Having watched Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, with a 9-year-old and a greater-than-35-year-old, I was curious what reviewers thought of it, but found something more interesting: Spike Jonze's and Maurice Sendak's thoughts on the Where the Wild Things Are project, thanks to Pitchfork.

The Sendak picture book is sparse in text. (The article linked above says it has ten lines.) The characters in the book have no individual personalities, while in the movie, several have a fairly complex personalities. It was fascinating seeing a three-minute read interpreted as a 90-minute animated moody art drama.

"If man sticks his hand where it wasn't meant to go, it will get cut off!"

Why would a supposedly intelligent network mind waste so much energy and resources indulging in cinematically grandiose personal combat in grim wastelands with loud music?

If a robot runs a task-specific program, its capabilities are very limited. It is not able to deal with any of the complex scenes in Terminator. However, robots that are capable of autonomous mental development are totally different.

The above snippets are from experts commenting on the plausibility of a Terminator movie-scenario. The main issues were the robots gone amok, time travel, and a pesky Skynet computer network taking over the world. This article is from H+ Magazine, found by way of Slashdot.

Says the SFWA: "Joss Whedon, creator of such science fiction and fantasy-themes television series as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse, has been named recipient of the Bradbury Award for excellence in screenwriting, as presented by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America."