A glorious glimpse of "Where the Wild Things Are" on a newsy day

This being Comic-Con season and all, there's a lot of great news out there for a Saturday morning, so I'll just jump right into it - finishing up with the truly fantastic new footage of "Where the Wild Things Are."

First up comes news about the second season of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" on Fox, which I'm rather amazed - but happy - is happening at all. The show took a good six or seven episodes to get started, but once it did, it was solid and increasingly crazy (especially the finale) sci-fi.

Well, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" fans should definitely take note, because Whedon announced at Comic-Con that (Salisbury, Md., native, huzzah!) Alexis Denisof, aka Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, will have a recurring role on season two of the show, and River Tam herself, Summer Glau, will probably factor into it somehow too now that "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" has gotten the axe.

And, since I suppose he couldn't resist, Whedon slipped in a thoroughly deserved dig at "Heroes" season two: "As long as we don't send anyone to feudal Japan, I think we'll be okay."

And I've also included a teaser poster for "The Cabin in the Woods," the horror movie that Whedon is cooking up with Drew Goddard. Funny as they are, the posters aren't all that promising, but with Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford headlining this, and even "Dollhouse" and "Angel" star Amy Acker in tow, I'm betting its gonna be a lot of fun when it finally comes out in February.

Next up, in movie news so good I probably should have led with it, David Cronenberg is about to - finally - get back to making movies again. He had been rumored to be making something from the Robert Ludlum spy vs. spy tale "The Matarese Circle" with no less than both Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise, but it sounds like the frankly more promising project below might happen first.

The new word is that Cronenberg is teaming up with a Portuguese producer to bring novelist Don DeLillo's "Cosmopolis" to the big screen. I've not read that one, though I did read "Underworld," but the plot certainly sounds nuts enough for Cronenberg: The story of a 28-year-old multimillionaire on a 24-hour odyssey across Manhattan to get a haircut.

I kind of miss the days when Cronenberg's movies had a more creepy side to them ("Spider" is still my favorite), but it's just nice to hear the man is working on the big screen again at all.

On another subject completely, it seems that Todd Phillips' follow-up to the wildly popular and mostly deserving "The Hangover" just got a lot more classy, even if does fall squarely in to the road-trip rut he's crafted for himself.

It seems that Robert Downey Jr. has signed on to play the lead in Phillips' next flick, "Due Date," along with "Hangover" star Zach Galifianakis. Downey will play an expectant father who finds himself on a road trip with a mismatched partner (Galifianakis, natch) as he races to get home before the birth of his first child.

Though Downey is now crafting a solid career as an action star with "Iron Man" and now "Sherlock Holmes," I always like him best when he's funny, as he rather deliriously was in "Tropic Thunder," so to this I can only say bring it on.

And, finally before we get to the "Where the Wild Things Are" goodness, if I were really able to go to Comic-Con rather than just be there in my mind, the one other panel (along with "Where the Wild Things Are") that I'd be sure not to miss would be the Miyazaki/Disney panel, at which John Lasseter made a promise that damn well better be true about Hayao Miyazaki's new flick, "Ponyo."

Disney deserves credit for getting behind the Western release of Hayao Miyazaki's movies, but they've never really given them a full-throttle Disney push, until now. Here's hoping that Lasseter meant it when he said of "Ponyo," "We are going to give this a nice big release. Disney believes that strongly in the film."

And I can promise you I will be one irate moviegoer if that doesn't turn out to be true come Aug. 14.

OK, finally comes the "Where the Wild Things Are" featurette screened at Comic-Con that just made me smile broadly through its entire three-and-a-half minutes or so. Along with interviews with Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak, it also contains some new footage, and yes, I do plan to howl like a wild thing in the theater once I finally get to see this for real. Enjoy, and have a great rest of the weekend. Peace out.