Where The Wild Things Are
 

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Comes out on my birthday. Really Warner Bros. couldn't have given me a better present, I loved Where The Wild Things are as a kid and the trailer looks amazing.


I really really hope they get this right.

I've been looking forward to this for a while.

I'm quite excited!

Oh I didn't know about this! I must have read that book 5 x's a day as a kid. I'm all over the movie now. Looks very cool :).

And Karen O is doing the soundtrack! <3

I can't wait. The effects look brilliant.

How do you make a full length movie out of a 20 page book that has like 50 words in it?

Well, it's "inspired by" the book. There's obviously a whole lot of stuff even just in the trailer that had no direct source in the book.

Good question.

So is this one: How do you make a 450,000 word novel fit into even 3 feature-length films (The Lord of the Rings)?

[The average American can read as many as 300 words per minute. That would mean the average American reading The Lord of the Rings would take at least 25 hours. Now imagine having to speak or act it aloud dramatically. :)]

How is this related?

Well, the point I'm making is that creating a film vs. creating even a picture book are two entirely different processes. You can't "make a book into a film" so much as "make a film out of a book."

I agree with you, though. There isn't much source material, so there will be much to be created for a film.

I'm more concerned about the special effects. I'm worried about losing my suspension of disbelief: "Dude, they're just guys in suits."

I don't remember reading the book.

Would it be interesting to an adult?

I will be in the minority, but I'm not really all that excited for this film.

As soon as I saw the trailer for this (I think it was when I saw "Away We Go") so much nostalgia came over me.

I'm so excited for this movie!

I saw the trailer for this when I saw Harry Potter.

And yes, I want to see it. :)

next time you're at the library/book store, just grab it off the shelf and read it. It'll take you 2 minutes.

Saw the trailer for it when we saw Harry Potter. I am excited for it - also excited about Cloudy with a Chance of Meetballs - did anyone else love that book as a kid?

I think I'm one of the few people that won't be conned into seeing this crap just because of the Nostalgia factor. The trailer looks boring and I'm not interested in it at all, and yes, I read and liked the book as a kid. Nostalgia != interest for me. It's gotta be more than that.

I didn't read Meatballs until I had a son; but, I LOVED it, and loved the preview. Wild Things, good book, but the preview, not so much.

Another beloved childhood book to movie that might be worth watching :

Part of me is thinking, "yes! Let the wild rumpus begin!" The other part is saying, "damn it. Don't screw up a favorite childhood memory."

First off... if you didn't like the book, no one cares if you don't like the preview/movie. Go find your soul in some other story.

Meanwhile. For those who did love the book...
Here's some grand info - the author of Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, worked closely with Spike Joneze on developing this movie and, in fact, gives a glowing seal of approval on this movie that is a creature all its own from the book.
Check it out in his own words: Apple - Movie Trailers - Where the Wild Things Are (click on "exclusive featurette").

I am super excited for the movie. An hour+ is a long time to fill, but there's lots of subtext in that book that didn't need to be explicitly stated but is simply understood by all children. I imagine lots of this will be manifested in the movie and make great filler aka character & plot development.

For real? Wow, now I'm even more excited than before to see it. This hasn't been a bad year for movies; Funny People and Drag Me To Hell were good, I'm looking forward to District 9 tonight, and now WTWTA looks to be even better than I thought...

I can't stop thinking about this movie!
Karen O is a good musical choice.
And finding this collab between her and Spike Jonze makes me really excited and not at all surprised they're doing WTWTA!

Though, when watching the first preview that came out, however cheesily spine tingling appropriate the music is, I couldn't help but think about how perfect Sigur Ros would be for this movie too. I mean, their music videos are so similar already!
The music of Gobbledigook came to mind immediately (maybe start the song halfway through if you want to watch with the WTWTA trailer hah!)

Personally, I'm not a fan of the casting of Max. He doesn't have that snarky, troublemaking look to him that the book's character did.


Even still, I'm really looking forward to the movie.

One week to go!

Not to bluntly say I'm in the same boat, but to preface: I don't get hyped up for feature films or movies, never have and I still am very indifferent to what the media endorses to me; I know I'm in an even lower minority than those that don't care for this one movie, but I got to say, I don't care for a film until I sit through the entire thing and re-evaluate it thereafter, deciding later if it was a worthwhile endeavor or just a lazy waste of my computing intellect into a hinged plotline. I just don't feed the machine.

That said, even without owning a television, I have heard entirely too much advertisements for this film. It's absurd. I thought it would have premiered last week considering the sheer volume of commercials I've seen and heard offhand, but now, it's still not out? After all this time.. alright. People are excited, I understand. Word's got to get out. Minor annoyance I can avoid.

Also, not to be the resident 'debbie-downer', but the single most grating thing I have a problem with is that in the same repetitive commercial they keep cycling day and night, why does the kid propose a contest of 'imaginary warfare' amongst the beasts he encounters? That just kills the piece of mind that the wild things universe was a docile place of monsters, and because of the arrival of one small boy who has been fostered to enjoy cowboys and GI Joe, he turns the place where the wild things are into a consummate pandemonium of grotesque cannibals.

I don't think it'll be a bad film, though, I'm just making all sorts of leaps because I don't like the kid, especially when he talks.

Here's the review(s), for those thinking of watching it this(?) weekend.

Weekend Movie Roundup - 10/16/09

I saw it this afternoon. I thought it was pretty good, it captured the ups and downs of being a little boy nicely.

I think it's one of those books parents like more than the kids do.

Personally, I got nada out of it.

For the record, the book is ten sentences long. I loved it as a kid. I don't think my parents ever read it.

The movie is an entirely different animal (NPI). I think it sounds good, the AV Club gave it a good rating, and they're tougher than most.

The one thing that kind of annoys me is that Dave Eggers, who was the scriptwriter has turned around the story into a mid youth novel. Which immediately found a publisher because he owns a publishing company. So essentially it's self published - which I think is really bad form for an author. And the book has been panned so far.

The guy writes one successful book and thinks he can ape Sendak.

I really don't care to consider what constitutes success in the book world these days but I've been a Dave Eggers fan for quite some time and while I haven't (and probably won't ever) read his Wild Things adaptation, he's rather talented.

With that said, I caught a late thursday/early friday midnight showing and I thought it was pretty good. Nothing particularly groundbreaking. Nothing that'll stick to you unless you were into the book as a child but there was plenty of visual interest and I found that in almost every way that the movie could have been made better, would have taken it further away from the source material.

A pretty successful adaptation considering how poorly the original lends itself to the format. Probably would've been better as a short but all in all, it was enjoyable.

I don't disagree he's talented. I loved his effort on MIGHT magazine. It's just that he's reached a point where he's into his own fandom.

I cant wait for this to come out in the UK

One of the favourite books of my childhood.

Saw this last night with my wife. It was...interesting. We agreed that this movie is basically for those of us who are now adults (or at least teenagers) who read the book as a kid or had the book read to them as a kid. It's not horribly scary, but I feel like the movie is kind of out of reach for most kids of age for the book.

I'd give it a 6 or 7 out of ten. It's pretty visually incredible, but the plot (as might be expected) is...odd...at best. Spoiler: I like my wife's explanation of all the wild things representing aspects of his personalities and externalizations of some of his wants, desires and fears. The movie is very much a close look into the mind of a child, and is worth seeing for that and for nostalgia, but don't expect something revolutionary.

I was bored out of my skull.

Yes I read/liked the book as a small child. But any nostalgia factor was completely satiated by the previews alone, because the full movie didn't bring anything extra to the table.

And instead of a boy with an over-active imagination, max came off as an uber-needy little pussy.

Oh well, yet another flic that I totally disagree with the general consensus on.

Went to see it on Friday, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was good, not great but definetly good.

I tend to agree with this. Eggers is very talented; unfortunately, he buys into his own reputation too readily.