neongen Maurice Sendak loved his little dog Jennie but she did not love him. Just before her death Sendak began a picture book about Jennie's attitude towards him and life and what happened to her following her death. This short film is a work of quality that even more than the book evokes a sense of the tragedy that that is the relationship between long - lived man and short - lived dog. Anyone who comes upon the film without not being aware of the source material might not understand what is shown until the conclusion. That's one of its virtues. The beauty of the visuals is unsurpassed in film . This is true even tho some of the characters are grotesque in the style of Tenniel's art for Alice in Wonderland. The viewer's reaction to this stop motion puppet masterpiece may well depend on how he feels about animals. For me it's crushingly sad. A must see for anyone interested in dog/pet stories.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life" is a Canadian 23-minute short film from 2010. The directors were Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, but the more known contributor here is of course writer Maurice Sendak. This one came out in 2010, so a year after "Where the Wild Things Are" and very fittingly (now Oscar-winning) filmmaker Spike Jonze voices one of the major characters. And there are more Oscar winners in here. Meryl Streep voices the main character and Forest Whitaker is on board as well. The main character is a little dog here and while he was kinda nice in terms of looks and animation, I am not too sure if Streep was the right casting choice for this character. And while the animation there is not a letdown, it is on many other occasions. One would be this weirdly animated baby. And the other animal characters did not work very well for me either. This also had a negative impact on the story overall and it may at least have a bit contributed to me being relatively unimpressed by the movie. I was also not too big a Sendak fan before, especially when it comes to the movie I mentioned earlier, but I like Streep, Jonze and Whitaker, but they also could not really make up for it and elevate the material (sufficiently). The story has a good moments and the ending may leave an impact, but it's just not enough quality here, not even for a film slightly over 20 minutes. Watch something else instead.