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A14 PEOPLE & ARTS
Wednesday 26 OctOber 2022
Review: ‘Wendell & Wild’ is a dark and cold animated ride

By MARK KENNEDY “You Sexy Thing” by Hot
AP Entertainment Writer Chocolate. In many ways,
Just in time for Hallow- this film has the creepiness
een comes a film that isn’t of “The Nightmare Before
afraid to lean into the dark- Christmas fused with the
ness, one frame at a time. girl-power of “Coraline” but
In the first five minutes of for less pay-off than either.
“Wendell & Wild,” our teen The animation style in-
heroine loses her parents in cludes the hyper-realism
a car accident, her town is of backgrounds and thrill-
economically gutted and ing details like a messy,
she ends up in the back of bubbling pot of sauce or
a prison bus, her legs shack- a rusted bulldozer to hu-
led and her hands cuffed. man characters who have
This is cold stuff. Direc- seams on their faces and
tor Henry Selick’s return often long, skinny legs.
to stop-motion anima- A pair of nuns resemble
tion is icy, from the slushy strange fat birds and skel-
potholes on the roads etons with worms in their
to the vapor clouds that eyes stumble along. The
emerge from characters’ This image released by Netflix shows Wendell, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, left and Wild, nifty character designs are
mouths. His script with Jor- voiced by Jordan Peele in a scene from “Wendell & Wild.” Associated Press credited to designer Pablo
dan Peele is equally chilly, Lobato.
a place where alienation, titular characters, a pair of green hair, eyebrow pierc- for-profit company that Beneath it all is the story of
backstabbing and plots mid-level, none-too-smart ings, knee-length platform wants to build a prison so a child’s love and guilt and
abound. demon brothers who hope boots and fingerless stud- badly it raises the dead to an education and judicial
Selick, whose previous films to escape drudgery in hell ded gloves. She carries a get the city council votes, system letting her down
include “The Nightmare by escaping to the world boombox and a doesn’t- and a parochial school which propels her to bring
Before Christmas,” “James of the living and opening a play-with-others vibe. “I willing to make a deal with her parents back from the
and the Giant Peach” and fun fair. don’t do friends,” she says. these devils to stay open. dead, but that gets a little
“Coraline,” has attracted Unfortunately, their banter “Bad things happen to Throughout is Selick’s id- lost in the gross-out humor,
a starry lineup of actors to is a little hemmed in, a little people I’m close to.” iosyncratic vision. It takes Addams Family-level weird-
supply voices this time: Ving less hysterical than antici- It is a dark tale, with the a certain kind of ghoulish ness and shock-for-shock’s
Rhames, James Hong, An- pated. action never far from the humor to bring a Catholic sake visual gags like a de-
gela Bassett, David Hare- They think they’ve found town’s cemetery and cof- priest back from the dead monic teddy bear. For all
wood and Peele, reunited their way out of hell in the fins seemingly always being with a hair-regrowth cream the lovingly crafted spec-
with his old comedy part- form of 13-year-old Kat El- cracked open. while our two demon broth- tacle, Selick’s agonizing,
ner Keegan-Michael Key. liott (Lyric Ross), a goth-like There is a stab at social criti- ers celebrate with high-fives shot-by-shot film, is as over-
Peele and Key play the rebellious orphan who has cism involving an ominous as the soundtrack plays stuffed as that bear.q

Naomi Alderman novel ‘The Future’ scheduled for next fall

By HILLEL ITALIE Naomi Alderman is a “what lease electricity through sorts of directions. So I was delay caused in part by
AP National Writer if” kind of writer, as in: What their fingers, the premise of thinking about whether the pandemic and by the
NEW YORK (AP) — Novelist if women were able to re- her acclaimed bestseller there was a way for them departure of actors Les-
“The Power “? to work better.” lie Mann and Tim Robbins.
For her upcoming book, Simon & Schuster an- They were replaced by Toni
simply and descriptively ti- nounced the novel Tues- Collette and Josh Charles.
tled “The Future,” she imag- day, calling it a blend of The pandemic also disrupt-

ined a handful of rogues “intelligence and storytell- ed her own writing. Alder-
including an unhappy ing, marrying white-knuckle man had been working on
spouse and a deposed ex- narrative propulsion with a novel tentatively called
ecutive overthrowing the an intellectually dazzling “The Survivals” about tech
masters of Silicon Valley critique of the world we billionaires fleeing from a
and running the tech world have made, in which a few deadly plague but altered
themselves. billionaires profit on the lives it after a real one spread
“I’ve seen the rise of these of many and lead us will- early in 2020. The tech
companies that started off ingly to our doom.” leaders remain, but the
with people tooling around “The Future” is scheduled pandemic has been de-
on the internet and now for publication in fall 2023. centralized and the “book
look at them. How have we Alderman, 48, is also known definitely got less dark,”
gotten to this point,” the for “The Liars’ Gospel” and mostly because Alder-
British author said in a re- “Disobedience,” adapted man wanted “to find some
cent telephone interview. into a movie starring Ra- hope,” she explained.
“A lot of them seem be us- chel Weisz and Rachel Mc- “The Future” is her first novel
ing their companies for ne- Adams. An Amazon Prime since “The Power,” pub-
Actor Rachel Weisz, left, and author Naomi Alderman appear farious purposes, like desta- Video series based on “The lished in 2016 and written
at a screening of “Disobedience” during the 2018 Tribeca Film bilizing democracies and Power” is expected next under the mentorship of
Festival in New York on April 24, 2018.
Associated Press radicalizing people in all year after an extended Margaret Atwood. q