This new featurette from Disney shows some of the finished effects from Alice in Wonderland alongside the same shots being filmed with a green screen (what I’d like to see: the production meeting where they decided on Johnny Depp’s retarded dance at the end).  It’s pretty cool to see stuff stripped of its FX magic, but also brings back some emotional memories from childhood, when I found out fairies weren’t real and my step dad made me bury my wand and leotard in the back yard.  F*cker.

After the jump, check out some more behind the scenes video of Wes Anderson scrutinizing the set of Fantastic Mr. Fox — something the DP had earlier criticized him for not doing — from the DVD extras.  And in case you were wondering whether he gently strokes his chin while supporting his elbow with the other hand like a finishing school headmistress, hell to the mothereffin yeah he does.  And yet, that movie was awesome.  So congratulations, Wes, you cartoonishly foppish dandy boy you.  This guy grew up in Texas?  He must know karate or something.

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(Viggo shepherds his son through the post-apocalyptic hellscape)

Opening this weekend (Trailers after the jump):

Fantastic Mr. Fox
I thought Darjeeling Limited was decidedly meh, so I’m hoping for a Wes Anderson to return to form here.  It’s already gotten an enthusiastic review from Punchface Thunderdog, and I’ll be finding out for myself in just a few minutes. So, you know, that’s what’s going on with me.

The Road
I loved the book, but it seemed like something that would be hard to adapt, and I wasn’t so hot on The Proposition, director John Hillcoat’s last movie.  I found it sort of slow and depressing.  Like giving your mom a sponge bath.

Ninja Assassin
It looks like a sort of ham-fisted mashup of every over-stylized action movie from the last ten years, like Boondock Saints with ninjas.  Also, the main weapon is CGI.  But I guess it’s great if you want to see a dude named “Rain” flex for two hours.

Old Dogs
I would rather watch an Al-Qaeda video featuring my own beheading, filmed in the future and projected back to me in the present where I could view it in real time.  Though it should be noted that Pete Hammond gave it an enthusiastic two flippers up.

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Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox opens wide next weekend, which is kind of like the hipster version of what happened with New Moon this weekend.  Only instead of cough drops and cat fur, it’ll be issues of The Atlantic and puggles or labridoodles or whatever super queer-sounding dog breed is popular this week.  Which is to say, I really want to see it.  Here’s the latest clip, in which Jason Schwartzman, playing the voice of the younger fox, gets picked on by a beaver until his older brother intervenes and beats him up.  I don’t know about you, but it really gets me off seeing a beaver get pounded.  (*gets thrown out of independent coffee shop for being “too fratty”*)

What? I liked The Life Aquatic! It was production design driven, that’s why it was so misunderstood! Fine, you jerks, maybe I will go to Starbuck’s.  (*dusts off baseball shirt*)

Opening this weekend:

2012 opens this weekend.  You know it, I know it, the kids in my rape van know it.  I’ve already featured the trailer, the disaster porn version of the trailer, the no-effects trailer, and my favorite, the Raising Arizona music trailer.  Anyway, it looks fun, and it’ll probably make a lot of money.  Other than that, you’ve got Pirate Radio, which has a great cast but also a guy walking into a lamp post in the trailer, Fantastic Mr. Fox opening in NY and LA, Black Dynamite playing a few more places, and probably some other stuff that I don’t want to look up because it’s Friday.  How about you just watch this awesome clip from Bad Lieutenant and we call it a week, shall we?

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Wes “Little Lord Fauntleroy” Anderson took time out of his busy v-neck sweater-buying schedule this week to talk to David Poland about the “beef” between him and his DP, Tristan Oliver. Oliver had previously said of Anderson, who’s been taking heat for directing The Fantastic Mr. Fox via email from Paris, “I think he’s a little sociopathic, I think he’s a little OCD.  Contact with people disturbs him.”   Well la di da, Mr. I Have Human Friends.  Here’s what Anderson had to say:

The word that I think gives one pause is ’sociopath’. That is the unexpected one. Well, I have another DP I’ve worked with for many years. There are moments in production…where I think he would have unkind words to say about me as well. Because movies are hard to make, and sometimes you’re making people do things that are the last thing they want to do, and the last way they want to do it.  And with this movie, there are a lot of things that people who work in stop motion are used to doing digitally, and I wouldn’t do it.

Tristan said a bunch of stuff that is a bit outrageous for someone to say about their boss, while they are working for them.  I didn’t know the details of it, but i knew some of it.  And he was obviously a bit mortified because he spoke completely out of turn.  But our relationship got better after that. [Oliver's quote was from April] By the time the piece [the LA Times article from Sunday] comes out, it’s a bit of a drag because it puts a wrinkle in a relationship that we’ve already smoothed out.

Leave it to captain bow tie to explain their disagreement with a fancy clothing metaphor.  Obviously I’m disappointed they’re not fighting more, but what can you expect from guys named “Wes” and “Tristan”?  I imagine they’d settle disagreements through barbershop quartet.  Otherwise Wes could get grass stains on his breeches, and that makes the headmistress ever so cross.

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