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Chris Sawin (602 KP) rated Where the Wild Things Are (2009) in Movies

Jun 22, 2019

Max is a boy who possesses something that fades away for most as they grow older and that's a young child's incredible imagination. His only dilemma is that he doesn't really have any friends of his own. He builds an igloo out of snow and tries to share it with his older sister, Claire, who seems more interested in hanging out with her friends. Max's mom embraces Max's imagination and even asks him to tell her stories, but everything falls apart when Max tries to save his mom a seat in the fort he just built that would save them from hot lava while she's on a date. Things quickly spiral out of control and Max winds up running away. He finds a boat by the water and takes it out into the sea. As he explores the open water, he becomes astray while he succumbs to the relentless weather and crashing waves of the ocean. That is until he stumbles upon an island where an incandescent glow of a small fire catches his eye. He finds that the island is inhabited by large, hairy, horned creatures. He's discovered where the wild things are and he will be their king.

This film is nothing short of amazing. As the film progressed, I found myself looking back on the memories of having the book read to me as a child. The film manages to capture the magic contained in the book and elaborate on it. The movie really made you feel like you were looking at the world through Max's eyes. It was almost like watching a world within a world. I found myself overcome with emotion by the time those credits showed up on the big screen. That's a special experience in itself.

Just about every aspect of the film is enjoyable. They really did a fantastic job stretching a ten sentence story into an hour and a half film. The writing is fairly superb as the pacing really flows once the ball gets rolling and the dialogue seems like it's straight out of the mind of a young boy. Max Records couldn't fit the Max role more perfectly. His range of emotion and the way he's able to have that look of innocence in his eyes is spectacular. Every action that Max made just felt so heartfelt.

The wild things are what really steal the show. The way they were pulled off just makes them look so realistic. Jim Henson's Creature Shop did a really phenomenal job on them. Despite the wild things being unhappy the majority of the film, it's really just a joy to watch them walk, move, talk, or smile.

As extravagant and imaginative as the film is, it did seem to have one flaw. The beginning of the film seemed to drag a bit. Everything leading up to Max finding the wild things just seemed to last a little too long. I realize they did all that they could with the source material and their efforts are extraordinary given how short that material is, but from a film critic's standpoint the beginning of the film dragged slightly.

Where the Wild Things Are is one of the most heartwarming and whimsical experiences at the theater I've ever had the pleasure of sitting through. If you read the book when you were younger, then this film will really hit home. You won't want it to end. You'll want King Max and the wild things to continue sleeping in a pile, having wild rumpuses, engaging in wars, building those glorious forts, and having Max stay there forever. I highly recommend seeing this wonderful film.

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Brian Eno recommended Afrodisiac by Fela Ransome-Kuti & The Africa '70 in Music (curated)

"I found a very interesting thing out about Tony Allen. I was thinking, ""How did he get to that music?"" In my opinion, Afrobeat really grew out of his drumming more than anything else. I mean, Fela was of course totally important to it and realised what you could build around that, but I think there was nothing else you could find that sounds like Tony at that time. So I was asking a friend of mine about this, Joe Boyd, the record producer, and he said that the story with Tony was that he was the only subscriber to Downbeat magazine in West Africa when he was about 18 or 19. In one edition there was a supplement by Max Roach, the jazz drummer, about hi-hat technique and Tony got completely fascinated by this article about how you balance the hi-hat with the rest of the kit. So Tony came from the history of Nigerian drumming and then he saw this article by Max Roach and that was the sort of thing that galvanised him really. Afrodisiac has four songs and they're all absolutely brilliant. There's no disappointment on the album at all. On later records there's quite a lot of fat, the pieces go on and on and sometimes they're a bit aimless, but Afrodisiac I suppose was being made as an attempt to push Fela over here, so instead of a piece taking a whole side it takes only half a side. I used to go to this record shop just off Tottenham Court Road called Sterns and that was a place where you could buy records from other countries, so a lot of Africans went there because you could buy West African records there. I used to sniff around there as I was just fascinated by all the covers. All these people with amazing headdresses on and you think, ""Christ, I really want to hear that record, I wonder what that sounds like."" So I saw that cover and bought it entirely on that. I thought, that sounds good, it's got the cheesiest title you could have. I took it home and just thought, fuck, the vigour of it and the Nigerian strength [laughs], the rudeness of it. The horns, when I heard them, I had this picture of these huge trucks on the Trans-African Highway and they have these enormous compressed air horns and that is what the horns on the record sounded like to me. They were so un-glamourised. They didn't have that kind of 'jazzy' soft, smoochy sound, they were just ""fucking get out of my fucking way!"" When I first met Talking Heads, the first meeting I ever had with them, they had been playing in London and they came over to my flat to talk about me working on their next album. So I said, ""This is the future of music"", and I played them Afrodisiac, and to their credit they were incredibly impressed by it. If you listen to the third album we did together (Remain In Light) it's so influenced by that. It's sort of shameful in a way."

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