"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

State of the Race, Feb '09 Edition

Welcome!

This is the first post here at Cine-O-Rama, where I aim to discuss not just the movies in all their stages of development, but especially those films which are considered in contention at the biggest awards ceremony in the business: the Oscars. We'll traverse the landscape of the festival circuits, the critic circles and the box office to assess each of the films, their importance and their innovations; and recall films from the past which have stood the test of time.


Ripped straight from my personal blog, with some added flourishes:

Taking a cue from Kris Tapley at In Contention, I'm very quickly going to run through who I believe are the current major forces in the upcoming Oscar race in '10. Quite a long ways to go before that point, but then isn't it the best feeling when you can say you called it ten months in advance? Besides, I've always found it interesting to see how films evolve over time and sustain changes in their consumption, and maybe we'll be able to see some surprises unfold right before our eyes as the year passes.

No pictures are standing out so deeply quite yet, which makes the whole ordeal even more sensitive and interesting since they're all on relatively equal footing, but I have my money on "Amelia" as a definite Actress contender for Hillary Swank - would be her third nom, with a win being three for three - which could play out either like "Boys Don't Cry" (only nommed for Actress) or "Million Dollar Baby" (which went all the way to Best Picture). If it hits its mark, she'll likely be up against her former director in the Best Picture category, Clint Eastwood from "Million Dollar", who will complete his Untitled Nelson Mandela project with Morgan Freeman later this year, who will likely go all the way to the Actor category. Eastwood is a darling with Oscar (though 2008 wasn't his year, apparently, since both "Changeling" and "Gran Torino" managed to get neglected except for Angelina Jolie's nom for the former) and this project has some deep history in it. I'm sure the old farts in the Academy will recall the global awareness of apartheid and Mandela's struggle against it in a way that they couldn't remember the Wineville Chicken Murders that were at the center of "Changeling."

Of course, with Eastwood back in top form with an ambitious and heavy project that'll really let him stretch his legs out, he's got to have the competition, and I think this may play out similarly to the year "The Departed" won, with Martin Scorsese this year giving us "Shutter Island," which sounds like a swashbuckler but is in fact a CIA flick with his old pal and very frequent collab Leonardo Dicaprio in the starring role. Got a taste of the FBI with "Departed" and decided to go one step further, I suppose. The premise sounds a bit too actiony and espionagy (are they words? on the internet, they are) not meditative or dramatic enough, but we'll see. In a game of Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation, I think Paul Haggis, who was Eastwood's scripter for "Million Dollar Baby," may see his rival from a couple years ago rise again, with Ang Lee's next follow-up to "Brokeback Mountain" after "Lust, Caution" ("Brokeback" should've won Picture, I keep telling people) being "Taking Woodstock." A period flick about the undying and seminal concert, it might be appealing in a way that "Milk" and "Frost/Nixon" were last year if only because they hearken back to a very strangely American past and unearth some of the nuances of the times that we all have forgotten about. The Academy might be itching to give some love to Ang Lee in the Picture category after they relegated him to just Best Director the year "Crash" crashed the party and stole Picture. Yes, I'm bitter.

As a fan of "Chicago," I'd personally love to see Rob Marshall get back to the big stage with "Nine", which is an adaptation of the stage adaptation of Federico Fellini's "8 1/2," a marvelous black and white film. Marshall failed to make it there with "Memoirs of a Geisha" (which wasn't a bad film, just messy and politically incorrect with the casting), so he's probably focused on Big O with this one. Got an incredible cast, too, with recent winner Daniel Day-Lewis, and a good sliver of the actresses that were at the Oscars this year as the addressees to the noms - Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard, not to mention other winners and noms Judi Dench, Kate Hudson and Penelope Cruz (who finally got her dues last weekend). Lots of gorgeous women, Day-Lewis is a lucky bastard. I could easily see this be a huge hit with the supporting categories, but perhaps Day-Lewis will earn for himself yet another nomination and solidify his position near the top of the acting food chain.

But the real one to beat, I think, will be Peter Jackson's new film, the adaptation of "The Lovely Bones." Early word is already brewing, and the coffee that's being stirred smells good and bold. They at the studio and on the ground resist using the "O" word, of course, but media monkeys are throwing it around for them, including even my old professor Anne Thompson at Variety. Snippets, set pictures, all that have been decidedly infrequent and there's a lot of hush hushing from the actors in the film, so you know they know they've got something golden in their hands that they have to guard it from our prying eyes and hungry hands. Could be Jackson's grand return to family drama, and the natural progression from his previous "Heavenly Creatures", which is one of his absolute best works. He's new Hollywood royalty, new money to Eastwood's very very old money, and could very easily have the movie-to-beat for the entirety of the year.

Of course there are other films to watch, but as it stands, these are the ones I'd bet my money on. Though if you were a betting man (I'm not), you'd probably figure that now wouldn't be the time to bet, as the campaign has but barely started. Wait for some studio honchos to get big-headed or enter a momentary state of weakness and declare an early victory before putting up your dukes.


Others to watch for in all categories: Michael Mann's "Public Enemies," with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale; Kevin MacDonald's "State of Play"; Jason Reitman (of "Juno") directing "Up in the Air" with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga; Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant"; Julie Taymor's (of "Across the Universe") "The Tempest" with a sex-reversal and Helen Mirren now in the lead role; Michelle Pfeiffer's period vehicle "Cheri" (does that sound odd to you?); the Alejando Gonzales Inarritu ("Babel") film "Biutiful" with Javier Bardem; Paul Greengrass of "United 93" with "Green Zone" and Matt Damon; James Cameron's long time-coming alien flick "Avatar"; and the Sundance hit "An Education" which may pull itself up to the ranks in some of the acting categories.

Keep those eyes... open (spoken like Patrick Bateman).



IMAGE taken from The NY Post

Cannes: Most Anticipated.

This year's Cannes Film Festival (with poster efforts by none other than David Lynch, below; employing a familiar motif) boasts some highly-anticipated new films from some of the most exciting filmmakers around, and a good number of them are set to open. The rest of the schedule, of course, looks just as splendid. (Here's the Variety coverage.) The first unveiling goes to Fernando Meirelles' ('The Constant Gardener' and 'City of God') Blindness which is one of the most curious films and one that I'm incredibly excited about. It takes a high concept like an epidemic of contagious blindness sweeping across a city and turns it into an elegant (so I hear) allegory about the fragility of civilization. It's adapted from Nobel prize-winner Jose Saramago's 1995 novel of the same name. 'Children of Men' and 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' come to mind whenever I hear or read about this film, and that's definitely a good thing, it's a good combination. The cast looks shining, too, consisting of Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, and Gael Garcia Bernal.

Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, is another of my personal picks for most anticipated, as Kaufman is one of the few screenwriters in or around Hollywood who has managed to turn the auteur theory on its head, or his. He's a hot commodity, as they say, and his new pic is being trailed by studio execs like a lion to a calf (seen the Battle at Kruger video yet?). They may get lost in this one, though, because it looks like a doozy: Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a theater director (living in Schenectady, New York, where else?) whose wife - played by Catherine Keener - leaves him, so to prove his worth decides to build a replica of the city in a warehouse, which he expands ultimately for forty years and populates with actual people. Even more of a doozy: Kaufman always said he wanted to make a horror film, and he calls this one it. His first time directing (he's the only first-timer this year at the festival), he's got some major ambitions.

Some of the other films to debut: Steven Soderbergh's Che, which follows Benicio del Toro as the 'Lawrence of Latin America' in a two-parter; Woody Allen's continuation of his re-energized phase that started with 'Match Point', Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which follows Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall in another twisty, lusty plot; James Gray's Two Lovers about a man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who's stuck in the middle between a woman his family loves and a new and volatile neighbor; and Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, which stars Angelina Jolie as a mother (the story of her life) who finds with the return of her abducted child that something's not quite right. A year with big names has quite a few fighting for the top spot.

IMAGE from: Anne Thompson

2008: Year of the Comic Book Movie?

With the summer season having been kicked off this last weekend to an incredible start with Iron Man (which opened to more than $100 million in its first weekend - the largest for a non-sequel), the stakes are now even higher for the other big comic books films shooting for the top spot as Summer 2008's biggest tentpole adaptation, The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight. The Paramount-distributed flick has proven to be a big earner for Marvel, who produced and developed the film independently and had gambled on bringing director Jon Favreau, ultimately to great success with him at the helm.

But of course Universal (whose 'Hulk' will be released on June 13) and Warner (with their 'Dark Knight' to debut on July 18) were aware of the anticipation surrounding the film, which had a $50 million ad campaign behind it, and decided to capitalize on its timing and newly-energized demographic to promote their own blockbusters with new trailers to call their own. 'Hulk' was released exclusively through Apple, while 'Dark Knight' had its posted on one of their viral websites (the latter also taking the opportunity to draw more hype around Harvey Dent, who of course becomes Two-Face, in a strategic move away from reminding audiences of Heath Ledger's tragic passing, who is still extensively featured in the trailer).

Also awaiting release are Wanted, which is helmed by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov and stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman, based on the comic by Mark Millar, and Hancock, which isn't based on a comic but nonetheless features Will Smith as a bad-mouthed and ill-received superhero who decides to change his public image with the help of Jason Bateman. It's a definite summer of hotly-anticipated flicks of all kinds, it'll be fascinating to see how this season yields by the time it closes.

And even beyond the summer, films like Frank Miller's adaptation of the Will Eisner comic The Spirit and Zack Snyder's follow-up to smash hit 300 are awaiting wide release with almost fever pitch, the former still waiting a release date (though it does already has a teaser).




*Speaking of Iron Man and The Dark Knight, two major spoilers have found their way onto the internet. For the one concerning what happens after the credits roll in Iron Man, click here. For a truly disturbing, but exciting, image from the Batman sequel, click here.