The first shots are fired in the race for the golden statuette

The great film critic Manny Farber once noted the difference between "white elephant art" - pretentious would-be masterpieces that we now call Oscar-bait - and "termite art" - films that joyfully burrow into their own set of details and concerns, awards and accolades be damned. Understandably, the latter sort of film is often more enjoyable than the former, and the difference is well-illustrated by the Thanksgiving releases of "Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

Sure-fire Best Picture nominee "Precious: Based on the Pointlessly Extended Subtitle" is definitely the white elephant in the room. There is a raw, powerful core to the story here, as Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), an obese 16-year-old who has been impregnated twice by her father and tortured by her mother (a terrifying Mo'Nique), struggles to find empowerment through alternative schooling. But director Lee Daniels doesn't seem to trust the story's inherent power, choosing instead to drown viewers in manufactured Oscar-grubbing uplift.

For Daniels, Precious' rape isn't horrifying enough - we apparently need interjected shots of smeared Vaseline, sweat and greasy eggs and bacon simmering in a pan in order to really feel the disgust. Similarly, simply suggesting that Precious dreams of a better life isn't sufficient. Instead, we're subjected to garish and boring dream sequences of Precious dancing on the red carpet.

This sort of groan-inducing nonsense never ends, and only when Daniels restrains himself do we catch a glimpse of the great movie someone else might have made with this material. The cast of "Precious" is uniformly remarkable, and Mo'Nique's final monologue detailing how she became a monster is one of most affecting pieces of screen acting I've seen all year. Indeed, whenever Daniels just lets his actors do their thing, their cruelty seems crueler, and the love seems more powerful. But then he's back, turning, turning, turning those movie gears to sledgehammer each point home until you can't breathe. What an already-sensational plot like this needs is restraint; what we have here is sloppy filmmaking.

Not knowing when to quit is a problem that "Fantastic Mr. Fox" director Wes Anderson has also dealt with in the past. Anderson's fussily designed films about family dysfunction ("Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums") have often been accused of being too, well, precious, piling on quirks instead of developing character. Personally, I've enjoyed most of Anderson's work, but with "The Darjeeling Limited," I felt that he had fallen into a rut, recycling the same old tropes with diminishing returns.

Thankfully, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is a thoroughly enjoyable curveball - it's Anderson's lightest and funniest movie and possibly his best yet. Based on the classic Roald Dahl book, ‘Fox' is made with charmingly retro stop-motion puppetry, and the termite-like zest with which Anderson has labored over every detail is itself worth the ticket price. The fox' fur sways in the wind, gauze rises as smoke from fires constructed from fluttering orange foil, and tea leaves fall from the trees in the gorgeous autumnal landscape.

At the same time, the perfectly aligned compositions, the fetishistic close-ups on sartorial details, and the ingeniously selected classic rock soundtrack are all trademark Anderson. In fact, the fusion of his signature visual style with stop-motion animation is so successful that I was left wondering why so few auteurs have tried it.

Even more surprising is how moving and human this animal story seems. Our Mr. Fox (George Clooney) was once a chicken-stealing bandit until a wife (Meryl Streep) and child (Jason Schwartzman) forced him into drab domesticity. But when he moves to a new house opposite a trio of evil farmers, he can't resist one last job, and his new heist ends up throwing the whole animal community into danger.

This may sound like a boilerplate kiddie flick, but Anderson richly layers the plot with Mr. Fox' existential dread, a lovingly detailed depiction of the Foxes' marriage and a touching subplot about the rivalry between Fox' son and his visiting nephew (voiced by Anderson's brother Eric).

Part of the reason the emotions here ring so true is the cast's sterling voice work. Clooney confidently swaggers in his Cary Grant mode, Schwartzman is hilarious as a sullen brat, and Streep and Bill Murray (as Fox' lawyer) both continue their tradition of seemingly effortless brilliance.

And while Anderson's fastidious style has always been slightly at odds with the messiness of real life, it is a brilliant fit for an animated feature. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" essentially provides a perfect showcase for Anderson's unique set of gifts.

Despite its strengths, ‘Fox' wasn't designed for awards or acclaim; the Pixar stranglehold on the Oscars will continue, and animation in general will probably continue to be characterized as a lesser form of art. But as ‘Precious' executive producer Oprah uses her hype machine to steer that film toward Oscar glory, remember the directors like Anderson who are digging like foxes, burrowing into their own obsessions and transforming their eccentricities into magnificent cinema.