Lost in the Trees – Where the Wild Things Are
Real quick, here’s a trailer you have to see.
To preface, let me first say that I think I may be the only person on the planet who didn’t go crazy for Adaptation. Really, I didn’t even like Being John Malkovich all that much. To me, they were over-meta and over-clever. There was just something about them, something that turned me off and didn’t ring true. I know, heresy, blasphemy. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t respect them (it’s hard to disrespect anything Charlie Kaufman puts out). And despite being underwhelmed by those two, Spike Jonze’s first two features, I can’t help but be oddly enamored with the looks of his third, the children’s book turned anti-CGI fantasy film, Where the Wild Things Are.
I look at the book cover and I know that I know it. I know I should have some memory of being in the elementary school library with my juice box in one hand and Where the Wild Things Are in the other, red juice stains lining my lips as I skipped the words in favor of the pictures–but I just can’t place it. Now, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, that’s cemented in there; The Hungry Caterpillar, no problem. But this one’s lost somewhere between a memory of throwing a birthday for the letter T in kindergarten and my very first act of rebellion, whispering instead of sleeping on that red and blue mat during nap time every afternoon. And it’s driving me nuts.
This just-released full trailer, though, conjures something up in me, more feelings than memory, but something. In a way, it’s kind of amazing. It’s got this incredible sense of youthfulness and dreaming, of drifting away on that red and blue mat and for a passing few minutes being somewhere better than school, somewhere perfectly lit and in the forest. I may not have the best track record with Jonze so far but I think this may be the one to break the streak. Just the way the costumes look almost homemade, like something out of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, adds such an organic feeling to the world. And Jonze’s background in music videos comes through, too–ARCADE FIRE’s “Wake Up” feels tailor-made and perfect here.
The only thing I worry about is whether spending 90 minutes with the “wild things” would get old. The 2 and a half minutes we get of the trailer are definitely chill worthy, but once you strip away the music and quick cuts, I wonder, will it start to feel like any other kid’s movie? Knowing Jonze’s style, probably not. I guess I just worry about it being over-something again, over-cute, maybe, or possibly over-weird. But I do love James Gandolfini voicing the main monster. He always had a childlike fragility buried under all of his anger and overcompensating in The Sopranos and, like it or not, he’ll probably always be Tony to us when we see him onscreen. Having just his voice, though, should offer that certain mix of power and innocence without the drag of us constantly waiting for him to make an ice cream sundae or quit therapy again.
Let me know what you think about the trailer. The film’s due October 16th.
Here’s another promo with less dialogue and story but a lot more of an escape-into-the-imagination feel. I personally think it’s a better trailer, just not as plot or character-oriented. Click here to watch.
This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 2:21 am and is filed under film, trailers/news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
