Where the Wild Things Are

Posted on March 1, 2010 at 8:00 am

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Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild thematic elements, some adventure action and brief language
Profanity:	Brief mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Adults drink wine
Violence/ Scariness:	Fantasy peril and violence, references to being eaten, bones of victims, hurt feelings and family stress
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 16, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	March 2, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001HN699A

Maurice Sendak’s spare, poetic, and deeply wise book has been lovingly unfolded into a movie about the child who lives in all of us, brave and fearful, generous and needy, angry and peaceful, confident and insecure, adventuresome and very glad to come home. The movie may challenge children who are used to bright, shiny colors and having everything explained to them but if they allow it, Max and his story will bloom inside them as it will for anyone open to its profound pleasures.

The book’s opening line is as well-remembered as “Call me Ishmael” or “It was a dark and stormy night.” “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him ‘WILD THING.'” Those who wondered what prompted Max’s mischief will accompany him as he experiences the jubilation of creating his own cozy space, a snowball-stocked igloo, and as he joyously takes on his sister’s friends in a snowball fight, only to be inconsolably crushed when they carelessly smash his icy lair and then leave without him.

There has never been a more evocative portrayal on film of the purity, the intensity, the transcendence of childhood emotions. The hallmark of maturity is the way we temper our feelings; it is not a compliment when we call someone “childish” for not being able to do so. Our experiences — and our parents — teach us that life is complex, that sorrow and joy are always mixed, and that we can find the patience to respond to frustration without breaking anything. But one reason that we mis-remember childhood as idyllic is the longing for the ferocity of childhood pleasures. Jonze and his Max (Max Records) bring us straight into the immediacy and open-heartedness of a child’s emotions.

We know we are in a child’s world even before the movie begins, with scrawled-on opening credits and then a breathtaking, child’s eye opening bursting with sensation, all the feelings rushing together. The film brilliantly evokes the feeling of childhood with the same freshness and intimacy director Spike Jonze showed in the influential videos he made when he was barely out of his teens. Max’s mother is beautifully played by Catherine Keener who makes clear to us, if not to Max, her devotion and sensitivity in the midst of concerns about work and a budding romance. His incoherent fury at her being distracted, including a kiss from a date who seems to think he has the right to tell Max how to behave almost hurtles him from the house, into the night, where he runs and runs, and then to a boat, where he sails and sails, until he comes to the land of the Wild Things.

They begin to attack him, but Max tames them with his bravado and imagination and he becomes the king, promising to do away with loneliness and make everyone happy. The book’s brief story blooms here as Max interacts with the Wild Things (voices of James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker, and Chris Cooper). Each of them represents or reflects Max’s emotions or experiences. They love sleeping in a big pile and are thrilled with Max’s plans for a fort. But Max learns how difficult it is to be responsible for the happiness of others, and before long, like other children in stories who have traveled to lands filled with magic and wonder, he longs for home.

The movie’s look is steeped in the natural world, with forests and beaches, and intricate Waldorf-school-style constructions that evoke a sense of wonder. The screenplay by Dave Eggers and Jonze locates the heart of Sendak’s story. They have not turned it into a movie; they have made their own movie as a tribute to Sendak, to childhood, to parenthood, to the Wild Things we all are at times, and to the home that waits for us when those times are over.

Everybody’s Fine

Posted on February 24, 2010 at 8:00 am

Parents try very hard to protect their children and at the same time teach them to be independent. And then we struggle to accept the consequences. That is what has happened to Frank Goode (Robert DeNiro), a recent widower preparing for a visit from his four grown children. When all four of them cancel, he decides to get his suitcase out of the attic and go see each of them. Well, he goes to visit each of them — without calling to let them know. But seeing them will take a little longer.

Based on the 1990 Italian film “Stanno tutti bene,” this is a quietly moving story of a family struggling to re-connect. Like many families, this one had one member, the mother, who operated as a communications hub and mediator. Without her, the grown children feel that their primary obligation is to protect their father, in part because that is what their mother did and in part because no one seems to know how to tell him that one of his children is in terrible trouble.

Frank takes the train, telling the other passengers that he helped to create the miles of telephone wire they are passing by. A million miles of wire to raise his family. And now, his children are constantly on cell phones that communicate without the tangible connection of wires. And no one is communicating with him.

What Frank thought of as encouragement they now see as impossibly high expectations, and each of them is afraid of letting him down. When Frank first arrives, he sees the children as they were. The married woman with a teen-age son (Kate Beckinsale) appears to him as a little girl (Beckinsale’s real-life daughter, Lily Mo Sheen). Director Kirk Jones adds a dreamlike, poetic tone to the story with these encounters, especially one near the end of the film when Frank sees the family gathering he was hoping for, with his sons and daughters appearing to him as the children they were, but letting him see and tell them the truth. Jones, who also wrote the screenplay, makes good use of the vast and varied American landscape as a metaphor for the distances and the connections between the characters. The simple, direct mode of the telephone lines Frank covered so carefully has splintered into a dozen ways of staying in touch — ways that can just as easily be frustrating just-misses that make us feel even more isolated. The movie gently shows us the challenges of maintaining those connections and the inevitability of getting it wrong sometimes — but also that even with that certainty, the importance of trying is what keeps everybody fine.

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Blood, Sweat, and Cookies — Olympic Women’s Hockey

Posted on February 20, 2010 at 10:18 pm

My friend Bob Elisberg recommends a great documentary about the women’s Olympic hockey team — and the great thing is that you can watch it online.
Bob wrote in the Huffington Post:

it’s the comradeship of the women, pushing, encouraging each other that gets them all through. That’s the theme of the documentary, it turns out. The bonding that occurs between these women athletes, many of whom won’t make the team, yet who build lifelong friendships, and take away lessons that they say will hold them and push them through the rest of their life.

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Interview: Danielle Bisutti of ‘True Jackson VP’

Posted on February 18, 2010 at 3:59 pm

On the Nickelodeon series True Jackson VP, Danielle Bisutti plays Amanda, the fashion company executive who is jealous of — and always outsmarted by — the teenage title character played by Keke Palmer. She also stars in the popular Christian film No Greater Love as a young mother who leaves her family and devotes her life to Christ. I spoke to her about fashion, co-starring with young performers, and what inspires her.

Is it fun to wear high fashion clothes as Amanda?

When I was two years old, I would pick out clothes. My mom would stand me up in my crib and pull out dresses and I would point to what I wanted to wear. So it was an inevitable thing that one day I would end up playing a role where I was a vice president of a fashion company. My mom and my aunt did a great deal of modeling and both my grandmother and my great-grandmother on my mom’s side worked for Gucci. So I have all these amazing vintage Gucci pieces. So when I was cast as Amanda in “True Jackson VP” and saw that it was a kind of “Devil Wears Prada”/”Ugly Betty” setting I knew exactly what I was going to wear. It was a total dream come true. And our wardrobe stylist, Alison Freer, is phenomenal. She totally gets me, my body type, the character. Amanda has a bit of little girl in her and a lot of sass, a lot of edge. She’s a New York executive and she always wants to be a little sleek and sophisticated. We’re totally on the same page and I couldn’t be happier. I love her; she’s amazing.

Is there one outfit you especially loved wearing?

I seem to get a lot of great dresses from Karen Millen and some pieces from Alice & Olivia. Alison Freer let me borrow and Alice & Olivia dress on the red carpet, and a Karen Millen one that fit like a total glove I wore on the red carpet as well. She gives them to me on loan and I rock them on the red carpet and bring them back.

You’re working with one of my favorite young performers, Keke Palmer of Akeelah and the Bee.

She is a consummate professional and she’s just 16 years old. There’s a side to Keke where you feel like you are dealing with a sophisticated 40-year-old woman who has been doing this forever and then there’s side that is this 16-year-old girl who is bouncing off the walls. What I love about her is that she is always open to playing, always open to new ideas. Sometimes I’ll come to her and say, “Hey, why don’t we try the scene this way, or in this scene why don’t you look at me and I’ll look and you and then we’ll go in this direction. We come to each other with different ideas and there’s a real collaboration with a lot of love and respect for each other and playfulness. It’s a total joy.

What is it like interacting with kid actors all day long?

That’s like the clash between the two worlds in the show — dealing with kids in a very adult, high-fashion, high-pressure situation. I kind of see myself as like the mama bear on the set. If the kids are getting rowdy before a take, honing everybody in and getting everybody focused. You have to watch your language. You have to watch what you talk about. I feel like it has made me a little bit more PG-rated, which is totally fine for me! It’s refreshing. The writers come up with clever, interesting jokes without it being anything risque. It’s a total family show.

Tell me about meeting fans of the show — they must get very enthusiastic!

I play the nemesis of the show. And there are kids who love the hero but there are also kids who love the villain! A lot of kids love Amanda! They love how she takes herself so seriously. They love how she dresses. One girl sends me pictures of how she dresses like Amanda at school! That’s been fun. We have a lot of parent fans, too.

I think it is great for families to watch a show that is set in the workplace. Most shows featuring kids are set at home or school.

You nailed it right on the head.

How was your experience filming No Greater Love?

Filming NGL was a completely organic and collaborative process. Russ, Brandon and Brad all set the tone for a family feeling environment which allowed me as an actor (and I believe the other actors as well) feel safe to really discover the truthful unfurling of each moment. Yes we were on a budget, yes we had a time limit, yes this was the first film for this production company but you’d never be able to tell by looking at the finished product that any of these factors weighed in on the over-all quality of the project.

What was it like being a part of a faith-based film?

Being in a faith-based film felt like being back at home, growing up in Simi Valley. Everyone was kind and supportive. There were a lot of prayers to get through stressful moments or non-stressful moments such as before each meal and no one ever used “bad words” on set. Much like being on set for my Nickelodeon show “True Jackson V.P.”

Did you identify with your character “Heather” in any way?

Since I am not a mother nor have I ever been married nor have I ever had a problem with drugs and alcohol, I do not directly relate to Heather’s outward circumstances and life choices.

However I can certainly relate to making a selfish choice as an act of desperation from a time in my life where I was feeling absolutely helpless and hopeless. Even regardless of having a relationship with God there have been those moments of total doubt and loneliness where I have felt like I need to do something drastic to take control of my life and inevitably my choice doesn’t help so much as lead me to a BIG lesson that God was trying to teach me all along. Then comes humility, surrender and supreme forgiveness and those are experiential attributes that I can certainly relate too.

Anything you want to add about the film, its importance in the industry, what people can learn from it, etc.?

NGL is a film that I believe transcends all “genres” or limits to “specific audiences” simply because its themes are so central and universal: Forgiveness, Redemption, Family, Love and Second Chances. Since it is a faith-based film the moral code is up to par to fit any families standards and regardless of what “Religion” you are, there is most definitely a need for more films of this caliber, upholding the highest integrity.

For people who want to check out the film, what is the one thing you would say about it to spark their interest?

First love that gets lost along the way is given a second chance to make it work for the better. I mean how romantic is that?!

The show has a classic “I Love Lucy” tone to it, with the over-the-top situations and humor. Who are the performers you look up to?

Well of course Lucille Ball is like the queen of comedy, and maybe the goddess is Madeline Kahn, who had a little more of an edge to her. I grew up watching a lot of “I Love Lucy,” a lot of “Saturday Night Live” in the Gilda Radner/Jane Curtin era. And a lot of Mel Brooks. I really resonated with her because she had that darker, edgier side, totally ridiculous. When I was 21 and graduating from college I had to do a one-woman show and I did “I’m Tired” from “Blazing Saddles.”

Is there a role you would really love to play?

I’ve always loved the role of Guinevere in “Camelot.” I’ve always been drawn to the Arthurian legends. My mom and I used to watch that movie all the time. I love rock operas like “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I admire performers like Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett because they are so chameleon-like; they do comedy and drama and music. Cate Blanchett can do anything — she even played Bob Dylan! I just love to continually change it up.

And you sing and write songs as well.

I’ve been singing and song-writing since I was 21 or 22. I have not released an album but I have done songs for movies. I hope to do an album very soon, that’s one of the things I’m working on during my hiatus time. The “True Jackson” fans have been downloading my songs and two of them even performed one in the talent show! To think that two 13-year-old girls would love a song of mine so much that they would sing it in a talent show is really a compliment and very touching.

Do you have a favorite romantic movie?

The Notebook is so good. It has that retro feel. “Casablanca” is also very romantic. Anything that has a love triangle sucks me right in. And “Camelot.” I get so tortured trying to decide who should be with who.

What inspires you?

To continually feel authentic in my work. And in my authenticity to be able to touch people is the ultimate gift. There’s a sense of being of service when you can get yourself out of the way and let the art come through. Surrender to the process and allow it to be fun, allow it to happen. Knowing that my work is inspiring other people to be authentic to who they are is my inspiration.

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Tribute: Charlie Wilson

Posted on February 10, 2010 at 5:00 pm

Former Congressman Charlie Wilson, whose top-secret orchestration of the defense of Afghanistan kept that country free and crippled the Soviet Union, died today at age 76. His success in channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to that conflict was revealed years later and became best known through the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, where he was played by Tom Hanks. The movie ended on a poignant note as Wilson was unable to continue the funding that was essential for rebuilding Afghanistan, a failure that was a partial cause of the rise of the Taliban there.
Wilson was also known for his unabashed enjoyment of beautiful women and fine liquor. He will be remembered for his honest common sense and commitment to freedom.

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