Where the Wild Things Are

Spike Jonze is an interesting director yet I doubt that he'll ever direct another children's themed film in his life. The verdict is still out on Wes Anderson and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Dr. Suess has never really been done correctly; Where the Wild Things Are is from the monumental children's book by Roald Dahl and Spike has essentially expanded a 36 page book with a handful of sentences into a feature length film. The animals of the story are animatronic and not CGI, which is a welcome relief in terms of looking at the screen.
In the long run Where the Wild Things Are is a bore, hardly worth the time or trouble to see it. Yet if your children really get into this film you may want to enroll them in a magnet school. As melancholy as Where the Wild Things Are is you are left with the feeling that you've just seen art film for 10-year olds. Like a Terrence McNalley for the pre-teen set.
Read the book and it's a few pages. The differences between the book and the movie are as follows. Max (the kid protag) takes off on an imaginary journey after being sent to bed without supper. He meets up with a bunch of monsters and they party. In the movie Max comes home and his mother is heartfelt crying to reunite. In the book Max wakes up in this room and the meal is on the desk still hot. In the book the little satyr-esque goat boy is only seen on two pages (pages 16 & 18) whereas in the movie he's a semi-major player. You could say they've reinvented Where the Wild Things Are. In the book the sentence tells us that Max is wearing a wolf suit. In the movie I didn't know if he was wearing a catsuit or a raccoon suit. Space and time are manipulated by Jonze to little effect.
Pure and simple this is a hard core art film masquerading as a studio release, and that's to be admired. The sad reality is that Where the WIld Things Are is a hard sit. In another universe this would be a perfect 30-minute short subject.

A Serious Man

The new film directed by Ethan and Joel Coen will both baffle and confuse. A Serious Man is a serious film, one that starts with a prologue performed in Yiddish that unfolds nearly a century before the main story. In this short sequence the concept of a dybbuk is introduced. I asked a couple of acquaintances who grew up Jewish if they knew what a dybbuk is and they didn't, which doesn't actually mean much in regards to enjoying the film. The Coen Brothers also make up a word, a mentaculus, or a book that explains everything in the universe as scribbled by supporting character Uncle Arthur.
A Serious Man takes place in a predominately Jewish neighborhood in the 1960s in Minneapolis, coincidentally where the Coens also grew up. Some scenes in Fargo also took place there. A Serious Man offers humor but it's not laugh out loud like, say, The Big Lebowski. There are brief moments of violence like a car crash or a crescendo of dream sequences that end with abrupt jolts but nothing on the scale of No Country For Old Men. The Coens seem to prefer intellectual themes rather than action dominated sequences, a move that will win them new respect among a certain set that aims for high standards in movie ambiguity. If you complained because you thought NCFOM had too subjective an ending you'll be left stunned at the end of A Serious Man.
Do you want me to tell you what the plot is? The last thing you want to do is to go into a Coen Brothers film knowing what happens. You won't recognize any of the actors (unless you frequent Broadway) and the twists require exercise lest you injure yourself watching.

Earth Days

Earth Days chronicles the environmental movement from its faint beginnings in the 1950s, its activism period of the 70s and up to the present. The emphasis is on the past and rightly so since many of those vintage clips of opulence and automobiles are suitable viewing in our current state on mass consumption. If you are the kind of person who wonders how to put the carbon cycle back in balance you want to see this film but its attraction extends to the curious in lieu of the subject. Earth Days presents its speakers and information in a highly accessible manner
Here are some of the talking heads Earth Days offers: Stewart Udall, former Secretary of Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; Denis Hayes, the non-compromising chief organizer of the original 1970 Earth Day; Stewart Brand, editor of the influential Whole Earth Catalog; Paul Ehrlich, author of non-fiction best seller The Population Bomb; Pete McClosky, congressman from California from 1967 to 1983 who was an outspoken proponent for environmental and endangered species rights; plus many other important voices. One thing becomes apparent while watching the political speeches and news clips from the 60s in Earth Days. We as a culture recycle the same images in our advertising over and over.
Earth Days attempts to put into perspective how people, starting just two generations ago, first realized that the planet's resources were finite. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring warned of the dangers of pesticides on the environment. The civil rights movement provided momentum for other activism and the awareness of nature surely was a partisan cause. At this point in time the public at large had never seen a picture of the Earth from outer space. The film opens with clips of every president since Kennedy giving statements about the state of the air, land and water. There's some splendid footage to be sure, like the early 70s television commercial with the Indian crying at how his ground has been soiled.
Some of the doom and gloom didn't occur. I mean we are, after all, still here. And pollution today certainly isn't at levels such as in 1966 when people in New York City evidently died from smog. Earth Days has a lot of territory it covers but no one film or website or person could cover the entire depletion of Mother Earth. It's hard not to be ironic when topics on discussion include gasoline prices, the energy crisis and a decrease in the standard of living and the year is 1973.
In our unbelievable truth times much of the information on display in Earth Days isn't hard to believe, it's just hard to conceive how we as a society have ignored it for so long. Earth Days opens this Friday at the Angelika. Eventually the documentary will pop up on PBS in April of 2010.

Mary Travers interviews Frank Zappa

Mary Travers interviews Frank Zappa in this 1975 interview. Berg says check it out. Zappa says that Timonty Leary is a CIA agent; that the Beatles are only in it for the money; and says hi to Elton John.

Coco Before Chanel

The heart is a cold dark place where the light of love never seeps. Or so Coco Before Chanel would have one believe. This Audrey Tatoo starring biopic of famed clothes designer Gabrielle Coco Chanel never takes flight but rather taxis on the runway of dullness. Tatou scours and frowns throughout the entire film; for Coco a mood swing is from a scowl to a sneer. You see her smile once, and come to think of it you see the sunlight once. The rest of the film is bathed in overcast skies with harsh interior light.
Coco starts with our heroine in an orphanage with her sister. We quickly move to young adult Coco (Tatou) and her loveless affair with aristocratic horse owner Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde). As director Anne Fontaine tells the story the taciturn Coco is so sultry that when Balsan has had his way with her and bids her adieu from his country manse Coco simply refuses to leave, or smile. It helps matters that she has no place else to go. The main problem I had warming up to Coco Before Chanel was due to the dour attitude expressed by the actors and the film's stark composition. The only other thing we see Coco doing besides frowning consists of her sewing embellishments onto hats. Supporting turns by Alessandro Nivola as one of Coco's doomed lovers and Emmanuelle Devos as a theatrical performer of renown place likeable characters in an unfriendly environment.
Since this is Coco before the Chanel empire we only observe a brief glimpse of her days as a fashion maven near the end. Despite her success Coco's unreadable face betrays her unfulfilled romances and friendships.