Here’s Spike Jonze and Karen O talking about how they came up with the soundtrack for his number one movie, Where the Wild Things Are. The movie is very good, great in some places, infuriating in others. But one of the things that really stood out was Karen O’s soundtrack. It was refreshing to go to a movie and not hear the same recycled soundtrack from some form of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri, et. al.
By James Furbush | September 11th, 2009 | 6:36 am UTC
Four brand new Where the Wild Things Arecharacter posters. There’s not a whole lot to the design, but as far as character posters go, they’re pretty great. Why all the sad eyes? You should be excited the wild rumpus is about to start! [via]
Karen O, of Yeah Yeah Yeahs fame, is penning the soundtrack to the Spike Jonze-directed, Dave Eggers-writing (thus completing the holy hipster trinity), Where the Wild Things Are.
The New Yorker published an excerpt from the upcoming book-length Dave Eggers’s Where The Wild Things Are, appropriately titled “Max at Sea”. I love Eggers, but this seems like a curious and pointless endeavor.
You can see the movie and/or flip through the Maurice Sendak original and I suppose you could slog through Eggers’s fan-fiction novelization of his adaptation of the Sendak masterpiece.
Director Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are has to be the Laure Ling and Euna Lee of movies. One minute there’s trouble with the project (CGI, puppet work, the rough cut) and it’s going to be sent to the proverbial hard labor camp and then poof a trailer shows up (Bill Clinton in this hackneyed metaphor) and all of a sudden the movie is on a plane and headed towards Oscar contention.
Seriously. I’ve never seen audiences react to a trailer in a way that they react to this movie. It’s pure adulation. There is, there has to be, a profound connection between people and the source material. Just the thought of Max and the Wild Things reduces people to a rambunctious six-year-old.
That’s a good thing. A great thing. A thing of beauty.
Disney used to hold the rights for Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and in 1983 they had a young man by the name of John Lasseter , interested in using computers to render 3D backgrounds. Lasseter created some short animations based on the book as a test for another project he had in mind – The Brave Little Toaster. Neither project ended up manifesting itself, with the Toaster being made in traditional 2D animation. For his efforts, Lasseter was fired by Disney because his superiors felt he was stepping on their toes with his new technology.
Whoops! Talk about your all-time gaffs. Lasseter saw the future in the early 80s for how new technology could be applied to the medium. Instead he was fired and then went on to help start Pixar. So in a way, I guess, we should all be thankful these events all indirectly led to the creation of what is inarguably the best animation studio right now.
Lasseter always seems to be ahead of the curb and the above clip is damn impressive, even looking better than some present day computer animated movies. Even if it’s not quite ready for primetime.
Chalk this up to the what if dustbin and normally these types of things make me sad, but given how awesome Spike Jonze’s live-action adaptation looks, well, it’s hard to complain. Every single time the trailer has shown in front of an audience, the entire place inevitably yelps and shouts along at the end of the trailer. [via theseplaces]
If you’re excited for Spike Jonze’s upcoming Where the Wild Things Are adaptation (and who isn’t?) then you might also love this animated version from 1973. It was directed by Gene Deitch for a Czechoslovakian animation company.
USA Today got their hands on a bunch of new photos from Spike Jonze’s upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. The article does reveal a few things, including confirmation that the first trailer will be attached to Monsters vs. Aliens. Expect that to hit the internets around then. Also:
The film expands on “Max’s home life that shed light on why he felt the need to run off to a magical place.”
The only words in the teaser trailer (attached to Monsters vs. Aliens) is one single line spoken by the Wild Thing called Carol (seen above), voiced by James Galdofini, welcoming Max to the new world: “I didn’t want to wake you up. But I really want to show you something.”
Though the Wild Things are nameless in the book, Jonze decided who was who based on their personalities.
Other cast members include: Catherine O’Hara, who voices the Wild Thing with the rhino horn named Judith, Forest Whitaker, who voices the Wild Thing with the big nose, Lauren Ambrose who voices the Wild Thing named KW (shown after the jump in the face to face shot), Chris Cooper who voices Douglas the chicken and Paul Dano who voices Alexander the goat.
This is a brilliant poster for Spike Jonze’s much-anticipated Where the Wild Things Are. It was dug up by The Spike Jonze Fan Blog by mining the pages of Nick Magazine.
I’m not entirely surprised they’ve decided to hide the face of the monsters in this teaser poster, but if CHUD is correct, then we’ll have a trailer for this movie attached to Monsters vs. Aliens. With all the problems this is having, it’ll remain to be seen what sort of market this movie has.
The CHUD tipster described the movie as thus:
Try as I might, I can’t verbalize how I felt about the trailer beyond the most grandiose superlatives: ‘beautiful’ and ‘gorgeous’ and ‘breathtaking’, making me sound like Pete Hammond. The environments in particular (there’s a sequence of cutting between 4 shots of Max running through different environments that is absolutely magical) are a work of incredible vision, especially in light of the production methods Spike opted for. It does feel like a ‘kids movie’ (not pejorative): the trailer repeatedly made me about eight years old, over and over again. Unless I’m an idiot, and you’ll see yourself in a week or two, the finalized monsters are some kind of incredible technical achievement.
The trailer will be scored entirely to The Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up.” Which is kinda a perfect, arty tune and tonally/thematically spot on for Maurice Sendak’s seminal book.
Usually reshoots mean bad things for movies, but if they can get this movie pitch perfect in tone. . .
By James Furbush | November 18th, 2008 | 2:14 pm UTC
AICN’s Drew “Moriarty” McWeeny sat down with director Spike Jonze to talk shop and of course what the deal with his adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are? The movie began filming in 2006 and was supposed to be released by now. Looks like it won’t come out until October of 2009. Jonze also has a few kind words for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, just in case you were wondering about that. [AICN]
By James Furbush | February 20th, 2008 | 10:34 am UTC
UPDATE: The strange news just continues with this project. The guys over at CHUD are reporting that Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are considering reshooting the entire picture! Damn, that’s like tossing $75 million down the drain and going in an entirely different direction.
To wit:
“Sources tell me that the suits at Legendary and Warner Bros are not happy with Max Records, the actor playing Max, the mischievous boy who is crowned King of the Wild Things. Worse than that, they don’t like the film’s tone and want to go back to the script drawing board, possibly losing the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers script when they do it. Apparently the film is too weird and ‘too scary,’ and the character of Max is being seen as not likable.”
my friend BC, who watches a horror movie a day, caught the screening and liked what he saw, but I’ve also been told that the movie is ’subversive,’ which is just the sort of thing that drives studio suits up the wall. The film, I keep hearing, is pretty great at this early stage of post-production, but it could very possibly not be a commercial movie. You can imagine the panic at Warner Bros when they realized they’d made a reportedly 75 million dollar kiddie art house film.
To which you’ve got to say, well what the hell did you expect? You know, if you want a safe kiddie pic don’t hire Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers to do so. Warner Bros. reaps what they sow and now if this is true, then only fans are gonna get shafted. Will we ever see this version of the film?
Finally confirmed directly from Spike Jonze, the speculative Where the Wild Things Are footage that popped up over the weekend, was in fact, early test footage.
that was a very early test with the sole purpose of just getting some footage to Ben our vfx (visual effects) supervisor to see if our vfx plan for the faces would work. The clip doesnt look or feel anything like the movie, the Wild Thing suit is a very early cringy prototype, and the boy is a friend of ours Griffin who we had used in a Yeah Yeah Yeahs video we shot a few weeks before. We love him, but he is not in the actually film…Oh and that is not a wolf suit, its a lamb suit we bought on the internet. Talk to you later… – Spike Jonze
So there ya go. In case you were really still wondering. Where the Wild Things Are has been pushed back until 2009, under speculation that the VFX are taking longer than planned, reshoots are necessary and the studio is overall unhappy with the dark tone of the film.
