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Wednesday

Wily Mr. Fox opens London film fest

Post a Comment October 14, 2009 – 5:40 pm | Permalink |  Print This Post |

Wes Anderson’s animated movie Fantastic Mr. Fox had its world premiere on Wednesday on the opening night of the London film festival.

The stop-motion film is based on Roald Dahl’s book about a clever, chicken-stealing fox who continually outwits farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean.

Dahl’s widow Felicity gave her blessing for the adaptation and Anderson and Noah Baumbach co-wrote the screenplay while staying at the Dahl family home in Great Missenden in southern Britain.

George Clooney voices Mr. Fox and Meryl Streep voices Mrs. Fox. Both appeared on the London red carpet at Wednesday’s premiere.

Actor Bill Murray, who plays Badger, also attended.

Clooney appears in two other films at the London festival — Canadian director Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air and Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats.

In Up in the Air, Clooney plays a downsizing consultant who is ordered to stop his jet-set life just as he’s met the woman of his dreams. It’s Reitman’s first big screen production since Oscar-nominated Juno and Thank You for Smoking.

The 16-day festival will screen about 200 feature films and will offer a best-picture award for the first time this year.

Among the films in the lineup:

* The White Ribbon by Austria’s Michael Haneke.
* A Prophet by France’s Jacques Audiard.
* Bright Star by Jane Campion.
* The Informant! by Steven Soderbergh.
* A Single Man by Tom Ford.
* An Education by Lone Scherfig.

The festival wraps up Oct. 29 with the world premiere of Nowhere Boy, a film about the young John Lennon directed by Britain’s Sam Taylor-Wood.