Last night (the day after graduation) we (the original gang) went to see Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox.Roald Dahl's original story was my favourite book as a child, I had a version illustrated not by Quentin Blake like all the others, but by Tony Ross, my favourite illustrator (see Towser), I expect the coupling of my favourite illustrator with the best children's writer ever made it my favourite.
Wes Anderson's film is really nice. I imagine it would be truly amazing if it wasn't your favourite childhood book! I really liked it and it was exactly as I expected after having seen the mad trailer. All the original story is in there but with more so that the characters sort-of learn morals and grow emotionally (in the book Foxy just stole a load of food and everyone loved him- in the film they were all pretty angry with him at that point!!) Anyway, the script was mad and very Wes Anderson, if you liked the Darjeeling Limited (which I did) you will like this.
It sort of looks like a Cravendale advert. The stop motion animation takes a while to get going- the beginning felt very static- lots of long shots where the only thing moving is the character, not the billions of dollars animation we're now used to. In fact it reminded me of stop motion of my youth, maybe it would look better on the small screen!! It sort of warmed up, I wonder if the animators did each scene in order and so got the hang of it and put in more detail as the film went on.
It's nice, just disconnect the two. It didn't feel like Roald Dahl- even if the plot is sort of similar!
Fantastic blog!!!!
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