• This week’s installments of the Oscar Guide covered the animated feature, sound mixing, lead actor, live action short and film editing categories.
• Kris toasted the career of Jeff bridges with his list of the actor’s top 10 performances (off-site).
• We caught up with “Red Riding: 1974” director Julian Jarrold as well as “A Prophet” helmer Jacques Audiard.
• Elsewhere, we spotlighted the crafts of “Bright Star” in our weekly Tech Support Interview series.
One of my smaller disappointments of last week’s Oscar nominations was the failure of Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs’s lovely “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak” to secure a nod in the documentary short category. (You might remembert Kris’s enthusiastic endorsement of the film back in October.)
Admittedly, I have not seen the five films that did make the cut — chances are they’re all highly worthy. But the Sendak short was a captivating portrait of a truly singular artist, simple in construction but touched by its subject’s one creative energy. Moreover, a nomination would have been a nice way for the Academy to indirectly recognize Jonze’s extraordinary work on “Where the Wild Things Are,” recipent of one of the most undeserved ducks of awards season.
Anyway, spilt milk and all that. But I’m pleased to report that one of my favorite new indie outfits, Oscilloscope Laboratories, has acquired the short, and will be releasing it on DVD to coincide with the DVD release of “Where the Wild Things Are.”
• Nathaniel Rogers weighs in on Christopher Plummer’s upcoming whirlwind campaigns. [The Film Experience]
• John Hiscock sits down with 2009’s “it” girl, Carey Mulligan. [Daily Telegraph]
• Enter a contest to design the actual one-sheet for Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist.” [CHUD]
I sat down this morning to watch Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze’s “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak,” which originally aired on HBO last night, expecting little more than a swift, arbitrary look at the author and perhaps a nice companion piece to Jonze’s adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are.” Boy was I in for a surprise.
The film (which is on Oscar’s short list for documentary shorts) is instantly one of the 2009’s great joys, a compelling, insightful study from the perspective of the genuine article. And Sendak is indeed the genuine article, a directly honest man who has transformed his take on the world into profound art for most of his 81 years. And at that healthy old age, he seems equally awed by, and bored with, the realities of the world.
Filming began in 2003 at Sendak’s home in Connecticut. The seasons zip back and forth, spring sunshine to winter snowdrift, as Bangs and Jonze piece together the meat of Jonze’s conversations with the author. The title stems from Sendak’s opinion that there should be no demarcation when it comes to age. “I don’t believe in childhood,” he says. “Like, ‘You mustn’t tell them that,’ ‘You mustn’t tell them that.’ You tell them anything you want…If it’s true, you tell them.”