Director Jon Favreau, who wrote and starred in the 1996 indie hit "Swingers," is an old-fashioned guy whose tastes run to the nostalgic. He grooves to the tunes of Frank Sinatra. He is obsessed with hot rods, especially the 1932 Ford in his Santa Monica garage. And, he makes movies that harken back to the days before computer-generated images.

The sci-fi fantasy "Zathura," which opened Nov. 18, is based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg ("Jumanji," "The Polar Express"). It stars Josh Hutcherson and Jonah Bobo as squabbling young brothers from a broken home who find an old board game called Zathura in the basement of their father's (Tim Robbins) house. The mysterious game sends them - and the house - hurtling through deepest, darkest outer space, where they encounter an angry robot, hungry aliens named Zorgons and four-eyed sheep.

Dax Shepard plays a stranded astronaut the two boys rescue while playing the game; Kristen Stewart is the boys' teenage sister who is clueless to what's happening. In the end, the brothers are forced to overcome their differences to finish the game to safely return home.

Although there was money in the "Zathura" budget to create a computer-generated image of a house being catapulted through space, Favreau opted to have a miniature made. Of course, he didn't entirely ignore state-of-the-art special effects. "We used the best technology to composite and put the lighting together, and we have CG backgrounds," he said, which combined to make it appear as if the miniature house is indeed rocketing through space.

Favreau called on veteran special-effects wizard Stan Winston to create the killer robot as well as the meat-eating Zorgon space creatures the boys must battle.

Using real props, he said, "forces you to shoot them in a way where you use a lot of darkness. You don't show everything. What starts to happen is the film takes a nostalgic feel because you are forced not to show as much as you would were it CGI. The audiences' imaginations are used a lot more."

Favreau's friend Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from "A Christmas Story") is co-producer on "Zathura," and credits the director with having "a clear-cut vision from Day One. I know the term ‘vision' is overused, but, really, he had a vision for these things before he ever started. When he read the script, he quickly saw a world. And the world that he pitched (to the studio) and talked about two years ago is now on the screen."

Favreau also was involved in the creation of the Zathura game that launches the movie's events - a board game made of tin, which doles out an instruction card with every turn of the key.

Needless to say, a board game based on the one in the film is coming out for the holidays. "I just saw a commercial on TV for the game, and it looked like it could have been a commercial for when I was a kid," Favreau said.

"When they make a video game to a family movie, not a lot of care is put into it. I got involved in the script and wanted to tell a story that is consistent with the film."

"Zathura" was shot on the Sony lot near Favreau's home on a tree-lined street in Santa Monica. In fact, Favreau purchased the house next door to the one he shares with his physician wife and turned it into his office, so that he could be closer to home even when he's working.

"At the end of the day when my life is drawing to an end, I am going to look back at the one-sheets on my wall, and that is going to be all well and good," he said. "But it's going to be the family that's around me that is going to determine how content I am getting ready to move on to whatever is next."

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