Wes Anderson, director of Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Oscar-winning The Grand Budapest Hotel, is back behind the camera with another journey into stop-motion animation. Isle of Dogs is set 20 years in the future, where all of Japan’s dogs have been quarantined on an island full of garbage due to an outbreak of “dog flu.”
It looks very quirky, as would be expected from a Wes Anderson film, and it features an all-star cast of voice actors. Bryan Cranston and Edward Norton voice the main characters, along with an impressive ensemble that includes Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, Kunichi Nomura, Greta Gerwig, F. Murray Abraham, Courtney B. Vance, Tilda Swinton, and Yoko Ono.
Anderson’s films have a very distinctive style, and his work has inspired many YouTubers to create mock trailers of him directing films like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Witch.
Bill Murray spilled some details about the film back in 2015 when he was accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Marrakech International Film Festival. “I’m playing a dog,” Murray told The Playlist. “And it’s a Japanese story and I’m playing a dog. I’m very excited.”
The film chronicles the adventures of a Japanese boy as he sets off to the island to find his lost dog “Spots.” The poster for the movie also features Japanese translations for all the major actors.
3.23.18 #IsleofDogs pic.twitter.com/KGAiw28Ect
— Isle of Dogs (@isleofdogsmovie) September 21, 2017
Rather than a family film, the new movie may well be an homage to an icon of Japanese cinema, as well as drawing inspiration from a surprising source. “I really liked these TV Christmas specials in America. I always liked the creatures in the Harryhausen-type films, but really these American Christmas specials were probably the thing that really made me want to do it,” Anderson said in a conversation at ARTE Cinema. “The new film is less influenced by stop-motion movies than it is by Akira Kurosawa.”
Last year, Anderson raffled off a small part in Isle of Dogs through Crowdrise to benefit Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, a non-profit organization which helps to restore old movies. The effort raised more than $250,000 for the foundation.
No word yet on what “lucky dog” got to add their voice to the star-studded film. Isle of Dogs comes out in theaters March 23, 2018.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.