Since there’s no pay involved, this might be a very prolonged process like the TNA post. I’m gonna try to keep my reviews as such brief and to the point, as much as is feasible.
AFI Fest kicked off Friday night in the Grauman’s Chinese with Wes Anderson’s FANTASTIC MR. FOX. More on the movie in a bit. First, some things that have drastically changed about AFI Fest:
It’s now at the Chinese rather than the Arclight. There are a lot less movies, and for the most part they only show once. The audience choice award seems to have been eliminated, as I have not been handed any of those paper ballot things so far. And in the boldest move so far, all of the tickets are free.
Now, as an elitist critic who likes my festival privileges, the free ticket thing makes me little better than the likes of you commoners, so it doesn’t improve my lot, but you, if you live in LA, should be taking some fucking advantage (like my friend Dan Sedan, who’s been indulging big-time), and not taking this for granted. Because here’s the thing — I’m not sure they’ll do it like this again.
Why? Because L.A. being L.A., it really feels so far like people are taking the free tickets and then not showing up. All the people in the rush lines have been getting in, which is great for them, but indicative that movies are not filling up. There’s no incentive to buy passes. And nothing so far has been 100% full as far as I’ve seen, which is unexpected.
Also, how often do you get to see festival flicks on the motherfucking Grauman’s Big Screen? Shit is rockin’. The selection of movies is REALLY GOOD so far too. Let me emphasize that — REALLY GOOD — because in a couple of paragraphs I’m about to really whine about the minor stuff.
The nature of the thing means that sponsors have paid for the whole thing already. And one of the ways I think this has been achieved is that Dunhill cigarettes are involved. Their logo isn’t onscreen or on any of the material, probably due to legal restrictions on cigarette ads, but they had ads on the table at the opening night party, and cigarette girls going around offering coupons to anyone whose ID ran through a scanner as positively over 18. I don’t imagine cigarette companies get offered sponsorship opportunities much in Hollywood, so they probably had cash to spare.
One of the people I spoke with at the opening, a beautiful multi-tattooed lady, works for an escort service. No idea if they hooked up a sponsorship there — probably not — but why not?
Volunteers still don’t seem to know very much. On both nights of the fest so far, I’ve been sent back and forth between various desks (during which time you also have to deal with people who tell you you can’t walk here or there, even as others are telling you you can), and one time a guy took my ID and forgot to give it back to me; when I reminded him, he didn’t even remember that he’d taken it! Dude had just set the thing down on a stack of booklets where anyone could have grabbed it.
People get mad at Wal-Mart for indoctrinating employees, but this is what happens when you don’t. Maybe there should be a compromise: next year, rather than making the festival free, make it cheap, and with the extra income from it being not-totally-free, pay some of the volunteers to know their stuff, and actually talk to each other so they coordinate.
Anyway, back to the movies.
FANTASTIC MR. FOX is indeed fantastic. It’s a one-of-a-kind, one of the year’s best, though it definitely has echoes of other themes that are currently prevalent. Like UP, it has animals that speak English, yet can suddenly, abruptly revert to idiosyncratic animal behavior, usually to humorous effect. Like WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, it takes a beloved childrens book and stays mostly true to it while at the same time being very much of a piece with the director’s unique style and way of looking at the world.
But unlike Wes Anderson’s other attempts to branch out — I’m thinking of the awkward action sequences in THE LIFE AQUATIC, which I liked but not as much as this — FANTASTIC MR. FOX is a rollicking, kid-friendly animated adventure, albeit one full of ironic dialogue and bizarre non-sequiturs that will fly over the young ‘uns’ heads.
I’m curious how the estate of Roald Dahl let this slip past them, as they’ve been notorious control freaks ever since the late author dissed WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, even though he himself wrote the script. Tim Burton’s re-attempt at that story was forced to stay slavishly faithful in script, though Burton tacked on a new, out-of-character ending and Depp’s performance really missed the mark. And I was talking to Henry Selick earlier that day and at the after-party, and he said they’d been fairly rigid about JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH’s fidelity too.
But apparently they’re doing press for this one, which is a good sign. The book is so short that it necessarily has to be embellished; as a young boy in the men’s room loudly detailed afterward, the entire third act of the movie is new. Plus the animals are all American now, though the villainous human farmers remain English. Culturalism!
I should note for those who don’t know that FANTASTIC MR. FOX is done in stop-motion animation, using actual furry models. Our protagonists are anthropomorphic subterranean mammals who live much like people, wearing clothes, holding down jobs, and so forth, but also behaving according to their nature, which is to say that Mr. Fox steals and kills chickens from nearby farms. (Birds aren’t anthropomorphic in this world; they’re food. And domesticated dogs simply act like dogs, not people. Plus apparently, foxes and badgers and so on speak and write in English that can be understood by humans. Yet it all works. Maybe not logically under geek-level analysis, but instinctively, on a kid-level, sure.)
Mr. Fox is voiced by George Clooney, in a casting nod clearly designed to draw mileage from his Ocean’s heist movies. Retired from the farm-raiding business after he inadvertently puts his wife (Meryl Streep) in danger, he writes a newspaper column that nobody reads. Hoping to improve his family’s life, he stretches his finances to buy a large treehouse, but the new place just so happens to be right next door to three of the richest and most nasty farmers in all of…England? or whatever country this is meant to be. Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, respectively own farms full of chickens, geese, and apple cider. The movie makes gun-toting Bean the main baddie, as voiced by Michael Gambon, whereas I seem to recall the book assigning equal evilness.
Some reviews have said that this is very much of a kind with Wes Anderson’s other movies, but it is and isn’t. It’s arguably his most commercial movie to date, and certainly his laugh-out-loud funniest…in many of Anderson’s films, the humor is such that you don’t quite know if you’re meant to laugh or not, while here there is no doubt. But it does feature many familiar voices from his usual gang: Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzmann, and even Anderson himself does a little voice-acting.
Bottom line, though, is that it’s great, giving UP a run for its money as best animated film of the year. It’s distinctive, artistic, and lovable. To me, anyway…many of my colleagues on the way out seemed skeptical.
Little disappointed that the after-party’s only food was Baskin Robbins ice cream cake. The recession hits home. I was hoping for mini-burgers at least.
Pure pomegranate juice to mix with the free vodka is nothing to sneeze at, though. And the bartender had the Graham family motto “Ne Oublie” tattooed on his arm…a very distant relative, it seems. His shirt said “The Villain,” which I asked about – could this be a reference to James Graham, Earl of Montrose, being the villain in the ROB ROY movie, as played by John Hurt?
Nothing so cool; the shirt was randomly assigned.
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