Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

I ADMIT, I’M KINDA OBSESSED WITH WILD THINGS

In my review of Where the Wild Things Are (a movie I pretty much hated), I talked about how perplexed I was that anyone could love such a muddled mess of a movie. “Appreciate” it for the visuals and for being “different”? Sure. But “love” it? That’s hard for me to wrap my head around.

And yet some critics are rhapsodizing. It’s currently at 67% on RottenTomatoes.com (which I think is actually pretty bad given that this is the kind of film critics love to love: an edgy, esoteric film adaptation of a beloved children’s book by a wildly acclaimed “auteur” director).

Then I remind myself how subjective art always is. If, as a writer, I’m ever discouraged by a bad review of something I’ve personally written, I console myself by going to Amazon.com and reading the user reviews — and seeing that every book ever written, no matter how beloved, has someone who thinks it’s a piece of s***. Don’t believe me? Go look. Someone calls The Hobbit, for example, “the worst book ever written.”

People are different, that’s all.

I’m reminded that writers and artists are all very different whenever I teach creative writing (which I’ve done at both the high school and college level).

Some writers approach the craft of writing from a love of words and language. Some filmmakers, meanwhile, see making movies as being about the manipulation of images and visuals.

My approach, on the other hand, has always been that words (in books) and visuals (in movies) are merely tools that artists use to tell a story. For me, story (and character, which should be an expression of story, and vice-versa) is everything. If there’s no story, there’s no point, at least in a full-length work.

But for many writers and filmmakers, “story” is an afterthought, at best. That’s how Where the Wild Things Are seemed to me. It was almost solely about the visuals, and the director’s esoteric “point.”

Worse, some people confuse “structure” and “dramatic conflict” with “formula” and “cliche,” but they’re very different things. I hate formula, but I love structure. In fact, I think a well-crafted dramatic structure — where the ending is inevitable, yet completely unexpected — is one of the most beautiful things a human being can ever create. It’s literally my religion — my personal glimpse at the divine.

And that’s probably waaaaaaay more than you wanted to know about my philosophy of writing!

STOP GIVING FANTASY ENTHUSIASTS A BAD NAME!

So CodingHorror.com has a fascinating look at the evolving ads for the online fantasy game Evony (something I’ve written about before). Here are their first four ads in succession:

Now check out their latest ad (no joke):

Here’s some of CodingHorror’s very trenchant commentary:

Evony, thanks for showing us what it means to take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom … then dig a sub-basement under that, and keep on digging until you reach the white-hot molten core of the Earth. I’ve always wondered what that would be like. I guess now I know.

Could! Not! Agree! More! Read the rest.

MORE PROOF THE WORLD HAS GONE INSANE FOR VAMPIRES

So there’s this pretty good children’s book called Cirque Du Freak, part of something called The Saga of Darin Shan. It’s the story of how this kid falls in with a mysterious traveling circus which includes, yes, some vampires. Soon the kid is embroiled in this conflict between rival vampire factions and must even decide whether he wants to become a vampire himself.

There’s a movie version coming out next Friday, which is based on the first three books in the series. The first trailers for it emphasized the interesting, complicated set-up, and hinted at the vampire plot.

But the closer we get to the release date, and with the insane break-out success of Twilight and now The Vampire Diaries, the studio is suddenly dropping all pretense that it’s about anything other than “a kid becomes a vampire!” The original title, Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is fast becoming, simply, The Vampire’s Assistant.

Check out the latest trailer:

Can’t blame em at all. People are currently gaga for vampires. But it’s interesting, no?

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

On Sunday, HGTV presents its Halloween Block Party, which offers us three potential “block party” designs: “The Haunted Mansion,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Since I live for both Halloween and home design, I am so there! (Sunday, 8 PM, HGTV).

Also on Sunday, The Simpsons offers us their twentieth Treehouse of Horror (Sunday, 8 PM, Fox). I’ve seen it and, as usual, it’s a cut-above their usual episodes, with parodies of Hitchcock and Strangers on a Train (pretty funny), 28 Days Later (hilarious), and Sweeney Todd (not that funny, but gutsy of them since most people won’t get any of the references…but then most people won’t get the earlier Hitchcock references either!). (Sunday, 8 PM, Fox)

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

Well, you all already know what I thought of Where the Wild Things Are.

Out on DVD this week is a movie I thought was flat-out terrific, Drag Me to Hell (here’s my review). Also out is Blood: The Last Vampire. (Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing these movies (or any other media!) through these links.)

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?!

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl Google

Hugg Jamespot Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinkedIn LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb

Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Twitter Webride Windows Live Worlds Movies Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Two Torches (Out of Five)

It’s a bad movie.

But according to Rottentomatoes.com, Where the Wild Things Are, which opens on Friday, isn’t being panned. In fact, it’s getting mixed-to-decent reviews.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to figure this out, and here’s what I’ve come up with: there are two kinds of bad movies. There are those like G-Force or Year One, which are either cliched or formulaic, or just plain incompetently made.

Where the Wild Things Are isn’t bad like that. Director Spike Jonze at least tried to make something truly different, and critics really, really like it when filmmakers do that.

Much has been made of the fact that Jonze was trying to create the sense of being a nine year-old boy — the sense of confusion, the feeling that the world doesn’t make much sense.

He succeeded in that respect. He just didn’t make a very satisfying movie, or even an effective adaptation of the children’s book on which the film is based.

Here’s the story: a lonely, ignored kid runs away to a boat to sail to a land where monsters are real. Is this all in his imagination? We know from the book that it is, but we don’t know that from the movie. It’s like the movie can’t be bothered to fill in this part of the story, not even vaguely. It’s too intent on getting us to the land of monsters so it can show us:

• A ten-minute sequence where the boy and the monsters knock down their huts.
• A ten-minute sequence where one monster takes the kid on a journey to show him his model city.
• A ten-minute sequence where the monsters have a dirt-clod fight.
• A ten-minute sequence where the monsters all build a fort.

Sure, there’s a little flurry of an interesting conflict toward the end, and Catherine O’Hara has some funny lines as one of the monsters, but otherwise, story and character and conflict barely seem to matter.

So if it doesn’t really have a plot or a story, what is Where the Wild Things Are?

Basically, it’s an impressionist film “experiment.”

I’m all for film experiments, but the thing about experiments is that they sometimes fail.

Look, I’m as sick as the next film critic that every kids’ movie has to be about saving the world or keeping some parents from getting a divorce, but even I need more than a dirt-clod fight.

Yes, yes, I get it: it’s supposed to be told from the point-of-view of a nine year-old boy, and nine year-old boys love dirt-clod fights. That’s why the movie doesn’t tell us if the land is “real” or imagined: a nine year-old boy doesn’t know the difference.

But if the movie is told from that point-of-view, why do all the monsters talk like neurotic, ironic twentysomethings?

Almost everything about this film just seemed off to me, like it was either sloppy writing or made to be deliberately obtuse.

Here’s the thing: Where the Wild Things Are is a classic children’s book about an angry kid who learns that he can control his own anger — that his anger isn’t an out-of-control “wild” monster that controls him. The book is sophisticated and definitely works on an “adult” level, but it’s so brilliant because, in its deceptive simplicity, it also works on a “kid” level.

Where the Wild Things Are, the movie, doesn’t even try to work on a “kid” level. I suspect there’s going to be a whole lot of bored kids in theaters this weekend, and a lot of pissed-off parents.

There’s a whole genre of brilliant, sophisticated, but subversive fantasy children’s movies that went on to find widespread success: Time Bandits, Toy Story, Babe, and even Beauty and the Beast, to name just a very few.

Why can these movies be appreciated by the “unthinking” masses, but also by film aficionados looking for multiple layers and deeper meanings? Because first and foremost, they take their characters, and their story, seriously.

I never felt that Where the Wild Things Are did. It seemed to me that, first and foremost, the filmmaker wanted to make a POINT about how childhood is “confusing,” to show how clever and avant garde he is — “Look, I don’t need to have a ‘plot’!” — or maybe just to show us some (admittedly) cool film imagery.

Basically, this is a movie for Spike Jonze and all his film school friends.

Which is fine for an indie or arthouse film, but this is a $80 million studio film that’s being heavily marketed to mainstream audiences.

Deceptive much?

There is definitely a small minority of folks who will love this movie, in spite of its slow pace and the non-narrative (or maybe because of it, because they like rule-breaking for rule-breaking’s sake).

And apparently many of these folks are film critics.

These folks will all say I missed the point of Where the Wild Things Are, that we’re sometimes supposed to be confused and frustrated and bored, because the character is confused and frustrated and bored. That there’s no real point because life has no real point.

Or maybe they won’t be bored at all — they’ll be satisfied by the non-plot and the ironic monsters. They’ll say to me, “The movie is pure emotion put on film.” Or, “It seems to be about nothing, but it’s really about everything!”

I can’t say these folks are wrong, because that’s their opinion. More power to ‘em.

All I can say is that I was mostly either bored or annoyed with Where the Wild Things Are, and it seemed like most of the preview audience I saw it with thought that too.

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl Google

Hugg Jamespot Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinkedIn LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb

Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Twitter Webride Windows Live Worlds Movies Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Here’s a prediction: the upcoming feature film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, to be released on October 16th, will be stunning artistic triumph or a critical disaster.

If it’s the former, it might even be a box office hit. If it’s the latter, it will surely end up a massive flop.

How is such an “either-or” prediction possible?

It has a lot to do with the unconventional director, Spike Jonze, who has broken the “rules” of filmmaking on both his previous films and who sees Wild Things as his most personal ever — despite its $80 million-plus studio-level budget.

But it also has to do with the troubled history of the film — turmoil that’s been spilling out onto the blogs for years now and is now featured in a splashy cover story on last Sunday’s issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Jonze is the director of only two previous films: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation — both critically acclaimed, but also impossible to pigeon-hole. (Indeed, Adaptation is a satire of the whole by-the-numbers filmmaking process — and an homage to those who try to circumvent it.)

From the start, the word on Where the Wild Things Are has been that it’s different — really different.

According to the New York Times, Universal Studios passed on the film, claiming that Jonze’s script, co-written with author Dave Eggers, didn’t have enough of a plot (much like the book). It was Warner Brothers that finally greenlit it, based on earlier successes fitting quirky indie directors like Christopher Nolan and Alfonso Cuaron into big-budget hits like Batman Begins and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

But Jonze battled the studio throughout the production, insisting, for example, that it’s okay that the film is thematically ambiguous and that what little dialogue there is be “realistic” and not always capable of being understood by the audience.

According to 2007 blog reports, an early screening of the film’s rough cut resulted in crying children and walk-outs.

The studio insisted on changes, but Jonze reportedly refused most of them. After all, the director went through similar disagreements with the financiers of Being John Malkovich, and he ended up being hailed as visionary.

With many millions of dollars at stake, the studio is now at least pretending to play nice.

“It’s like the studio was expecting a boy, and I gave birth to a girl,” Jonze told the New York Times. “And now they’re learning to love and accept their daughter.”

With the impending release of the film, it’s tempting to simply assume that Where the Wild Things Are is yet another case of a brilliant filmmaker being forced into mediocrity by a craven, soul-less movie studio — another Brazil, for example. The studio agreed to release Terry Gilliam’s cut of that film only after the Los Angeles Film Critics Association shamed them into it; the critics awarded Gilliam’s version Best Picture after a private screening by the director.

Still, for every success like Brazil, there are plenty of “director’s cuts” that are pretty much unwatchable disasters — films like Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain or Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. (And for the record, Brazil still flopped, at least in the U.S.)

In other words, the studios aren’t always wrong, at least when it comes to wide appeal. After all, “wide appeal” is how they make their money.

There are even those (like this writer) who think that Jonze’s earlier films had major flaws and were critically acclaimed mostly because their concepts were so outrageous and bold — so decidedly different than anything else Hollywood was producing.

Still, no matter how slight the plot of Where the Wild Things Are is, the story of its adaptation as a movie will have a very definite ending: on October 16th, when the film is released.

It remains to be seen, however, if that ending will be a happy one for Jonze and the studio.

Looking to buy Where the Wild Things Are? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl Google

Hugg Jamespot Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinkedIn LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb

Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Twitter Webride Windows Live Worlds Movies Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »