Where the Wild Things Are (PG)
Director: Spike Jonze Stars: Max Record, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper Rating: 4/5 101-minutes, now screening
Beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak had always been a little reticent about granting film rights to his legendary picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. After all, while the pictures themselves are fiercely evocative, there’s really only a hundred or so actual words in the slim title, and the narrative is even slimmer: little boy gets angry at his parents and wanders off into his imagination to lick his wounds.
But Sendak found a safe bet in his friend Spike Jonze, a young director whose career, while primarily featuring music videos, has occasionally diverted into the surreal, collaborating with the likes of Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation). In adapting Sendak’s book, Jonze relocated to Australia and began the complicated process of bringing to life a little boy’s imagination.
The result is quite astonishing. After he confronts his Mum (Catharine Keener) and her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) – the little feller has had a bad afternoon courtesy of his sister and her friends – Max runs off, jumps into a little boat, and sails to a new land filled with giant trees and populated with… well… scary monsters. But the diminutive Max overcomes his initial terror and bluffs the little group of monsters into believing he is their new king. Jonze has been quoted describing his film as less a children’s film, and more of a film about childhood, and it’s a fair call – he has expertly tapped into the psyche of a small boy coming to terms with his inner demons and learning to cope with them.
Max Record is simply astonishing as the boy in question, as are the various monsters, including the barely controlled Carol played by James Gandolfini. With glorious visuals and a wild, unrestrained soundtrack, this really is a masterpiece.
Feast awaits over Xmas break
With a veritable cornucopia of films coming up over the next few weeks, and as The Indie taking a break over the festive season,let’s highlight a few films I’m looking forward to at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010.
Always worth waiting for, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has once again collaborated with the gorgeous Penelope Cruz in Broken Embraces (December 17). And it might be a case of ‘believe the hype’ when it comes to James Cameron’s Avatar (Dec 17), which has been 10 years in the making, and is rumoured to have cost almost half a billion dollars. I’ve seen a sneak preview of some of this sci-fi pic, and it does look incredible.
Boxing Day is traditionally one of the more lucrative dates on the cinematic calendar, and there are some big titles in the offing. Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lovely Bones (pictured below) which is based on the novel of the same name by Alice Sebold and is a compelling murder mystery starring Saorise Ronan, who was last seen in Atonement. And there have been some promising reports about Jane Campion’s period romance, Bright Star that tells the little known story of the romance between legendary poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Sam Taylor Wood’s Nowhere Boy is a finely crafted bio-pic about John Lennon’s life before The Beatles; and if you’re looking for some grubby French post-Christmas fare, you can’t go past the very funny coming-of-age film, The French Kissers. Finally, January will see the release of Australian director John Hillcoat’s superb adaptation of The Road by Cormac McCarthy; George Clooney stars in Up in the Air, a comedy about what one man will do for frequent flyer miles; and Brisbane’s own Spearig brothers release their antidote to Twilight, in Daybreakers.
The Binge
Oz offerings on DVD worth a look
Dead Snow (R)
Lucky Country (M)
Balibo (M)
Samson and Delilah (MA15+)
The Cove (M)
Ghost in the Shell: 2.0 Redux (M)
(all now available through Madman Entertainment)
If you’re looking for some ideas for pressies in the countdown to Christmas, you can’t really go past a DVD; and there are numerous titles being released in time for the wrapping. Made by two Norwegian graduates from Bond University, Dead Snow is a zombie film with a difference: reanimated Nazis attacking stupid preppies on a ski trip – ’nuff said.
Three Aussie titles are being released, with Queensland’s own Kriv Stenders directing the gorgeously shot period piece Lucky Country starring Aden Young as a disillusioned farmer in the Victorian bush at the turn of the twentieth-century; Robert Connelly’s award-winning Balibo starring Anthony LaPaglia tells the story of six journalists who were murdered during Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor; and Warwick Thornton recently picked up a gong for Best Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards for his beautiful film about young love in remote Australia, Samson and Delilah.
Doco lovers can’t go past The Cove. Directed by Louie Psioyos, this suspense-filled film exposes the practices of a very dodgy village in Japan that indulges in an annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins, and then passes the catch off as whale meat in the domestic market. And finally, something for the anime lovers out there, Mamoru Oshii has released a digital reproduction of his legendary Ghost in the Shell, (pictured below) the landmark animated film that inspired films such as The Matrix.
