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?!

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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?!

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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.

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

If Maurice Sendak didn’t really exist, some writer would’ve had to invent him.

Sendak, who is openly gay, had a miserable childhood, still hates his parents, never wanted children himself, and is obsessed with death.

He’s also the writer and illustrator of perhaps the world’s most famous (and also possibly the best) picture book, 1964’s Where the Wild Things Are, as well as a number of critically acclaimed (and sometimes very controversial) books for children.

He’s also now the subject of a short new HBO documentary, Tell Them Anything You Want, directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze (Jonze is the director of a highly anticipated upcoming film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, coming later this week).

Tell Them Anything You Want is a modest film. It seems to be just Bangs and Jonze with a hand-held video camera in Sendak’s house, asking him questions about his life and his career.

It’s also pretty damn fascinating.

Be forewarned: Sendak is a very dark man who has lived a very sad life. At first, it’s hard to know what to make of this bitter, sometimes unbalanced old man. But the more he talks, the more you realize how perfectly equipped he was to revolutionize the field of children’s literature.

According to Sendak, Wild Things, with its less-than-perfect mother and negative emotions, initially got terrible reviews and was frequently banned. And even Sendak admits, he wasn’t the “best” artist.

But kids absolutely loved the book — so much so that adults could not deny its incredible power. The secret, Sendak says, is that he was willing to say things that other children’s authors would not: he was willing to tell children the truth.

“I don’t believe in childhood,” he says at one point when discussing his belief that there are no subjects that should be “off-limits” to children, but also clearly speaking of his own early loss of innocence. “Tell [children] anything you want, as long as it’s true.”

This HBO documentary is a fascinating portrait of a fascinating man.

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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.

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9 (Septmber 9th)

The Oracle Says: The new animated movie from producer Tim Burton about animated robot dolls of the future has a really cool look and buzz to die for.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (September 18th)

The Oracle Says: The 1978 book upon which this CGI animated movie is based never explains why the town of Chewandswallow has food rain on it three times a day. In the movie, it’s the result of a mad scientist. This does not bode well, in the Oracle’s opinion.

Jennifer’s Body (September 18th)

The Oracle Says: It’s about a beautiful, popular high school student (played by Megan Fox in a Meryl Streep-like stretch *cough* ) who, possessed by a demon, wreaks havoc on her class. In other words, it sounds like a parody of typical teen horror flick. But the fact that it’s written by Juno’s Diablo Cody means that it might actually be a parody.

Surrogates (September 25th)

The Oracle Says: Ever since reading The Bonfire of the Vanities (which documents what a very limited actor Bruce Luckiest-Person-on-Earth Willis really is), the Oracle has had a hard time taking any movie of his seriously. Surrogates, based on the comic book series, is the kind of broad, big budget science fiction that Will Smith usually stars in — with lots of action, cool special effects, and absolutely nothing challenging.

Zombieland (October 2nd)

The Oracle Says: It’s a zombie … comedy? Didn’t they already do that with Shawn of the Dead? Yes, but expect this one to be a lot more irreverent — and whole lot grosser. Prediction: big hit. After Inglourious Basterds, can’t you feel it in the air?

Where the Wild Things Are (October 16th)

The Oracle Says: Two questions loom about Spike Jonze’s adaptation of the Maurice Sendak classic children’s book: is such a slightly-storied, visually specific book even adaptable as a film, and is Jonze’s film (with creatures from the Jim Hensen Company) too quirky for mainstream audiences? The rumor is that test audiences found the film too dark and not “family-friendly, and at one point, the studio considered reshooting it entirely.

The Road (October 16th)

The Oracle Says: Studio execs are surely freaking out as you read this about the reality of releasing this chilling movie about a post-apocalyptic world in this time of social and economic unrest. One thing is certain: eat dinner before you see this movie (if you’ve read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel upon which it is based, you know why!).

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (October 23rd)

The Oracle Says: Based on a serious of genuinely creepy children’s books, this movie tells the story of a teenager who joins a mysterious traveling circus of “freaks.” But there’s much more here going on than meets the eye. Alas, much of it involves an all-too-tired vampire storyline.

The Fourth Kind (November 6th)

The Oracle Says: The title of this movie about alien abductions in Alaska refers to the “closest” of alien encounters (”of the fourth kind”). The publicity implies this is all a “true” story, but the Oracle suspects we’re being Blair Witched.

2012 (November 13th)

The Oracle Says: Has anyone ever noticed how, except for Independence Day, Roland Emmerich’s movies suck? Stargate, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow were all bad, and 10,000 B.C. was almost unwatchable. So why do we keep going? Great, eye-catching trailers that suck us in. Here’s yet another (but don’t be fooled! Look away before it’s too late!):

Twilight: New Moon (November 20th)

The Oracle Says: The Oracle doesn’t think it’s possible for him to care less, but he hopes that teen girls everywhere are breathless with anticipation.

Avatar (December 18th)

The Oracle Says: Is James Cameron’s latest the movie most anticipated by fanboys since The Lord of the Rings (or even, perhaps, Phantom Menace — boy, was that the let-down of all time!). Anyway, the Oracle predicts Cameron will pull it off. Let’s face it: the guy knows how to tell a story — and he works well under pressure. His reunion with Sigourney Weaver can’t hurt.

The Imaginatium of Dr. Parnassus (December 25th)

The Oracle Says: The early reviews of Terry Gilliam’s latest (and Heath Ledger’s last) film are mixed. But it’s Terry Gilliam! And this is one of his “passion” projects — not one of his for-hire-by-the-studio ones. Prediction: at the very minimum, it’ll be really interesting, if not outright fantastic.

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