This week:

The box office gets Wild; a Vampire Chronicles star moves to Cradlewood; Everything Must Go for Will Ferrell; Owen, Keener and Schwimmer Trust each other and Terrance Mallick’s Tree of Life withers in 2009.

Short Version: Where the Wild Things Are is a wonderful movie more suited to grown-ups who want to remember their childhood than for the kids who are still there.

Screen Rant reviews Where the Wild Things Are

Just so you know, I don’t have fond memories of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. Neither for myself as a child nor for reading it to my daughter when she was younger (the book I remember is The Wheels on the Bus). So I didn’t have any bubble to burst going into the movie.

I don’t know how this will go over with fans of the book… Spike Jonze had to flesh out a book whose entire text maybe amounted to one paragraph into a 100 minute movie – so he had to fill in a LOT of story that isn’t in the book.

Our friend Harry Knowles over at Ain’t It Cool News has given the Spike Jonze film adaptation of the eponymous 1963 children’s book Where The Wild Things Are a glowing review.  Check out just one bit of praise they give give the film:

“…it could very well be the best film ever created about what it is like to be a 9 year old…it will conjure up primal childhood emotions of joy, regret, elation, confusion and you may realize that you’ve lost an awful lot, by simply growing up.”

Wow, to call that review “glowing” is an understatement!

Have you been watching the trailers or the TV Spots for Where The Wild Things Are? Have the tunes in those previews and commercials added to the magic of Spike Jonze’s upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s book? Have those tunes stuck in your head for hours after you watched them? If the answer is “yes” to any or all of these questions, we have a treat for you today:

The soundtrack for Where The Wild Things Are is now streaming for free online.

Some movies just seem to be instilled with a touch of magic, and that is certainly the way I feel about Spike Jonze’s upcoming adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are. If you haven’t seen the trailer or our gallery of pics from the film, you could be missing out on what looks to be one of the most enjoyable movies on the docket for the Fall/Winter season.

Today we have the TV spots for Where The Wild Things Are, and they too capture the magic of Maurice Sendak’s childrens book brought to life on the big screen. Aiding in the magic-making is the wonderful soundtrack by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O and the Kids; the TV spots make good use of the songs from the ‘track, which I’m predicting will be just as popular as the film itself.

Happy Friday everyone! Today we’ve again gathered the latest posters to come out for this week’s poster round-up.

Screen Rant’s wall this week now includes one-sheets for Toy Story 3, Saw VI, Paranormal Activity, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Blind Side, Dark Country, Jekyll & Hyde, The Hole, Get Low, The Descent: Part 2, The Karate Kid, The Fourth Kind, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and A Christmas Carol.

But that’s not all! We also have the latest sets of character banners for Where The Wild Things Are and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Let’s get to it.

Of all the movies coming out this fall, perhaps none is more anticipated than Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Adapted from Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s story, Where the Wild Things Are has already received significant praise for its unique visual style (a common trait of Jonze’s work) as well as its emotional depth.

What has impressed me the most about the film so far are the “Wild Things” themselves. Created using a mix of live-action and CGI, Jonze’s Wild Things capture Sendak’s  illustrations so well that I literally got goosebumps the first time I watched the trailer. Jonze elaborated on his approach to filming the movie in a recent article for the New York Times, saying “I wanted it to be as natural feeling as possible…I wanted to shoot the wild things in camera: on location, out in the wild.”

Happy Friday everyone! Today we have gathered the latest posters to come out for this week’s poster round-up.

Screen Rant’s wall this week now includes one-sheets for The Box, Pandorum, Growl, Takers, Red Cliff, The Shrine, District 9 and Michael Jackson’s This is It.

In addition to those, we also have four great character banners for Where the Wild Things Are and and as a bonus, a photo for The Twilight Saga’s New Moon.

Let’s get to it…

As the days become shorter, and the nights become cooler, there is one thing on the horizon that all of us are quickly becoming aware of – the arrival of a slew of exciting 2009 Fall Movies. What’s always been great about this time of year is that it’s not just about “horror films” or movies that are made to touch the holiday hearts that burgeon each year as turkey, Santa and New Year’s Eve stretch into the new year and beyond.

The menu is varied, wide open and we hope – satisfying. While we couldn’t list them all, please join us as we quickly chronicle what lies ahead in Screen Rant’s 2009 Fall Movie Preview!

Happy Friday everyone! Today we have gathered the latest biggest and best posters for this week’s poster round-up.

Screen Rant’s wall this week now includes new one-sheets for Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr.Fox, 2012, The Road, Gamer, Bad Lieutenant and a pair of comedies: The Invention of Lying and Couples Retreat.

For the horror fans out there, we also have some fan-made posters for the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and as a little bonus, the first official photo for Saw VI.

Let’s get to it…

One of the most positive receptions at Comic-Con was for Where the Wild Things Are. There was quite a bit of footage shown for the film and it looks like it will have enough heart for three movies. It looks like Spike Jonze has managed to take a childrens book that takes about 60 seconds to read and turn it into a really excellent feature film.

Comic-Con seems like old news (even though it only ended a week ago), but as a final note we thought we’d show you what you guys ended up picking as the hottest things to come out of the 4 day event. There was certainly a lot of competition for fan attention, but as usual there are always a few things that end up grabbing the limelight.

We ran a poll asking you to pick what you thought were the three hottest things to come out of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Now the total numbers add up to more than 100% because with so much to choose from we allowed people to pick their top 3 items.

Results after the jump.

There was an opening video where writer of the original book Maurice Sendack and director Spike Jonze talked about the approach to the film. Sendack is very, very happy with Jonze’ vision of his original story and couldn’t say enough positive things. He said it is true to the spirit of the book and it’s an expansion of the story.

In a rather surprising piece of news, Spike Jonze’s (Being John Malkovich) adaptation of the popular children’s book, Where The Wild Things Are, is reportedly getting an IMAX release. Several sources are confirming that it was mentioned at a “Future of IMAX” panel in San Diego yesterday, although no specific release date has been set for its release in that bigger format.

Wow, Comic-Con 2009 is already less than three weeks away. Seems like only a couple of months ago since we were there. Last year was a ton of work but also a blast (click here for our wrap up of the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con), and this year we’ll be providing even more extensive coverage for you with additional staff to cover the event.

Warner Bros. recently released the lineup of panels they’ll be presenting at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International. So if you are headed to Comic-Con this year and are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, Where The Wild Things Are, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Book Of Eli, Jonah Hex or even The Final Destination, then you’ll need to know where and when to show up for the panels.

Lucky for you Screent Rant loves our readers and has a nice list of the Warner Bros. panels at Comic-Con all ready for you, including the one that is my most anticipated: a preview screening of DC Universe’s animated feature Green Lantern: First Flight!

Two weeks ago, we finally got to see the first official trailer for Where The Wild Things Are and to everyone’s relief, it seems that they’ve actually pulled it off in bringing the children’s book to life.

Today, we have a brand new poster for your viewing pleasure and it’s even better than the first Where The Wild Things Are poster from last month. Following the same style as the earlier one-sheet, this new image depicts the monster with his face partially hidden (in the first poster, the character’s heads were cropped out and you could only see them from the neck down).

Spike Jonze’ newest creation Where The Wild Things Are has been on my movie radar ever since it was announced (in fact, even before that, in a general “looking forward to Jonze’s next movie” sort of way). And the release of some great images and a fantastic promo poster for the film have fueled the fire of  my excitement.

With the still images having given us a feel for the film and a sense of the general plot outline, it’s just about the perfect time for a trailer, so that we can fully and properly get geared up for the release of Where The Wild Things Are later this year.

Last week we reported on the awesome poster for Spike Jonze’s newest creation Where The Wild Things Are. It hinted at another wildly creative experience of the sort that we’ve come to know and love from Jonze over the years. But at the same time it did not give us enough to be able to guess just what the heck the film is going to be like (by doing such interesting and unique things as, for example, cutting out half the head of one of the main characters – how many movie posters like that do you see?).

One director to emerge in the last decade or so who has the potential to go on to great things is Spike Jonze, the man behind the wildly original and mystifying flicks Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (both of those movies are genius – although he didn’t write them, his creativity shined through brightly).

With those two films he has truly cemented himself as a weird and wonderful director to watch, and as far as I’m concerned he grabs attention with the sheer mention of his name being attached to any project. His career thus far has consisted of mainly shorts, documentaries and music videos, with only the aforementioned Being John Malkovich and Adaptation making up any full-length feature film experience.

Another Sunday brings another Weekend Movie News Wrap Up.

This week:

We look at the weekend box office and why Robert De Niro doesn’t like the Edge of Darkness, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington make a sequel, we get to see Where the Wild Things Are, Russell Crowe goes Holmes and Tom Cruise might go to Florence.

In today’s Movie News Grab Bag, I’ve got a confirmation on the director and writer of the RoboCop sequel, X-Files: I Want To Believe is getting poor reviews, and my theory on why Ant-Man isn’t on the release slate yet.

RoboCop 4 (unless they ignore parts 2 and 3 and do a reboot): Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi and the one movie I liked but I’ll never watch again, Requiem For a Dream, has officially signed on to direct the RoboCop sequel, set further in the future after the program was shut down.  Will it be a new RoboCop, or will Murphy live again?  David Self (Road to Perdition) is writing the script.  Sounds like it’ll be fun, especially since it isn’t a remake!

It’s almost time for The Dark Knight. We’ve almost made it. Not long now. However, in the meantime here’s a new Weekend Movie News Wrap Up to keep you preoccupied.

This week:

We try and figure out Where the Wild Things Are, David Duchovny blogs, Robert Downey Jr goes Holmes, John Cusack sues and Darren Aronofsky may be giving us some Prime Directives.