Tag Archives: Maurice Sendak

Who The Wild Thing Was

Peace The Forks Out

to

Maurice Bernard

All Hands On

Sendak

June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012

Sendak is the author of my four favorite kids books EVER – Chicken Soup With Rice, Alligators All Around, Pierre and One Was Johnny. when someone I know gives birth to a child, the Nutshell Library four-pack of them titles is my go to gift for that newborn (+ this animated DVD & the Carol King songs!). I do this cause I want this new generation of kids to grow up in the world of Sendak wonder and weirdness, and not in one filled with kiddy crap about farting dogs and other poop.  You may regard Where The Wild Things Are as Sendak’s best work, but you’re just plain wrong, cause wild rumpuses are nothing compared to eating chicken soup every month of the year, alligators imitating Indians, not caring and then learning how to care, and knowing who #1 is (Johnny)

+

Goober

some leading lady none of us know

JFK dead body examiner 

ski gogglerer

Tapestry weaver

film lover

one of only two players to hit three home runs in World Series Game 7s

the falling bear

Nixoner who would walk over his own grandmother

he made burritos fly

a total slot

cheezie guy

Fisher’s Popcorn popper

&

the man who said ow

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Scary Stories To Tell In The Light

Where The Wild Things Are
Add Depth Tation
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

We’ve been baffled, befuddled and blindsided as to what to make of Spike Jonze‘s much more than 10 sentences movie version of Maurice Sendak’s long beloveded (which our mumsy can’t figure out why it is so) Caldecott Medal winning Where The Wild Things Are picture book. It’s inventive, audacious, dreamy, bleak, and downright boggleminding. It also happens to be the biggest big screen risk in recent memory that a studio has taken by letting Mr Jonze’s Sendak approved work play out as it is. No wonder there was a lot of fuss between the WB and the director, cause it’s a remarkable unmarketable flick

Can’t say that we truly loved it, but can’t say that we didn’t either. One thing we can say is that you should stock up on yer shrooms intake before viewing, and even if you don’t, you should still probably see it cause you’ll get juss as delirious even if yer sober. Don’t know if kids will take to this very un-PG PG pic at all, but it’s middle section, where the Wild Things actually are, is seen just like a children’s book usually reads – free flowing, with no real rhyme or reason other than to entertain the end user with a nice little moral or message. In someone else’s hands (besides Gondry or Burton, hell, let’s throw Kubrick’s name in there as well), WTWTA, would have been a disaster, so it has to be said that Jonze hit the nail on the head, even if there wasn’t exactly a blueprint on how to turn this short book into a full fledged feature (we’d love to see him go through with the aborted Harold & The Purple Crayon adaptation he planned to make… czech out this test footage)

Best way to describe what it was like to experience the imagery heavy/plot light WTWTA is thru… heavy imagery, and even more sentences than 10! we’ve rarely done this in this past, and it was only to show how awful a movie is, like VanHelSucks, or not, like The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

take one kid who looks as innocent as Elijah Wood
with a real name (Max Records) as fake as Max Powers

but make him a bit cooler, and more rambunctious
like Corey Haim and/or Corey Feldman
before theys became uncool and had a reality show

then force him to wear a pair of footie pajamas
that are less gay than Ralphie’s

topped with a Burger King crown

then have him get totally pissed at his family
cause no one has time to pay attention to him
esp his mum Catherine Keener who has to appear by contract
in any Charlie Kaufman or Kaufman-esque type movie

who dates Mark Ruffalo
who’s in the movie for like literally 39 seconds
and therefore gots like the easiest paycheck mt EVERest

then the kid runs away and somehow finds a boat
and sets sail for the cliffs of insanity!

or a rocky beach where the Goonies see the light of day!
or any sorta odd island type place ala Lost or Lord of The Flies

where he then runs thru a creepy Twin Peaks forest

that’s not as creepy as Lakeforest Mall in Gaithersburg, MD

where he meets a bunch of harry goof balls that look like
incredibly hi-tech updated versions of Chuck E. Cheese’s
animatronic house band The Pizza Time Players!

with voices that sound an awful lot like
Tony Soprano, Claire Fisher, the milkshake drinker,
that closeted gay dad from American Beauty,
the last king of Scotland and Catherine THE GREAT O’Hara
who’s name alone conjures up that one in a zillion voice

and theys also look like

Falkor and Mischa Barton

and pretty much anything else from
The Neverending Story eggcept this

although kids, incorporated or not, loves the Limhal

and then the boy and the harry and the henderson goofballs
goof around like theys was on Romper Room

and beat the fork outta each other like Romper Stomper

and then theys walk the desert

which aint got no two suns like Tatooine!!

and so theys do this stuff, and then run thru
the forest again and then the desert again

and everytime theys does, you hear some some
Polyphonic Spree type-o positive music by Karen O and The Kids
which is brilliant stuff, but is played a lil too often

and then theys build a fort

with a center consisting of a circle thingie
that looks like the New World Entertainment logo

and then the kid and the hairy things get mad at each other or something and then make up or something and then it’s time for him to go and then he does and then it ends

and another Dave Eggers penned flick that attempts to
pull at yer heart strings doesn’t really pull at anything
juss like his Away We Go did/didn’t


alas, plenty of bubbles, but no champagne!!!!

All Hands On Sendak: best gift for kids that we get all of our friends’ kids be the Nutshell Library, which includes our flav Sendaks, Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup with Rice, One Was Johnny, and Pierre. not so sure of their greatnesssss? then why did the wonderful Carole King lend her pipes to singing his books as Really Rosie, eh? read em, listen to her CD and feel the earth move under yer feet

Verdictgo: so effin luol dang strange, but that shouldn’t stop you from peepering this Jeepers Worth A Peepers

WTWTA opens at a theater near jews today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

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