Where the Wild Things Are

Rated: PG

Starring: Max Records

Runtime: 94 minutes

My Rating: 2 stars.

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I don't think Where the Wild Things Are could have every really succeeded. It's just too memorable and too good of a book.

“Where the Wild Things Are” – the book – is so successful because it lets the reader imagine what he wants. A child's imagination cannot be put on screen.

For one, it's different than any other child. For two, parents who remember the book remember more their memories about it. I did.

So when those images came to life on screen, I didn't connect with them. Neither did any of the adults there. They were mostly bored.

The kids, however, who either hadn't experienced the 10-sentence book or had no inkling of what a Wild Thing is, were delighted. Most were laughing hysterically, especially the child behind me.

Especially the child behind me.

Especially the child behind me.

I was fighting consciousness throughout the final 20 minutes. That's because writer-director Spike Jonze ran out material. He tried to make each sentence nine minutes on film. Instead he made each one six minutes, realized he had 30 minutes to fill and turned a film that was quite good into a soap opera.

He just didn't know how to get to the end. It was a good effort though.

Where the Wild Things Are follows Max (Max Records) as he runs away from home and discovers where the wild things are. It's a movie about the innocence and imagination of youth.

What comes on screen is a pseudo political drama and commentary on tyranny and socialism. Yes, it's there. Go watch it. Kids won't get it. I did, parents did, and it was all very disappointing.

Where the Wild Things Are just doesn't work the way Jonze did it, despite the fantastic-looking characters and original story. He carries it well for an hour, but fumbles it at the end. Unfortunately the result is a movie that started with high energy and ended as an epic all because Jonze couldn't drag a full movie out of the classic children's tale. Two stars.

Please watch the following video before you read this post.

It will not only make your day, but perfectly setup my wonderful column.

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Has it really been two weeks? Oh man, where did that all go?

Perhaps I was run off by a meddling old newspaper reporter.

Perhaps I'm sick of watching movies from the 1950s.

Perhaps hockey season started and football season kept going, and I found myself with little time to do anything other than consume college sports.

All of those things happened since I last spoke to you.

Let's start with the meddling old newspaper reporter. He, who we shall call Bubbledor, claimed to be wanting to help my writing. He said I used the word “heathen” wrong in a sentence when reviewing Apocalypto. He also said “the most advanced primitive civilization” displayed my lack of understanding the English language.

Perhaps, so... Usted, señor, me llevan demasiado literalmente y en serio. Bueno?

I spent the week readin-isin some wordes out of da-dum der book.

I kid. His football team lost in a pathetic display on Sunday, so all is not lost.

And let's talk about this black-and-white nonsense. I watched these movies in the last two weeks: Artists and Models (1955), The Apartment (1960), and The Asphault Jungle (1950). I broke it up with Atlantic City (1980). It's getting unbearable. I even did a count and found there are 153 movies on the list from 1950-59. I'm dead. I'm simply dead.

These films aren't even primitively advanced. Damn it, I'm still not using it correctly. Lo siento, Bubbledor.

Something kind of cool did happen while watching Artists and Models. It was digitally restored and colorized, except, apparently, this one scene. In it, there is a superhero portrait on a wall. It's supposed to be green. The reason I even noticed it was in the background was because it was black and white. I thought that was odd.

Then, the picture popped full of color for a split second, flickered for a few frames, and finally stayed colorized. This was my first instance when restoration “missed a spot,” if you will.

That process is obviously very primitive now, but perhaps advanced for its time. Hey! I think I used both words correctly. Bubbledor will soon e-mail me, I'm sure. That heathen.

The movies themselves were all fine, even if I can't effectively write about them. I especially liked Atlantic City, which showed that Susan Sarandon has aged quite well. Advanced-aged Sarandon looks remarkably like primitive Sarandon. Comments, Bubbledor?

Finally, hockey season started, and my life got increasingly more busy. I was driving to Canton and Syracuse during the week, interviewing players in person, over the phone, writing columns for the St. Lawrence hockey blog and the newspaper. I covered games on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. Movies were quickly becoming a back-burner issue.

But don't worry, I'm alive and well, albeit bored with some of the old, old movies (Yes, as a 20-something, I think 1950s cinema is old, old. Sorry, Dad.).

I'll post the brief reviews and my movie list sometime Monday afternoon. For now, it's time to look over my hockey and football notes, call a player and try not to make any more egregious errors like calling the Mayans an advanced primitive civilization. You happy now, Bubbledor?

Zombieland

Rated: R

Runtime: 80 minutes

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

My rating: 4 stars

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Zombieland is a movie-fan’s movie. It’s not going to the an all-time classic, nor will we be looking back on it in 20 years, saying this was the funniest film of this decade, but it is better than Shawn of the Dead and I argue funnier than The Hangover.

Yeah, I said it.

Zombieland is about a kid from Columbus, OH, who is also named Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg). Columbus is surviving in a post-apocalyptic world ridden with zombies. When we meet him, he knows not of another uninfected human. He survives on intelligence and a strict set of rules, which include “beware of bathrooms,” “maintain cardio” and my favorite “double tap.”

He mocks the clichés of the zombie-horror genre throughout, saying things like “You know when you think you’ve killed a zombie and you’re looking at it to see if it’s dead. Just pull the trigger again. It’s almost never dead.”

He is trying to find his way back to Columbus to see if his family is still alive. Along the road he meets Tallahassee (Woody Harelson). The pair team to kill zombies and get Columbus back home. Along the road they meet Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin).

The two girls swindle and trick the boys. Typical women. But since there are only two other known humans alive to the girls, they decide to travel with the boys.

The ensuing road trip – at first to Hollywood – is filled with hilarious kills, gaffes, and laughs, especially when they get to the hallowed gates of BM’s house. Tallahassee loves BM.

I liken this to Scream for its knowledge of genre history and its entertainment value for those who don’t.

It’s fun for everyone, but those who catch and understand the endless references (“I’m not very good at leaving. So… ‘That’ll do, pig’”) are rewarded. I found myself laughing when no one else was.

Start-to-finish, this is the funniest film of the year. It’s not in-your-face funny, like The Hangover, it’s subtle humor about girls, coming-of-age, regrets and, of course, zombies. Four stars.

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Where it's playing:

Canton/PotsdamSHOWTIMES

Watertown SHOWTIMES

Death by 1,000 Films

Did you get the memo?

One sticking movie. Uno. That's all I got to watch this week. And I almost watched it last week.

It was Mel Gibson's Mayan epic Apocalypto, and it was slow.

I originally went into this week hoping to finish off the “A” section of the list. Instead, I'm staring at six more films before I go on to the “B”s.

So why did this happen? I was on such a torrid pace, watching at least one movie every day.

The reason is because of St. Lawrence hockey and Syracuse football converging this week. I cover both teams, and preparing for SLU's season and covering Syracuse's first Big East football game made my days very long, very busy, and when I got home at 1 a.m. a movie wasn't really my first priority.

This week should be a little bit tamer. Today I'm headed to the movie theater, but tomorrow is a normal work day for me, so I will watch at lest one of the films on the list, probably two. I have Wednesday off (first day off in over one week), so I will knock off a few more that day.

It is a shortened column because, well, I have nothing to say. Apocalypto laughed at Mayan history. It turned the most advanced primitive civilization into just a bunch of heathens. It was wonderfully filmed, but historically inaccurate. It's also entirely in the Mayan language.

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THE MOVIES

Apocalypto. Rated: R. Year: 2006. My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. A brief thought: It's good enough for a watch, but not highly recommended. It's on the list because it showed how good a director Mel Gibson can be.

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My Movie List.

I'll have my review of Zombieland later today. Four star movie.

Be sure to come back at noon for the latest column in my "Death By 1,000 Films" series.

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Name That Movie

If you know the movie's title, e-mail me at dcassavaugh@wdt.net. Check back tomorrow for the answer.

Top-10 Thursday: Indie Comedies You Don't Know About

Enjoy these. I laughed very hard during all of these.

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10. The Foot Fist Way

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9. Cashback

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8. I am a Sex Addict - The trailer is too dirty for me to post. If you search Youtube for "I am a sex addict trailer" you will find it.

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7. Pieces of April - This was the only trailer available online to embed. The sound is horrible. I apologize. It's a great movie.

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6. Henry Poole is Here - More sweet than haha funny.

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5. One Last Thing

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4. Easy

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3. King of California

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2. Squid and the Whale

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1. American Splendor

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Do you have any additions or personal favorites that didn't make my list? Add them in the comments below!

The answer to Monday's Name that Movie is It Happened One Night.

Connie Holberg, Lance and Cheryl Evans, Jude Seymour and Nancy Madsen answered correctly.

One-minute review: An original romantic comedy, this Best Picture winner is entertaining, funny and romantic. Even though it's nearly 80 years old, it still holds up well over time.

Surrogates

Rated: PG-13

Runtime: 88 minutes

Starring: Bruce Willis

My rating: 1.5 stars

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Surrogates disconnects from the audience by forcing actors to act like the robot characters they’re supposed to be.

That didn’t make sense. Neither did this movie.

How many of you like to watch an actor stiffly move about and exhibit little-to-no emotion when delivering lines? I may as well have been watching two computers talk to each other for 88 minutes. It probably would have been just as entertaining.

Surrogates is not a good movie. But with this, and Gamer before it, we’re seeing Hollywood start to produce films about humanity’s disconnect through technology. And yes, I agree, but the multiple sporadic glow of cell phones sprinkled throughout the audience led me to believe that no one really cares about watching a film about this disconnect.

A surrogate is a robot machine with near-perfect human movement. They are controlled through censors attached to human brains. A person can buy a surrogate and use it to go out in the real world. The surrogates transmit the images and only good sensations back to the user. The bad feelings are somehow blocked.

One day a human dies while attached to a surrogate that is murdered. It is the first time this has happened. Bruce Willis plays a cop trying to uncover why the human died, who killed him and what to do about it.

Meanwhile there are rogue humans who refuse to participate in surrogacy. They are fighting against the increasingly large number of surrogates. Think of them as Native Americans during America’s expansion.

The journey forced Willis to question morality, humanity and his role in the universe. Sounds interesting, right?

It’s not, and the reason is because Willis is one of very few “live” people in the movie. The rest are surrogates and deliver lines in monotone, never cry, never show emotion, and barely can raise their voices. It all makes for a boring – and I mean boring – movie.

Audiences go to the movies to feel something. Surrogates succeeds in that. It made me feel tired, sleepy, apathetic and like I was wasting my time.

Do you know what ‘Second Life’ is? It’s a virtual world in which a person controls an avatar. This avatar lives a life like any other person, except they can fly (I think) and build things. Overall it’s a giant waste of time, producing almost nothing. I feel about it the same way I did about the people obsessed with ‘Sim City’ and now ‘Farmville.’

Surrogates brings those programs to live. And it’s as boring on screen as it is playing it. Why is it that in Surrogates and Gamer do only fat guys use these things? It’s never a beautiful woman controlling a beautiful woman.

Perhaps that’s the true message: Inside every beautiful woman is a huge fat schlub. 1.5 stars.

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Where it's playing:

Canton/PotsdamSHOWTIMES

Watertown SHOWTIMES

Death by 1,000 Films

Idiot

If ignorance is bliss, I don't feel very blissful.

I watched Animal Farm this week. Let me rephrase that: I tried to watch Animal Farm this week.

I got through it, but it took three attempts, which is probably why I didn't get to many other movies. That, and the fact I had a three-day argument with a friend about George Orwell's book “Animal Farm.”

It was the battle of the century.

The Tale of the Tape

In her corner: The history of the world.

In my corner: My ego.

The battle: Has nearly everyone in my age group (18-25 years old) read “Animal Farm”?

I never have. To tell the truth – and this is a secret so shh – I never even heard of it. I blame public education.

My friend, meanwhile, not only heard of it, but read it and said that it was one of the most influential books of our time.

“That can't be true if I didn't read it,” my ego screamed in my head.

So I challenged her. She works at a college and oversees student employees. I told her to ask her 150 students if they had read the book. I guessed 10 percent or less would say yes.

I posted the same query on my Facebook page to my 462 followers.

Why must my ego get me in trouble?

Within 15 minutes, I had almost 20 responses saying things like:

“Yo, I read that in 10th grade.”

“I <3 Boxer.”

“Forced to read it and glad I did.”

“Of course.”

“What a stupid way to try and figure out if a book is influential or not. I've read it, and thought it was really incredible.”

Ouch. But the punch that knocked me down came via my friend in a text message.

I was at a football game and she called. I didn't answer. I got this text: “I just wanted to rub it in more by laughing in your face.”

But this wasn't really the wager. It wasn't about my friends and if they had read it. It was about her students and if they had. So what if all my friends read it? Good for them. They didn't go to the good-old Norwich High.

Nevertheless, I was down for the count, bloodied, and clinging to what life I had left.

My phone rang. It was my friend.

“Heyyy,” as she often does.

“What's up? Did you ask your students?”

“Yeah.”

“And...”

“They all said, 'Duh, of course we read it.' Then we all laughed at you.”

Ding, ding, ding.

From the beginning; Week 5

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THE MOVIES

Anatomy of a Murder. Rated: UR. Year: 1959. My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. A brief thought: It's a really good, courtroom thriller. It was clear this film was based on a stage play. It takes place almost exclusively in a courtroom, but it doesn't detract too much from the film.

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Angel Face. Rated: UR. Year: 1952. My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. A brief thought: Men should just never chase women. One crazy woman ruins the world in this noir.

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Angels with Dirty Faces. Rated: UR. Year: 1938. My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. A brief thought: Really good, old gangster film. I enjoyed it a lot. It's a story about two friends, one who grows up to be a priest, the other a gangster. The two fight over control of a group of kids who could end up either way.

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Annie Hall. Rated: PG. Year: 1977. My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. A brief thought: Fantastic and perfect. If you're any kind of film fan, you will have already watched this.

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Animal Farm. Rated: UR. Year: 1954. My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. A brief thought: I recommend the movie with caution. It's very slow and somewhat boring. It doesn't really hold up well, but it did change the world, so I say watch it and learn about Communism.

NO TRAILER AVAILABLE

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My Movie List.

Be sure to come back at noon for the latest column in my "Death By 1,000 Films" series.

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Name That Movie

If you know the movie's title, e-mail me at dcassavaugh@wdt.net. Check back tomorrow for the answer.

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