TRAILER: "Where the Wild Things Are"

Okay, maybe this has become overkill or maybe I'm hyping up this movie more than I should. But I wasn't expecting the trailer to appear online so quickly after those images from USA Today came up. I thought Warner Bros. would hold onto the thing until the last minute, that is, 'til Friday when it was supposed to be seen for the first time with "Monsters vs. Aliens." I'm sure glad they decided not to adhere so strictly to that strategy since I'm not so keen on seeing the Dreamworks flick -- none of the gags or jokes strike me as funny really, and while the plot screams amusing, their marketing doesn't scream quality. (Having grown up loving the Universal Monsters -- Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc. -- the selection on call for this movie just seemed... random. The monster movie is an old staple genre of Hollywood so it's just irking that they went with a cockroach scientist. At least there's the "Missing Link" lagoon monster, though. Not that Dreamworks would've ever fulfilled my wild, I'll admit it, dreams of seeing these classics done up in respectful CGI up against some actually worthy-looking alien creatures -- too limited an audience, and hard to sell -- but for them to have gotten so close and still strayed so far is just too much. Too much!)

But I digress.
The trailer for "Where the Wild Things Are" is finally out, and it is even more fantastical than I imagined it could've been... as unlikely as that may sound considering how many posts I've made about it, not to mention my hopelessly exuberant rhetoric in regards to the film and talent involved. The rendition of Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" starts off much different from their album version (cleaner, fleshed out), but it's just as colorful, and by the end of the trailer returns to the sounds of the original album version and really truly aids in making these characters endearing and magnetic. Purely rambunctiously lovable. Like the most fun you've ever had, the wildest fantasies. It's like Dorothy stepping out of her black and white home into the magical Technicolored Oz. (I used that line in a review I wrote about the Arcade Fire's debut album, in fact.)



Wildly excited yet?


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"Wild Thing," You Make My Heart Sing

After spending innumerable hours staring at the poster for Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" -- which has very easily claimed its place once again at the top of my most anticipated list for this or any year, as I mentioned before -- and holding it up for evaluation next to some images from the book, I have to say I'm relieved and elated that Jonze and Co. have maintained stylistic fidelity -- notice those scales (or feathers?) on Carol's (James Gandolfini) legs, and the striping of the fur -- as well as the original scale of the Wild Things in relation to little Max (Max Records, a definite contender for coolest name ever). Anyone ever notice that, although the Wild Things are giants next to their young king, they would really be as tall as (or a little taller than), say, Max's mother (Catherine Keener) if they entered our reality. This was probably intended by Maurice Sendak, and it's a minute visual element that's actually very thoughtful. The physical manifestation of subconscious feelings, or the distortion of authority figures into villains. Like the casting of Jason Isaacs in "Peter Pan" (2003) as both Mr. Darling and Captain James Hook, which was an excellent touch to that adaptation, as bland as that movie was as a whole. And with these new photos, it's with enormous glee that I can say that Jonze has really outdid himself in making these creatures expressive, larger-than-life and utterly huggable. I'm eager to see the translations of Douglas the chicken-thing (Chris Cooper) and Alexander the goat-thing (Paul Dano).

Jonze: "As a kid, I just connected to it. I wanted to hear it over and over. It's like trying to explain why you love somebody. To me, the Wild Things are both cuddly and dangerous. I wanted to climb atop of them like Max."

Catherine Keener on Jonze: "Spike has such an incredible imagination, and this is very much a work of imagination. And there is so much room to apply your own."

Jonze on Sendak and the process of adapting the book: "He was adamant that I make my own thing. He had strong opinions, but he would ultimately defer to us. He said, 'Make something personal to you.' "

Jonze on the tone of the film: "I never thought of it as a children's movie. My intention was to be true to how it felt to be 9 years old. Maurice's whole thing is to be honest. You can say anything to kids as long as you are respectful and not pandering"

There are a couple more incredible photos from the film at USA Today for a total of twelve, and they come packaged with some more great quotes from Jonze, the producers, even young Max himself. I'm so brimming with excitement over the trailer -- which features only one line of dialogue and the musical stylings of the Arcade Fire (track: "Wake Up") -- that I don't even care anymore that "Monsters vs. Aliens" has gotten some deadening reviews and might not be worth admission.

Do these images make your heart flutter?


IMAGES from: Slashfilm and Cinematical

We Know "Where the Wild Things Are" Now

After what felt like a decade but was actually more like three years, it seems that we're finally going to be getting Spike Jonze's translation of the Maurice Sendak seminal children's book, "Where the Wild Things Are," and I could not be happier. (To be fair, it was known late last year that the film was slated for release in the fall of this one, but you can't blame me for not exactly investing in that pronouncement since the production has been embedded in secrecy and rumor for some time, and this conlusive release date is still a year later than was originally intended.) And to further tie down expectations of its release, Jonze and Co. have released a poster (below) sparse in its focal points but brimming with detail, and pithy in connoting the thematic and emotional range of the film. I think it's clever that the Wild Thing's face has been cut off: maintains mystery (and doesn't obligate the filmmakers to one appearance), but also helps to draw you to Max (Max Records) standing at his side, with the Wild Thing no doubt a transliteration of sorts of the boy's pre-adolescent mania. It also solidifies that practical effects, suits and puppetry will still be central to the visual aspects of the film, to assume a similar charm to that of Jim Henson's creations (but with an earthier, more adult flair).

(click to enlarge, via Slashfilm)

This is one such project that has kept my mouth watering, mind racing, ever since the concept of a marriage between Jonze and his knack for quirkiness and whimsy and Sendak's vividly, beautifully, earnest book about maturation, restraint and interpersonal responsibility slipped its way into my vision; and has topped two separate most anticipated lists of mine since production began. (I don't have those lists published online, but will now make it a feature in the future.)(I referenced this film in my last post as the project I'm most looking forward to that's penned by author Dave Eggers.) It's a match made in Heaven. Because although I adore "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," which was directed by Michel Gondry, I'm a sucker for Jonze's collaborations with Charlie Kaufman, partly because those scripts are just downright wondrous in their intricacies, but largely because of Jonze's magnificent way of constructing them. "Being John Malkovich" is a masterwork of absurd relationships and people, and as a meditation on being and consciousness, but is unforgettable in its sincerity, its conclusiveness about love as an end-all, be-all. And "Adaptation" is such a tender film with dozens of quotable lines that resonate largely because the humanity that Jonze is able to extract through some peculiar devices like pacing and scale are virtually unnoticeable at first, but indelible upon review.

It's like those experience you have as a child where someone has said something to you, or you have witnessed something that would otherwise be the minutiae of the day, but they become motifs in life, recurring with a little more depth and profundity each time. That's the beauty of childhood, and I hope Jonze has been able to instill that kind of approach in this film.

The trailer for the film will debut in front of "Monsters vs. Aliens" on March 27th.

Will you be going "Where the Wild Things Are?"


IMAGE from: Entertainment Weekly
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Sam Mendes Gives it Another "Go"

Only a few months after Sam Mendes' powerfully and cripplingly dramatic "Revolutionary Road" (which was robbed of some much-deserved nominations, not wins, at this last outing at the Oscars, most definitely for Leonardo Dicaprio but also for the underrated Kathy Bates) and he's already geared up for another go with yet another American couple to explore in "Away We Go." Lucky for them he's had his fill of destroying dreams, and now is intent on preserving the glue that holds a couple together (played by John Krasinski of "The Office" and Maya Rudolph who was a favorite of mine from "SNL" and appeared in Robert Altman's swan song "A Prairie Home Companion") after they find out their newborn baby might not have a home. It's totally new territory for Mendes - who's done suburban parody, disconcerting war pictures, and cold gangster films - and as far away tonally from "Revolutionary Road" as can be conceived, so it's an experiment I'm quite excited about, especially with all the talent involved.

'Away We Go' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

The film has the stylings of "Little Miss Sunshine" which yields some amount of promise, but at the same time makes me groan at the prospect of sitting through another film in which people act insensitively to one another for our own amusement. (As much as I adore Catherine O'Hara, her line and delivery about moving "3000 miles away" are completely unfunny to me.) But unlike "Little Miss Sunshine," the film looks like it'll take a more tender approach to their oddities and misgivings, all in a post-"Juno"/"Rachel Getting Married" kind of way, relishing in the unpredictable joys that arise from difficult circumstances rather than pitting those circumstantial incidences and, albeit unlikely, aspirations against an overtly cruel, bitter and cynical world as was depicted all throughout "Sunshine." (With the exception of the pageant director at the end, every minor character in the entire film is either a bastard or a fool.) I think the film takes more notes from the worldview of author Dave Eggers (who plays screenwriter here, this now being the second film penned by him that I am interested in) than director-duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who often uses the harshness that can tinge an expression misinterpreted or taken out of context to contrast with their eventual softness. His characters are frequently hardened souls (or souls looking to get hard - sorry, vulgar, but true) who don't quite experience enlightenment in some climactic moment, but rather discover that their severe callousness is choking the people around them, or themselves. (His novel You Shall Know Our Velocity! explores precisely that in the guise of a road narrative.)

I've had a particular interest in Sam Mendes ever since he did "Road to Perdition" and after I'd discovered that he was a comrade of Rob Marshall's ("Chicago," "Memoirs of a Geisha," the upcoming "Nine") in their work in theatre and on Broadway. His films maintain that stage sensibility, very often framed in such a way that they could retain utter fidelity if transported instantly to the Steppenwolf house, for instance. ("Revolutionary Road" could be the next "August: Osage County" if it only had some great talent willing to do it.) His use of light, music, camera distance, even color reeks theater and its a wonderful thing to keep in mind while watching his films. The heartbreaking scene in "Road to Perdition" where Tom Hanks meets Paul Newman for the last time in the rain surrounded by buildings dotted with windows and silhouettes peering out is made all the more moving when you consider that if it were on the stage, it would've been conceived of as a choreographed dance almost, with bullets as their confetti or glitter, rather than as two disparate performances occurring at once in a large sound stage. There seems to be a lot of open-air environments in "Away We Go," so it'll be fascinating to see how Mendes might apply his theater background.

The film arrives in limited release on June 5th.

Will you be going "Away" on this "Road"?


IMAGE from: Paste
IMAGE from: Entertainment Weekly
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