With its 16 October US release date rapidly drawing into focus, the pre-release hype for the Spike Jonze-directed adaptation of
Where the Wild Things Are is accordingly being brought right to the boil. We have had a new trailer and mini-feature in recent weeks, and now there are four new character banners upon which we fortuitous folk can feast our ravenous eyes.
First we have Max, played by young whippersnapper Max Records, who is the focal point of the whole story. It is Max who fashions the Wild Things from his own imagination, and escapes from his everyday life into their remote realm where he reigns as king. Which, I suppose, would probably beat another day of school dinners.
We are also treated to close-ups of some Wild Things; namely Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), Judith (voiced by
Home Alone mom and Christopher Guest-troupe member Catherine O’Hara), and KW (whose vocal pipes come courtesy of
Six Feet Under actress Lauren Ambrose).
Where the Wild Things Are represents the first big screen effort from Jonze since
Adaptation in 2002, and plans for a major movie version of Maurice Sendak’s 60s-published children’s book go back even further, with Pixar mastermind John Lasseter attempting to put an animated version together while he was at Disney back in the 1980s. Sendak himself has been enthused by the new cinematic transposition of his illustrated book, remarking that the film manages to be a definitively Jonze vision, while simultaneously remaining true to the spirit of the original source material.
The buzz about
Where the Wild Things Are has been steadily building for a while now, and the recent trailer exhibited enough charm to propel Jonze’s movie towards the apex of many people’s list of movies they are most looking forward to this autumn. Of course the greater the pre-release anticipation is then the greater the risk that the finished movie will ultimately disappoint (don’t know why, but Zack Snyder’s
Watchmen suddenly popped into my head then). But all the indicators thus far from
Where the Wild Things Are have been positive, and my solitary bugbear is that we Brits are being forced to wait until 11 December to check the film out for ourselves. Not fair!
Source:
Total Film 
May 13, 2009, 07:32:55 PM
