I just got home from seeing Where the Wild Things Are which I really loved. I thought it hit all the right notes and was quite moving.  I encourage you to go see it on the big screen.

The Wild Things are an amazing combination of body suit with animatronic faces, that were later enhanced with cgi.  It is, I have to say, utterly seamless.  The team of people who created each character deserves a big hand for really compelling performances.

When the credits rolled they had each of the Wild Things listed with their voice performer and their suit performer, which made me very happy.  Too often, the puppeteers get ignored altogether or lumped into a group at the end.  The lumping is sometimes unavoidable because complex puppets are frequently team efforts and it’s hard to sort out who did what.  So it was nice to see a film that acknowledged the fact that the guys in the suits are on set all the time, while the voice performers have more limited contact with the rest of the cast.  Not to downplay their performance, by any stretch, ’cause bad voicing can ruin good puppetry.

It’s just a pet peeve because there are times when a puppeteer or matchmove artist works for months on a show and then isn’t credited.

So.

I was excited and the credits had rolled too fast for me to really catch the names of the suit performers. I headed to IMDB.

Which does not list the suit performers for the characters.

WTF? Who made that decision?

I finally found the list of the cast over at FanCast, which does credit them and they deserve kudos for giving truly expressive body language to the characters.

• Vincent Crowley as Carol Suit Performer
• Sonny Gerasimowicz as Alexander Suit Performer
• Nick Farnell as Judith Suit Performer
• Sam Longley as Ira Suit Performer
• Angus Sampson as The Bull Suit Performer
• Mark McCracken as The Bull Additional Suit Performer
• John Leary as Douglas Suit Performer
• Alice Parkinson as KW Suit Performer
• Garon Michael as KW Additional Suit Performer

Well done, all of you.