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Wes Anderson officially announces his return to feature animation!

The post Wes Anderson Is Returning To Feature Animation With ‘Isle of Dogs’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Anderson will make a stop motion film about dogs.

Patrick deWitt’s follow up to the brilliant The Sisters Brothers is just as described by the publisher on my advanced reading copy, “incredible”. Continuing on with the subversiveness that made The Sisters Brothers such a magnificent and unique take on The Western, deWitt turns his hand to another genre to create a darkly comic romp that […]

The director of "Juno" and "Up in the Air" will make an animated feature based on the Caldecott-winning children's book.

What would have happened if Wes Anderson took the helm on an X-Men film adaptation? Patrick Willems decided to find out by creating a short video.

The parody piece embedded above has drawn more than 19,000 views on YouTube—what do you think? Click here to access a behind-the-scenes video. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

As part of their website redesign, the "New Yorker" has made every article they've published since 2007 available for free on their website, including some animation-related pieces.

Spring has sprung, and with it a whole bunch of movies I want to watch have arrived at the movie theater (as well as this bunch, see my recent review of Snowpiercer at Strange Horizons).  Though I haven't exactly been suffering, there's certainly a somewhat fannish slant to my recent moviegoing that verges on the embarrassing--I need to get around to watching some grown-up films, pronto.  Of

This post is so great-the palettes and screen shots are amazing.

Who will win the Oscars for best adapted screenplay and screenplay? Below, we’ve linked to all the nominees in the top writing categories.

On Monday morning, this GalleyCat editor will talk about the screenplay winners along with a team of Oscar experts in a Google+ hangout. Here’s more about the virtual event:

Join GalleyCat’s Jason Boog, TVNewser’s Alex Weprin, FishbowlLA’s Richard Horgan and GoldDerby editor Tom O’Neil for a post-Oscars Google+ hangout. What book adaptations were snubbed? How did TV news cover it? Learn more about the history of the awards show and get the L.A. perspective.  All this and more on Monday, Feb. 25 at 11:30 a.m.  And we want to hear from you. With the hashtag #mbhangouts, send us your questions and comments on Twitter, Facebook or Google+

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I wrote up a draft of what was going to be a blog post about Wes Anderson's 2007 movie The Darjeeling Limited, but then decided it might be fun to turn it into a video essay instead. And so "A Train Between Worlds: The Darjeeling Limited" was born. Because the narration was originally going to be a blog post, the video is a bit text-heavy — it clearly didn't need to be a video per se, but I think it's more enjoyable in that form, especially because I could include various songs from the film's soundtrack (many of which were taken from other movies' soundtracks). For reference, the entire narration is available on the video's Vimeo page, and I'll paste it below the cut here.

The Darjeeling Limited has been one of Anderson's least popular and least critically lauded movies, but up until this year's Moonrise Kingdom, I thought it was his most accomplished and satisfying. I like all his movies a lot, but my taste is weird — where most people seem to find Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox the most satisfying, I'd rank Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou higher, much as I enjoy the others. Later this summer, I'll probably try to create a companion video about The Life Aquatic to explore some of its intricacies.

Meanwhile, a new online film journal has just appeared, Screen Machine, and the first issue includes an excellent essay by Huw Walmsley-Evans that looks at Wes Anderson and the question of realism.

And if you haven't yet seen Moonrise Kingdom, seek it out. Even people whose taste isn't as questionable as mine seem to like it.


video narration script: 

A companion piece to Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom featuring animated snippets from each of character Suzy’s favourite books.

Directed by Wes Anderson himself, and produced/animated by One Hand Clapping, who worked on Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Wes Anderson + stop motion + robots? Sold.

This ad for Sony was animated bu the stop motion team at LAIKA/house with Fantastic Mr. Fox’s animation director Mark Gustafson.

Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) returns to animation – stop-motion animation – to cleverly illustrate a child’s conception of how Sony’s Xperia smartphone works. The animation, created at Laika/house, was directed by stop motion veteran Mark Gustafson, who also directed the animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Tiny bits of behind-the-scenes footage here. Or just watch the commercial.

(via Mashable)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Laika, Laika/house, Mark Gustafson, Wes Anderson

The Fantastic Mr. Star Fox - CollegeHumor video

I had to Google Star Fox to even get the reference here, but even being clueless as to what was being parodied, I found this to be a funny pitch-perfect send-up of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The movie in a nutshell: Three nasty farmers, one ambitious fox and his family, and a community of animals with oddball characteristics.

There’s an art to translating books into movies
The Houston Chronicle takes a look at what it takes to make a great book into a great movie.

Look Out, Pixar, Here Comes ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’
Oscar buzz has begun and Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is gaining momentum in the best animated feature category.

2010 Winter Books: January – April titles
Want to stay on top of the new book releases this spring? USA Today’s interactive book calendar can help.

2010: Living in the Future
Courtesy of  Shelf Awareness, “What will life be like in the year 2010? Daniel Sinker recalled one of his favorite childhood books, Geoffrey Hoyle’s 2010: Living in the Future, which was published in 1972 and, as Boing Boing observed, imagines imagines a far-off time when “we’ll all do our work and schooling and library-book-reading on ingenious video screens that can connect to each other from anywhere around the globe…. Wait until you get to the part about ‘a series of tubes.’”

Beautiful artwork on spines of stacked books
Check out this photo essay of artist Mike Stilkey’s “book sculptures” featuring images painted on book spines.

These Libraries Are Going To The Dogs
Although library and bookstore cats are frequently in the spotlight, this article higlights some of man’s best friends – library dogs.

Here’s Wes Anderson’s acceptance speech at the National Board of Review on January 11, 2010. I found this highly entertaining. The same goes for the film itself. Loved it.

UPDATE: Someone had their cellphone ready and shot the speech as it played at the event:

Posted by Ward Jenkins on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Animation, Fantastic Mr. Fox, film, stop motion, Wes Anderson

The First Book blog team recently took a field trip to see Wes Anderson’s film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic book, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Read the team’s thoughts below as they share their likes, dislikes and opinions on how the film compares to the book.

Nisha: While the filmmakers may have doctored the foxes’ family dynamics a bit, Ash and Kirstofferson were the perfect charmingly blunt pair of troublemakers to keep audiences engaged. The book reflected a slightly different story, with four fox cubs and a far more shameless means of putting food on the table. In the book, Mrs. Fox places requests for supper, which Mr. Fox proudly obliges by stealing from one of the three farmers. The movie did however stay true to the spirit of Roald Dahl’s witty and imaginative world, including many direct quotes from the book itself. Told in Dahl’s characteristically windswept fashion, viewers are dragged along for the ride of a lifetime (literally) as the animals fight to outsmart farmers Bean, Bunce and Boggis.

Aesah: I loved it—and was pleasantly surprised that I did. The filmmakers kept the spirit of the original work when they expanded the story but also managed to sneak their own quirky brand of humor into the film. I had my doubts about an entire movie done in stop-motion animation, especially in this age of CGI and big special effects, but it was actually the perfect medium; the jerky motions adding to the story’s overall quirkiness and the simplicity of the settings giving it a hint of nostalgia. Wes Anderson’s masterful hand turned it into just another layer of the story. George Clooney and Jason Schwartzman were perfect choices to voice the Fantastic Mr. Fox and his son Ash, respectively. It has something for everyone and I will definitely be adding this movie to my collection.

Bonnie: With the opening scene playing the song “Davy Crockett – King of the Wild Frontier” – I knew I’d love this movie! Wes Anderson is known as a less than typical director, which fits with a Roald Dahl story perfectly. I especially enjoyed the choice to use stop-motion, and like Aesah stated with most movies are now using big special effects I was a bit wary but this difference in animation made the film visually interesting and it is still able to move along in a fashion that adds to the charm of the story. Wes Anderson’s first animated film is a goodie and I recommend it for kids and adults alike.

Katie: All in all, I was delighted with the film version of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. I’d give director Wes Anderson three cheers for the vocal casting, soundtrack and the seamless additions of new characters. The casting of George Clooney and Meryl Streep as Mr. and Mrs. Fox was spot on, and it was fun to pick out recognizable voices including Jason Schwartzman as Ash and Owen Wilson in a cameo as Coach Skip. The film’s soundtrack added a rich background that complemented the visual animation. With artists as varied as the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and Burl Ives, this soundtrack includes something that just about everyone will like. Finally, I loved some of the charming characters – Kylie the opossum being my favorite – that were added in the film version. They brought a dash of whimsy that was a perfect foil to highlight the original characters from Roald Dahl’s story.

I had the chance to interview OneHandClapping’s Christian DeVita, the lead storyboard artist for Wes Anderson’s stop motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Here is the interview, along with several of Christian’s storyboards, sketches, and even some of director Wes Anderson’s thumbnails.

Drawn!: Tell me a little about your involvement in the production of Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Christian DeVita: I was the lead storyboard artist on the movie. I was drafted in early in the production (Sep 2007) along with other 6 artists.

We went through a few passes of the scenes, based on some thumbnails that Wes drew, before he decided he wanted to work closely with one of us in Paris. The animation studio and sets were in East London’s Three Mills studios.

(...)
Read the rest of An interview with Fantastic Mr. Fox storyboard artist Christian DeVita

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Animation, Christian DeVita, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Interviews, stop motion, storyboards, Wes Anderson