky or saccharine or cute (although those dance sequences come close),"

heheh I thought at the end it MIGHT have been a bit much, of course it was the END too, and probably more than likely an homage to Bill Melendez and the Peanuts.

what cracked me up was those real quick dances when they got up in the barns.
it just looked like the animators went "ok, they move around a little bit", kind of just giving the quick IDEA of Celebration.  It reminded me of when I started using Flash animation and how my friends & I would just half-ass things because the stiffness was so damn hilarious. 

[tpfkabi]

looks like i'll have to wait for DVD - it's already left theaters here.

it was in the top 10 that one week and stayed in theaters another week and didn't make it again, so i guess most people pulled it for bigger fare.

[modage]

30 min audio interview w/Wes & Elvis Mitchell

http://media.kcrw.com/podcast/show_itms/tt

[socketlevel]

I absolutely loved this. Me and Wes had a falling out with Darjeeling,

Funny i had a falling out with life aquatic, and darjeeling i came back in the fold a bit.

still haven't seen this fanstastic though. still skeptical, but a little more open minded then i was.

[New Feeling]

Saw this just before it ended it's 3 week run in town If this is still playing where you are run to see it on the big screen.  Don't walk.

It's completely lovely and imaginative and immaculate, and one of my favorite animated movies.  Too bad it bombed so bad.  The Wes Anderson backlash is one of the worst ever.  Dude is a MAJOR filmmaker. 

Also my 4-year-old quite liked it. 

[picolas]

*minor spoils*

loved it a looooooot.

mod, i found the use of street fighting man quite brilliant. it's not an obvious choice for that moment at all. it's the bad guys doing their thing. it's like a celebration of the chase! if you have problems with them jumping in and out of behaving wildly i don't know what to tell you.. that's the joke. that's the idea..

so well cast. i'm not sure if streep has done animation before.. her voice is so warm and layered. clooney is a great choice for fox.. schwartzman was wonderful too. and wes finally makes his cameo! he's actually quite good. murray.. hilarious.

i honestly feel like anderson's style is best expressed in animation. it's like all his previous films were trying to do this. or would work as animation too.

one thing i didn't like: zero explanation for the tiny motorbike. or did i miss something? very much a copout disguised as cuteness if not. i also wish they had done more foreshadowing for the wolf.

the use of the name Kristofferson is so good.. i'm a little hazy cause i saw it a couple days ago. it's so passionately well designed i know i'll notice new things each view.

[Reinhold]

if i had one major beef it would be the sound sync/mix. It was way too flat and made the film feel like a PBS animation show from the 80's. i think this film would have been a lot more funny if the sound mix had some depth.

I liked that the scale of the main character was continually manipulated and that the textures of everything had a sort of dollhouse or storyboard feel... the story was also fun and easily readable for kids. i found this film to be a lot more watchable than darjeeling limited.

[RegularKarate]

if i had one major beef it would be the sound sync/mix. It was way too flat and made the film feel like a PBS animation show from the 80's. i think this film would have been a lot more funny if the sound mix had some depth.

You didn't think that fit the feel of the movie?  I'm sure it was intentional.  The actors were all given different qualities to their voice-recordings.  It sounded like he took the actors to different locations to record their v.o.

[©brad]

The bar for awesome acceptance speeches of the year has been set. 

[modage]

That was great!  Unlike the movie it was funny and just the right length.

Want to prove me wrong? Vote for The Fantastic Mr. Fox at The 2010 Xixax Awards!

[MacGuffin]

Wes Anderson makes indelible endings a trademark
Source: AP

NEW YORK - As the credits of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" began to roll and the Bobby Fuller Four's "Let Her Dance" blared through the theater at a recent showing of the movie, a young girl leapt to her feet and joined the on-screen characters, dancing in the aisle.

Much has already been said about Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated film, a likely Oscar nominee and potential competitor to Pixar's "Up" in the best animated film category. But it's also the latest Anderson film to leave moviegoers — young and old, alike — with a memorable, final flourish.

The endings of his films — from "Bottle Rocket" to "The Royal Tenenbaums" — constitute some of the most indelible final reels in recent moviemaking. Collectively, they almost uniformly conclude in a poetic moment of togetherness, perseverance and, often, a wink of mischief. Emotion soars and music plays

"Anybody who knows my movies, they could probably spot one of my endings," Anderson chuckled in a recent interview at the National Board of Review Awards, where he was honored for achievement.

(Those wary of spoilers to these films, including "Mr. Fox," may want to stop here.)

In a Wes Anderson ending, characters come together — to dance to the Faces' "Ooh La La" at the end of "Rushmore," or get back on the train at the finish of "The Darjeeling Limited."

There's a sense of undaunted spirit, like in Dignan's (Owen Wilson) wink in his slow-motion walk into prison at the end of "Bottle Rocket," Anderson's first film. Or in "The Royal Tenenbaums," when Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) remains undimmed even in death — his gravestone amusingly etched in a blatant lie that he died trying to rescue his family.

Music is often woven into the concluding scenes.

After a film dotted by David Bowie covers, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" concludes with the real thing. Bowie's "Queen Bitch" rings out as Zissou (Bill Murray) elegantly (again in slow-motion) descends a staircase with a boy on his shoulders. In a homage to the cult film "Buckaroo Banzai," Zissou's team assembles around him as he marches down a pier.

In adapting Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Anderson (who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach), added bookends to Dahl's story. The plot essentially remains the same: The daring Mr. Fox (George Clooney) leads his family and friends into trouble when he picks a fight with neighboring farmers.

After a long battle both with the farmers and within his fractured, idiosyncratic family, Mr. Fox — though scarred — triumphs. His family is still stuck underground, but Mr. Fox discovers how they'll survive. The film ends with the group dancing in the aisles of a grocery store, owned by the same farmers bent on the animals' destruction.

The ending came from Dahl's original manuscripts, not the published version.

"It was only when we had the song did I get, `Here's what the mood is, here's what we're going to walk out of the theater with,'" says the 40-year-old director. "The scene exists because of the song."

The tune, "Let Her Dance," is a forgotten classic by Fuller, and Anderson says the song had been "on our list" since his frequent music supervisor, Randall Poster, played it for him about 10 years ago. The song's sock-hop exuberance — tinged with sacrifice — matches the Fox family's celebration perfectly.

"For me, that's the whole reason for getting into it in the first place," says Anderson. "The feeling when you're walking out of the theater and the whole thing has hit you — and usually there is something musical happening at that moment — and you're taking it all in."

Anderson's endings are almost like distillations of his entire work. Again and again, he meticulously creates characters of wit, audacity and melancholy. They teeter on the edge of keeping it together, but in the end they always do: They preserve the family, they get back on the train.

The consistency isn't intentional, Anderson says. Rather, the hundreds of decisions involved in making a movie "has a tendency of digging into your unconscious in ways that you're not entirely in charge of."

"At the end of it, you step back and you feel like, `Well, I've shown my hand again,'" says Anderson, smiling. "At that point, I'm sort of standing with the characters, looking out at the camera a bit — seeing it from that point of view."

[modage]

Title: Fantastic Mr. Fox (IMDb)
Released: 23rd March 2010

Further Details:
Fox Home Entertainment has announced DVD ($29.98) and Blu-ray/DVD Combo ($39.99) releases of Fantastic Mr. Fox for the 23rd March. The only extra material on the DVD release will be a From Script to Screen feature, a Still Life (Puppet Animation) feature, and A Beginner's Guide to Whack-Bat. The Blu-ray/DVD Combo release will include that, along with a 6-part Making Mr. Fox Fantastic documentary ("The Look Of Fantastic Mr. Fox", "From Script To Screen", "The Puppet Makers", "Still Life (Puppet Animation)", "The Cast", "Bill And His Badger"), a Fantastic Mr. Fox: The World Of Roald Dahl featurette, and a digital copy.

[Alexandro]

ok. time to take back any negatives I might have suggested previously about mr. fox. the film is a delight. and I must admit that due to the brilliance of the20th century fox marketing and distribution department we got this film ONLY dubbed into spanish (although that didn't stop them from advertising it all over the place with posters where CLOONEY, STREEP and MURRAY's names are prominent). And even in spanish, where it was painfully obvious that the mexican actors were ruining every joke, every nuance in the performances, every well written speech, it was obvious that the film was fantastic. The animation is beautiful, the camerawork is as creative as expected from wes, the music choices might be cliche for him at this point, but in an animated film they feel fresher, the color palette makes you feel like you are reading an old illustrated book. and I must point out the writing, because this is anderson's funniest film since tenembaums, and it's mostly a dialogue driven experience where characters say funny and smart things all the time. I loved it. I hope it snatchs that oscar away from up.

[Pubrick]

I hope it snatchs that oscar away from up.

i hope it doesn't!

fate rebalanced.

[cronopio 2]

The fantastic mr. star fox



this was adorable.