If you’re a Spike Jonze fan, better start saving some money or looking through couch cushions for change, because March just might break the bank.
As we reported awhile back, Oscilloscope Laboratories has picked up “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak,” the Jonze and Lance Bangs’ documentary that aired on HBO last fall. They will be releasing the forty-minute doc on DVD March 2nd, the same day as the DVD/BluRay release of “Where The Wild Things Are.” “Tell Them Anything”, which we called bracingly “honest and melancholy” in our review, while acting as a tribute to the author and featuring the likes of James Gandolfini, Meryl Streep, Catherine Keener and Tony Kushner, is also a frank and almost brutally naked portrait of Sendak, told by the man himself. There is no word yet on extras, if any.
But as previously reported, the DVD of “Where The Wild Things Are” will boast a pretty great bonus animated short based on another Sendak story, “Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life,” featuring the voices of Streep and Forest Whitaker. Produced by Jonze in collaboration with the National Film Board Of Canada, it will be animated by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the team behind Oscar nominated stop-motion animation “Madame Tutli-Putli.”
And lastly, we’d be remiss if we didn’t remind you that Jonze’s latest short film, the robot love story “I’m Here” debuted at Sundance to very positive notices. While details on who and how the short will be distributed are yet to be finalized, we’ve been hearing that a late March release seems likely.