If you've been reading the blog the last few weeks, you know I've been posting little facts about Maurice Sendak and his famous picture book, Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row, 1963), in anticipation of the movie which comes out today! I hope you'll get a chance to get out and see it, but to sum it all up, here are a few more details:
In 1988 there was a 7 minute animated adaptation of the book with composer, musician, author and satirist, Peter Schickele.
In 1989 a musical version of the book was performed at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera which is in East Sussex, England.
And finally, the 2009 movie is directed by Spike Jonze with Tom Hanks and Maurice Sendak himself as producers, among several others, with a screenplay writen by author Dave Eggers. The move is a mix of animation and live action mixed with live puppeteering, which I'm a huge fan of.
If you like live puppeteering too, check out these two other movies from the 1980's that are fantastic: The Neverending Story (1984), and The Dark Crystal (1982) - done by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, creators of the Muppets.
I went, I sat, I saw the movie. Thoughts....hmmm, well, I liked it, but I think it's one of those movies you absorb a couple of days after you've seen it. The live puppeteering was by far the best part, and the story, although obviously expanded from that of the book, stayed true to the story, in my opinion. The Wild Thing theme was certainly strong throught the film and brought back lots of those feelings of angst, and fear of growing up, and the Wild Things themselves were full of their own ever-changing emotions. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a B+.
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