LONDON—George Clooney has a thing for animals these days. His two new films are titled “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

The latter film opened the London Film Festival last Wednesday. Mrs. Fox, Meryl Streep, was a no-show because she was downed by the flu but Mr. Fox, George Clooney, carried on with a foxy companion, girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis, at the opening night gala.

Incidentally, Brillante “Dante” Mendoza’s acclaimed “Kinatay,” which stars Coco Martin, Julio Diaz, Maria Isabel Lopez and John Regala, is entered in the fest’s World Cinema program. Also in this section is a trio of digital films commissioned by the Jeonju festival in Korea and packed under one umbrella title. Lav Diaz’s “Butterflies Have No Memories,” with a cast that features Dante Perez, Kristine Kintana, Joel Ferrer, Willy Fernandez, Lois Goff and Edward Porta, is included in this trio along with Hong Sang-soo’s “Lost in the Mountains” and Naomi Kawase’s “Koma.”

Leicester Square was covered in yards and yards of red carpet for the screening of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” at not one but two movie theaters, Empire and Odeon. The stop-motion animated film also features the voices of Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Michael Gambon and Willem Dafoe. At the Empire, director Wes Anderson, who wrote with Noah Baumbach the screenplay adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, proudly presented some of his voice actors and behind-the-scenes talents.

When Wes called out the name of Bill Murray, who voices Badger, the actor was just as playful as in our interview with him earlier in the day. The actor ran fast to join Wes and the group, breaking to a halt right before the curtains. Wes also acknowledged the presence of Roald’s widow, Felicity Dahl, who allowed him and Noah to write the screenplay in the Gipsy House, where Roald found inspiration to write his other beloved books such as “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Guests in the black tie affair included Cindy Crawford, John Hurt and Thandie Newton and her two young daughters, Ripley and Nico.

Following the screening, the guests hied off to The Saatchi Gallery on King’s Road for the opening night gala party. Guests admired the contemporary paintings and sculpture on display when they were not ogling George, Bill, Jason (seen kissing his wife of a few months, Brady Cunningham) and company.

Just hours before, in our interview with George at the Dorchester Hotel, he joked about Jason recently getting married: “What’s up with that? I’ll talk to him.”

Jason, in a separate interview, half-jokingly admitted to staring at George like a star-struck fan during their voice recordings in Connecticut. Eschewing the common practice in animation films to record the dialogue in a studio, with each actor often recording his lines by himself, Wes brought George, Jason, Bill and Wally Wolodarsky (Kylie) to a farm in Connecticut. There, the actors acted out their scenes with a boom operator following them. Jason said that when he was not recording, he would look at his movie star colleague. Jason quipped, “So those are George Clooney’s ears…”

At the press con, Jason held the original puppet of Ash, the character he voiced in the film. Holding the puppet like an acting award trophy, Jason joked, “I would like to thank…”

Bill, who asked us if we arrived in London on a jeepney, said that his favorite animal is the tarsier, which he knows can be found in Indonesia and the Philippines.

George’s other starrers, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and “Up in the Air,” are also entered in the film festival. We watched George’s “The Men Who…” co-star, Kevin Spacey, in his stage play, “Inherit the Wind,” at the Old Vic theater, where he has been the artistic director for the past six years. Kevin is excellent in the play, directed by Trevor Nunn, that dramatizes the conflict between science and religion.

In our talk with Kevin at the Grosvenor House, he joked that there was something going on between George and the goat extras in the film. “I don’t know who had the bigger grin, George or the goats,” Kevin teased.

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.