Terrible Yellow Eyes
July 09
And when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said ‘BE STILL!’ and tamed them with a magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all…
I am practically gnashing my teeth in anticipation for Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak – it is still one of my favourite books of all time and the images from the film look amazing. There are two other things that are also cause for delight. The first is that Dave Eggers of McSweeney’s fame has written a novel loosely based on the original book and the screenplay to be released later this year (it comes hardcover, paperback and a special furry edition). The second is a blog by Cory Godbey, called Terrible Yellow Eyes. In tribute to Sendak, it showcases a series of interpretations/responses by a wide range of artists and illustrators. A few choice picks are below. The artists are: Anastacia Sholik, Dan Matutina, Alberto Cerriteño, Mike Maihack and Shannon Bonatakis.
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Comments
11 Jul 09 at 7:25
I don't know - don't you think they've taken some pretty intense license with the plot? I don't think of this film as related to WTWTA at all, except in the most superficial way.
I understand that you can't make a feature film out of the brief story laid down in the original book, but making the Wild Things something that has to be saved from the "real world" - making them victims instead of what they are in the original (and that's different to different people, but the one thing they AREN'T is victims or passive in any way) seems so removed from the thing that I love about the book that this may as well be a movie based on something entirely different.
And the idea of there being a "novel version" of WTWTA? Even if it's by Eggers? Makes me want to ask why people feel the need to stripmine their childhood favourites instead of coming up with new ideas themselves.
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