If these Bloggery roundup posts were truly meant to represent the hottest film news of the day, they’d always be about Twilight, or at least its star, Robert Pattinson. As I’ve learned from regularly monitoring movie sites, there’s something relative to the franchise to report on at least once every 24 hours (today we somehow got double news, with Pattinson announcing he’s committed to a fourth installment). And it will continue to be this way for the next few years. So forgive me this one time for caving in, like others, to turn the spotlight on an advertisement for a movie I know little about and likely will not see.

At least I do have an appreciation for posters, as an artform. And at least a lot of the commentary coming from the blogs regarding this new The Twilight Saga: New Moon one-sheet is humorous. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother with it. Everyone knows we’re going to see another hundred or so marketing images for the sequel before its November release (this wasn’t even the first), so why bother talking about just one? Here’s why: to point out that between this and the official teaser poster for Where the Wild Things Are, movie marketers are really into forestry shots with background light sources.

Okay, that wasn’t very funny (honestly, it wasn’t really supposed to be, anyway), so I’ll just leave it to the film bloggers with more wit to make us laugh at this heavily airbrushed poster. Check out the Twilight jokes after the jump:

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The new trailer for Where the Wild Things Are is such a phenomenon today that I’ve even seen celebrities excitedly Tweeting about it (and by celebrities, I mean specifically Rob Corddry). Actually, I think the majority of people I follow on Twitter have squeezed out a gushing statement in 140 words or less. That is, except me (don’t I technically follow myself?). Sure, I’m looking forward to the movie, as a fan of Maurice Sendak and a fan of Spike Jonze and a fan of Dave Eggers, but I don’t think the trailer looks that incredible. And the parts that do look really great remind me of how amazing the trailer for Benjamin Button looked. Remember what happened with that?

Maybe it’s my usual distaste for computer-generated characters; yes, I’d honesty be happier if the Wild Things were made by the Jim Henson Company and all looked like Sweetums from The Muppet Show. I do believe the film includes “suitmation” and animatronics, in addition to CG, but much of what I noticed in the trailer was the computer stuff, and I’m sad to say that, unlike all the commenters at FirstShowing.net, I can’t yet label this as an “instant classic.”

Let’s see if there are any bloggers who agree with me after the jump:

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• Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns made $20 million this weekend, which wasn’t enough to beat Horton Hears a Who at the box office.  Drillbit Taylor opened with just $10 million; Variety vaguely says it’s “the second lowest” opening for Owen Wilson after The Big Bounce, but that statistic must exclude every Wes Anderson film and anything else that’s opened in platform release. Speaking of platform releases, The Weinstein Company has finally has a successful one to speak of: Under the Same Moon broke the record for the biggest opening of a Spanish-language film in the U.S. this weekend with $2.6 million on 266 screens.
• James Gandolfini will play the mayor of New York City in that remake of The Taking of Pelham 123.  The film hasn’t been shot yet, and it’ll still probably hit theaters before what was suppossed to Gandolfini’s first post-Sopranos project, Where the Wild Things Are.
• Regal Cinemas is looking to double its number of IMAX screens over the next two years, via a deal where the theater chain and the giant screen guys share both the cost of the expansion, and the resulting profits.

Last week, a clip from (or, maybe more accurately, “from”, since its derivation is totally up for debate) Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are “leaked” onto the internet. I didn’t write about it at the time, because I watched it and thought it was kind of stupid, and I couldn’t think of anything better to say about it than “This looks kind of stupid.” Then AJ Schnack wrote this blog post shaming bloggers who posted the clip without bothering to consider whether or not it was real.”[I]t’s clear to this Angleno that the things is a badly conceived fake.” he wrote. “That rounded thing in the upper right corner? LA’s Griffith Observatory! And where is the movie being shot? Australia.” Whoops!

But the plot thickens: today, in response to wide-spread internet mocking and speculation, Jonze issued a statement confirming that the clip IS for real…sort of:

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Brandon Soderberg has a great post on No Trivia about the Spike Jonze/Kanye West video that debuted last week, “Flashing Lights”, and how it relates to the director’s other music videos for hip hop artists. There’s a lot of great analysis in the post, but I thought it was interesting that, in what’s essentially an auteur analysis of Jonze as an anti-Hype Williams, Soderberg give authorial credit for one of “Flashing Lights”‘ key elements not to Jonze, but to Kanye:

The model in the video, Rita G, is gaining an insane amount of press- which in and of itself, shows how “exploitation” of women for videos is way more complicated than old-fashioned feminists would have us believe- and is a kind of sprucing-up of the classic video chick. She has the thicker body, which is way more attractive than the classic rock image of the rock video chick or the sexless but cute and super-safe “hot” but not too hot indie chick staple, but Kanye puts her in lingerie instead of underwear and gives her actual poise and confidence. The video girl now takes actual center-stage, no longer being only ass and titties but the thematic and emotional focus of the video too. It’s a kind of “revenge of the Gold-digger”, as Rita G’s modern mixed with vintage lingerie were first seen in Hype Williams’ video for ‘Gold Digger’, Kanye’s most explicitly negative song about women (and one of his biggest hits…surprise surprise).

The video is so much about costuming (everyone’s talking about what happens with the shovel, but it seems even more significant that before the model enacts her revenge, she shrugs off a fur coat and what appears to be a designer dress, only to set them on fire before returning to the car to perform the video’s violent climax) that Soderberg is totally spot on to read what the model wears as a vehicle for the clip’s ideology. But how are we to know that this was a decision made by the author of the song and not by the clip’s ostensible director?

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Fimoculous points to “Part 1″ of “Flashing Lights”, Spike Jonze’s method of paying the mortgage whilst struggling to finish Where the Wild Things Are/new music video for Kanye West. Rex brands it as “basically hip-hop’s ‘November Rain’”, but I see it more as a Colin Farrell-less Miami Vice. So, yes––even though I’m no Kanye fan, I totally love it.

Vulture has a review of Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze’s script for the latter’s next directorial project, Where the Wild Things Are. The verdict? “It is really, really good.”

Eggers and Jonze — mostly, we suspect, Eggers — touchingly sketch this troubled family unit and carefully track the rising frustration and alarm Max feels as his world becomes darker and more unhappy, until, on page 21, he runs away, climbs aboard a boat, and sails to the island of the Wild Things.

There Jonze’s influence begins to be felt, as the enormous creatures — with names like Carol, Alexander, and K.W. — look to Max as their King, and in a series of marvelous adventures, wrestle tornadoes, eat mud, and tame hawks. Always, though, there’s a subtle undercurrent of menace, and it becomes clear that while spinning a yarn, Jonze and Eggers are also taking us on a tour of Max’s psyche, as he works out so many of the issues that plague his young life.

More here. No real spoilers to speak of.

At Slackerwood, Jette Kernion has a fully illustrated report from opening day of Fantastic Fest, which runs through next Friday in Austin. Of the Gore Cannon, pictured above, Jette writes: “I don’t know exactly how it worked, but it shot bloody gore through the air in a spectacular way.” Good enough for us. Jette also says she’s heard rumblings of an unannounced Fantastic screening of Spike Jonze’s long-awaited Where the Wild Things Are.