{"id":422,"date":"2022-08-17T15:43:54","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T15:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/?p=422"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:35:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T14:35:30","slug":"minimalist-moments-fantastic-mr-fox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/?p=422","title":{"rendered":"Minimalist Moments: Fantastic Mr Fox"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wes Anderson\u2019s filmography is chock full of classic soundtracks, and the director often uses sound to convey mood in a scene rather than spoken dialogue. A few great examples include Elliot Smith\u2019s Needle in the Hay in The Royal Tenenbaums<\/em>, Sigur Ros\u2019 Staralfur in Steve Zissou and the Life Aquatic <\/em>and The Who\u2019s \u2018A Quick One While He\u2019s Away\u2019 in Rushmore<\/em>. While I might get round to analysing some of those examples in future editions of this series, for now I\u2019ll be focusing on Anderson\u2019s finest animated caper (Isle of Dogs<\/em> was entertaining, but it wasn\u2019t in the same league as this).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As you\u2019ll know if you\u2019ve read Roald Dahl\u2019s brilliant book, Boggis, Bunce and Bean aren\u2019t the nicest of dudes. When Mr Fox starts stealing too much of their goods for their liking, the three farmers try to take vengeance by digging into the ground to find and kill Mr Fox and the rest of his family. In typical American style, all the bad guys are British (Boggis, Bunce and Bean are voiced by Robin Hurlstone, Hugo Guiness and Michael Gambon \u2013 yes, Dumbledore is a bad guy here, I\u2019m afraid), and all the good guys are American (Mr Fox and Mrs Fox \u2013 here titled Foxy Fox and Felicity Fox \u2013 are voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start of the sequence, Bean orders several vehicles to take down the fox family, requesting the items for \u2018immediate delivery\u2019. Once he has said these exact words, we aptly cut immediately to the image of the three vehicles ploughing forward in stop motion. The title \u2018The Terrible Tractors\u2019 appears above the sleeping foxes, quickly disappearing as The Rolling Stones\u2019 classic tune Street Fighting Man starts playing and Mr Fox wakes up in unison shortly before his family members. The group start frantically digging as we zoom up to see the farmers and hear their maniacal laughter. In a genius moment of sound design, the song is muffled as we move underground and listen to the strained conversation between Mr Fox and his son Ash (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman), who shoves sand in his ears to block out his father\u2019s speech. The song then blares into full force again as we go back up to witness the farmer\u2019s destruction and the progressively diminished hill. It\u2019s a short sequence, but one that certainly benefits from some iconic rockin\u2019 beats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wes Anderson\u2019s filmography is chock full of classic soundtracks, and the director often uses sound to convey mood in a scene rather than spoken dialogue. A few great examples include Elliot Smith\u2019s Needle in the Hay in The Royal Tenenbaums, Sigur Ros\u2019 Staralfur in Steve Zissou and the Life Aquatic and The Who\u2019s \u2018A Quick One While He\u2019s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Minimalist Moments: Fantastic Mr Fox”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}