Why Watch? This quite short but still entirely provocative short won the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. It’s the work of animator Marcell Jankovics, whose prior short Sisyphus was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 (and later used in a Super Bowl commercial for GMC). Jankovics has been called the “Walt Disney of Hungary,” which has everything to do with his place in cultural consciousness and much less to do with his actual work. Küzdők is a very brief film with awfully grand things to say. It’s a vignette of a sculptor who is quite literally destroyed by his greatest work, which comes to life while he carves. Creator and creation are both armed with chisels and chip away at each other. As the artwork becomes young, strong and beautiful, the artist ages into a withered nothingness. The whole thing is perfectly textured, capturing all of the roughness of untamed rock and bringing out a striking violence in the act of stone carving. Yet the cartoon is contemplative rather than brutal, re-framing the relationship between art object and artist with bold concision. What Will It Cost? Just over 2 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

In 1968, Steve McQueen starred in Bullitt as a San Francisco cop whose primary job description was driving a Ford Mustang GT fastback recklessly and seeking revenge on behalf of a witness he was trying to protect. The impressive Peter Yates earned immortality as a director with a 10+-minute car chase that’s effectively what people are talking about when they ask you to cut to one. For some, it’s the best (often trading out that top spot with Ronin). At the very least, it’s in the Top Five All-Time, but we wondered if it couldn’t be just a little bit faster and furiouser. So we called upon our old pal Sleepy Skunk to mash-up a trailer that pumps a ridiculous amount of NOS into Frank Bullitt’s ride in honor of the 14th or 15th installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise that hits theaters this weekend. Let us know what you think.

In the fourth episode of Arrested Development‘s third (and what initially seemed to be its final) season, Michael Bluth wakes up to find the handlebars of his bike in his bed, placed there by GOB, his sheets stained with bike grease. The moment is a clear reference to one of the most iconic scenes from The Godfather, where studio executive Jack Woltz awakes to find the severed head of his prized horse in his bed after refusing to give Johnny Fontaine a prize role in the film. But Arrested Development‘s relationship to The Godfather trilogy isn’t isolated to occasional references or sly parodies. Instead, the underlying structure of the series seems to be modeled off Francis Ford Coppola’s canonized adaptation of Mario Puzo’s crime saga. Here are a few connections between the three existing seasons of Arrested Development and the three Godfather films. Perhaps there will be more to look for when Arrested Development pulls us back in on May 26th.

Last weekend I was up late and noticed a 16-year-old follower of my Facebook page (and aspiring filmmaker) had a shitty night. He lived a nightmare we all had inside of us during high school. He was a sacrificial lamb in a demented prank from kids who he never threatened and never wanted to see get hurt the way he was. Bullying is a popular subject these days. It’s one I went through for four years, and it was so bad that on my first day of college I lied to my first friends about my high school experience. I haven’t really let it out there until reading a 16 year old kid expose his wounds online. This was my message to him. I’m sharing this letter in case others might find it useful.

There were a surprising amount of baddies in Iron Man 3. Director Shane Black‘s Tony Stark adventure put the idea of multiple villains being a bad idea to rest. One of those villains — or henchman, if you want to get technical — was played by a familiar face, James Badge Dale. Badge Dale chewed on every piece of Black’s dialog and his character’s eccentricities. Even with the technical challenges, it’s a role Badge Dale wanted to let loose with. The actor used to work construction, and he wanted to bring that mentality to the character. A Shane Black henchman isn’t the only role we’ll see James Badge Dale in this summer, as he has both World War Z and The Lone Ranger next on dock, and they represent a chance for the actor to reach an audience that maybe doesn’t frequently watch Shame or The Pacific with their free time. They’re certainly all physical roles, which, according to James Badge Dale, is a part of the job that he loves:

Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci are probably two of the busiest screenwriters working today. It seems like every month we hear of a new project they’re scripting, developing, or what have you (a look at their current IMDb pages includes listings for upcoming projects, from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to that Van Helsing reboot). Their schedules have certainly stopped me from interviewing them in the past, and when their names are appearing on four high-profile films in the span of a single year, you can see why scheduling would be a bit of a problem. Now the pair has two projects coming out only weeks apart, with Star Trek Into Darkness and Now You See Me both arriving this spring. Now You See Me has a chance of being a sleeper success, while Into Darkness already opened to impressive numbers this past weekend. It’s been four years since their Trek reboot, and ever since then there’s been plenty of rumors over what exactly J.J. Abrams was hiding in his mystery box. With the film finally out, we spoke with screenwriters/producers about what that box contained in a SPOILER-filled discussion:

Why Watch? In focusing on short films from Cannes, we land on this fantastic wonder from Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby that features a humanized menagerie going through their daily routine when tragedy strikes. Without dialogue, it seeks to share a man’s (well, really a chicken’s) life as well as a stirringly profound moment in it. The story is a triumph, but most striking is the animation itself, which flutters with a rare energy, flowing between the fantastic (a pig happily skinning potatoes) to the almost-photo-real (a lemon rolling into a gutter, the reflection off a toaster). When the Day Breaks is peerlessly detailed in its cinematography, using hand-drawn and painted elements on top of photocopies to share a wholly realized world. What Will It Cost? About 9 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

It’s long been said that the Star Trek movies work on an unwritten rule that the odd numbered ones wind up being disappointments and the even numbered ones wind up being the ones that are worth watching. If you go down the lineup and check the work on that theory, it seems to hold up. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was widely considered to be a misfire, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was considered to be the rebound that got things right, and then things keep sticking to that pattern all the way up to the tenth movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, which is said to have ended the streak of even numbered movies being good and is essentially the reason the franchise had to go through a reboot. Of course, if you’ve read this column before, you can probably predict that I don’t agree with this assessment. The Wrath of Khan is widely considered to be the best of the Star Trek movies, but to my non-fan eyes it plays as a set-bound bore full of paunchy, over the hill actors who were well past needing to be put out to pasture. Maybe you need an emotional investment in the franchise to really get its appeal. Nemesis, on the other hand, starts really horribly with a cringe-worthy wedding scene full of clunky banter and fake laughter, but as it goes on it develops into becoming an entertaining enough big, dumb action movie. It’s the perfect thing for the

Recently, the act of donating to or promoting a Kickstarter campaign has become a highly politicized and moralized one for movie fans, an act brimming with questions, crises, and conundrums about systemic economic disadvantages normalized by dominant industries of filmmaking. Suspicion has been directed in droves toward legitimate-seeming yet vastly-supported projects like the studio-release Veronica Mars movie or Zach Braff’s directorial follow-up to Garden State, whose constellation of multiple funding sources perhaps says more than we’d like to admit about the complex process of realizing even the most distinctly above-the-line indie projects. While frustration directed at a feature adaptation of a canceled UPN show or Braff’s seemingly boundless ability to produce haterade may appear legitimate when accounting for Kickstarter’s role as the possible final refuge for American alternative filmmaking, fingers should instead be pointed to the reasons that a resource like Kickstarter has become necessary in the first place.

Welcome back to This Week In Discs! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Murderer Lives at 21 (UK release) A murderer is stalking the streets of Paris, and his only calling card is a literal calling card bearing the name “Monsieur Durand.” The police are getting nowhere fast, but when a petty criminal offers evidence that the killer resides in a local boarding house a top detective goes in undercover to ferret the murderer out for arrest. Hilarity ensues. I’m not kidding about it being hilarious either. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot would go on to make Wages of Fear, Diabolique and others, but his debut film shows an assured hand with both the visual style and a fantastic tonal balance between the mystery and the laughs. The dialogue moves at a ’40s screwball comedy pace, and it’s loaded with wit, smarts and innuendo. Even more impressive is the film’s final shot… especially knowing it was shot during the Nazi occupation of France. [UK DVD extras: Interview]

Well, Arnold Schwarzenegger did say he’ll be back. In fact, he said it in pretty much every movie he did after The Terminator. It lasted well into the 90s. Now, he really is back as small-town sheriff Ray Owens in the action film The Last Stand, and he is the only thing standing in the way of a ruthless drug cartel kingpin escaping to Mexico. The Last Stand was a bit of a flop in theaters. (Okay, let’s admit it: It was a huge flop in theaters.) However, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. It’s one of those entertaining popcorn movies that actually works well for home viewing, and it’s small-town charm lends itself to being watched with a beer in hand. While this won’t live on as one of Schwarzenegger’s greatest movies, The Last Stand is still a lot of fun to watch and offers a cool nod to his early action films. Did we mention the beer part?

Rumor has it that J.J. Abrams is known to approach strangers, hold his finger beneath their nose while stifling a laugh and then ask them if they can tell which box it smells like. That probably isn’t true, but the man most definitely loves a good mystery. As writer, director and/or producer he’s been attached to dozens of films and TV shows featuring mysteries both big and small. The secret to Lost‘s island, the reveal of the monster in Cloverfield and the alien in Super 8, the explanation as to why Felicity cut her hair… all mysteries we eventually saw answered after a glorious period of intense curiosity. Hell, we’re still eagerly awaiting an answer to what exactly he was thinking while writing Gone Fishin’. Abrams famously explained his attraction to the idea of a “mystery box” during his 2007 TED Talk, and it basically boils down his belief that “mystery is more important than knowledge.” There’s a semantics argument to be had there, but the core point is a sound one that more often than not gets lost in an online world used to having all of the answers and information available 24/7. People who read books don’t (usually) read the ending first, so why do so may of us want to know as much as possible about the plot points, casting and cameos in the movies we’ve yet to watch? Abrams simply prefers as little as possible be revealed in advance of our eyeballs actually seeing his work

Why Watch? Another gem from Cannes, this short from Sam Karmann won the Palme d’Or in 1992 and later the Oscar as well. It’s a simple, very funny look at what happens when a man gets on the wrong train. Karmann converts this annoyingly relatable comic problem into a mini-adventure by raising the stakes to outlandish proportions and delivering a true knockout of a punch line. What Will It Cost? About 7 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Looking for any excuse, Landon Palmer and Scott Beggs are using the 2012 Sight & Sound poll results as a reason to take different angles on the best movies of all time. Every week, they’ll discuss another entry in the list, dissecting old favorites from odd angles, discovering movies they haven’t seen before and asking you to join in on the conversation. Of course it helps if you’ve seen the movie because there will be plenty of spoilers. This week, they explore the illustrious history of directors declaring cinema dead with a New Wave heavyweight doing battle with American financiers for the first (and last) time. There’s a reason Jean-Luc Godard‘s CinemaScope attempt is called Contempt.  In the #21 (tied) movie on the list, an American producer and a film director played by an iconic film director try to make a big budget movie version of Homer’s “Odyssey” while struggling to balance commerce (nude scenes) with art (tasteful nude scenes). But why is it one of the best movies ever?

Game of Thrones is many things, least among them is subtle about its weekly themes. It’s part of the experience, as we’ve seen it develop over the years, to watch D.B. Weiss, David Benioff and the rest of the writing team parse together stories from all over the world of Ice and Fire in a way that makes them fit together despite great geographical, philosophical and tonal differences. This week’s episode, “Second Sons,” is no different. It’s the kind of slower, more meticulous episode that digs a little deeper into the greater notions of faith and honor, love and duty. It’s also filled with moments both sweet and sour for characters we like, those we don’t and those whose true nature is yet to be revealed to us. It is on this note that we begin our weekly Blog of Thrones discussion of episode eight, a sweet and sour appetizer to whatever darkness lays ahead. From here, there will be advanced talking points from this week’s episode, “Second Sons.” Read on at your own peril.

Author’s Note: While on a survey mission, Al Gore is sucked into a giant hole in the ozone that deposits him in the past. Stranded, he uses his knowledge of the future to invent the internet decades sooner than he did in his original timeline. By the 1980s, the internet has evolved to what it became by the early 21st century, dragging fan culture with it. This is one such review that I obtained from our alternate past.

We all get burned out from time to time, but it seems that when ad men get burned out, things really go awry. Especially when there may or may not be steroids or some weird “stimulant” involved. This week’s Mad Men, “The Crash,” is a surreal, fever dream of an episode. Nightmarish events occur, but you won’t find any dream sequences here. Written by Jason Grote and Matthew Weiner and directed by Michael Uppendahl, this episode throws its viewers down the same drugged up rabbit hole as the characters. And while it features some of those questionable Dick Whitman whorehouse flashbacks, it’s a very strong one in terms of the overall immersive effect of Uppendahl’s direction and the dark aura that it leaves behind. Chevy has put a lot of deadlines upon the yet-to-be-named super agency, and they need to work all weekend to come up with a slew of new ideas for the campaign. Don isn’t feeling well, Ken got into a car accident test driving with the powers-that-be at Chevy, and many are saddened by Frank Gleeson’s passing, so Jim Cutler reasons that it’s a good idea to get a doctor to come to the office to inject any ailing parties with a stimulant which is supposed to keep them creative for over twenty-four hours.

Whether or not you’re a fan of Star Trek Into Darkness, you should take a look at the latest SoundWorks Collection shorts on the music of the film. Michael Coleman visited the 20th Century Fox Newman Scoring Stage to document some of the recording of the Star Trek sequel’s score. While there he interviewed Tim Simonec, the conductor and orchestror, while also getting some footage of director J.J. Abrams and composer Michael Giacchino overlooking the sessions. Also named in the video is co-producer Michelle Rejwan as the orchestra plays “Happy Birthday” in her honor (at least I think it’s in her honor since the camera is turned toward her). Behind the scenes stuff like this is always neat, and here Simonec explains some of what’s different about the Into Darkness score compared to the previous Star Trek movie’s music. For one thing this has more synth less choir. I also just like watching all the professional musicians. It’s easy to forget about all that talent while watching a movie, especially when you wind up nitpicking at the writing and directing. While Giacchino’s compositions themselves may be criticized, there’s absolutely no digging at the people on the strings and horns and percussion. Their performance of the score is objectively perfect, as that job always has to be. Watch the brief video after the jump.

This is another edition of Short Starts, where we present a weekly short film(s) from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. The new animated feature Epic doesn’t seem to be high on a lot of lists of anticipated summer movies, but it is sure to draw in the kids. While Fox’s Blue Sky Studios may only be the third most significant company making animated features in the U.S., that’s still very lucrative business (mostly for the Ice Age series). And director Chris Wedge, a founding member of Blue Sky who hasn’t taken the helm of a movie since 2005′s Robots, is a name you should know in the world of animation. Even if Wedge wasn’t such a big wig, though (and even if we didn’t share a birthday, which I take very seriously), I always like devoting a Short Starts post to directors of animated works. More than most kinds of filmmakers, they tend to have begun with short subjects, and these shorts tend to be available to watch online. Both are true of Wedge’s early animated films, two of which are very crude, very short, very early examples of computer animation from the 1980s — Tuber’s Two Step and Balloon Guy — and then a later longer piece that won the Academy Award in 1999, titled Bunny. Join us in watching and learning about all three films after the jump.

After four years of waiting and anticipation, geek honcho J.J. Abrams has finally given us the sequel to his 2009 box office and critical hit. And it is … serviceable. Abrams’ new movie is as sleek and shiny as his first Star Trek picture but lacking much of its charm. The novelty of seeing these characters coming together is gone, the villain is lackluster in bizarre ways, and the high-flying pacing is absent, making many of the film’s logic gaps even more head-scratching. And there are indeed some real head-scratchers. Choosing emotion and spectacle over logic can work, and it does in the last Trek outing and the first half of Star Trek Into Darkness, but this time around Abrams and his screenwriting team can’t gloss over all the leaps in logic and other narrative problems. What starts off as another thrilling Abrams movie ends up turning into a mess by the end. Here are some (spoiler-y) questions which arise out of that mess: