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I would have picked with great JOY a recent (very big) hollywood film over these two aforementioned films because my choice was like a therapy metaphor turned into a children's blockbuster where every element was in support of the whole ....and I found it very enlightening. not gunna name it because you didn't put it INSIDE your poll so....you'll have to die of curiosity (now that was sarcastic!). I hope you see my point here overtly and covertly. thank you a million times over for your talent, hard work and insight (even if your wrong sometimes )... love you guys and the show! HAVE A VERY META DAY, cheers, JANGLES, OUT!
(obviously i need a Thelma Schoonmaker)
No option for neither? i pick neither. i MUST HAVE MISSED SOMETHING about the poll because those were the only two choices. Please dont hate me for this ostensibly blasphemous tirade of ANGER or DISGUST in not loving either of these films or directors. I could say some positive things to balance the scales but it would be forced and it would make this already too long post even longer. So now...gun to HEAD.... id pick f.m.fox because i liked Clooney's voice performance. It was such an odd choice that it seduced me with its plain job-interview tone throughout. Not being sarcastic here, I genuinely thought it was bold to make Mr. Fox's voice void of any emotion like he's a sociopath treating every interaction as if he's reading a newspaper aloud to an absent wife before heading off to work. . .that alone would have made the film interesting for me except then every voice performance in this film (aside from bill murray's-- who actually performs sans SADNESS) was like someone talking in their sleep while having a dream about a job interview at BING. As for wtwa i love gandolfini as an actor but was totally distracted by his voice in this. I Dont think his acting suited the character at all. There really isn't much for me in wtwa at all i'm afraid. TBH, I was confused and bored by both pictures because of the directing choices. Is it possible your love for these directors has seduce you into thinking the emperor is wearing something from your favorite collection? is it possible that the charm of these films is merely that they are different than anything that has been released in their genre and relative time as opposed to well crafted works that execute the story as effectively as possible in their own right (i.e. their otherness has charmed you into not simply validating them ... but coronating them). Am i wrong to think that a work of good filmmaking should stand as a collection of effective artistic directorial choices that blend and collide like a symphony of notes into a well crafted whole? Are the clumsiness and poor choices/ flaws in either of these films being mistaken as artistic integrity (seen as quirky ideas etc.) merely because they contrast with tired techniques and ideas we are all bombarded with from hollywood? For example, How does the charm of the purposely amateurish looking stop motion in f.m.f. help the story make its point, relate to the world he created in a way that justifies the quirkiness or at least suspend the viewers disbelief? My answer: I think it doesn't. Purposely using amateurish technique here in f.m.f. is about the director showing off his ability to defy conventions in order to triangulate an identity for himself as "not them" and I FEAR that perhaps you and others are mistaking it as "something special" (that IS to say wes anderson film's are about wes anderson showing off his ability and choices and therefore his directorial choices and technique are not in support of the characters in the films or an expose of the world we all live in... similar to QT, btw). His characters are their to support his technique and his chosen persona. Its like a really long artistic film clip for a dating site asking the world to go out with him so he can take you through his closet and show you his favorite clothes and where he went to school and how he lines up his pencils next to an old timey sharpener and how he has an interesting and weird collection of friends and you should call him an artist and like him (all choices are curated, designed and empty things about the director to serve the audience his character "Wes"). Wes anderson films are about Wes anderson. ( i do like some of his work for other reasons, hes got 1 story in him) Now maybe this poll was supposed to be only arty-alternative-children-animation films based on children's books but if it was included in the list I would have picked with great JOY a recent (very big) hollywood film over these two aforement
Wild Things.
Both of these movies are pretty damn great, to be clear. I wouldn't want it to seem like I'm out to bash "Fantastic Mr. Fox," which I enjoy enough to own a copy of. It's hilarious. It's clever. It's easy on the eyes, too - every inch, a perfect picture (or maybe that's every *quarter-inch,* at this scale).
But I'm one of those cats who has a troubled relationship with Wes. Here, it's a bit like he's is at my bedside, reading Dahl's book as a bedtime story - but he's an annoying dad. He pauses to comment on the story, does impersonations of contemporary politicians, insists on quietly spinning his favorite records in the background, and basically makes it about HIM. I mean, luckily, he's a really entertaining guy telling a super story, but sometimes you want to grab his cheeks and say, "can Mommy finish the story? She has fewer performative instincts."
Spike's "Where the Wild Things Are" is a little overlong - it's tough to stretch a slim picture book into a full-length feature - but it reveals the director's great, great gift for sincerity. His response to the studio's herculean task? Cut to the heart of the matter. It's a hat trick. He stretches the content from 10 to 190 minutes but distills the material into elemental constituents: childhood fears. Making friends. The spectre of growing up. A child's twin desire's to flee, and to nest. The result is more weird, fresh and unburdened than anything Anderson, ever tinkering with nostalgia and pastiche, could ever dream up.
Where Wes used "Fox" as another platform for showing off, Spike's "Wild Things" is wildly earnest in service of its sweet, singular source material.
Fantastic Mr. Fox without a shadow of a doubt. Where The Wild Things Are is a children's book adaptation for kids, whereas Anderson manages to translate a undoubtedly chlidren classic into a movies enjoyable by adults and kids alike.
Keep up the good work guys!
That "nostalgic emotion" comment was in reference to Moonrise Kingdom. My bad, had to type that comment twice due to technical difficulties and rushed through it the second time.
Need to amend my last comment after catching up with The Royal Tenebaum's pantheon episode. Sheesh! Has the show ever put a director's entire oeuvre info the penalty box? For both hosts? Seems about time.
Despite all the Anderson talked recently, I was pleased to hear how similar my experience was to Sam's. Love love love Bottle Rocket and never expected Anderson to quite hit those highs again after being positive on Rushmore and disappointed by Tenenbaum. Turns out he made his masterpiece by injecting his typical formalism with a healthy dose of palpably nostalgic emotion.
How is this not 100% in favor of Where the Wild Things Are? Between this and Filmspotting Madness I'm starting to get all "tin foil hat" concerning the tyranny of Josh.
You just had to put "best" in the title didn't you? If you had said "favorite" adaptation Mr. Fox's charm and wit would win it easy. But "best" requires me to put the two films side by side and realize how impressive each is. They both feature staggeringly beautiful filmmaking and creature design, moments of poignant introspection, a sense of true wonder. How can I value the whimsical absurdity of Mr. Fox over the exploration of the collapse of childhood in Wild Things?
Perhaps the word I should focus on is "adaptation." Both films are based on quite short books, and elaborate on them by inventing imaginative new sequences, and exploring serious emotional issues, and aim more at adults than at children, and...and...cus you guys, this is really hard!
I can't believe this is happening, but I'm actually casting a vote against Wes anderson...
Watching "Where the Wild Things Are" in the theater was one of the strangest movie-going experiences of my life. From the moment it started, I kept thinking, "This is really beautiful, but it's not working for me." The storytelling was too loose, too sloppy, and I just felt like I couldn't connect with it. But then, somewhere near the end, even though I still felt like the movie wasn't working, I found myself in tears. And I don't mean that the theater was dusty. No, I was practically weeping, trying to hold myself together and failing. Somehow, the movie had squeezed past whatever defenses I had built up and had touched me in a way that I didn't see coming. My affection for the film has only grown over time, and more than being a children's movie or a children's book adaptation, it's one of a small handful of movies that makes me feel like a child again. "Fantastic Mr. Fox," for all of its wit and style, doesn't do that. Don't get me wrong, it's still a wonderful movie, and it deserves to be mentioned alongside Wes Anderson's best, but it doesn't have the raw emotional power of Spike Jonze's visionary film. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is ingenious and terrifically entertaining, but "Where the Wild Things Are" takes me back to a time when my friends were big, the sun was small, and I was the king of everything.
I love these two films for incredibly different reasons. However, I have to give the edge to FANTASTIC MR. FOX. A lot of people might say that WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is the deeper movie, but I think of that as a surface observation because it's so forefront in announcing its darkness. It's a movie about the harsh realities that occur while growing up, but I can't help but feel that the film's own harshness drowns out any kind of joy that childhood can bring. I understand that this is a strength of the film, but I tend to still think of it as a film about children through the eyes of an adult looking back. FANTASTIC MR. FOX, on the other hand, tackles adult themes through a childlike lens. Musings on existentialism are coupled with physical gags or absurdist humor. The ending, in particular, gets darker as I grow older (and I was already out of childhood when I initially saw the film) with its near apocalyptic prophecy of rapid industrialization and how that will influence the survival of future generations. Then Wes caps it off with a dance. This kind of style incepts socio-political questions into the younger audience with a far more approachable genre (the adventure comedy) rather than the blunt use of drama in WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.
See Also: Miyazaki.
Ahh, I see the "Other" Option was removed. Mr. Fox all the way, then.
As not only my choice out of these two, but also as my favorite film of 2009, I have to go with Where The Wild Things Are. I definitely have love for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and it may be a more faithful adaptation of its source material, but when I look at the movies themselves, Jonze's film comes out on top. I'm 31 years old, and Wild Things made me feel feelings that I haven't felt since I was nine. Using a very simple picture book as source material, Jonze created a piece of art that evokes every emotion of a child: what makes you angry, what makes you giddy, what makes you act out and immediately regret your actions, and just in general the emotional roller coaster that is childhood. It's certainly not a kid's movie; the melancholy that permeates around and through its carefree joyfulness has a complexity that can only be appreciated by people who have been through that phase of life and moved on. Long story short: The Fantastic Mr. Fox is charming, and Where The Wild Things Are is transcendent.
Though Anderson's Fox is the clear winner of this specific crown, the "Battle of '09" could have been opened up with Coraline for sure and also Cloud with a Chance of Meatballs, our first introduction to the consistently surprising minds of Phil Lord & Chris Miller. I think those would have been four very formidable, qualified, and interesting opponents. Limiting to Jonze and Anderson does make an enticing death match, however, and given that, again, I have to go with Fox. Jonze's "Wild Things" never caught on with me, which is sad because I adore Sendack's book. I admire the defenders, but something about it never coalesced, and it could be because it's such a auteuristically rendered vision of the book that I, despite my love for Jonze's other work, couldn't get past how he evolving and adapting the source material. Fantastic Mr. Fox, on the other hand, I think is an absolute gem. The clear carryover of Anderson's style, the pitch perfect voice casting, that specific sense of humor, and the sheer beauty of the stop motion. It's one of my favorite Anderson's - Top three for sure - and I think it could stand its own against any number of animated films, from its stop motion brethren at Aardman to the champions of the medium at Pixar.
Oh, Coraline is wonderful! Love that movie. I even saw a truly magical live-action adaptation of it off-Broadway in NYC, about a year or so before the film came out.
Maybe if I hadn't seen that -- and been absolutely floored by it -- the film version would be getting my vote, too. Because it IS really wonderful. But as it stands, I have to give my vote to Where the Wild Things Are, a movie that just makes me want to hug it forever.
Mr. Fox is a delight, but against those two contenders, it ranks an easy third for me.
What the cuss were you thinking? The Wild Things vs THE WILD ANIMAL! Come on? FOX is a better digger, troublemaker and father, which is saying something since he takes both his son and nephew on heists.
Kylie? Are you paying attention?....
I voted for Fantastic Mr. Fox, but I wish I could change it. No, not to Where the Wild Things Are - that movie suffers from bloat due to expanding the scope of the kid's book in order to reach feature length...not unlike How the Grinch Stole Christmas, though at least WTWTA is decent instead of unwatchable like The Grinch.
No, assuming it's all relegated to 2009 there is still a superior "other" option and that's Henry Selick's beautiful, funny, haunting and argument in favor of 3D, the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. From the Letterboxd rankings, Adam clearly underappreciates it, though he likes it. It's a perfectly economical film that gives just enough development and backstory while also immersing you in the weirdness of the alt-world. The animation is charming and appropriately creepy in places; it's basically training wheels for future horror fans. There is amazing voice work from everyone in the cast. You've got the king of voice acting in Keith David plus the likes of Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman and Ian McShane. But it's Dakota Fanning as Coraline who imbues the film with a sense of urgency, realism (character realism helps make the supernatural seem more plausible), and (the Adam Special) important stakes.
Coraline is my favourite children's book adaptation...and I'd even say it does what neither of the official options does and that's improve on the source material.