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Where the Wild Things Are, based on Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book, is slated for major motion picture release in mid-2009.

via Wild Things All Over – 2/4/2008 – Publishers Weekly.

and…

the film will carry a blockbuster of a tie-in—and it’s not the book the film is based on: it is a solo novel, written by Eggers (working title: The Wild Things) inspired by Sendak’s iconic tale, to be published by Ecco Press.

Awesome… Where the Wild Things Are is my favorite children’s book of all time.

In these hard times, you deserve two “best films” lists for the price of one. It is therefore with joy that I list the 20 best films of 2008, in alphabetical order. I am violating the age-old custom that film critics announce the year’s 10 best films, but after years of such lists, I’ve had it. A best films list should be a celebration of wonderful films, not a chopping process. And 2008 was a great year for movies, even if many of them didn’t receive wide distribution.

via The best films of 2008… and there were a lot of them :: rogerebert.com :: News & comment.

If 2008 was a great year for movies, it was a bad year for me actually seeing movies.

Time to go pump up my Netflix queue!

Last night we saw Slumdog Millionaire. It was a soaring and moving experience. We sat down in the crowded theater, and we watched the previews as my mind did the reality-detachment dance. However, when the opening frame flashed upon the screen with text that read, Mumbai 2006, my heart skipped a couple beats as I thought about the reality of the past week in Mumbai — a place I have never been, but a place I would like to go.

I was quickly drawn back into the story, which finds the main character being interrogated (tortured) by the police. They are attempting to find out how this slumdog came to be waiting on the chance to win twenty million rupees. (via the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire)

Through a clever retelling of the slumdog’s life, we learn how he knew the answers. Obviously, I’m not going to give away how it ends, but I strongly recommend that you see this movie. It’s easily one of my best of 2008, and one of my favorites of the past few years.

The characters of this film, the places and situations are made of a strong humanity that was very real, conflicted, and ultimately, extremely compelling. Thanks to my sister for the recommendation!

Side note: we bought tickets while sitting at dinner using the internets. As the line was piling up for the 7pm showing, we decided to spend an agonizing 15 minutes trying to purchase tickets via moviefone.com for the 8:30pm show… luckily, we prevailed, and good thing too, as the movie was sold out!

wall•e is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

On Friday, I was lucky enough to be amongst the first to see a new film called "The Listening Project". This documentary sends a group of people around the world to open a conversation about America’s role in the world. It’s not a perfect movie, and it has it’s own lens and perspective as all movies do, but it is quietly powerful in the way that we get to listen in on what people think about America, in locations as diverse as Vancouver, Kabul, and Tanzania.

The filmakers are going to be bringing the movie to some film festivals now, and with luck, they will be able to have it shown in theaters from there. Check out the website, there are some extended interviews and journals from the "listeners" as they made the film.

Just decided to give Netflix a two week trial. Are you on Netflix?

After that post about movielens, it occured to me that Netflix must do the same thing… and it does. Multiple profiles on your account, seperate ratings, recommendations for your friends. I can tell I’m going to be hooked. I know people (jgd3) have been telling me forever to get on this, and in fact we bought a gift subscription for the parents a couple years ago, but we’re finally giving it a shot.

Send me an email or an invite if you use Netflix so I can get some people on my friends list.

Oh, and Eric, I’m finally going to see Donnie Darko. It’s in queue.

Back in the heyday of the internets (the late 90’s) there were all sorts of free services that offered you interesting information for free… with little or no advertising! Moviecritic was one such site. It capitalized on the power of collaborative filltering to recommend movies to you.

Basically you would browse through the movie database, and if a movie was listed that you had seen, you would rate it, 1-5 stars.

After rating a certain number of movies, it would begin to predict movies for you based on your ratings and the ratings of all the other users.

Then the really sweet thing was when you fed another username (the Juice-ette, say) to the site, and it would return movies that both of you will like, based on all these ratings.

Well, somewhere around late 2001 – early 2002 (not sure exactly) the site was shut down. Very sad. A few dark years of movie watching ensued. Somewhere in there we saw ‘Connie and Carla‘. A bad time indeed.

Something sparked my interest in movies this afternoon, so I thought I would see if any sites had cropped up in the wake of Moviecritic.

With that, I give you: movielens

The site is very similar to Moviecritic, and lo and behold, it’s appears to be a research project at the University of Minnesota. So with any luck, after I’ve rated 1000 movies, the site won’t disappear.

So, I strongly urge you, the 3 or 4 readers of my site, to sign up and do some rating. Send me an email to let me know you’ve signed up and we’ll see some movies!