Hamptons Talents Lend Voices to Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs'
Director Wes Anderson‘s innovative new stop-motion animated feature Isle of Dogs gathers some big name actors, including four Hamptonites, to voice its canine companions. The film, opening March 23, stars Amagansett’s Scarlett Johansson as Nutmeg, Montauk homeowner Liev Schreiber as Spots, Bridgehampton resident Bob Balaban as King and Shelter Island renter Fisher Stevens as Scrap.
Watch the Isle of Dogs trailer below.
Set in Japan 20 years in the future, Isle of Dogs presents a dystopian future where all dogs are quarantined on remote Trash Island after “canine saturation has reached epic proportions” and “an outbreak of dog flu rips through the city of Megasaki.” Within this dark premise, the film tells the tale of a boy, Atari (Koyu Rankin), who is trying to find his beloved dog Spots (Schreiber) on the island of exiled pups.
Atari enlists some a local “pack of scary, indestructible alpha dogs,” including Chief (Bryan Cranston), Rex (Edward Norton), Boss (Bill Murray), Duke (Jeff Goldblum) and King (Balaban), to help him locate Spots and evade Mayor Kobayashi’s (Kunichi Nomura) Municipal Task Force.
Along with some of Anderson’s favorite actors, such as Murray and Norton, Isle of Dogs bottles the director’s Twee magic in his return to the animated form. Anderson’s previous stop-motion picture, Fantastic Mr. Fox was based on the book by Roald Dahl, and he says this latest effort was heavily influenced by films by Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Rashomon, Seven Samurai) and Rankin/Bass stop-motion classics (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, Jack Frost).
The film also stars Courtney B. Vance, Yoko Ono, Tilda Swinton, Greta Gerwig, F. Murray Abraham, Ken Watanabe and recent Oscar winner Francis McDormand.
So far, the movie has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival last month.
See Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, opening at theaters everywhere on March 23.