Where The Wild Things Are (Animated Version)

I really want Spike Jonze's movie adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are" to be good. Maurice Sendak's original children's book was one of my favorites as a young kid in the 1970s. I must confess, though, that one of the reasons I liked the book so much was that it was short. (I didn't like to read very much as a child.) It was less than 40 pages, many with no words at all. It was so short, in fact, that it was faithfully adapted in a 6 minute animated short made in 1973 (embedded below). If you're thinking of seeing the new movie, which is being released today, you might want to refresh your recollection of the source material by watching this:

Given that this faithful animated version is only 6 minutes long, I wonder how faithful to the original source material the movie could be, since it's running time is apparently a more fulsome 1 hour 40 minutes. But the "New York Times" gave the film a positive review in this morning's edition (describing it as an, "alternately perfect and imperfect if always beautiful adaptation"). The 2 minute trailer for the film is embedded below. If you watch it just after viewing the animated version above, you can get a feel, I think, for how the tone of the film may differ from that of the book.