Spike Jonze

Courtenay Semel (daughter of former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel) and heiress Casey Johnson are no longer an item after Ms. Semel spent an  evening partying with Tila Tequila, Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson. [P6]

Michelle Williams is reportedly officially dating her close friend director Spike Jonze, who was previously married to Sofia Coppola. [Daily Mail]  

Vogue intern and New York Ranger Sean Avery, 28, is dating 51-year-old Kelly Klein, ex-wife of Calvin. [P6]   read more »

Spike Jones will have 20 months to make his studio happy with his big-screen version of Where the Wild Things Are. The highly anticipated movie was originally set for an '08 release date, but Warner Bros. was reportedly extremely unhappy with the film Mr. Jonze had shot, and a test screening had kids leaving the theater scared, according to Slashfilm (check out the screener comments!). Now the movie won't hit theaters until Oct. 16, 2009. Apparently the film was… well, a Spike Jonze movie, and not the cute cuddly family fantasy movie Warner Bros. was expecting. There were even rumors that the movie studio was forcing him to reshoot the entire film.

It's hasn't been a good couple of months for Michelle Williams. First, she breaks up with Heath Ledger. Now, Spike Jonze is kicking her off of Where the Wild Things Are for Lauren Ambrose, the redhead who recently received rave reviews for her turn as Juliet in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Romeo and Juliet.

Reuters reports:

Ambrose is replacing the previously cast Michelle Williams. According to a production source, the filmmakers enjoyed working with Williams, but her voice didn't match their original vision of how the Wild Thing should sound.

Jonze and Dave Eggers wrote the screenplay adaptation of the book. The film, set for release in fall 2008, will use real actors, computer animation and live-action puppeteering.

Indie-darling filmmaker Spike Jonze just bought an apartment at the Forward Building—the new Lower  read more »

Indie-darling filmmaker Spike Jonze just bought an apartment at the Forward Building—the new L  read more »

Over at the McSweeney's mag, they're shilling a new, quarterly DVD compendium of short films, titled -- most bewilderingly -- Wholphin.

Ordinarily, this would not concern the Politicker. But issue No. 1 includes the "lost" 13-minute Al Gore documentary by Spike Jonze, the director who brought us everything from Being John Malkovitch (1999) to an endearing Ikea lamp commercial. Though the Gore film aired at the 2000 DNC, Dems never pushed it to a broader audience. To this day, nostalgics argue that it offered a (wasted) chance to shake Gore's wooden image...and the DVD release seems to have revived some interest in that line of thinking.  read more »

Ice-breaker or time-waster? If you didn't have an opinion on the film six years ago, you can watch it and have one now. [If you have a link to a version of the film that's larger than, say, a largish postage stamp, please pass it along! Though I found it viewable at this size, it's not for the beady-eyed or squinty among you.]

If anyone were to ask me at this moment to pick the best movie of the year, with all of December sti  read more »

A quiet string of guitar eighth-notes rises and falls as drums brush along, and "Smoke Rings in the  read more »

Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich , from a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, may or may not be voted t  read more »

At a family funeral in North Carolina, a cousin and I exchanged e-mail addresses.  read more »