Faaaantastic

The trailer for Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox looks bright and engaging, and the array of voice talent in it is pretty impressive. But it leaves me with one question: will the movie focus, as it should, on the food? I don't know if any of my foodie friends remember this, but The Fantastic Mr. Fox is an amazing book about the joy of eating. The three evil farmers in the book are characterized in part by what they live on: donuts stuffed with mashed goose-livers, extremely strong home-brewed apple cider, and three chickens a day--they're defined, in part, by their culinary limitations. The animals who live near the farmers are threatened by starvation when the farmers retaliate against Mr. Fox for stealing from them, and he forms an ingenious scheme to create a cross-species underground community that tunnels into the farmer's storehouses. The descriptions of the food are beautiful, and Roald Dahl really captures what it's like to be able to eat well when you haven't been able to for a while. I imagine it'll be somewhat hard to capture that sensation in the movie--visuals can do only so much, and food appreciation isn't as dramatic as evading maurading steam shovels, unless you're Brad Bird and you're amazing. But whether Wes Anderson intended it or not, I think it's highly appropriate that The Fantastic Mr. Fox should get its movie adaptation in the middle of a reinvigorated national conversation about what we eat, why we eat it, and what we get out of it.