Max from the wild things

10 wild facts about Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are | Children's books

President Obama chose to read one of his favourite children’s books, Where The Wild Things Are, for the 2016 Easter Egg Roll at the White House. His very dramatic reading, accompanied by First Lady Michelle, featured claws and roars from the excited crowd! As one of our favourite children’s books too, here are some fun facts that you may or may not know about Maurice Sendak’s classic.

1. The book is about the author’s childhood

Where The Wild Things Are is inspired by Maurice’s youth, his background growing up in Brooklyn and his relationship with his parents. He intended to write about his own experiences and the people he knew, and the books became a form of self-expression for him.

2. Maurice actually began his career as an illustrator

Maurice’s first published work were illustrations for a textbook titled Atomics for the Millions in 1947. He continued to illustrate other people’s children’s books, before he was given the chance to write and draw his own.

3. Where The Wild Things Are was not the original title

The initial working title of the book was ‘Where The Wild Horses Are’, and the story was supposed to be about a child who escapes to the land of the wild horses. Although his editor loved the idea, Maurice realised he was unable to draw horses, and the idea of the ‘Wild Things’ was born.

4. ‘Wild thing’ refers to a Yiddish term

When Maurice was a child, his mother often used to call him a “vilde chaya”, meaning ‘wild animal’ in Yiddish. In the book, when Max’s mother call’s him a “wild thing!” he retorts with “I’ll eat you up!”, which is why he is sent to bed with no supper.

5. The ‘Things’ in the book were based on Maurice’s relatives

Maurice began to draw his ‘Things’, which he wanted to be personal creations rather than stereotypical and traditional monsters. He soon realised his inventions were similar to his Jewish relatives from his childhood, who came for Sunday lunch each week and often told him he “looked so good we could eat you up”. He focused on their appearance as entertainment when he was younger, and this is what inspired the ‘Wild Things’.

6. Like Max, Maurice often went to bed without his supper

After dressing in his wolf costume and causing chaos in his house, Max is sent to bed with no supper as a punishment. Maurice revealed that he too sometimes went to bed without any supper, but for a very different reason – he hated his mother’s cooking!

7. The book was initially received badly

Upon its release, many psychologists thought that the book would be very traumatising for young children. A prominent psychiatrist said the book would cause fear of desertion, and that Max throwing a tantrum is unacceptable behaviour which appeared to be glorified in the story. Since then, the psychiatrist revealed they had never even read the book, and it has gone on to receive many awards, including the Caldecott medal.

8. Maurice didn’t want to write a sequel

Despite the popularity of the book, which was his most successful, before his death Maurice revealed he didn’t want to create a series from the story, and there was no convincing him to even consider it.

9. Where The Wild Things Are has been adapted many times

In the 1980s, Maurice worked with the British composer Oliver Knussen on a children’s opera based on the book, which was most notably performed at the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2002. In 1983, Walt Disney conducted a series of computer-generated imagery tests, using Where The Wild Things Are as their subject. In 2009, a live-action film version of the book was released, directed by Spike Jonze and with Maurice as one of the producers.

10. The children’s book has received many awards

Obama is not the only president who is a big fan of the book – in 1997, American writer Maurice received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton!

Shelf Awareness for Thursday, October 15, 2009

Quotation of the Day

The Future: Things that Make Indies Great 'Will Still Be There'

"But I can envision the time when our bookstore will be able to deliver any book, ever written, in any format on the same day--in the store or to the doorstep. The things that make independent bookstores great will still be there. Our buyers will continue to place quality titles on our shelves and our customers will continue to enjoy browsing, aided by booksellers who love books. We'll just be adding about 10 million titles to our inventory and we'll deliver those books faster than Amazon's armada of planes and trucks."--Jeff Mayersohn, owner of the Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, Mass., writing in the Huffington Post about the bookshop's new Espresso Book Machine.

News

Notes:

The plot thickens. Dan Brown's potential Icelandic sales for The Lost Symbol may have taken a turn for the worse after a burglar "broke into the offices of the Bjartur publishing house on Tuesday got away with the first proof copy of the translation," the Associated Press reported.

"Possibly the burglar gave up on his English copy of the long novel and in his desperation decided to get a copy of the Icelandic translation before anyone else," said Gudrun Vilmundardottir, chief of publishing for Bjartur.

Fortunately, the proofreader has another copy of the translation.

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Gizmodo featured "first photos of Barnes & Noble's double screen e-reader," and noted: "What's interesting is that B&N will sell the books it also publishes (yes, remember, they are also a publisher and not just a store) at a deep discount compared to print editions. And the device will have some sort of access to all books scanned by the Google Books project; probably books that are out of print."

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Yesterday at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Baker & Taylor unveiled an e-reader for computers, smart phones and cell phones--essentially one of the fanciest e-reader apps we've ever seen--for which it is acquiring and distributing content.

The reader was developed by K-NFB Reading Technology, a joint venture of Kurzweil Technology and the National Federation for the Blind. (Kurzweil created the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind.)

Besides offering full color images and allowing text to be adjusted in a variety of ways, the reader offers audio versions--both basic text-to-speech audio and the recorded audiobook versions of the texts that are synchronized. Publishers can add various video functions to the texts on the device as well.

Retailers will be able to sell titles through the e-book reader and have the reader branded with its name. The reader will be free to retailers.

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"From winning a grant from the Brooklyn Public Library, to scouting locations and creating neighborhood buzz, the story of Greenlight Bookstore has been a page turner,"  the Brooklyn Paper wrote about the much-anticipated opening of the new Fort Greene bookshop owned by Jessica Stockton Bagnulo and Rebecca Fitting. 

Information and updates on the opening party, scheduled for October 24, can be found at the Greenlight Bookstore blog.

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Pauline Melville, author of Eating Air, chose her top 10 revolutionary tales, "the best stories--from Conrad to Ballard--exploring the lethal excitements of trying to smash the system" for the Guardian.

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Obituary note: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Nan Robertson, whose book, The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men, and the New York Times, chronicled female employees' fight for equal treatment at the newspaper, died Tuesday. She was 83. The Associated Press reported that in her "decades in the business, Robertson mentored a generation of younger reporters, some who became prominent names at the Times, the Washington Post and CNN."  

September General Retail Sales: Better than Expected

General retail sales in September fell 1.5% compared to the same month in 2008, but the Wall Street Journal reported that, excluding "sales of autos and parts, total retail and food sales increased 0.5%. It was a welcome sign of consumer activity after the deepest downturn in a generation. August sales were revised downward 0.5 percentage point to a 2.2% increase."

The end of the government's "cash for clunkers" program was cited as a prime reason for the September dip, though "consumer spending rose in many categories, lifting hopes that the economic recovery is gaining momentum at the start of the holiday shopping season," according to the Journal, which also noted that "Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo said economic growth appeared 'to have moved back into positive territory in the third quarter. '"

The New York Times observed that the September numbers "demonstrated the opposing forces weighing on the consumer sector. Sales fell as a frenzy of car-buying spurred by government rebates came to an end, and consumers retreated. But economists greeted the news with a small cheer because sales excluding automobiles actually grew in September, suggesting that consumer spending was stabilizing."

Media and Movies

Media Heat:

Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press, $27.95, 9780195324877/0195324870).

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Tonight on Charlie Rose: Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, $27.95, 9780307267146/0307267148).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Susie Essman, author of What Would Susie Say?: Bullsh*t Wisdom About Love, Life and Comedy (Simon & Schuster, $25, 9781439150177/1439150176).

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Tomorrow on Dr. Phil: Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before (Free Press, $14.95, 9780743276986/0743276981).

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Tomorrow night on Dateline: Lynne McTaggart, author of The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (Free Press, $15, 9780743276962/0743276965).

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Tomorrow night on Jimmy Kimmel Live: Serena Williams, author of On the Line (Grand Central, $26.99, 9780446553667/0446553662).

This Weekend on Book TV:

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, October 17

9:15 a. m. Francine Prose, author of Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (Harper, $24.99, 9780061430794/006143079X), examines the impact of Frank's diary from a literary point of view. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m.)

12 p.m. Clara Kramer, author of Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival (Ecco, $25.99, 9780061728600/0061728608), recalls the 20 months she spent hidden in the basement of a German family's home in Nazi-occupied Poland. (Re-airs Sunday at 4 a.m. and 8:15 a.m.)

1 p.m. William Hyland Jr., author of In Defense of Thomas Jefferson: The Sally Hemmings Sex Scandal (Thomas Dunne, $26.95, 9780312561000/0312561008, argues that Jefferson did not have an affair with Hemmings nor father her child. (Re-airs Sunday at 11 p.m. and Monday at 7 a.m.)

9:15 p.m. David Fitz-Enz, author of Redcoats' Revenge: An Alternate History of the War of 1812 (Potomac Books, $29.95, 9781574889871/1574889877), presents a fictional account of the war and supposes the British won the battle of Plattsburgh.

10 p.m. After Words. John Harris, editor in chief of Politico, interviews Taylor Branch, author of The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President (S&S, $35, 9781416543336/1416543333). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m., and Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m.)

11 pm. For an event hosted by Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C., David Finkel, author of The Good Soldiers (FSG, $26, 9780374165734/0374165734), talks about the 15 months he spent with Army Battalion 2-16 during "the surge" in 2007-2008. (Re-airs Sunday at 5 p.m.)

Sunday, October 18

1 a.m. Brian McGinty, author of John Brown's Trial (Harvard University Press, $27.95, 9780674035171/0674035178), recounts the trial of the abolitionist who led an attack on the U.S. armory and arsenal in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., in 1859. (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

Television: A Late Night Twist on Author Readings

In an offbeat alternative to the traditional author reading, Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson asks celebrities to read excerpts from his new book, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot. Betty White, Danny De Vito, Neil Patrick Harris, Marg Helgenberger, Drew Carey and Reba McEntire are among the stars who have answered his call to letters. Here's actress Kristen Bell sharing Ferguson's recollection of bad acid trips. 

Movies:

Tommy Lee Jones is in negotiations to direct and co-star with Matthew McConaughey in the film version of Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer. According to the Hollywood Reporter, McConaughey will play Mickey Haller, but it is "unclear what role Jones would play; the playboy character, which could be the second male lead, is described in the book as somewhat younger than Jones, though the part could be adjusted to accommodate an older interpretation."

Books & Authors

Awards: National Book Award Finalists

The National Book Foundation has named the 2009 National Book Award finalists. Winners in each of these categories will be announced at a ceremony on November 18 in New York City, where Gore Vidal will be honored with the NBF's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and Dave Eggers will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community.

The NBA finalists are:

Fiction

• American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell (Wayne State University Press)
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Random House)
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton)
• Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf)
• Far North by Marcel Theroux (FSG)

Nonfiction

• Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook by David M. Carroll (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books/Holt)
• The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton University Press)
• The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles (Knopf)

Poetry

• Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press)
• Or to Begin Again by Ann Lauterbach (Viking Penguin)
• Speak Low by Carl Phillips (FSG)
• Open Interval by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop (University of California Press)

Young People's Literature

• Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman (Henry Holt)
• Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose (FSG)
• Stitches by David Small (Norton)
• Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
• Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

Shelf Starters:

Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Cinco Puntos Press/Consortium, $16. 95, 9781933693583/1933693584, September 2009)

Opening lines of books we want to read, in this case a YA:

Some people have dogs. Not me. I have a therapist. His name is Adam.

I'd rather have a dog.

After our first session, Adam asked me a lot of questions. I don't think he liked my answers. I kept saying, "I'm not sure." And "I don't remember."

I think he got tired of my answers. "You're not sure about a lot of things, are you, Zach?"

"Guess not," I said. I did not want to be talking to him.

He just looked at me and nodded. I knew he was thinking. Adam, he likes to think--and he's a friendly guy but I was not into friendly. "I have homework for you," he said. Homework. Okay. "I want you to tell me something significant about yourself."

I just looked at him. "Something significant? Like what?"

"I think you know what I mean, Zach."

"Sure."

He smiled at the way I said sure. "You can do it in writing or you can draw something. "

"Yeah, okay," I said.

"It's all right if you're angry with me," he said.

"I'm not angry with you."

"You sound a little angry."

"I'm tired."

"Who are you angry at?"

"Nobody."

"Can I be honest with you, Zach?"

"Sure, go ahead, be honest."

"I don't think that's true. I think you're really angry."

I wanted to say something. Something that began with F and ended with you. But I didn't. "I'll do the homework," I said.

--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

Deeper Understanding

Deeper Understanding:

Perhaps you, like I was, are skeptical of how a movie
Could capture as perfectly as Maurice Sendak's picture book has
Max's wild ride of emotions.
Out-of-control emotions
get him sent to his room without his supper,
and launch him on a journey to the land of the Wild Things
who roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth.
Max looks them in their yellow eyes, tames them,
and becomes their king.
But even then, Max is lonely.
He "wanted to be where someone loved him best of all"
and "gave up being king of where the wild things are."
He goes home to a supper that's still warm.
 
What you see first in the movie,
is a real live-action boy in a white costume with ears and a tail,
growling loudly as he chases a Scottie down the stairs.
Just as the boy tackles the dog, Spike Jonze does a freeze frame
with the scrawled all-cap letters,
"Where the Wild Things Are."
This Max, played by Max Records (yes, really),
captures the essence of boyhood,
all innocence, charm and mischief rolled into one complex being
(the result of a five-continent casting call).
In the space of several seconds,
his expressions, so natural, so transparent,
register surprise, disappointment, anger.
Everything that happens in the movie
occurs within Max's experience.
 
Spike Jonze takes a risk
and imagines what sets off Max.
A teacher describes the sun moving ever closer to the earth.
Max's sister, Claire, prefers her phone conversation to a visit to his igloo.
Max starts a snowball fight with Claire's friends,
and they pile onto Max's igloo, crushing it.
His divorced mother invites a date over for dinner.
Max spies frozen corn and jumps up on the table in disgust.
When his mother tries to pick him up and set him down, he bites her shoulder.
"You are out of control!" says his mother (played by Catherine Keener),
as Max flies out the door and down the street
to where his "private boat" awaits.
 
Spike Jonze takes another risk when he imagines
what those Wild Things might say or do,
beyond the Wild Rumpus.
But Jonze deftly works in echoes of Max's experiences.
The igloo-crushing pile-on becomes a Wild Thing pile-up
that demonstrates their affection and acceptance of Max.
As it was in the book, the journey to the land of the Wild Things
is a transformative experience for Max.
 
And what a land it is.
The stretches of sand, bounded by endless sea and sky,
give rise to trees that tower over the Wild Things which, in turn, tower over Max.
Nature's palette in this Australian landscape is the same as Sendak's.
When King Max, as his first order of business, shouts,
"Let the Wild Rumpus start!"
the Wild Things step out of the forest of the book
And into the deep dense trees of the big screen.
 
Carol (James Gandolfini), the striped Wild Thing, is Max's favorite.
Like Max, Carol has constructed an entire imaginary miniature world,
"a place where only the things you want to happen would happen,"
Carol tells Max.
In a tiny boat that sails down the river of this miniature world,
Carol and his beloved red-headed KW are still a couple.
Gandolfini's voice plumbs the depths of emotion
we saw in Tony Soprano--
one moment protective and paternal, the next throwing childlike tantrums.
When Max cannot bring KW back into the fold
("You were supposed to take care of us! You promised!"),
Carol wants a new king.
 
As Max sets sail for home,
the Wild Things join in a group howl.
Only KW says, the way a mother might say it to her child,
"I'll eat you up I love you so."
 
Max's reunion with his mother is wordless.
Their expressions exude ineffable gratitude and relief.
Like John Cassavetes, Jonze trusts his actors
to say everything that need be said
Solely through the expressions on their faces.
 
Max has appeared in a book again only once,
a reissue of Ruth Krauss's 1948 text Bears (HarperCollins/di Capua, 2005).
Ruth Krauss and her husband, Crockett Johnson (Harold and the Purple Crayon),
whom everyone called Dave,
mentored Sendak throughout his early career.
On weekends, he visited them in their Connecticut home
with the manuscript for Wild Things.
"Dave gave me the word 'rumpus,'" Sendak said in an interview
(Publishers Weekly, April 18, 2005)
"Max was like our child."
Would Sendak entrust Max to just anyone?"
 
Here's to Spike Jonze,
who has shepherded Max to the big screen
and safely home again.
--Jennifer M. Brown

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All films of the classic Mad Max trilogy - an overview of all parts of the Mad Max franchise

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Spoiler: nothing. In the sense that you can go to a session without even knowing the existence of the old films, this will not prevent you from enjoying the new chapter and understanding the plot. But if you read the article or decide to watch all three films, it will certainly allow you to get even more pleasure from watching the new film by George Miller.

I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called “Max.” To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time… when the world was powered by the black fuel… and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now… swept away.

The Mad Max trilogy turned 30 years old, the first film was released 36 years ago, in 1979, the second in 1981, and the last in 1985.

When you watch all three of these films in a row, the first thing that catches your eye is how different they are from each other - in tone, in genre orientation, but at the same time they strangely represent an absolutely merged trilogy, opening up from a new side in each chapter.

Despite all the outward madness of these stories, caricaturing crazy villains and action frenzy, this is a very believable world. You believe in him, you sympathize with the characters, and tense moments make you really worry about the characters who die one after another.

Mad Max is a nickname, in fact, from the opposite. Mel Gibson's character looks like the only reasonable and cold-blooded person in a crazy world.

Because Miller is a great storyteller. He is not always good with the dynamics of the narrative, but he knows how to present simple or, conversely, wild things in such a way that they do not cause dissonance.

All three films are perceived not as a crazy attraction with two-dimensional characters, not as a sequence of action scenes, but above all as a coherent and interesting story, where every explosion and every death has its own drama.

For example, when the settler base explodes in the second part, it's not just a beautiful work of pyrotechnics, it's a sign of the determination of people who burn all the bridges. There is no way back. That is why this one explosion gives more emotions than all the badabooms in the films of Michael Bay.

There are a number of recurring elements in the trilogy that become hallmarks of the series:

• Lots of beautiful, creative, insane cars whose weird body kits like spikes and barbed wire even turn out to be functional.
• Bare-legged women in sexy rags
• People tied to or clinging to the hoods of cars until they are smeared on other cars.
• Bandit costumes with a strong BDSM and homoerotic flavor
• A bare-ass villain avenging his lover, who was blown off half his skull with a boomerang by a small but very wild boy (here are the children against the propaganda of homosexuality)
• People with collars on leashes
• Long chase on an empty straight highway in the middle of a deserted desert
• Rapes
• Shown in full detail, terrible accidents, falls, murders and other unpleasant injuries to the human body
• Four-fifths of all the positive characters that you had time to feel something for, dying a terrible painful death. Even a dog.
• Tina her mother Turner in chainmail dress

Mad Max 1979

1979 It's been two years since Lucas rocked the world with the first Star Wars movie. In distant Australia, whose cinematography is practically unknown to the world, a strange film is being released dedicated to the revenge of a police officer for the death of loved ones. A month before Ridley Scott's first Alien, 5 years before The Terminator, and 16 years before Waterworld, the movies inspired by Mad Max.

Cinematographers James Wann and Leigh Whannel are two years old. In 24 years, they will create another famous Australian franchise - "Saw", where at the very beginning they will quote the scene with sawing off the chained ankle that so impressed them in "Mad Max".

The atmosphere of the first tape was more like a western with its small towns in the middle of the endless plains, lonely heroes, sheriffs and gangs of wild rabble doing whatever they want.

Early in his career, Miller worked as a doctor in a Sydney hospital, where he saw many car accident injuries that he meticulously transferred to the screen.

During the 1973 oil crisis, Miller watched how fiercely Australians defended their right to fill the tank - they were not stopped by either huge lines at gas stations or the price. Those who cut the line were beaten. Then the future director realized that nothing would drown out this desire of mankind to remain mobile, to keep their transport alive.

The sleeve of the jacket is still in place, there are no braces on the leg, the eyes are intact, there is no gray hair in the temples. Yes, and Mel Gibson himself is so young that it is difficult to recognize him.

The first film about Max was only a conditional dystopia - the Australia of the future in Mad Max was very conditionally different from the world we are used to.

The world was running out of oil, which aggravated relations between countries, chaos and anarchy engulfed cities, but it was still far from complete apocalyptic. The police, albeit modified, still tried to protect law and order, and gangs of brazen bikers, killing and raping people right and left, can be imagined as existing in our world.

The atmosphere of the first film was more like a Western, with its small towns in the middle of endless plains, lonely heroes, sheriffs and gangs of wild rabble doing whatever they want.

Real freaked out bikers from a local gang acted as crazy bikers. They paid them in beer, because there was no money.

The plot of the tape is a typical story of a tragedy that gives birth to a hero and his terrible revenge. But, despite the banality of the plot, Miller managed to create a truly powerful parable about resisting evil.

What is curious about it is how atypically the hero is presented – to put it mildly, he does not look like a hero at all. In the first half of the film, we almost never see him on the screen at all, and in the second he behaves at first not at all like a hero.

Spoilers: In the city where Max works as a policeman, a gang of bikers breaks in and kills several people. Max's partner, Gus, is eager to end them, but as a result, the gang cracks down on the policeman, sending him to the hospital horribly disfigured in an accident. It would seem that it was at this moment that Max should have come to the fore, obsessed with revenge, and justify the presence of his name in the title, but that was not the case.

After hearing about the attack on his partner and visiting him in the hospital, Mad Max... quits the police force and leaves with his wife and child away from the city. Only when a vengeful gang overtakes them and kills his family, Max takes the path of revenge and cracks down on the bikers.

I especially remember the feeling of doom when a baby dies, and the wife remains mutilated in the hospital, as Gus used to be. Yes, Max punished the killers, but all this is no longer important, you will not return your wife and child, and Max himself has changed forever, turning into an empty shell.

End of spoilers

Mad Max is a nickname, in fact, from the opposite. Mel Gibson's character looks like the only reasonable and cold-blooded person in a crazy world. Frostbite bikers and even fellow cops are much hotter and crazier than our hero, and the people he meets most often resemble harmless nuts.

I don't know if Miller laid this point, but the first tape does not look like a fantasy about the sweetness of revenge, but rather like a parable about its futility. This is a film about a decisive mistake.

You can RUN, but you can't HIDE!

Gus decides to destroy the evil at all costs and gets burned, quite literally. Max decides to stay away from the conflict, but loses his family as a result. If he had gone up against the gang with Gus, his family would still be alive. The accomplished revenge clearly does not bring him satisfaction or peace.

She sucks nitro… with Phase 4 heads! 600 horsepower through the wheels! She's meanness set to music and the bitch is born to run!

Curious facts:

• "Mad Max" became popular because of his car stunts, which are really well thought out, filmed and presented in a story. There are plenty of unexpected, wild moments that provide a completely unfamiliar pleasure.

• These stunts were not just filmed "live", but for the most part without any legal permissions and safety standards. In the role of crazy bikers were real frostbitten bikers from a local gang. They paid them in beer, because there was no money.

• It was also convenient because the thugs were in trouble with the law and would not complain about injuries during filming, of which there were many: broken legs, fingers, noses, and so on.

• Since there was no filming permit, and in stunts the actors walked on the edge of a knife and could be seriously injured, real Australian police chased the police cars from the film to cover up the production. To hide from the police, Miller posted sentinels around the filming site and washed off when a patrol appeared.

• The second and most memorable car of Max's Pursuit Special (also a Ford Falcon XB like the rest of the police cars, but a special edition) after the rental went to auction where NO ONE BUYED it. And all this despite the film's wild success at the box office.

• The ratio of the budget (300 thousand dollars) to the fees (more than 100 million worldwide) set and held the Guinness record for a long time.

• After the failure of the first auction, the car was given to the mechanic of the film. Then Miller bought it back for a sequel, after which it was stupidly dumped in a landfill since no one bought it in a re-auction (crying at these lines is normal, bro).

• As a result, the car was restored and bought for the Star Machine Museum in England. After the museum was closed, the car went to another - already American - museum in Miami.

• Falcon special edition hood air scoop is a show, it didn't work.

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, 1981

The second film is the most widely known and is considered the best of the trilogy. In America, the first film was not released at all, and therefore the sequel was released under the name "Warrior of the Road", deciding not to confuse the audience with the number two in the title, hinting at the first part, which no one had ever seen.

It is here that we see a truly changed world: crazy machines made of shit and sticks, hung with all sorts of devices, people in rags and mohawk bandits in strange leather suits.

Gasoline has become the main resource that is hunted for, there are no weapons and cartridges left - the survivors shoot from bows and crossbows, and Max threatens the whole half of the film with a sawed-off shotgun, which, as it turns out later, has no cartridges.

That's why the moment in which the main villain takes aim at Max's truck is staged with such fanfare: shots are a rarity in this world.

The plot is not much more complicated this time. A group of survivors have built a base around one of the remaining oil pumps, they are attacked by bandits, trying to take away both the tower and the extracted fuel. Max offers his services: he will bring them a truck capable of dragging a tank of fuel so that the settlers can break out of the cordon, and they will pay him with gasoline.

Spoilers: After delivering the truck, Max decides to leave despite the settlers' pleas to stay and help them escape. The thugs attack Max's car, causing his beautiful Falcon to explode along with all the fuel he has obtained, the dog is shot down, and Max himself barely survives.

The helicopter pilot brings him back to the base, and Max agrees to still help the settlers break through. What follows is a fine highway action scene and a relatively happy ending.

Once again, Miller reproaches his hero. Max again decided not to interfere, left people in trouble, taking care only of himself - for which he paid the price, once again losing everything. Some life teaches nothing.

In contrast, a half-crazed helicopter pilot who seems to have been a sly, lone psychopath forgives Max for holding him in chains, saves his life several times, and stays with the settlers, despite originally planning to escape.

End of spoilers

No! It's my snake, I trained it, I'm going to eat it! I got a recipe for snake. Delicious. Fricassee of reptile. You are what you eat.

Curious Facts:

• Despite being one of the most "automobile" franchises ever, filmed by true fans of anything that eats gas (and this is well felt in the attention to detail, in close-ups, licking cars and motorcycles), there are no chases that we are used to: turns, overtaking, and so on.
• There are from two to a couple of dozen cars going at high speed along a straight highway, and the fighters who jump from one to another, shoot and ram each other. There is nothing close to a typical tense film chase here. It's not about overtaking, speed and driver talent, as usual, everything is decided here by slightly different sets of skills.
• The plot of the second picture is reminiscent of Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" not by chance - Miller was inspired by this particular story.
• Some actors played different characters in the trilogy, which is no less confusing than the similar appearance of Mad Dog in Raid 2 (it turned out to be a new character by the same actor).
• Bruce Spence, who played a helicopter pilot in the second part, plays a different pilot in the third.
• The main villain of the second film does not take off his mask, but we can see that he has burns on his head. Because of this, the suspicion creeps in that this is Gus, Max's partner from the first film, who was badly burned in an accident.
• According to the original script, it really should have been him, but then the creators decided that no one really saw the first film anyway, and the surprise would confuse everyone, so they made the hero an independent villain. Although he still has the same gun as Gus and police cars in the gang.
• All this same-character/new-character confusion has led me to the crazy idea that the Empress of Furious Charlize Theron in the new movie is actually Max's wife, crippled by the bandits in the first movie. After all, when we see her body in the hospital after the accident, she is still alive, and it looks like she has no arm. But even if it didn’t seem to me, the wife’s right hand is missing, and Furiosa’s left hand, so these are most likely my fantasies.

Mad Max: Under Thunderdome, 1985

Despite the fact that "weird" and even "morbidly strange", which perfectly conveys the word weird - an epithet applicable to the entire Max trilogy, this strangeness grows with each film, acquiring new layers.

In terms of mood, this film is the closest thing to a hilarious Indiana Jones and Water World, which will be filmed 10 years later, drawing on Max's experience.

The third chapter of the Road Warrior story is strange primarily because of its tone - uncompromising violence gives way to glimpses of comedy, causing fans to brand the film as more childish. The second oddity is the complexity of the plot, which has not been observed in the franchise before.

This is because Thunderdome combines two films - an originally planned film about post-apocalyptic children in the style of "Lord of the Flies" and, in fact, the Mad Max adventure in Bartertown.

Max's hardcore fans don't really like the third film, because in it Miller risks joking and shows the beginnings of a new civilization, which somewhat deprives Max's world of the atmosphere of wild prairies, where only mobile groups of bandits exist.

In terms of mood, this film is the closest thing to a hilarious Indiana Jones and Introductory World, which will be filmed 10 years later, drawing on Max's experience.

And yet, I really liked this movie. Miller continued the evolution of both Max himself and the world around him. The fans, it seemed to me, were simply obsessed with some of their favorite features of the second part and did not want any development, going beyond what had already been shown.

Still in all, every night we does the tell, so that we 'member who we was and where we came from… but most of all we 'members the man that finds us, him that came the salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there.

At the beginning of Under Thunderdome, we meet Max as an old man. Since the events of the second film, the oil crisis has escalated into a nuclear war, all major cities lie in radioactive ruins.

Max, traveling in a car pulled by a team of camels, has his transport taken away and pursues the car thief to Bartertown, the stronghold of a new civilization.

**Spoilers:**In the city, Max meets its ruler (already mentioned Tina Turner) and accepts her order to kill one thug, whom she needs to kill quietly and by proxy. Max fights him in the arena under the same steel dome from the name, but refuses to finish him off, for which the ruler sends him to the desert to die.

Half-dead, he is found in the desert by the leader of an isolated tribe consisting almost entirely of children and living in an oasis in the middle of the desert.

The tribe mistakes Max for the predicted savior of Walker, who will lead them to the cities of the future. Max tries to explain that he is not a Walker, not the chosen one, and, as usual, refuses to help the children get out of the oasis, proving that they cannot find a better place.

In the end, he still helps the children, but again, for this, one of them has to die. The squad sneaks into Bartertown and implements a complex plan with unclear goals. At the end, the tribe manages to move to the city and settle down in the ruins of skyscrapers.

End of spoilers

The Cloud Atlas-like tribe speaking their own twisted dialect of English was really great, and the ending summed up the whole trilogy really well.

As a result , it's hard to say which of the three films I liked the most. At different points in time, the answer to this question can be either the first film, or the second or third. Each of them stands out with something different and brings new interesting elements to the world of Mad Max.

My name is Max, my world is fire and blood.

If you have a desire to watch the trilogy, go for it. She looks much lighter than I thought. If the first film goes really hard, switch to the second - it is shot much smoother and more dynamic.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015

The film was released yesterday and I have already enjoyed it. Miller has unequivocally created something that raises the bar of action quality to previously unimaginable heights, there can only be one verdict - you must go to the cinema for this. Iconic films like these are not to be missed. More details - in the review, which will be on the site by the evening.

Everybody has gone out of their mind. You're not the only one Max.

Curious facts:

• According to the chronology of Max's universe, the events of Fury Road take place between the first and second parts. At least it looks like a logical assumption. Miller himself says that the films are connected more in spirit than in some clear chronology.

• A fourth film was supposed to be made in 2003 starring Gibson, but was put on hold due to the Iraq War, as Namibia, where it was eventually filmed, was originally scheduled as the filming location.

• Miller considered releasing the fourth chapter of Max's story as a full-length 3D anime.

• While Miller and McCarthy were writing the script, they realized that there was story material for a couple more films. The script for the next, fifth part, "Mad Max: Furious Empress", has already been completed.

• Tom Hardy signed a contract for 5 films about Max, including Fury Road.

• George Miller is already 70. He is the second person after Scorsese to show what kind of crazy drive old people can give out in their tapes.

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5 wild things that Joaquin Phoenix did for his roles

Demanded to call him by another name and starved the extras

Joaquin Phoenix plays the Legend of Walk the Line -singer Johnny Cash, with whom at first glance he has nothing in common. Cash was tall, Phoenix was quite average, Cash sang in a deep baritone, and Phoenix's voice was more like David Bowie or John Lennon. To become Johnny Cash on the screen, the actor had to step over himself and bring the Stanislavsky method to frightening limits.

Not only did he study Cash's biography for months and did not part with the guitar on the set, Phoenix asked all colleagues on the set to call him J.R. (real initials of the singer) and did not respond to his own name. And during the scene in the prison, he forbade feeding extras who portrayed prisoners - everything to create the necessary tension on the set. His efforts paid off: for his role in Walk the Line, Joaquin received an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical.

Became a fireman

You don't have to be a fireman to play a convincing fireman. So right? Joaquin Phoenix thinks - no, not like that.

To play a fireman trapped inside a burning building in Jay Russell's "Team 49: Fire Ladder", Joaquin didn't limit himself to reading his memoirs. He entered the Baltimore Fire Academy, learned from the inside all the intricacies of the profession, trained on a par with the rest of the students, graduated and for some time even went to calls with a squad of firefighters and put out real fires. "I wanted to understand how the guys at the academy felt because my character was a rookie."

According to Phoenix, his firefighter friends wrote to him after the film's release that the portrayal of their profession on screen couldn't be more believable. “Firefighters watch this film and say that this is an accurate description of their life. And that's all we could ask for."

Quit his career for a year and a half and behaved like a psycho

After filming James Gray's The Lovers, Joaquin Phoenix and his close friend Casey Affleck had an unusual idea - they decided to make a mockumentary "I'm Still Here", exploring the theme stardom and the relationship of stars with the media and the audience. To do this, Phoenix made a public announcement that he was retiring from film and would pursue hip-hop music.

What started as a joke ended up dragging on for a long 18 months, during which Joaquin did not go out in public from his new image: overgrown with hair and beard and always muttering something incoherent. In the same image, for example, he went to promote "Lovers" on the evening show with David Letterman: mumbled something inarticulate, behaved as awkwardly as possible and even stuck chewing gum to the inside of Letterman's table. In interviews, he said terrible things about colleagues, performed at real concerts with terrifying rap, and all this, of course, for the sake of art. In the end, "I'm Still Here" turned out to be one of the most impressive examples of pushing the boundaries between cinema and reality, and Phoenix himself, according to him, was able to find new dimensions in his acting skills thanks to this extraordinary work.

Hungry

In order to play no less than Jesus in Mary Magdalene, Joaquin Phoenix carefully studied all four Gospels and realized that the information in them is extremely contradictory. He began to carefully select those characteristic features of the Son of God that seemed close to him, and, in his own words, tried to find "human" in such a deeply spiritual mythical character.

In addition, Phoenix, who tends to be relatively overweight, began to starve himself and went on a strict diet to look emaciated. According to him, this process was especially complicated by the fact that the movie was filmed in Sicily, and the temptation to escape from the filming for a plate of good pasta was too great. “Working with Joaquin is like working with a beautiful wild animal. You have to give him space, freedom, so that his playing can find itself: raw, uninhabited and truly natural. From the very beginning, I did not imagine another actor who could play Jesus, ”said the director of Mary Magdalene, Garth Davis, later.

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Tied his jaw and destroyed part of the scenery

In The Master, Phoenix played Freddy Quell, a World War II veteran who falls under the influence of a cult leader (which apparently hides the founder of the Church of Scientology Lafayette, Ronald Hubbard). According to director Paul Thomas Anderson, Joaquin remained in character throughout the filming and more than once harmed his own health.

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