Spike Jonze Archives - chimesfreedom

Her, the new film starring Joaquin Phoenix and written and directed by Spike Jonze, is garnering very good reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives the film a 93% critics rating (and 87% audience rating). The movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. It does address an interesting concept and I enjoyed much of the story, but I was not as overwhelmed as the critics.

Her takes place in the not-to-distant future where we know it is the future because people do not wear belts but they do wear mustaches. Phoenix stars as a writer named Theodore Twombly going through a divorce who falls in love with the advanced operating system on his cell phone, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

I have admired movies by Jonze since Being John Malkovich (1999), and he does an excellent job here of capturing a world that is recognizable but slightly different from ours. The film also raises interesting questions about artificial intelligence and human relationships, addressing more immediate problems raised by computers than what we see in other science fiction films like Terminator. I enjoyed the characterization by Phoenix and the voice work by Johansson. And Amy Adams does a great job here too. But my one complaint about the film was that there was not enough there to keep me entertained for two hours. I never became invested in Phoenix’s character enough to stay entertained. For me, the movie could have told the same story in ninety minutes or less.

Conclusion? Most people are enjoying this film, so maybe you will too. For me, I enjoyed a lot of the movie but it could not keep me from looking at my watch several times. Still, Her raises some interesting issues that might lead you to further discussions with your friends.

Bonus Parody Video: This weekend on Saturday Night Live, host Jonah Hill (with a little help from Micheal Cera) did a funny parody with the preview for the movie Me. Check it out.

Did you like Her? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Trailer for Coen Brothers’ Film: “Hail, Caesar!”

Jonah Hill “Doesn’t” Let Oscar Nom Go to His Head (SNL video)

Paul McCartney Joins Springsteen for “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”

Teaser Trailer for New “The Jungle Book” from Disney

“I Am Chris Farley” Trailer

“Serial” Parodies from Funny or Die and SNL

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Chidren’s author Maurice Sendak passed away this morning at the age of 83. Sendak wrote more than a dozen books and illustrated more than one hundred, but he is most remembered for his book, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which is published in many languages around the world.

Like many others, I discovered the book as a kid and fell in love with it instantly. I remember it as one of the first books I picked out myself when I was attracted to the fascinating illustration on the cover. I liked that the “monsters” were both scary and cuddly at the same time. I eventually figured out that there was something unusual in the 10-sentence story too. In its simplicity and sparse use of words, it raised questions for me that I could not articulate and left me with some questions I still do not know the answer to today. At the time, I remember asking my mom, “Why was his food still hot?” and receiving an unsatisfying answer. The book somehow captures a complex aspect of childhood that adults cannot quite interpret. So I won’t do that here (although Sendak once described how he had to fight with his publisher to keep the word “hot” because his publisher wanted to change it to “warm”).

Spike Jonze understood the complexity of the book when he made his 2009 film version of Where the Wild Things Are, which on Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% rating from critics and a disappointing 59% rating from audience members. Some noted that the movie was more for adults than children, and the movie did a good job of taking a book that takes a few minutes to read and turning it into a feature length film. It is not the same as the book, but for those who grew up with the book, it made a good effort at recapturing that initial bewilderment from encountering the book as a child. As Nick Deigman explains on Fan the Fire, the movie is “a beautiful and languid testament to the importance of remembering how powerful our childhoods really were.”

That complexity in the film came directly from Sendak’s work. Today, the Washington Post explains that Sendak “transformed children’s literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up.” The dark tones of reality appeared in Sendak’s children’s books because he saw that side of life as a sickly and home-bound child who had relatives die in the Holocaust. He grew up in Brooklyn where his family kept him indoors much of the time because he suffered from bouts of measles, pneumonia and scarlet fever. He became fascinated with things like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which he later used as an inspiration for his book Outside Over There. Sendak based the Where the Wild Things monsters on his immigrant relatives who would visit when he was a child. They spoke a different language while engaging the children affectionately in ways that were terrifying to the children.

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Maurice Sendak explained that he originally conceived of Where the Wild Things as “Where the Wild Horses Are” until he discovered he could not draw horses. When asked why he wrote children’s books, he responds, “I don’t know.” I don’t either, but I’m glad he did. I am also glad he could not draw horses. In this interview from Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, a documentary by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs, Sendak talks about death and looks back on his work. RIP.