Where the Wild Things Are — Wild Thing Pics

Slashfilm has some images from the Spike Jonze film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, showing for the first time the eponymous Wild Things.

WTWTA is a classic children’s book — I doubt there are many of my generation or younger who don’t have a strong affection for it. And everything I’ve seen and heard about the adaptation sounds fantastic. There was a brief scare after Jonze turned in his first cut — it was deemed too scary for kids and too weird for adults. This worried the studio. But it excited me.

Even though WTWTA is an extremely short book (only 48 pages, and averaging a single sentence per two-page spread), it sounds like Jonze used that as a starting-off point to create what could be an equally classic, timeless film. Bizarrely, even though there is limited source material and I expect (and even desire) deviations, my expectations are higher for this than any other adaptation in recent memory.

Loved Jonze’s work to date. He’s just weird enough to pull this off. Fingers crossed that October 2009 it turns out to be what I hope it is.

Last post on the Watchmen debacle

If you hadn’t heard, Warner Bros. and Fox have reached a settlement over Watchmen, and so the March 9 release will not be delayed.

This means that I probably won’t be posting about this project again until I’m giving my review on March 9 (midnight showing, what-what). Let’s hope that after all this drama (and publicity) that the flick doesn’t suck.

One more post on Watchmen

Or at least so I say.

Lloyd Levin, one of the producers of the project, has written an open letter regarding his feelings on the matter. I figured given the he-said-he-also-said that I posted before, it was only fair to share something that was written by someone who was involved.

I just hope this gets settled so we can see this movie.

Dear Cracked: Eat All the Crow

Part of the primary thesis of yesterday’s post is that Fox, while seemingly completely in their rights to claim ownership of the distribution rights to Watchmen, should have said something much earlier. Like, when Warner Bros. first announced that they were making Watchmen, Fox should have said, “Um. No.”

Well, as it turns out, they did. Not only was the lawsuit under discussion filed in February, but indications are that Fox did, in fact, speak up when WB first announced their intentions to make the Watchmen film. Essentially the conversation went like this.

WB: We’re making Watchmen!

Fox: Hold on, we own that. You need to pay the buy-out price.

WB: You don’t own it. Go screw.

Fox: Seriously, we’ll take it to court.

WB: Try it, we dare you.

Court: Yeah, they own it.

WB: Fuck.

Fox isn’t completely off the dick-eating hook here as a studio; they deserve to choke on Dick Mountain for their treatment of Firefly alone. But they’re off the hook somewhat for their actions re: Watchmen, since it looks like they did what we the whingers said they should have done. WB should definitely have done their homework a little better on this one.

Dear Fox: Eat All the Dicks

So for those of you not following the Watchmen legal saga, the short version is this:

Fox optioned the rights in the 80s. DC thought that the option had lapsed, and took it elsewhere. Warner Brothers made the film, and once the film was made, Fox stood up and say “Hey, we think we still own that.”

And a few days ago, the judge in the case ruled that Fox was right.

No one is arguing that they weren’t in their rights to do so, but they might have said something before Warner Bros. spent hundreds of millions of dollars making and promoting the film, considering it’s not like the production was shrouded in secrecy.

My thoughts on this are best expressed by Dan O’Brien’s blog over at Cracked.com. So I’ll just be one of many auxiliary blogs linking to that one.

“Watchmen” Fan Cordially Invites Fox to Eat Several Dicks

Pretty much what I expected

No Country won screenplay, directing, and picture, deserving none of them (maybe directing).

Transformers was robbed; Golden Compass didn’t hold a candle to ILM’s work on Transformers.

RIP Heath Ledger

I was working on my Cloverfield review to put up when this stunner hit the news.

A part of me remains fascinated by the fact that someone can die on the East Coast and within a few hours (or less) the world can know about it. That’s how wired in we are, and that’s not a bad thing. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Overall, this is just incredibly unexpected and sad. I’m not crying over it, but when I think about how Ledger’s career is about to blow wide open with his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight, it’s tragic that that will be the end for him, instead of the beginning.

Ledger seemed like a grounded actor with a good head on his shoulders. The papers are calling “drug overdose” but I’m going to reserve judgement and hope that isn’t true.

We’ve been deprived of a very promising actor’s future body of work, and that’s sad. But most significantly, Ledger leaves behind a wife, Michelle Williams, and a two year old daughter who will never know her father besides the times he played pretend. That’s the real tragedy here.

And now for something completely different.

There’s some good news to go along with the bad.

-Ray Park, best known as Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace, has just been cast as Snake-Eyes in the upcoming live-action G.I. JOE movie. That is so cool. I’ve had the outstanding fortune of working with Ray on our Descendants teaser, and he’s still attached to star in the feature if the writer’s strike ever ends. Besides the fact that it’s going to put the heat back on his name, and make it easier to sell a movie with him attached, Ray is just a great guy and I’m just terribly excited for him. He deserves it.

-My good buddy Travis has at long long last released “Six in the Morning,” the sequel to the popular “Three in the Afternoon“. I’ve seen it. I liked it. We will have to podcast about it.

-RvD2 Behind the Scenes DVDs are at the replicators and should be ready around the Christmas season. They look great and I think all our fans, those who donated and those who ordered DVDs specifically, will be pleased and find them worth the wait.

-Haven’t done a YouTube find in a while. Got a Robot Chicken sketch for ya today. If you’re an RC fan you’ve probably already seen it. I had seen it before, but it’s been a while, and for those who haven’t, I thought I’d share.

The funniest part, to me, is how scandalized Mario is by the “Princess” and her proposition.

Fingers crossed…

The writers and the AMPTP go back to the negotiating table tomorrow. I have high hopes that they will reach an agreement quickly, but it’s not like the AMPTP was negotiating in good faith before. There’s a good chance they aren’t doing so now, either. I think there’s a good chance that the AMPTP is only doing it to try to swing public opinion back in their favor. “Hey, we tried to negotiate. But those darn writers were just being too unreasonable and walked away!”

Don’t back down, writers, and don’t be fooled anyone else by the AMPTP’s word-games. This is a big deal. The studios stand to make billions off the writers’ work. The writers deserve a portion of that.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?!

I’m going to stop promising to cover topics in my “next” blog post, and just say “a later” blog post, so I have something to come back to in the lean times. We’ll call them blog residuals.

I say that because I said in my last post I was going to touch on the subject of humility, but I’ve decided I don’t want to do that today, so I won’t. I have a lot of other, more current stuff to talk about.

Case in point: There’s a new Ghostbusters game coming out.

This is, as my friend Travis likes to say, a big damn deal.

To use another Trav-ism: Let me explain something to you.