fantastic mr. fox – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

I am so excited for the fall edition of the buddy movie watching I do with my friend and fellow blogger, Lisa, over at Boondock Ramblings! We wanted to watch some fall movies together and really couldn’t pick one lane. Or maybe I couldn’t, because that sounds like me. So we have a list that we compiled that moves from feeling all cozy autumn that moves into sort of creepy, then boop! Back to cozy again! We wanted movies that made us feel all snuggly, that made us want to get under blankets and drink tea, and then we wanted a little extra thrill for around Halloween. And I think we were successful in our list making! Feel free to watch along with us!

This week we are not just doing one movie, but two, and it has me all kinds of happy. I happily settled down Saturday night in my super comfy pajama pants, a cup of mint tea with honey, and my honey, Billy to watch the first up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and from the moment it began I was glued to the screen. (sorry for the cheesy joke…)

This movie is a visual treat, and perfect for autumn with all of its super warm tones of yellow and orange. I have said time and again in this space that I am a sucker for a beautiful movie, and that even includes stop action animation. Also, Wes Anderson! I love Wes Anderson! He managed to capture the spirit of the book and blend it with his own style and aesthetic in the most perfect way. Or should I say, fantastic way?

This movie sticks to the core of the book, with Mr. Fox being a clever little fox vs. the villainous farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean (one fat, one short, one mean..) The movie added a bit more to the plot to fluff it out a bit more, with the addition of nephew Kristofferson, Ash and his foibles, school, etc, and fleshed out the life of the animals more. In this version, Foxy is a former thief, and a very good one at that. However, he promises his wife Felicity (voiced by Meryl Streep!) that he will give us his thieving ways and get a safer job. So, he does, and becomes a newspaper man. He is suave, he is sophisticated, he is clever, but lives in a den underground, like foxes usually do. Foxy though, has higher aspirations and ambitions, and moves his family to a beech tree, right in the middle of a highly dangerous neighborhood, one occupied by none other than the farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. And here the madness begins.

Oh Foxy. He causes So. Much. Trouble! Not just for his family, but for all the animals in the area, who are none too happy with him. And neither is his wife, Felicity. One of my favorite scenes is one where Felicity is giving him a piece of her mind, and she asks why he didn’t keep his promise to her, and he says, “Because I’m a wild animal”. And I thought what a great line, what a great moment. Because despite everything, he is who and what he is. A wild animal. They may be little animal versions of newspaper reporters, artists, lawyers, doctors, but they are all wild animals first and foremost. This actually becomes a much deeper theme later in the movie, that is expanded upon in a wonderfully fantastic way.

There is another scene that I loved just as much. Foxy and his gang are out on a mission, when in the distance, they spot the most wild animal of all, the wolf. There is this pause, a weighty pause full of emotion, more than you would expect from a movie like this, as the characters take in the majesty of what they are seeing.

It gave me goosebumps.

The voice actors all did a fantastic job (yes I am going to keep using that adjective) – George Clooney, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, and Michael Gambon who managed to be 100% Gambon-ish even in the role he was voicing. And I loved how instead of swearing in this movie, the used the word “cuss”, where there would be a cuss word. So very very clever.

So, does Foxy beat the farmers? Are his family and friends saved? Well, you will just have to watch and find out!

You can find Lisa’s thoughts here!

Next up is The Secret World of Arrietty, another movie based on a children’s book. Arrietty is based on the classic The Borrowers, and oh do I love it so much. I want my whole house to look like their house. Anyway, that is for another day – Thursday, in fact.

This is our list of movies by the way. We do have some break weeks built in, so stay tuned for which weeks are break weeks!

Hi everyone!! It’s been a fun reading month, full of wolves and snow and adorable woodland creatures! We hit up our library at least twice a week, so I am not sharing all of the books that we read together, but I am sharing some of our favorites. I am also back to buying more books than I had been so some of these are from Wyatt’s own personal home library.

This post does contain Amazon Affiliate links. If you were to purchase a book using a link, I would make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

A Thing Called Snow was pretty loved universally around here, by the whole family. Zommer’s books are oversized and just beautiful. In this one a fox and a hare, born in the spring and about to experience their first winter, are on the lookout for snow. My Winter City was more my favorite, not Wyatt’s. I just loved this look at what winter looks and feels like, all the little details from frost in the dad’s beard to slushy bus rides. Noisy Night was all Wyatt. This one was pretty cool because you feel like you are going up a floor in the building with every page because the residents all complain about the noise above them, until we get to the very top. It was pretty cute. And finally, probably the favorite book of the entire month, No Fuzzball! Any cat lover will be delighted by this one, and how Queen Fuzzball adjusts to a new little kitten face in her kingdom. It is absolutely adorable and also, made us chuckle. Definitely a keeper.

Wyatt loved Wolfboy. I knew he would – he considers himself a wolfboy half the time. And I could certainly relate to the grumpy feelings of being hangry!

We finally got some snow around here the other day, so Wednesday afternoon, after playing in the snow, we came in, had hot chocolate, and read a stack of snowy picture books. When It Starts to Snow and Blizzard were two of our favorites! When It Starts to Snow is a book that feels slightly poetic, with how it keeps asking the questions “What if it starts to snow? What do you do? Where do you go? These questions are answered by all of the little woodland animals and made us feel all cozy, because we knew what we were doing on our snowy day. Blizzard was fantastic- we both loved it! The author John Rocco tells his story about the blizzard of 1978, and the part he played in helping his neighbors and community, along with his memories of that time. We both really enjoyed it! It probably was our favorite right after No Fuzzball.

I Love Books in the Otter series is one of Wyatt’s go to grabs right now. He loves it because he too, loves books, just like Otter, and going to the library.

As for longer read alouds, we read the second in the Heartwood Hotel series, The Greatest Gift. Wyatt loves these books about the animals who work and live and stay at the Heartwood Hotel. After we finished up The Greatest Gift we moved on to Fantastic Mr. Fox – we are still reading this one and while things seem grim for the foxes right now, we have faith that Mr. Fox will come up with something to save his family!

Have you read any of these?