Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!
SO WAS I RIGHT ABOUT WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE?
I’m on record as telling readers to ignore the mixed-to-decent reviews for Where the Wild Things Are – that this movie was one seriously naked emperor (i.e. a bad movie that many people refused to acknowledge).
It is, of course, impossible to say who is “right” on something as subjective a film opinion. But now that the movie has opened and played for a while, what did everyone else think?
Here at TheTorchOnline.com, most commenters seemed to agree with me. This may not mean much, since perhaps people were drawn to a review they agreed with (although usually people online are pretty, uh, forthcoming when it comes disagreeing with opinions!).
This was typical:
It’s not just a bad movie, it’s a really, really, REALLY bad movie. Lovable Max from the book became a latchkey brat in need of serious therapy.
Much was made about how the movie was supposed to be from the POV of a child, but I thought TheTorchOnline.com commenter Nina made a particularly trenchant point that I wish I’d made:
I’m sorry, but 9 year olds are way more sophisticated than this movie makes them out to be. Max is a 4 year old in a 9 year old’s body.
In addition, while the reviews were mixed-to-good, there were plenty of critics who hated it — a heated critical split that EW noted in their most recent issue.
What about audiences? The movie did open strongly (not surprisingly, given a very effective advertising campaign), making $32 million its opening weekend.
On the other hand, it fell a dismal 57% the second weekend, and another 52% the weekend after that, and has now grossed a total of not quite $70 million (US), where it has stalled. It’s not an outright flop, and will probably make money (it cost $80 million to make and probably a similar amount to market), but it’s definitely not resonating with audiences either.
User reviews at various websites are split too, although they usually come in lower than the critics: at Yahoo, it’s at B- (critics gave it a B+), and on Netflix, it’s at just over three out of five stars (due to the nature of user ratings, movies rarely go too much lower than this). At Metacritic, however, critics gave it a “70″ out of a 100, while users gave it a “71.”
There was once some talk of Wild Things getting a Best Picture Oscar nomination (!!), but I think the poor box office makes that extremely unlikely.
In the end, the movie seemed to split audiences even more than it split the critics. In any event, it’s nice to know I wasn’t alone!
VAMPIRE OVERLOAD!
We’ve written before about the current overload of vampire-themed projects, but I was confronted by vampire-mania in a rather dramatic way when I went into a Barnes and Noble last weekend.
Here’s a photo I took of all the vampire-themed books in the teen section:
And keep in mind that this was just the teen section! There were plenty of other vampire books in the “fantasy,” “romance,” and “general fiction” sections too!
Incredible.
THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX
I confess I was a little disappointed by the season premiere of Legend of the Seeker. Oh, wait, there’s another prophecy for you to fulfill. Oh, and yeah, here’s yet another relative you didn’t know about.
Please. Resetting a series doesn’t mean just rejiggering last year’s storyline, giving things different names, and doing the same thing all over again. The Stone of Tears? Really?
Still, the show continues to look fantastic, and the leads are appealing, so I’m still in. This week, the search for the Stone of Tears brings the Seeker face-to-face with “an evil from the grave”. (The show is syndicated, so check local listings.)
I’ve seen all six hours of the mini-series remake of The Prisoner, starring Ian McKellen, running Sunday through Tuesday. Here’s my review. Nutshell: it’s a major snooze. (AMC, Sunday-Tuesday, 8 PM).
On Tuesday, NBC and DreamWorks Animation try their hand at creating one of those lucrative Christmas classics with Merry Madagascar, where Santa crash-lands in the zoo in Central Park (and encounters the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, and the rest of the gang from the Madagascar movies) . The rivalry between the “north pole” reindeer and the “south pole” penguins sounds cute. Here’s a clip:
On Thursday, look for new episodes of Flash Forward, The Vampire Diairies, Fringe, and Supernatural. A friend recently said to me, “Something is very wrong when it takes you three days to watch Thursday night television.” So true!
THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE
I missed the advanced screenings of the two fantasy-esque movies opening this weekend, but I confess I so disliked Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC (not to mention just about every movie he’s done other than Independence Day, which was at least fun) that I’m extremely wary about his latest, 2012. The critics have not been kind, but then the critics didn’t really like Independence Day either, which just proves again how worthless they are.
For what it’s worth, the critics love Fantastic Mr. Fox, and I confess that this looks like a movie I should love. But I haven’t liked any of Wes Anderson’s previous movies — all style, lousy or non-existent plots, IMHO — so I’m wary about Fox too, especially since Variety called it beautiful, but “self-indulgent.”
Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.
Oh, who am I kidding?!
Santa doesn’t crashland in the zoo in Central Park. Santa is shot down by characters in the show over Madagascar because he rains coal down on them on the 24th of “Julianuary”.
It was what it was — and about as enjoyable as Shrek the Halls. I laughed.
Oh Lord I’m with you on Thursday night television! The madness must STOP!
I don’t think I experience the same reality as some of these film critics. I know exactly what Spike Jonze was trying to do in Wild Things, it’s not that I didn’t “understand” it. But apart from the opening sequence, it just seemed so badly executed. It was like a parody of an arthouse movie - everything ponderous and pretentious you expect.
Wow, that looks like my Barnes and Noble there, but I can count at least three non-vampire YA books in the foreground of that photo. I actually kinda want to see Where the Wild Things are once it comes out on DVD just so I can form my opinion; but after hearing the reviews I’m not waiting with bated breath.
:-) I knew someone would say this. But it looked like MOST of them were vampire novels!
True, I do count at least 4 or 6 novels right off the bat and some the others have that whole “black background red object” symbolism thing going on. Bet it’s all because of New Moon’s release, I foresee a lot of vampire novels for a few years to come.