Wild Things and Sundaes and Other Delicious Things

We went to see the much hyped movie Where the Wild Things Are last night and splurged the extra five bucks to see it in the Imax theater. As movies based on childhood books go, I would consider this one of the more difficult ones to adapt. If you recall, the actual words in the book are rather limited, and the illustrations are what really carries the story forward. The problem with watching movies based on beloved books is that the director's imagery often doesn't line up with what you had pictured in your head while reading. However, once I got over this, I really enjoyed Spike Jonze's interpretation. You can view the trailer and read about the movie here. I thought Max Records, who plays the character Max, did a fantastic job in the role of a wild, misunderstood little boy. The one thing that threw me was the personification of the wild things on the island. At first, I didn't like that they had names and voices. But by the end of the movie, I really saw the wild things as a reflection of Max's own personality and I think it really worked. The soundtrack is fantastic, as well.

After the movie we made a quick stop at Giant Eagle and made the most amazing ice cream sundaes with vanilla ice cream, hot toasted almonds, chocolate sauce and coconut. And whipped cream, of course. This balanced out our dinner, which was equally delicious in a different way. We sauteed collards greens in olive oil and Liquid Smoke. Maybe because the collards are really fresh, maybe it had to do with M using our new food processor to cut them into delicate, grass-like ribbons, but they were really delicious. We stayed up way too late - M playing Zelda and me wandering aimlessly around the house - but we slept in this morning until 11. We'll probably never do that again. M, upon waking, declared Sunday his favorite day of the week and proceeded to whip up some whole wheat, crepe-like pancakes, stuffed with stewed apples and topped with powdered sugar. Only one word could describe them...amazing.