Thursday 30 July 2009

Fantastic Mr Fox trailer

It's a Wes Anderson film, with puppets. Formal framing, great design, hip music, quirky characters talking directly to camera. Plus Bill Murray. And Jason Schwartzman. In short, it's stop-motion animation, but not as we know it.

Just a shame they didn't figure Roald Dahl's name was worth mentioning. "Based on the book by the author of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory." Pur-lease.

That aside, I like this. I like this a lot.

7 comments:

Matt Jones said...

We've been watching this here at Aardman & we're frankly astonished at the poor animation & uninspired character design. The 'mise-en-scene' is typically Anderson-and seems to make for an interesting approach to stop-mo film-making. We'll see- hopefully the story & characterisation will sustain interest. . .

Mark Salisbury said...

Really? They were going for an old-fashioned approach in terms of both the design and animation, inspired by Le Roman De Renard.

Unknown said...

the trailer looks great - but i have to agree "based on the book by the author of some other books"?

jesus. even TRUE BLOOD notes that it's based on the sookie stackhouse books BY Charlanie Harris. why wouldn't they say "Roald Dahl"

or at the VERY least "based on the book by Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and a hundred other stories and tales that you should really read even if you think you might be too old. seriously."

The BFG, George's Marvelous Medicine, The Twits, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More... the man is a legendary children's writer! it's like making "the snow queen" and saying "based on the book by the author of the little mermaid and thumbelina"

kids are gonna think "walt disney is a genius!" in the case of Mr. Fox... they'll just be confused.

srsly! who made that decision?! no no no... let's not actually USE the author's name. it's too weird. people will think it's spelled wrong or something. we don't want kids actually READING.

idk. i'm rambling. also? if you couldn't tell by my distinct style of writing, this is schmid4brains. i just changed my blogger profile cause imma making changes to mah blog.

Fran said...

Apart from having the same issue as you with the 'based on the book' caption (I mean, really? That's like putting 'based on the book by the author of the other Harry Potter books' on a Harry Potter trailer...), me likey way much. Wasn't sure about George Clooney at first (in my mind Mr. Fox was always a bit more Cary Elwes), but he's definitely grown on me.

Mark Salisbury said...

@Fran

Cary Elwes or Cary Grant?

@Steve

I'd recognise your rambling anywhere :) And it's always welcome.

Fran said...

Cary Elwes, circa Princess Bride. Or Men In Tights. In my mind, Mr Fox was always terribly English. I think it might have been something to do with an audiobook I had of it. But now you mention it, Cary Grant would have worked too...!

Mark Salisbury said...

Clearly, Mr Fox should have been English. But George Clooney is the next best thing. And he definitely has that Cary Grant vibe going.