We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Wow! Over the weekend we received e-mails from more than 350 We Love You So readers across the globe, from Colombia to Bosnia and small towns in Missouri. Your e-mails were so overwhelmingly filled with an outpouring of love for Where the Wild Things Are, Spike, and the blog that it was terribly hard to choose just three winners. We wish we could give copies of the DVD to each and every one of you! But since we can’t, here are the three lucky fans who we chose:

Paul D. of Philadelphia, PA wrote in to say he loved Lance Bangs’ documentary portrait of Family Bookstore in L.A.

While it is a little tough to know that so much land lies between that little hub of creative energy and my lonely mountain perch near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it is encouraging to know that scenes like the one that has developed around Family and The Smell are happening contemporarily. It is easy to get discouraged about the present state of the creative movement when looking at the cliques and happening spots that one missed witnessing first hand by decades (punk rock’s first squalid notes, the abstract expressionists redefining New York, the Algonquin roundtable, the Bauhaus etc.)

However, fetishizing the past is easily kept in check when there are ample reminders that art and culture are kept alive / re-imagined in new and unexpected ways by individuals striking out on their own or in packs. The We Love You So blog has provided ample encouragement that beautiful things are always being made and that one only needs boot straps and elbow grease to step up into the ranks of those pushing culture forward.

We like your attitude, Paul! And apparently ardent reader Danny H. appreciates our attitude. He kindly complimented us on the overall “voice” of the blog:

…hands-down my favorite thing has been the way reading the blog has always seemed like an excited friend telling you about this great new _______ that they just discovered. You’ve never sounded like taste-makers or scenesters or critics….it’s just been one more person whose opinion I look forward to hearing. Thanks!

That made us feel warm and fuzzy inside, but what sealed the deal for Danny was this cute post-it doodle he sent our way:

Finally, 14-year-old Mia R. from Los Angeles told us that when she’s not writing Star Wars-inspired sonnets, she checks We Love You So on the computers in her school library:

I love everything about We Love You So, but some of my favorite things are the knit wolf suit sweater (once I finish knitting some cupcakes, I’m going to start this sweater), Coco Cake Boutique’s Wild Things cake (I started reading the Coco Cake blog after I saw that and all of the other adorable cupcakes- I also became obsessed with cupcakes then too), Pogo, and Happy Socks. But my favorite is probably all of the lovely forts people made!!!!

For everyone else, you can pick up a copy of the Where the Wild Things Are Blu-Ray or DVD online or in stores now!

Where the Wild Things Are isn’t the only rad movie hitting shelves tomorrow! Spike and Lance Bangs’ fascinating documentary delving deep into the personal world of Maurice Sendak, Tell Them Anything You Want, is getting a deluxe DVD release, thanks to those loving cinephiles at Oscilloscope Laboratories. The handsomely packaged disc is loaded with bonus features including an exclusive essay by Sendak’s good friend, Pulitzer-winner Tony Kushner, and a Sendakian birthday tribute with Meryl Streep, James Gandolfini and Catherine Keener.

To celebrate the release, the dynamic directorial duo are making an in-store appearance at Barnes & Nobles’ Union Square store for a conversation with McSweeney’s contributor and ineffable witticist John Hodgman.

The discussion will go down Tuesday, March 2nd at 7:00 PM. After the Q&A, Spike and Lance will sign copies of Tell Them Anything You Want and John Hodgman will sign copies of his own books. Barnes & Noble Union Square is located at 33 East 17th Street.

SOOOOOO EXCITED! If you haven’t already sent in an email to win a copy from us. Now’s your last chance. We’ll pick the winners later today.

The epic wait is finally over! Where the Wild Things Are is coming to Blu-Ray and DVD this Tuesday, March 2nd. The special features include a veritable bounty of videos from Spike and Lance Bangs revealing the exciting chaos of production from every angle, including all the pranks, mutinies and vampire attacks. Most excitingly, the Blu-Ray release includes a brilliant brand new 23-minute adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Higglety Pigglety Pop!, directed by dream team Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski of Madame Tutli-Putli fame and starring the voices of Meryl Streep and Forrest Whitaker.

It’s been a wild ride on this humble blog. The movie Where the Wild Things Are started as a fleeting thought in Spike’s mind and went through years of preparation, imagination, re-imagination, shooting and editing before We Love You So sprouted up last spring, just when the film was blossoming from the quiet final stages of post-production to a roaring sea of buzz and promotion, followed by fan-fueled frenzy and trips abroad to foreign shores. Finally Where the Wild Things Are is a disc that you can hold in your hands and watch until your eyes fall out of your heads.

You, the dedicated readers of this blog, have shared the journey with us, and we want to express our appreciation by giving away copies of Where the Wild Things Are on DVD and Blu-Ray! All you have to do is write us an e-mail at email hidden; JavaScript is required telling us what you’ve loved most of all the lovely things on We Love You So. The lucky winners will be chosen at random on Monday!

Sound collage artists The Books have spent the past decade making music more gorgeous than the gentle waters of a summer lake. They’ve made good on the art of sampling’s boundless potential, proving that those oft-maligned tools of remixing can be used for far more than repetitive house music and hip-hop hooks.

The Books’ live shows have always been special experiences, due largely in part to the hypnotic video collages projected while they play, carefully matching torrents of found footage with the group’s ethereal tunes. In 2007, the duo released a DVD entitled Playall featuring 13 of their videos plus some weird special features, like archive footage from the ’30s of a dapper fellow emotionlessly performing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” entirely in hand-farts. Lovely stuff.

Art collective Paper Rad haven’t lost their touch. It’s been a while since we’ve heard their camp, but it seems like they’re everywhere you look, now. Jacob Ciocci is currently travelling the US on his 2 Blessed 2 B Stressed Tour in support of his solo music and a new 45-minute DVD-R containing the above video, Peace Tape. Paper Rad-adjacent band Extreme Animals, who recorded the soundtrack for Peace Tape, are touring this summer as well. Fecal Face has an interview with Ben Jones, another fantastic artist in the PR orbit, that’s as intense and brutally honest as it is absurdly comical:

After having been around the artworld for a hot minute, what are yours thoughts on it? You have made fun of it time and time again, and with just cause. Where is it right now, where do you think its going?

Any really good artist, or just any happy smart person can explain quickly and simply why things like fame, or the art world, or war are essentially meaningless and then also how these things attract young stupid white kids, or people with mental problems, or classic Americans as a result of the of these populations having low consciousness and/or intelligence. If you really are into the art world or TMZ or the Taliband it means you have a type of retardation.

But at the same time, since these populations have such a predictable and simplistic understanding of life, I think it is okay to inject good ideas and good energy into these retarded systems, so that we can help evolve the universe. And to do this you have to sometimes wear the right kind of shoes or try to think up clever answers to questions I guess. I don’t know, I think the next big thing in the art world is going to be The Beastie Boys.

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What has been greatly inspiring/uninspiring to you?

Love, jogging, Pantera, punching the air or bushes, yelling at a cat on the street “why are you looking me!” then coming home and cooking some baked beans and listening to the Adam Carolla podcast and then being like, hmmm, webmd.com…search…depression…hmmmmm oh look its 3 am, time to “go to bed”.

Tonight at 8pm, two of our favorite institutions, short film DVD magazine Wholphin and the curatorial brain trust that is The Cinefamily, are joining together in glorious harmony for the release party of Wholphin No. 8 at The Silent Movie Theatre in LA.

Established by Where The Wild Things Are scribe Dave Eggers and his McSweeney’s colleague Brent Hoff, Wholphin is a quarterly video magazine that collects a melange of disparate shorts linked only by their quality of excellence and their rarity. Breathing new life to the format, Wholhpin offers a unique venue for films that would otherwise only play in festivals or galleries, where most people might not get a chance to see them. From well-known directors like Steven Soderbergh, Errol Morris, Miranda July and of course, Spike Jonze, to first-time filmmakers, cartoonists, comedians and video artists, Wholphin has hosted some of the most talented artists’ work from across the globe.

For issue eight, Wholphin is presenting shorts directed by brilliant photographer/youth culture documentarian Lauren Greenfield, Interpol bassist Carlos D., British conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, and Dave Eggers himself. Eggers, in one of his first shots at directing, presents a three-part work called The Room Before and After, starring James Franco, comedian Maria Bamford and The Office star Creed Bratton in an animalistic display of primal emotion: they’re each given the rare opportunity to consensually tear apart a room. Check out the preview below: