Wes Anderson can make style icons out of tiny dolls

Last Friday, Fantastic Mr. Fox -- Wes Anderson's long-awaited film adaptation of the beloved Roald Dahl book -- was released in theaters. The film, which Anderson wrote with The Squid and the Whale's Noah Baumbach, does not feature any live humans on camera (although Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray all supply voices) -- it is stop-motion animation, and the actors are tiny dolls -- and yet, Anderson has managed to create characters so lifelike and so distinct that they might as well exist in the same universe as Ritchie and Margot Tenenbaum. Except for that they exist in that of Roald Dahl. The story, which expands upon Dahl's slim original edition, tells the story of a charming, scheming, somewhat reckless father fox (Foxy, voiced by Clooney) who accidentally jeopardizes the lives of himself and everyone he loves. It is a witty, sometimes emotional, and fantastically beautiful film: every tiny detail is tended to with great care, right down to the thumbtacks on walls, or books on shelves. And, of course, there are the outfits. Foxy wears a suit cut from the same cloth (literally) as one of Anderson's custom-made corduroy numbers, but even those characters who spend the majority of the film in their pajamas have distinct -- and distinctly Andersonian -- identities. And perhaps you won't come out of the movie with new outfits in mind (unless you ave a thing for matronly frocks), but this one is a must-see regardless. Aren't style and fashion   basically the same thing, after all?