Hollywood hasn't impressed me much this year, however there are two movies coming out that have me excited: the new Harry Potter movie in July and the long overdue, live-action version of one of my childhood favorites, Maurice Sendak's classic, Where The Wild Things Are.
| This movie is being directed by Spike Jonz. For those of you who aren't familiar with the name, Jonz directed Being John Malkovich, the wonderfully dark and surreal movie which starred John Cusack as a puppeteer who discovers a portal into the brain of John Malkovich. Jonz also directed Adaptation, another brilliant, but more neurotic movie with Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). I thoroughly enjoyed both of these films. One down side of Jonz was his involvement in MTV's Jackass movies, to which I readily acknowledge (and am proud) that I am not part of their target demographic. My hope is that Jonz did those for the money so he could continue making high caliber artsy films. Speaking of demographics, any movie of this classic Sendack work will automatically have a large family demographic. I read in interviews that, like me, Jonz read the book as a kid, and will want to share it with his own kids. Now given his track record with the dark, artsy films and hoping that he has the sense not to incorporate any elements from the Jackass series, I'm still a bit anxious about the final product. That said, another potential positive factor for this film is that the screenplay was written by Dave Eggers, the creative mind behind McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Eggers is co-founder of a program called 826 National, which promotes writing skills in kids ages 6-18 at seven centers across the U.S. Given that level of interaction with kids, I think there's very good reason to be hopeful that the script Jonz started with was in tune with younger audiences. |
