This MV To Movie feature series is really meant for directors making that first transition, but since Spike Jonze is arguably the bestest director ever and this is the most buzzed about movie of the minute, here we go.
Director Spike Jonze's live-action adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children's book classic, Where The Wild Things Are finally hits theaters today. Since Spike's previous two movies fall in the love it or hate it category — and making a serious movie about childhood and talking monsters (or EMOnsters, as Salon.com puts it) is certainly not the safest move in Hollywood — I wouldn't be too alarmed at the mixed reviews. In fact, I would guess that many of these critics would probably prefer what ended up on screen to the typical crap that panders to short attention span kids and production executives. (That said, I haven't seen the movie yet.)
Key Videography:
- Weezer "Buddy Holly"
- The Pharcyde "Drop"
- Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
- Bjork "It's Oh So Quiet"
- Fatboy Slim "Weapon Of Choice"
- Wax "California"
Key Reviews (more at Rotten Tomatoes):
- Rolling Stone (Peter Travers) — "Forget every sugary kid-stuff cliché Hollywood shoves at you. The defiantly untamed Where the Wild Things Are is a raw and exuberant mind-meld between Maurice Sendak, 81, the Caldecott Medal winner who wrote and illustrated the classic 1963 book, and Spike Jonze, 39, the Oscar-nominated director (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) who honors the explosive feelings of childhood by creating a visual and emotional tour de force. The movie barrels out at you like a nine-year-old boy filled to bursting with joys, fears and furies he can't articulate."
- USA Today (Claudia Puig) — "Where the Wild Things Are is a fiercely innovative film with surprising texture and nuance. It captures the joy and exuberance of childhood without shying away from its very real pains and woes. "
- NY Times (Manohla Dargis) — "[An] alternately perfect and imperfect if always beautiful adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s book... After years in the news, the project and its improbability — a live-action movie based on a slender, illustrated children’s book that runs fewer than 40 pages, some without any words at all — are no longer a surprise. Even so, it startles and charms and delights largely because Mr. Jonze’s filmmaking exceeds anything he’s done in either of his inventive previous features, Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002). With Where the Wild Things Are he has made a work of art that stands up to its source and, in some instances, surpasses it."
- Salon.com (Stephanie Zacerak) — "If your kids get all wide-eyed at the prospect of listening to grown-ups' self-absorbed reflections on the fears, anxieties and frustrations of childhood, or if they've ever clambered onto your lap and begged for a civics lesson on the dangers of totalitarianism, then by all means run, don't walk, to Fandango and get your tickets for Where the Wild Things Are."
- LA Times (Kenneth Turan) — "Sometimes you are better off with 10 sentences than tens of millions of dollars, and this is one of those times."
Worth Noting:
- Test footage from a 1983 Disney attempt to make an animated version of Where The Wild Things Are. LINK
- Lengthy article in NY Times Magazine about Spike Jonze, screenwriter Dave Eggers and the creative journey of translating Where The Wild Things Are to the screen. LINK
- MTV Movies Blog: Telling The Difference Between Where The Wild Things Are and Wild Things (answer: Only one has Kevin Bacon's phallus). LINK
- LA Times article on the controversy over the movie's production (rumors of reshoots, children crying at test screenings, blah, blah). LINK
Trailer: Quicktime (HD) trailers of Where The Wild Things Are (including feauturettes)
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