Wes Anderson is a polarising filmmaker. Depending on whom you ask, his movies are either delightful escapes or sentimental trash rife with daddy issues. There's very little space in between. I fall into the former camp: Wes Anderson is a national treasure.

Anderson, who directed a charming holiday commercial for H&M this year, hasn't made a movie since 2014's The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was nominated for nine Academy Awards (including best picture), won four, and grossed $175 million at the worldwide box office. On Tuesday, Anderson unveiled details about his next film, Isle of Dogs, in a video posted to Vimeo.

First, a couple of things we already knew about the movie:

It's stop-motion animation in the style of Fantastic Mr. Fox.

youtubeView full post on Youtube

It's about dogs, which, according to Indiewire, is sort of ironic, because Anderson has a history of harming canines in his movies (for instance, the tragic death of Buckley in The Royal Tenenbaums). The New Yorker even published an essay in 2012 asking whether Anderson actually hates dogs.

The new details are mostly about the star-studded cast. Isle of Dogs features a lengthy roster of popular actors doing voice work, including Anderson regulars like Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, and Harvey Keitel. (Curiously, other Anderson veterans—like Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrian Brody—are not listed among the cast members.) New, refreshing additions to the lineup of actors includes Greta Gerwig, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, and Yoko Ono.

There's no release date for Isle of Dogs, but Anderson said production begins soon in London.

In the Vimeo video, where Norton makes an appearance, Anderson provides a very brief glimpse of one of the movie's dogs and offers fans a chance to voice a character in the film and visit the set for a $10 donation to The Film Foundation, a charity founded by Martin Scorsese for the preservation of film. Anderson partnered with Crowdrise on the fundraising effort.

The video is below, but first, here's a not-at-all definitive ranking of Anderson's movies:

  1. Rushmore
  2. The Royal Tenenbaums
  3. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited (tie)
  4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
  5. Bottle Rocket
  6. Moonrise Kingdom
  7. The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson from Crowdrise on Vimeo.

From: Esquire UK