c'est le temps de l'amour, le temps des copains et de l'aventure

Wes Anderson's latest film Moonrise Kingdom is just adorable. I've talked before about how the Tenenbaums remind me of Salinger's Glass family and I also think there's something Mitfordish about his films and the families within. There'll be them that just don't like Wes, and that's fine by me, but his films really tickle my fancy.*

Moonrise Kingdom is about Sam and Suzy, a pair of twelve year olds who are in love and run away - Sam from scout camp, Suzy from her home - to be together. It's set in the 1960s, has a brilliant soundtrack and all the trademarks of a Wes film: the obligatory slow motion shot, long tracking shot that shows a bunch of different rooms, Bill Murray, wonderful colours and costumes.

It felt like a really wonderful middle grade novel. The kind that makes your heart swell and pushes your nostalgia buttons, one that's about innocence and creeping towards the end of childhood. The kind of book that would win the Newbery Medal. For in these books it is always the time of love, the time of friends and of adventure!

In the film, Suzy lives in a most spectacular house called Summer's End, which reminded me of a book I read recently...

In Monica Dickens' The House at World's End, Tom, Carrie, Em and Michael have to stay with their rather unwelcoming uncle and aunt, because their mother is in hospital after a beam from their house (as it burned down in the middle of one night) fell on her and broke her back, and their father is sailing round the world in a boat he made himself. However, they soon con their uncle into allowing them to strike out on their own in a tumbledown house in the countryside (at World's End), a house that becomes the most wonderful lawless refuge for the children - and a menagerie of stray animals.

Michael, who was the youngest, came in like a bishop in a long towel bathrobe meant for a man. They had lost everything when their house caught fire, and although their aunt and uncle had bought clothes for them, Valentina's patience had run out before she finished outfitting Michael.
  'Excuse me.' He stirred the dog Charlie with a towelled toe. 'She says you must go down to the cellar.' Charlie thumped his tail without opening his eyes. He was a part poodle, part golden retriever, part hearthrug, who liked people better than dogs. 'It is your duty,' Michael told him. That was one of Valentina's favourite sayings.
  'It's worst for him,' Carrie said. 'She kicks him under the table.'
  'I kick her back,' said Michael. 'That my duty.'
  'When we're at school,' Carrie said. 'I think She ties him up, and the cats laugh at him.'
  'I don't blame them.' Em always sided with the cats. 'They think he bit through that old electric wire and burned down our house.'
  'After the fire...' Carrie said, looking through the wall at nothing. 'Do you remember? There was just the spine of the chimney and bits of burned framework, like ribs, and our rubbish heap. I did a picture at school of the black broken ribs and the tin cans. Miss Peake called it morbid. I called it "After the Fire".

The slightly anarchic family dynamics, the rueful independence, the gloriousness of these childrens' lives - I love it. The same way I love Glenda Millard's perfect and quietly heartwrenching Kingdom of Silk books, Hilary McKay's mad Cassel family (see Michelle Cooper's recent post). Or the Conroy sisters from McKay's The Exiles (I LOVE!), who just love books, but when they're forced to spend a summer at Big Grandma's house they discover the joys of gardening, badger spotting and fishing in a bucket:

All by herself Phoebe had acquired a new hobby. It was her own invention, nobody had helped her, nobody but Phoebe would even have thought of it. You filled a bucket with water, tied a bit of string on the end of a stick, held the stick over the water, and there you were. Fishing in a bucket...The fisher in a bucket can take liberties that conventional fishermen can only dream of. He can stir the water vigorously with his rod and produce no ill effects. He can carry the water to any more convenient site...It is a good hobby, and cheap, and if more people did it more often...

(I've been on a bit of a middle grade kick of late.)

Watch the Moonrise Kingdom trailer:



*The evil sister and I have been trying to list them in order of our favourites, and we have boiled it down to The Darjeeling Limited right up the top, as well as The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, then Fantastic Mr Fox and The Life Aquatic a little bit below. My sister didn't love Moonrise Kingdom, and she felt that because the film revolved around children that she wasn't able to invest emotionally enough in the story. I think she has an interesting point, though I think she is also wrong.

so apparently it is july

it's cold where i am,

not actually taken this winter, but in january 2006 at a famous castle in france. this is how cold i feel though

but we built a tent in the lounge room.

this is actually my house. we are real grown ups

it's super hot where the rejectionist is

here are some texts from jane eyre

lala over at the joy of mediocrity saw take this waltz and had the same reaction as me. it was so beautifully filmed, a brilliant soundtrack, great cast ... but just a little over-wrought and seemed to take itself quite seriously. the beautiful michelle williams' character margo was really quite unlikable, the handsome stranger kind of dull. there were elongated silences that were supposed to be Poignant but could have used banter. and early on margo gives a little speech that basically baldly states the entire subtext of her character and this was a moment we could have used a Poignant Silence.

i have sonya hartnett's latest book to read, as well as sarah waters' fingersmith and courtney summers' this is not a test, but i spend most of my time on suri's burn book and when in melbourne.

but last night i saw simone felice and josh ritter play and sing and read at readings carlton. it was very nice.

Ira in my life

When I listen to This American Life podcasts I usually spend most of the hour looking like this:

Beth "cry-baby" March

But it is totally worth it for the surprising, entertaining, shocking, hilarious and and nearly always moving stories that it collects and presents.* Like the episode Neighbourhood Watch, in which an older woman searches for people who might volunteer to be friends with her middle-aged Autistic son, so that when she dies he won't be left all alone. In which we hear about how regular everyday postmen save lives, stop fraud and get to know the people they deliver mail to daily. In which a man takes his baby daughter for a walk around the block for the first time and it's the most terrifying walk he's ever taken - because he's blind.

Also, I have a rather large crush on the nerdy host, Ira Glass. 

Ira "HandsomeInGlasses" Glass

When he came to town earlier this year I discovered I was not alone in my affection. Dagnammit. Many fellow admirers packed out the Athenaeum Theatre**. That time he wandered the stage, controlling music and audio clips from the iPad cradled in his arm and talked about what made a great story, and how great a medium radio is for telling these stories.

But now! Now you can go to the Cinema Nova and you can watch a two-hour long live This American Life show - with bonus visuals! Great animations, a short film, dance, music - the works! A cast of impeccable storytellers, and dishy Ira. It's absolutely brilliant, and includes David Sedaris. Wouldn't it be great to bottle these real life stories and then take them apart to figure out how to recreate it in fiction? Are they so amazing because they're spoken out loud, usually by the people to whom the story actually happened?

The very visual story about the discovery of Vivian Maier's photographs was the highlight for me, I think (oh, it was all so good). Check out her amazing photographs from the 50s and 60s here.

photo by Vivian Maier

Get tickets here. Last shows this weekend.

Visit the This American Life website.

* Totally worth the ugly, chin-wobbling sobfest. I just don't listen on the tram anymore. 
**Threatening via twitter to throw their undies.

what does the future hold?

The Future of Us, Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

A mostly entertaining story about what some teenagers might do with the information given to them by a bizarre portal to the future through a strange website called Facebook. It has a familar, funny Back to the Hot Tub Time Machine Future take on the future, borrowing cheap jokes from Almost Famous (which were cringeworthy then), Mick Jagger still rocking as an old man, etc.

FB pops up on Emma's new computer when she first loads up the Internet and she's horrified to discover the picture of an older version of herself alongside a bunch of short inane comments about her life. How vapid it can be? This is what I personally hate about social media. Contemplating highlights, attention-seeking behaviour making pathetic comments about her husband - blurg. But the character of young Emma as she is presented, I was hardly surprised that she would grow up to be that kind of FB user.

Emma isn't nice, but perhaps that's what the book is about, it holds a fifteen-years-later mirror to her face and she has to rethink the way she acts. The message and the outcome are a bit confused though. She was manipulative to the end, selfish and shallow and there was little chemistry between the two leads. I just kept wanting to shout at Josh run! get out of there!

The book's story is a love story, but I would have liked some more about the world as a whole - what has changed since 1996? Death of Princess Diana, September 11, George W, Obama, another war in the Middle East, tsunamis and floods and earthquakes. But not even just political: reality TV, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman splitting, Madonna's weird arms and hands ... it could have been really fascinating to see the world through a FB feed, links to news articles and photographs of significant events.

I wanted to love this book. A quick read, funny in parts - possibly will entertain the yooths with the outdated technology. I pretty much agree with this NYTimes review.

But speaking of disappointing and vapid ... I saw Young Adult.

I forgave Diablo Cody for Juno because Ellen Page was so damn endearing and because Allison Janney is my queen. And Young Adult had such a brilliant poster, Charlize Theron is pretty amazing and I love a good return-to-your-hometown story. Unfortunately I don't think the film was funny, nor insightful, enough to be successful. Mavis was so sad, so alone, and she needed help. She was narcissistic and mean and desperate. But nobody learned anything, nobody changed at all. So what was the point?

Not only this, but it was generally accepted that Mavis wrote YA (even though I don't know that her Sweet Valley High-type books are really YA) because she had been unable to leave her teen years behind.

Now that's a depressing thought. And so, so wrong. It is such a special gift that YA writers have of being able to remember the wonder and the joy and the angst of being a teenager or young adult. I would never want to tell any of my favourite YA authors to grow up! For it isn't about living in the past, but being able to tap into it and tell a great story. That's what Young Adult lacked. A story.

here comes the sun

'Kate!' I hear you saying. 'What are you doing? Why no blog?' And here's me, just a-shruggin' and mumbling, 'I dunno, stuff, work, reading, summer, I dunno whatevs. Anyway, you're not my real mum!'

Here are some of the things I've been reading and watching and listening to and being generally inspired by lately:

Forever YA posted a list of the top ten british shows you could be watching, which made me laugh and reminisce. And I pop Misfits on there as the eleventh show for being hilarious and badass...and in a large part due to this scene (warning: bad swears! and spoilers!) and also the brilliantly anachronistic Ashes to Ashes for DCI Gene Hunt and all the blue eyeshadow and amazing music.

Also, one of my favourite anonymous and inspiring bloggers - The Intern - has outed herself and, extra-excitingly, has a YA book on the way.

And I still can't stop looking at the ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS.

I've been secondhand book shopping at Lost and Found in Brunswick:

Read as much as you can, and write. Keep notebooks. Be open to everything in the world. Don't give up. Tenacity is the most valuable asset for a writer.

This is a quote from an interview with Joanne Horniman here. I keep it on the wall next to Kerouac's Rules for Spontaneous Prose. I may be failing NaNoWriMo but am practicing tenacity.

The George Harrison documentary Living in the Material World by Martin Scorsese was a four hour cinema experience (including interval) that I hope you didn't miss (though I think you have, but just get the DVD). It is a fabulous look into his life, the contradictions in his personality and his relationship to death and dying. The music, the drugs, the religion. His beautiful son...

Then watch this scene from A Hard Day's Night. It is a hilarious and curious little jibe...maybe even relevant to today's hipsters, hmm? I challenge you not to laugh at lines like "the new thing is to care passionately and be right-wing".



I am also trying to read Haruki Murakami's new book 1Q84. But I'm worried I will drop it on my face while I'm reading in bed and it will kill me with its weighty tome-ness.

Last, but not least, our favorite Witty Waiter down at A Minor Place recorded this song, Against the Grain, and a guy called Dropbear has made this incredible stopmotion video to go along with it. Pencils! What a mad dog. Enjoy.

Hudson - Against The Grain from Dropbear on Vimeo.

a novel experience

One Day, David Nicholls (Hodder)

This review is twofold.

First, the story itself. "The international bestseller" One Day by David Nicholls. I did not care for this novel. But I read it through to its end and below there will be spoilers.

Second, I read this book as a Flipback. Tiny book and an amusing, novel experience...an amusing novel experience? Oh for the love of a comma!


Now for the second, first. Printed on 'bible paper' it's pretty much necessary to employ the lick-your-thumb-to-turn-page method and, until your eyes adjust, sometimes being able to see the print on the other side so clearly is distracting.


Flipbacks are so delightfully tiny they fit in most small bags and are perfect for the tram. I think the idea is to just use one hand to hold the book, like an e-reader, but I persisted mostly with the two-handed approach.


Somehow I felt betrayed by this book. I feel like it was marketed as literary fiction, though to be honest and fair I don't believe it was. Somehow I had that perception though. Then all the "celebrities" were reading it in my trashy magazines. I thought - wonderful! Literary fiction to the masses! Then they made a film and I thought I had better read it before seeing the movie. It's definitely well written*, engaging and a good novel. I just think that if it'd had Maeve Binchy's name on the cover I might have gone into it with the appropriate expectations.**

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew (get used to hearing their full names, Nicholls refers to them thus all the time) meet at college. She's young and idealistic, he's charismatic and arrogantly entitled. They've just graduated from Edinburgh university and drunkenly hook up one night, though they don't sleep together, and eventually decide to be best mates. The book then checks in with each of them on the same date each year, spanning the next twenty years. It's a great concept.

Emma is smart and enigmatic, but she sneers at Dexter's wish to travel the world and then she's relegated to failing regional theatre and a dead end job in a shitty London Mexican restaurant.*** Meanwhile Dexter travels, is charming, and then gets work in television. This apparently entitles him to be condescending to Emma whenever they meet because Emma is a dowdy, writing girl who "wonders why sex, even when so enjoyable, leaves her so ill-tempered."**** The reader's sympathy is nearly always with Dexter as he struggles with the rise of fame, the loss of fame, relationships, family and aging.

The characters are self-centred and on the clichéd (ok, ok "everyman") side. Their problems are annoying. Is this kind of novel designed to make me get myself out of a rut? Am I supposed to identify with the characters and their haplessness? Maybe this is why I enjoy young adult literature so much. Even when the characters wallow it isn't the same; there's the future to look forward to - there tends to be some kind of hope.

And what about the ending of One Day, I hear you ask. SPOILERS: So Dexter the cad finally gets the girl (fortunately Emma has become less dowdy in the intervening years) and, because of Emma's love and all, he gets back on track: becomes a better boyfriend, a better son, a better father, a better human being. So, her job done, David Nicholls kills the girl.



I know.



Let's not talk about it anymore.




At least I could imagine this as I read:

Go and watch him sing I've Just Seen A Face.

*Though, occasionally boring. On page 343 "Emma felt the hot tears of humiliation prick her eyes".
**This is not mean to sound disparaging. Yes, I am a MB fan. You knew that already.
***Don't get me started. This didn't make sense!
****Seriously, I don't want get started. Emma was "so very British" while Dexter was allowed to enjoy love and sex and it made me SO MAD.

murundak: songs of freedom

murundak: songs of freedom is a fantastic new documentary that follows the Black Arm Band touring their murandak show around Australia and abroad; to the Opera House, the Womadelaide festival, Royal Festival Hall in London and to remote Aboriginal communities that hadn’t seen a concert before, let alone one so big and purposeful and about them.

The doco was filmed during end of the Howard years and the start of the Rudd government, including the wonderful and incredibly belated moment of apology to the Stolen Generations (Archie Roach speaks about being taken from his family as a child, how he came to write the song ‘Took the children away’) and uses archival documentary footage of historic moments – massive land rights protests, Whitlam pouring a ‘handful of sand’ through Vincent Lingiari’s fingers, the Rudd apology.

Like the filmmakers Natasha Gadd and Rhys Graham said, the film aims to bring the stories of Australian Aboriginals into everyday conversation, through the songs. It challenges the ignorance of these politicians (and others) who look back on Australia’s past and don’t, or refuse to, see the violence and mistakes. People like Howard, Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt who say it’s just a biased, black armband view of Australian history. (the gorgeous) Dan Sultan put it so well in the Q&A when he said: ‘St Kilda lost the grand final last year. That’s not my opinion, it happened.’ He said we can’t look at the scoreboard of our history and say it’s just an interpretation, an opinion. It happened.

murundak is a protest film, there’s anger and hurt explored, but it’s also so upbeat and positive. It's so important to hear these stories - and the music is beautiful.

The film is full of hope. Go and see it.

black arm band website
daybreak film website
check out the cinema nova screening times

may the force be with you, because you're worth it

lots of lovely things to read this week:

where she went, gayle forman (doubleday)

the golden day, ursula dubosarsky (allen&unwin)

press here, hervé tullet (allen&unwin)

chenxi et l’éntrangère, sally rippin (mijade)

outside of reading, there are lots of other lovely things to do this week:

• a friend of mine sent me this link to a video of sarah kay, a spoken word poet. wonderful. wonderful. watch it.

• can't wait to see howl, the allen ginsberg biopic starring james franco. if you want to go to the cinema, i would heartily recommend the new peter weir film the way back (and not just for the gorgeous jim sturgess) which was a fascinating film about a group of prisoners who escaped from a siberian gulag and walked to india (ye gads, i know!) read a review over at the joy of mediocrity.

• my reading is suffering a little because i can't stop watching outnumbered, with karen being my absolute favourite character.

karen: i think the world is unfair to women.
mum: well absolutely. i think you're right.
karen: because women can't grow moustaches or beards.
mum: do you want to grow a beard?
karen: well...i might want to be a...a...tugboat captain, or a...an ayatollah.
mum: you'd make a good ayatollah.

this clip never fails to make me laugh:

yippee calloo callay!

hooray for shaun tan - what a clever man to win an academy award for his film of
the lost thing
this makes me tres happy and proud.

film : tomorrow, when the war began

You know what? I really liked it!

SPOILERS...

Sure, Fi was totally wrong - in that instead of being a sweet, naive, wholesome "private schoolgirl"-esque character she was...kinda trashy...but her character arc was nice and she did have some funny moments.

...and when one of the characters ate Vegemite out of the jar with a spoon i thought - oh dear, those poor foreigners will be even more confused about Vegemite. That's not cricket.

...and they filmed it in New South Wales so Hell and surrounds looked completely wrong too. John Marsden set the books in the Victorian Alpine region, specifically around the Terrible Hollow (aka Hell), the Devil's Staircase (Satan's Steps) and the Crosscut Saw (Tailor's Stitch), which is near Mt Howitt and Macalister Springs. Beautiful country.

This* is how it really looks:





However.

I was happily surprised with Caitlin Stasey as Ellie (even though Ellie would never have worn such short shorts in the bush!) and Deniz Akdeniz was brilliant as Homer. Ashleigh Cummings, although I was unsure to begin with, portrayed the incredible character of Robyn with the perfect balance of fragility and strength (although I always imagined Robyn a bit older, practical, the ferocious netballer). That scene at the end (no, not the very end, but the bit just before they blow up the bridge) which was a departure from the book, but very well done, was so moving - mostly, I believe, due to Cummings' performance.

As a big-budget film I think it works. The explosions were great, the action acting pretty good. The comic moments were great too, with a special mention to the conversation between Ellie and Corrie during which they conclude that books are always superior to their films. Cute touch.

With a couple of moments of creative licence the plot sticks to the orginal story - enough that I was anticipating the next scene, thinking 'oh yes, now they go back to Corrie's...' I was disappointed that they dropped the Hermit storyline, although I understand that not everything can be included in a film that can be in a novel.

Ultimately, it all felt so wonderfully familiar. It was like finally meeting old friends (pen pals, perhaps).

I'm so glad the movie wasn't awful. Now bring on The Dead of the Night.

*I took these photos in 1997. The place may look different now, but I don't think so.

hard-boiled inception

been to see inception tonight. i really liked it. very fun, suspenseful and enjoyable. i loved the paris scenes, i really liked the special effects (and i am not a special effects fan in general) and i especially loved the collective response at the end by the entire cinema. won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet...but those who have probably experienced the same thing.


i will certainly be v soon re-reading haruki murakami's hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. surely the inspiration for the film?! i love murakami (and this one, along with a wild sheep chase, is my favourite) and maybe the popularity of this movie will introduce even more people to him. i don't know, though, how many people are noting the similarity. a quick google search suggests some are.

i bought my copy of hard-boiled wonderland at shakespeare and company in paris. i do like this shop even though it's flooded with hipsters and poseur-tramps and i wish i had been around when ginsberg was there, or anaïs nin...or even back before that in its real and original version with sylvia beach when she published joyce's ulysses and movable feasts were attended by fitzgerald and gertrude stein and, of course, hemingway (and ezra pound, whose poems i like, though he was a fascist).

i am sure to have very strange dreams tonight.

rich kids have feelings too

when reading salinger i can't help thinking about wes anderson.

i thought i was so clever when i said to my best friend m: "you know? i think owen wilson and wes anderson must have been reading franny and zooey when they wrote the royal tenenbaums" only to find in a quick internet search that most people realise this.



franny and zooey is a collection of two short stories (one called franny, the other called zooey; the zooey bit much longer than the franny) and our two protagonists are part of the glass family. seymour glass, the eldest, is the subject of a perfect day for bananafish, one of salinger's most famous stories. the others appear in stories such as raise high the roof beam, down at the dingy and seymour: an introduction.

the glass family are a riot. upper east siders, childhood stars of a radio show called 'it's a wise child.' now adults and young adults they are smart, caustic, depressive, (often misanthropic) perfectionists. the two youngest siblings, franny and zooey, are suffering from having been practically brainwashed by their older siblings (primarily buddy and seymour) in all aspects of philosophy and religion, particularly eastern mysticism. franny has become obsessed with prayer, and specifically a christian pilgrim's "jesus prayer" which one is mean to pray constantly, every minute of the day with the aim that it soon becomes automatic. she's hardly eating, always thinking away, and it is causing problems with her boyfriend (though i thought he was something of a douche, really) but also with her family. her mother is worried and she enlists zooey to talk to franny about it. zooey is very handsome, but (and this cracks me up) "his face had been just barely saved from too-handsomeness, not to say gorgeousness, by virtue of one ear's protruding slightly more than the other." he is an actor who is sick and tired of other people's pretentiousness and excitement about their own work (be they screenwriters, playwrights or other actors). the siblings talk, they help and hinder each other, in an effort to understand one another.
i simply adore salinger's turn of phrase and intelligence, wit and the brilliant dialogue he gifts to his characters.
and so you can see why i can't totally separate the glass family and the tenenbaum family in my mind (and, curiously, and not unsurprisingly, the eldest glass daughter, boo boo, actually marries a mr tannenbaum). margo, chas and richie tenenbaum are equally disillusioned grown-up child prodigies.

poetry, by way of cinema

the other day i indulged myself and went to two films. first, my crick-crack-rock-chick best friend and i saw jane campion's bright star. it was divinely romantic without being mawkish.

here's a great keats poem:

give me wine, women, and snuff

until i cry out "hold enough!"

you may do so sans objection

til the day of resurrection

for, bless my beard, they aye shall be

my beloved trinity

and this poem also shows what i felt was one of the strongest aspects of the film: that these regency folk, including the romantic poet himself, were just people like you and i and that in spite of all those period films that would have us believe that everybody comported themselves with the utmost restraint and good manners, these people were smart and fun and fiesty and played outdoors and climbed trees and joked about with their elders.

the movie was brilliant, so subtle and romantic but fun and passionate. keats was beautiful, the inclusion of his poetry made it come alive again and abbie cornish was a revelation as the wonderful fanny - she was phenomenal in those final few scenes. however, it was paul schneider as mr brown that stole the show in his tartan "onesie" and sarky asides.

later that night, the evil sister and i watched nowhere boy, the story of young john lennon with an excellent focus on his relationship with his aunt (who raised him) and his mother. it was much more moving than i'd prepared myself for so the combination of these two films left me emotionally exhausted but a good cry is always welcome!

the boy - err, young man - playing john lennon (aaron johnson) was robbie in the hilarious teen movie angus, thongs and perfect snogging and i was a bit worried about his tween looks and simpering voice but he astounded me and now i think i'm a bit in love with him. he's beefed up, but more importantly he did really well imitating lennon's mannerisms and laugh (it was the laugh that got me - brilliantly done!) his performance reminded me of lennon's performance in the ace beatles film a hard day's night: i think the writer and/or director must have been fans - the opening scene of nowhere boy was defo an homage. he was also very impressive in the more serious scenes, as were kristin scott thomas (the stern aunt mimi) and anne-marie duff (john's mother julia). beautiful. two thumbs up for nowhere boy.

my worried shoes

i went to see where the wild things are at the nova cinemas last friday (and then again on saturday). it was fantastic - whimsical, scary, moving and funny.

as a child the picture book by maurice sendak frightened me a lot and as a family, we didn't really like it. as an adult and a bookseller i've really come to appreciate it - even though i find the bit that reads "the night max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind (then you turn the page) and another" a bit jarring. and i think the film took the essence of the book and created something more, something really special.

the screenplay, written by spike jonze and dave eggers together was the basis for dave eggers' novel the wild things. it follows the plot of the film for the most part, but with some segues and diversions - all welcome. in the first few pages of the book max rides his bike over to his friends' house a couple of streets away and he goes by himself and i think helmetless. the mother of his friend, when he arrives, is shocked and agitated to the point of almost hysteria at the thought of max riding home again alone. she wants to accompany him back, but he rides off. she runs after him. this scares max and he rides faster - his confusion and fear were marvellously written and it was a brilliant start to the book. i was there, i was max, while reading it.

older children will enjoy this book for its fun and adventure, they might even feel the same way i did. but i think it is the grown-ups who with benefit most! without being cloying, it reminds the reader of being a child - the way children percieve the world and how something that adults accept without question can really frighten kids. in the book, and the film, when max's teacher tells the class that one day the sun with die, and with it take the earth and other planets with it - sets max to thinking and thinking hard. an adult might dismiss this, for some reason need no further explanation or reassurance that it won't happen tomorrow, or to me.

at the cinema: the wild things were magnificent! apparently they had to CGI their faces for the eyes and some expression, but the fact that they were giant puppet-esque/people in wild-thing-suits gave them a quality and realness that has been lacking from movies for a while. it sort of reminded me of classics like the neverending story, or the labyrinth. but the wild things were even better than the weird creatures in those films! other things i loved about the film: the fort they build (anyone seen the book natural architecture by alessandro rocca - wow! and maybe the inspiration?)

the movie's soundtrack by karen o and the kids is also fantastic. i've been listening to it on repeat for a couple of weeks now. it was perfect for the film, creating atmosphere, fun and rumpus! highlights of the album: capsize and worried shoes.

basically i give all wild things two thumbs up.