Internets Ablaze Over Exceedingly Fake WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE Clip

I love all my blogging brothers and sisters, but occasionally we (and I include myself in this) run with something that seems like breaking news to our heart, while our brains should be yelling, no, no, a thousand times no.

The latest is the somehow exclusive, somehow secret scene from Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' upcoming adaptation of the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  Even my dear pals Eugene and Dentler jumped into the act - but I give them an out, for reasons I'll explain shortly.

Seems that a publicist for the website Buzznet was contacting people, heralding their exclusive clip, only to later remove the clip -  the mystery over its origins and its removal unsolved.

Witness the resulting firestorm here and here and here and here and here.  In some cases, sites did raise doubts about the authenticity of the clip.  Others speculated that it might be a test scene (which I'll allow is possible).  And some commenters saw the same tip-off that I did which indicates the thing is, at best, a test clip, and at worst, a huge fake-o.

But at least these bloggers have the guts to let their posts hang out there in cyberspace.  Meanwhile, in yet another example of the MSM breaking the rules of blogging - Entertainment Weekly posted about the clip on its PopWatch blog, only to have taken the whole thing down by Sunday afternoon (maybe they too realized that it was a fake?).

Today, Jeffrey Wells links to another site that has the video up, and with just one look, it's clear to this Angleno that the things is a badly conceived fake.  If the video is still there, go to the 44 second mark.  That rounded thing in the upper right corner?  LA's Griffith Observatory! 

And where is the movie being shot?  Australia.

Comments

[Jason Scott]

Seems like a decent enough test clip, either for the full WILD THINGS or someone doing some examples of interaction between a shot live actor and some computer generated work. I like the light work on the monster, makes him seem to fit right in.

This is what they need for a PETE'S DRAGON remake!

[don lewis]

Over on Movie City News the word from Spike Jonze is that it was a test shoot:
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/02/where_the_wild.html

Unfortunately, Drew McWeeny at AICN has "seen" the film and says it's a long ways off. Bummer...that clip made me get EXCITED! And by "unfortunately" I mean it's unfortunate those AICN people get to see things way before anyone and then either christen or damn it. Lame.