Blu-ray Movie Reviews

In 2009, one of the kings of quirky dramedy, Wes Anderson, managed to surprise us again with a star-studded, fully stop-motion-animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s deliciously absurd Fantastic Mr. Fox. This laid-back bad boy has settled down with his wife and pup, but can a fox ever really change his nature?

While the master is not listed as new, I am tempted to rate it one tiny notch above the 2010 Fox (20th Century, that is) Fox. The 1.85:1 movie was painstakingly captured one frame at a time on the Nikon D3 digital still camera, so there’s no blur whatsoever, and the fine animal fur pops in high def. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 demonstrates no drastic improvement over its predecessor, but the clarity and nuance certainly remain. Many wonderful supplements are included here for the first time, notably a new commentary by Anderson, plus storyboard animatics for the entire movie, animated award-acceptance speeches, and an audio reading of the book by the late Mr. Dahl himself. The movie and all these bonuses are repeated in SD across two DVDs.