"Wild Thing" you make my heart bleed

I was really looking forward to seeing Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jone's adaptation of the children's book. And while the movie was good in a lot of ways, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed.

Spike Jones also directed the mind-bending Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and the kick-ass "Sabatoge" music video by the Beastie Boys. For this movie, he joined forces with writer Dave Eggers, who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What?, two books with bounding pulses of vitality. Eggers also created the ridiculous/inspiring Pirate shop/writing center at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. Just how intensely emotional can Eggers get? Here's the last line from AHWOSG:

What the fuck does it take to show you motherfuckers, what does it fucking take what do you want how much do you want because I am willing and I'll stand before you and I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long, for you, I want it fast and right through me-Oh do it, you motherfuckers, do it do it you fuckers finally, finally, finally.

What is the What? is a postmodern biography of a Sudanese "Lost Boy" refugee, accounting atrocities beyond your imagination. And so, with these two minds collaborating on a children's book about a boy, Max, and his monsters, the possibilities were endless.

I think visually the film is a success. The wild things themselves look so wonderful, so lifelike, any kid would love to party with 'em. It's really cool to watch them jump around and smash into things. Also the location of the film, a remote area outside Melbourne Australia, is breathtaking. Even the handheld camerawork is good, tumbling down stairs and through forests and tunnels.

The story is pretty straightforward. Max throws a temper tantrum and drifts off into this imaginary world to escape the tribulations of reality, where he becomes king of the wild things. They engage in typical childhood rough-housing, dirt clod wars and the like.

But the monsters threw me for a loop. I couldn't get a handle on what age they were supposed to be. They're nieve and playful like young children, but also combative and overly sensitive like adolescents. They fight and whine A LOT. Max just wants them to get along, but it's draining for him and the audience, and there's a sense of relief when he finally comes back to the real world. Seriously the drama was overwhelming, and for no real clear reason.

One of the joys of working with children is regularly experiencing their effortless imagination and wild freedom, which this film exudes. If only Max could conjure a remedy for Eggers' bleeding heart...

"The Informant!" He's wearing a wire, but that ain't half of it.

The Informant is Steven Soderbergh's newest film starring Matt Damon, and is based on the true story of Mark Whitacre, a man who sought to expose a global conspiracy of price fixing by multinational corporations...but for all the wrong reasons. Indeed it's one of those stranger-than-fiction stories that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief and muttering ai yai yai (sic?)

So here's the setup: Mark Whitacre is an upper management biochemist at the ADM corporation, which makes additives in various food products. When the factory he oversees has trouble meeting demand, he fabricates to his superiors an insidious plot to subvert ADM by its Japanese competitor, involving extortion, viruses etc. This lie prompts an investigation by the FBI, which threatens to uncover an even greater plot: ADM in cahoots with its competitors to fix prices of their additives worldwide and rip off a planet of consumers! Rather than be caught on the wrong side of this potential disaster, Whitacre turns FBI informant and snitches the entire scheme, with the delusion that he will ascend to ADM CEO once the Fed cleans house.

Got all that? Maybe not. Suffice it to say that Whitacre, through the course of the film, weaves such a tangled web of bullshit that he finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble, with everyone else simply pleading for the truth. As his lying becomes seemingly pathologic, the film evolves from comedy to tragedy.

Now Soderbergh's most known for his Ocean's Eleven movies, Sex, Lies and Videotape and Oscar-nominated Traffic and Erin Brockavich. He certainly has made some great movies; I think Traffic was just awesome, and his lesser known film The Limey, was also very cool. He recently made Che: Part I and II, which didn't get a lot of attention but were, from my understanding, quite historically accurate, if a bit overly deferential. In The Informant!, though, Soderbergh doesn't score a lot of style points. The strength of the movie is the story itself, and doesn't need a lot of flair, and in fact the Muzak soundtrack and cheeky opening disclaimer were a bit annoying.

There's one particular editing technique Soderbergh used in The Limey, Out of Sight and Erin Brockavich that I thought was really neat, transcendent even. He films two people conversing, then cuts to a scene with the two people together, silent, with the sound from the previous conversation still playing. It allows us to see two people together both silent and conversing simultaneously, which in reality, is impossible if you think about it. Here's a youtube link that shows what I'm talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uxY8Wsygpw

If this movie doesn't sound like your bit of whimsy, you might at least listen to the This American Life podcast "The Fix is In", which basically tells the entire story (but without Matt Damon in a god-awful tie and mustache).

Coming up next time: Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. Can't wait!!