Mon Meilleur Ami is the story of a crotchety antiques dealer who discovers that none of his so-called friends actually like him, finding him arrogant and self-centered. His business partner bets him a really nice vase that he doesn't have a "best friend," so he goes about trying to find one, ultimately enlisting a cab driver for the role, despite the fact that they have very little in common. Zut alors! ...You know, not having seen it myself, that sounds like your standard French farce. (See La Cage Aux Folles and every other French movie ever.) I would love to see Anderson take it and make it his own, but right now it sounds pretty blah. I'd be curious to see the script he adapted in the hands of another director, but if it doesn't have all of his trademark detail and atmosphere, I'll probably take a pass.

That said, I'm not sure I'm going to see Anderson's next picture, either. An adaptation of Roald Dahl's book The Fantastic Mr. Fox, the stop-motion animated project was written and directed by Anderson, and while Dahl may have been a huge influence on him, after years of so-so Dahl adaptations, I'm not the fan I was as a child. Maybe if Henry Selick of A Nightmare Before Christmas fame had stuck around to finish the film, that would be something, but the guy took off partway through to work on Coraline! Still, the movie does feature the voices of George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, so at least he's working with his favorite actors, but I'll still need to see some footage before I decide. Also, I'm curious to see how the public responds to a children's movie in which a family of foxes tunnels into a henhouse and slaughters all of the inhabitants. Fantastic!

Call me crazy, but I'd be happy if he just made a full-length movie out of whatever he was shooting in that American Express commercial. I know it was meant to be a stereotypical Anderson flick, but any movie with Jason Schwartzman, an exploding car and a .357 Magnum with a bayonet on it is all right in my book.