Show Me Where The Wild Things Are

So the trailer for Spike Jonze's long awaited project "Where The Wild Things Are", just dropped. You can find it apple.com.
The film has long been delayed due to complaints by Warner Bros that the film is too dark and inappropriate for children. Which I'm sure thwarted the whole reason the green lit a children's book. The rumor was that Jonze was going to remove his name from the project, which seemed to me to be a completely tragic turn of events to to my excitement that his former girlfriend Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's was doing the soundtrack. Forest Whitaker who plays Ira the lead "Wild Thing", was very vocal about the importance of the dark scenes and that kids need to see some of that stuff. Regardless of what happened between Jonze and the Studio, the film is finally ready to be released. Currently scheduled for Oct. 16, 2009.

You can see in the trailer that the feel is much different from the current over saturation of Dreamworks/Pixar animation ventures. It is a combination of live-action, CGI, animatronics and enormous puppets.


The clip below is from a test that leaked onto the internet years ago which Jonze conducted to pitch his creative direction to the studios. What I love most is that depite its brevity, it contains within it larger suggestions. For a short scene, I love how it subtley contrasts Ira's (the Moster) physical invulnerability, with his major emotional vulnerability. As he walks away muttering that "robots are the best", you can feel his disappointment.




Robots are the best,

-MM