{"id":1729,"date":"2010-01-05T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T16:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=1729"},"modified":"2010-01-05T12:44:20","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T18:44:20","slug":"wild-things-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/01\/wild-things-in-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild Things in the Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brick<\/strong> doesn\u2019t usually have movie reviews. But it\u2019s the turn of the year \u2014 not the decade as it actually ends Dec. 31, 2010 \u2014 and a couple are worth a shout. It\u2019s far from a complete assessment, as I often wait to see movies on DVD. Also, this comes from Northwest Arkansas where so many of the movies we hear about won\u2019t arrive until the Oscar nominations are announced, in early February. From the reviews, though, I\u00a0 can\u2019t wait for Crazy Heart<\/em> starring Jeff Bridges and the Coen brothers\u2019 A Serious Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Besides, there\u2019s a need to even out the vitriol that Avatar<\/a><\/em> caused me. It wormed under my skin like a Pandoran parasite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What comes to mind are Up in the Air<\/a><\/em> for grown-ups and the family-friendly Where the Wild Things Are<\/a><\/em>. Neither show will be hurt by seeing on video when they\u2019re released, but the big screen does them justice.<\/p>\n

If Tom Hanks is our James Stewart, then George Clooney long ago earned the wings to be our Cary Grant. Clooney\u2019s Up in the Air<\/em> is a witty drama (serious comedy?) with not only realistic main characters but accurate minor ones, not to mention the unexpected documentary snippets of unemployed people. Clooney plays a hit man, hired to conduct layoffs across the country. That makes him legal, not an outlaw, though the carnage gives pause. He has a romance on the road, and he trains a protege. Everyone is smart, including the real-life cameos. From the start, he faces the risks we all do, if on a more suave, Cary Grant scale, and he and we learn from them. That\u2019s the show, tight and seamless. Lie the screen that\u2019s showing this movie flat over the seats, and I bet you could bounce a quarter on it.<\/p>\n

I avoided Where the Wild Things Are<\/em> until near the end of its fall run. The Maurice Sendak award-winning book was my childhood favorite, and it wasn\u2019t yet a classic. I have two copies in different spots of the house now. They remind me that imagination always will be key, even at this time when so many wrongly think that the pursuit of truth rules out imagination. Still, I avoided the show because in expanding the 1963 picture book to a full-length picture, Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers had to surround the little boy with realism. Sum-up of book and movie: Bad Max is sent to his room, where he discovers a world he can rule. The movie’s Max, by having just a mom and a sister and deep snow in winter, no longer resembled little Ben or many other 8-year-olds. Not coloring in allows anyone to see themselves. I bought a ticket when I decided it wouldn\u2019t cloud my memory. It turns out that showing Max\u2019s family and street was a minor issue. What\u2019s crucial is the movie tells its story start-to-finish through the perspective of a child. That has to be hard; it’s sure unusual. A child can see his truth with nearly friendly monsters, which makes as much sense to him as the fact his older sister\u2019s friends play rough, not from malice, just size.<\/p>\n

In our award-happy society \u2014 and that goes from schools to well-meaning employers \u2014 we forget that a good job doesn\u2019t need praise. Sure it\u2019s nice when it happens. It certainly is an overstatement that a good job is its own reward. Sometimes it seems we witness quality rarely so we don\u2019t recognize it. Other times quality is so common in American goods and services we stop seeing it. In these two movies, everything from writing to acting to set design is flawless. Maybe that deserves awards, especially when you consider all the dreck around. But I can\u2019t see Clooney being nominated for acting or Jonze for directing this year. All they did was exactly the right things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brick doesn\u2019t usually have movie reviews. But it\u2019s the turn of the year \u2014 not the decade as it actually ends Dec. 31, 2010 \u2014 and a couple are worth a shout. It\u2019s far from a complete assessment, as I often wait to see movies on DVD. Also, this comes from Northwest Arkansas where so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3502,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/02\/whodve-thunks\/","url_meta":{"origin":1729,"position":0},"title":"Who’d’ve-Thunks","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2012 Ben S. Pollock I knew what to expect of The Artist, a \"silent\" film, meaning no talking, though it did have sound effects and music (and beforehand, ironically, the loudest-volume trailers since those running with Avatar). Still, the teenage box office cashier warned My Beloved and me, while\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":272,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/nomenclature-fine-thanks-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":1729,"position":1},"title":"Nomenclature? Fine, thanks. You?","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The reportage dichotomy keeps coming up. Who's in charge: the people in the article or the people creating the article? How about a few terse examples, with questions we can consider over lunch. As noted yesterday, a school stopped what it called a gang initiation. In it local officials again\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/03\/georgie-porgie-porgy-and-bess\/","url_meta":{"origin":1729,"position":2},"title":"Georgie Porgie, Porgy and Bess","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Democrat-Gazette published today my review of What Orwell Didn\u2019t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, Andras Szanto, editor. I was so excited by this book, even though it was disappointing, that I wrote three Bricks referring to George Orwell. Two of them were on revelations about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":939,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/02\/two-for-the-show\/","url_meta":{"origin":1729,"position":3},"title":"Two for the Show","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What a thoughtful movie. It's about this middle-aged man who's in a real interesting career, been at it his whole adult life. But the guy is on its far side, losing it. What he's doing -- or selling, depending on the degree of jaundice in your opinion of work --\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":439,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/07\/arson-wells\/","url_meta":{"origin":1729,"position":4},"title":"Arson Wells","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Book report: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke Panning a novel that I devoured in 50- to 80-page chunks approaches being disingenuous. Perhaps an An Arsonist's Guide, released in fall 2007 to overall glowing reviews (though readers on amazon.com gave it only three of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":394,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/12\/cotton-candy-club\/","url_meta":{"origin":1729,"position":5},"title":"Cotton Candy Club","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Driving home from work early Sunday morning, the radio was playing \"It Ain't Necessarily So\" from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. The tenor's voice was to-the-back-of-the-hall soaring, precise in enunciation and emoted with the sass the song demands but rarely gets. This was public radio's Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson, who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}