This week, stereotypes and Spike Jonze.

As Southern California burns, I’m watching movies. Seventy-five of them, all international feature submissions to the Sundance Film Festival, almost all of them subtitled (and some of the British ones really should be). For the past week I’ve been popping them in one after another while watching coverage of the spectacular fires, getting hotter and hotter in my apartment with no cross-breeze.

Watching so many movies at once is both encouraging (lots of well-made films) and depressing (there are so many well-made films that they can’t all find audiences). And as Brazilian sex romp follows Japanese samurai flick, follows talky British scam movie, follows didactic German film, I’m reluctantly beginning to admit that it might not be all that wrong to indulge in cultural stereotyping. Then I take out a French movie and press play. In the first five minutes, long crusty loaves and the word “existential” are deployed several times. That’s it. I’m embracing my inner CGI-heavy American blockbuster and my beautifully-costumed Chinese epic about loss of honour. So should you.

Spike Jonze has just signed on to direct the film version of that great children’s book, Where The Wild Things Are. In the last iteration of the project they were planning on doing an animated version, but Jonze wants to make a live-action film. The illustrations were such an integral part of the story that it’s hard to imagine Max and his wolf-suit without them. Maybe we’ll get something like the Smashing Pumpkins’ video for Tonight, Tonight, with a Jonze-y touch. Jade Chang 24 October 03

useful link: www.sundance.org