Posts Tagged ‘Spike Jonze’
February 2, 2010 - 3:18 pm
By Jay A. Fernandez
It’s an unpleasant business, but calling attention to those talents overlooked for deserving Oscar recognition is a standard part of the awards circus. And this year has its share of snubbed also-also-rans. Well, according to me.
First in my mind are Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber for their “(500) Days of Summer“ original screenplay (and not just because I was wrong in predicting its inclusion). Their peers in the writers guild honored it with a nomination, and it represented a truly original take on a worn-out genre that delighted a lot of viewers and inspired a rookie director, Marc Webb, to show off his talents. On the other hand, original screenplay was an unexpectedly tight field for a change, and only five could fit, so Neustadter and Weber will have to make another run at it down the road.
January 22, 2010 - 10:15 am
By Jay A. Fernandez
As part of this year’s non-opening-night opening night, Sundance featured a collection of shorts Thursday after the screening of “Howl.” Likely this had something to do with including the marquee name of writer-director Spike Jonze, whose short film “I’m Here” kicked off the screening.
It was a delightfully eclectic bunch, and all the filmmakers were in attendance at the Egyptian Theatre on Main.
By Jay A. Fernandez
Bono received news of his sixth Golden Globe nomination for original song today, for the new U2 song “Winter” from the soundtrack to Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers.” As part of the awards-season ritual, he got on the phone with me today to relay his reaction to the honor.
What follows is an unexpected Q&A with a rock legend about the band’s process for selecting which movies to get involved with, his predilection for Colin Farrell movies and tying the Pixies‘ shoes.
Oh, and the singer-activist also threw in an impression of Bugs Bunny while relating a story about an unrealized U2-Spike Jonze video collaboration. Read on…
THR: This is not new for you. This is number six!
Bono: [laughs] We’re often left waiting at the altar on occasions like this. It’s a big thrill. And more than that, because of our relationship with Jim Sheridan. It goes back to really the first year of our band’s life, we’ve known him that long. It’s a very special feeling. And it’s going to be tricky because people think of songs that are involved in movies like this as non-integral. And this is not the case here. But it’s gonna be hard to convince people of that. We were involved in the very earliest stages of this movie—before it was a script! When it was just Jim pitching it! He wanted a complex song for a complex character. And we wrote two—one that referred particularly to the brothers that was called “White As Snow,” and this is called “Winter,” one that is just really a more universal song about the experience of the armed forces in Afghanistan. “No army in this world can fight a ghost,” in an asymmetrical war. The brave men and women of the United States military have their work cut out for them.
How do you write these songs at the script stage?
Well, we were in songwriting mode, actually, when Jim first told us about “Brothers.” So we were actively looking for subjects. And I was trying to give myself a break from writing in the first person anyway. [laughs] I was bored, and I reckon our audience were bored hearing about my every whim and aspiration and fear. So I really jumped on the idea of trying to get into this guy’s head. I am so pleased it turned out very well. It’s had a few iterations. We did a kind of rock band version of it, we did an acoustic version of it. And even yesterday [laughs] I caught Edge—because we were supposed to be working on something else—I caught him working on an electronic version! [laughs] He’s very proud of it. We are very proud of it. Songs like this, if you’re a songwriter, don’t come about every year.
By Steven Zeitchik
Now that the trailer for Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" has sufficiently bowled over/mystified audiences with its children-in-bunny-costume weirdness, Warners is on another mission: convincing people that all that weirdness doesn't push the pic beyond the integrity of Maurice Sendak's beloved world.
In fact, the studio argues in this new featurette, first shown at Comic-Con and now available online, that the weirdness has been blessed by Sendak.
There's a very meta aspect to the video — someone filming Jonze filming Sendak talking about how he liked his book being filmed by Jonze — in which he offers an endorsement of Jonze's attempt. Over the years, the author says, he met "various people who were interested in (making a movie), but those people did not interest me. And then Spike came into my life." Sendak goes on to endorse the effort with "He's turned it into his (vision) without giving up mine."
It's hard to imagine Warners doing the same for J.K. Rowling, whose fans are just as devoted to her Harry Potter series (or, for that matter, Alan Moore, who of course has never blessed any big-screen version of his work).
And it's rare in the hoopla-happy world of movie marketing for a studio to be so aggressively defensive. The featurette ushers in a kind of preemptive marketing, in which viewer objections are anticipated and addressed (or defanged, we suppose, in the coinage of the book). This has Dave Eggers and Jonze and the Arcade Fire, but really, it's not the most expensive hipster movie ever made. It's just like you remember it from childhood!
