There are few directors that had a career like Billy Wilder‘s. There are probably none that reached his level of skill and notability while staying as diverse as a storyteller. The man did drama and comedy with equal acuity, but his dominance of filmmaking almost didn’t happen. Born in what is now present-day Poland, Wilder left for Paris during the initial rise of the Nazi party in Germany and soon left for the States. He got out early, yes, but it’s difficult to think about the magic he’s delivered without being reminded that but for a few years he may have found himself a victim of the fear-mongering and murder that befell European Jews at the height of Hitler. Fortunately, he did get out and did go on to craft some of the best scripts and movies of the era (and, you know, of all time). His breakout was writing the hilarious Best Picture nominee Ninotchka; success he translated into a fruitful writing/directing career which produced a truckload of notable classics like Double Indemnity, A Foreign Affair, Lost Weekend, Sunset Blvd., Stalag 17, Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, The Apartment, Witness for the Prosecution, Sabrina and more. The man was seriously prolific. With six Oscars and a ridiculous list of incredible films under his belt, he’s a perfect director to take a few tips from. So here it is, a bit of free film school (for filmmakers and fans alike) from a legend.

With most of the sitcoms that debuted in the fall (and managed to escape cancellation) winding down this week, I think it’s time to crown a winner. Which one of these brand new sitcoms most deserves to stick around?  Which was the most memorable? Which came out on top? Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl has already been renewed, Whitney was a thing that happened, but the show that worked the best for me was NBC’s Up All Night. Executive produced by Lorne Michaels and created by former Saturday Night Live writer Emily Spivey, Up All Night is a funny and relatable look at the life of a married couple, played by Christina Applegate and Will Arnett, trying to adapt to life with a new baby. Arnett is Chris, a former lawyer who has decided to stay home with their daughter while Appelgate’s Regan returns to work where she struggles to balance motherhood with the demands of her larger than life boss Ava—an Oprah-like talk show host played by Maya Rudolph. The show was this season’s best new sitcom and here are four reasons why.

We normally reserve 10 & 5 posts for big movies that are familiar to the masses, but once in a while it’s good to shine a light on a low profile indie film. This is not that time though, so instead we’re taking a look at the movie with the biggest opening weekend in history. Joss Whedon‘s entertaining as hell blockbuster, The Avengers, has already earned a rare A- grade from us (read Cole Abaius’ review), but Robert Fure and Rob Hunter wanted to take a more detailed view complete with potential and actual spoilers. Warning: There are major spoilers below. Major spoilers. You’ve now been warned about the major spoilers.

Ever since I moved to Austin 14 years ago, the summer has meant one thing to me (well, besides several months of brutal triple digit temperatures): Paramount’s Summer Classic Film Series. More recently, Cinema East has developed into a staple for my Sunday evenings during the summer months. While I anxiously anticipate announcements from the Paramount and Cinema East regarding their 2012 summer programming, the Alamo Drafthouse is the first out of the gate with a couple of announcements that have pushed my calendar well beyond its cinematic limits for the next few months. First off, Alamo Drafthouse and Mondo announced their partnership with Martin Scorsese’s film preservation organization, The Film Foundation. Created in 1990 by Scorsese, The Film Foundation is dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. By working in partnership with the leading archives and studios, the foundation raises awareness of the urgent need for preservation and has saved over 560 films.

Comedic actor Mike Meyers has had an interesting film career. On the one hand he can be considered an amazing success, because he has three huge franchises under his belt. On the other hand, he sometimes gets looked at as something of a failure, because everything he’s done outside of those franchises has been less than stellar. The first two franchises Meyers launched were Wayne’s World and Austin Powers; moneymaking juggernauts in their own rights for sure. But it was the third series of films he was involved in, the animated Shrek movies, that really broke the bank. This tale of an overgrown ogre finding true love managed to connect with children and parents alike, and the original spawned a series of sequels that broke all sorts of box office records and pushed mountains of merchandise. I’m sure Meyers was a rich man already, but Shrek made him very rich. One project that didn’t do so well for the guy was So, I Married an Axe Murderer. It was Meyers’ big followup to his breakthrough success with Wayne’s World, the movie that could have  seen him moving away from the heavy character work he did on Saturday Night Live and moving closer to taking more mainstream roles playing regular guys. Unfortunately it didn’t even make a tenth of the money that Wayne’s World pulled in, it’s been largely forgotten over time, and Meyers hasn’t been accepted in a role where he plays a regular guy since.

Why Watch? More than just a compilation of movie scenes and a narrator who’s seen better, whiskey-filled days, this intriguing film noir from Fabrice Mathieu is a conceptual curiosity. It abstractly tells the story from the perspective of a Shadow who has decided to get rid of its “Wearer” – the meat doll it’s attached to – and Mathieu uses shots of shadows from other films to get the job done. At once, it functions as its own dark animal and as a movie fan’s slideshow through great works. The copyright infringement necessary is…undoubted…but the final product is something mysteriously engaging. What will it cost? Only 8 minutes. Skip Work. You’ve got Time For More Short Films

This post is probably not what you think. There are no LOLCats, no Rage Comic stick men bellowing about the superiority of The Dark Knight and Inception. It’s not really a love letter to modernity. But it’s also not Sight & Sound‘s decennial Top Ten List. That prestigious publication has done great work since even before polling critics in 1952 to name the best movies of all time. They’ve recreated the experiment every ten years since (with filmmakers included in 1992), and their 2012 list is due out soon. However, there is certainly overlap. The FSR poll includes only 37 critics (and 4 filmmakers), but we’re young and have moxy, and none of us were even asked by Sight & Sound for our considerable opinion. That’s what’s fascinating here. The films nominated by those invited by S&S have the air of critical and social importance to them. They are, almost all, serious works done by serious filmmakers attempting to make serious statements. This list, by contrast, is the temperature of the online movie community in regards to what movies are the “greatest.” The results might be what you expect. But probably not.

Crowding a movie with talent often seems like a good idea only in the abstract sense. In practice, such films can easily feel overstuffed. For example, the basic conceits for both The Expendables and Grown Ups sound like products of wishful thinking held during a drunk conversation between a group of 19-year-olds at 3am. Yes, in theory a movie featuring all of the action stars of the 80s or the most successful SNL cast since the late-70s would be great – however, a bunch of famous people do not a seminal action film or great comedy make. What’s most surprising about Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is that the whole somehow proved greater than its parts. A movie with this quantity of iconic superheroes runs the incredible risk of being overstuffed and only half-cooked. The standards created by previous Hollywood films indicate that studios would be happy enough allowing the conflagration of bankable characters stand in for (or, more accurately, distract from the lack of) actual entertainment value; mammoth opening weekends, after all, are always more a sign of effective marketing than good filmmaking. But The Avengers not only stands as an equal to some of the stronger entries in Marvel’s 4-year, 5-film multiverse-building, but is arguably superior. Some of these characters came across more fully-fleshed and three-dimensional as part of an ensemble than in their respective standalone films.

There are two types of people in this world: those that like glittery vampires whose biggest battle is with a hunky teen werewolf over the heart of a humdrum angsty teenager… and those that don’t. If you’re in the latter category, you might enjoy vampires of a different kind, ones that actually rip their victims apart and fight to the death with real tear-off-your-face werewolves. Fans of the violent vampire/werewolf conflicts likely are fans of the Underworld movie series, and it’s latest installment, Underworld: Awakening hits DVD and Blu-ray this week. This drinking game will help you get through the latest film with some giggles, and it can also be used for the first two Underworld films as well.

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! Sadly, this is one of the worst week for new releases in decades. Decades I say! Well, in weeks anyway. Some of the mediocre titles coming out this week include the occasionally entertaining Underworld: Awakening, the frustratingly uninteresting Mother’s Day remake, the low-rent Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, and Channing Tatum’s funniest film yet, The Vow. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Front Line War films are a staple here in the US, something that’s benefited by the fact that America has dozens of wars to choose from, but not every country is as lucky (or unlucky).  South Korea was a part of only one major conflict in the modern era, but out of this trauma have come several fantastic war films including 71: Into the Fire and My Way. The Front Line is the latest and also one of the best as it focuses on one of the war’s final battles. Both the South and the North struggle to capture and recapture a particular hill as the final hours of the war wind down, but as the clock ticks forward the men (and woman) discover there’s far more at stake here than a simple plot of land. Director Hun Jang finds real suspense and spectacular battlefield action amidst the stories between friends, enemies and countrymen.

Why Watch? In this world where CGI can do just about anything, it’s monumentally impressive when an artistic endeavor is achieved through sweat and a hundred clocks ticking. This video for Benga‘s “I Will Never Change” is the kind of short film that shows off one specific thing, but it’s a specific thing that’s infinitely impressive. Us Studios crafted a soundwave using 960 vinyl records, some precise placement, and a lot of movie magic. Plus, you can check out how they did it because the team has given a ton of information from behind the curtain. What will it cost? Only 2 minutes. Skip Work. You’ve got Time For More Short Films

A few weeks ago I wrote about Live Tweeting television. At the time, my focus was on how you end up spoiling a lot of stuff for a lot of people. Time zones and the rotation of the Earth and that sort of stuff, all very fascinating. Well today I’m going to revisit Tweeting what you’re watching and expand it to include other activities you do while watching television or a movie of some sort. Studies show that as a people we are increasingly addicted to our mobile devices, whether they’re smart phones or tablets. Unofficially, the study also concluded that we are all now assholes of a much higher order. Forty percent of respondents acknowledge that on a daily basis they use their smart phone while watching television and even more people used their tablet, inconclusively proving people with iPads are the biggest assholes around. I do have a point here – when you’re watching something, watch it.

Now that The Avengers is a Hulk-sized hit on North American shores as well as overseas, the big question is what will Joss Whedon do next. As seen in this interview with Collider, the man appears to be pretty damn tired from this monster film that officially wrapped only a couple weeks ago. But Hollywood moves fast, and Marvel Studios moves even faster. Acolytes of Whedon are sounding the charge as if a revolution has occurred that makes the later seasons of his shows pale in comparison. The question is will Whedon be courted by the inevitable Avengers 2? Will he resurrect his TV series onto the big screen? Will Neil Patrick Harris be involved in any way? Here are the main options Whedon has before him.

It’s time to call you back in, my Bannermen. And Bannerladies. As you well know, Winter is Coming. And as we steam past the midpoint of season two, the big season finale is also coming to the lands of Westeros. So our weekly Blog of Thrones can see the end of this round, not clearly, but on the horizon. This week we learn plenty of lessons along with the denizens of Winterfell, King’s Landing, Harrenhal and whatever the hell they call those mountains north of The Wall. These lessons will likely come back to be important later in the season, as many a collision course is being set. War may be upon these gamers of thrones, but we are yet to see the real bloodbath that is to come. As always, Blog of Thrones is written from the perspective of a relative novice to George R.R. Martin’s books. It focuses solely on Game of Thrones the show and assumes that you’ve seen everything up to the latest episode. If you travel down this Kingsroad and find yourself spoiled, the king will know the reason why. 

No one was expecting this. The chances The Avengers had of breaking the opening weekend box office were slim. They were there, but few thought it was anywhere near reality. There’s a lot of egg on a lot of faces today. Not only did The Avengers beat Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2‘s opening weekend take of $169.1m, it left every film that has ever been released in its dust. The first film to ever break $200m in its opening three days of US release – That’s to say nothing of the $441.5m it’s already made overseas – this is a milestone in Hollywood’s history that everyone thought would come one day. Not many thought it would happen in 2012.

More than a few opinions were changed about the upcoming Total Recall when that trailer hit last month. The big summer sci-fi blockbuster’s preview sold an epic scope, the chance to explore a new world, and a fresh take on Philip K. Dick‘s story. Gone was Mars, the mutants, and a body builder acting like a killing machine. What director Len Wiseman is bringing to the table is more in line with the tone of Dick’s short story: serious, heady sci-fi. Wiseman has unquestionably made a film that will contain its fair share of explosions and one-liners, but the mystery of Douglas Quaid is what piqued the Live Free or Die Hard filmmaker’s interest the most. “Who am I?” is a quintessential life question, so imagine the stakes of having to answer that while being chased down and shot at. Speaking with Wiseman, the busy director discussed his reliance on practical effects, building an entire world without too many talking heads, and the identity crisis Douglas Quaid faces.

Why Watch? Lawrie Brewster’s style is difficult to describe. It’s homegrown CGI mixed with animation and live-action that’s been tossed in a blender set to homage. We previously experienced the bizarre world of Turnip Head, but this short is a new breed with similar sheep’s clothing. It’s a salute to Abel Grance’s 1927 war epic Napoleon by way of Guy Maddin. It’s also a jarring, pristine experience. What will it cost? Only 8 minutes. Skip Work. You’ve Got Time For More Short Films

The Mayans, the wise race of ancients who created hot cocoa, set December 21st, 2012 as the end date of their Calendar, which the intelligent and logical amongst us know signifies the day the world will end, presumably at 12:21:12am, Mountain Time. From now until zero date, we will explore the 50 films you need to watch before the entire world perishes. We don’t have much time, so be content, be prepared, be entertained. The Film: Brick (2005) The Plot: When his ex-girlfriend goes missing, teenage Brendan dives into the seedy underworld of High School, digging his way through political allegiances and a youthful criminal enterprise in this seedy neo-noir tale.

Every Girl’s Guide to The Avengers By Internet Princess Quartney Vagington Hey, gurrrrls! It’s your BFF Quartney Vagington! I’m gonna save your cute butts again, so get ready to thank me. Your boyfriend has probably looked up from his Xbox a couple times in the last week to say, “Dude, we gotta see The Avengers on Friday! It looks totally sick!” I know Trevor has! I just rolled my eyes and was like, “LOL, whatever you want, honey-bun,” and then I went back to texting. But guess what, bitches? He’s totes serious about it! Your boyfriend is too, unless he’s like a dork or whatever, in which case, ew, why are you dating a dork? Anyways, me and Trevor are gonna see The Avengers on Friday cuz it’s his turn to choose the movie, cuz he let me choose which Olive Garden we went to last week (the nice one, or the one close to Pinkberry), and so I was like, “Aah! I don’t know what these dumb comic book movies are about!” So then I was like, “Help me, Facebook, LOL!” And so then Facebook was like, “Here are some Tumblrs and Wikis about it!” So you guys, I totally did some research to help you know what the eff is going on when you see “The Avengers” with your boyfriend! You can thank me later, I accept Hot Topic gift cards, LOL. (P.S. if you do not have a boyfriend then I don’t know what to tell you [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; we’re formin’ in a straight line…at the buffet. You’ve foolishly wandered into the Internet’s best second best currently existing bad movie column. Every week we examine a particularly rank schlock dog, rather frankly, exposing every spoil mark and moldy flaw. Then, eschewing our sense of reason, and regard for our own intestinal well-being, we happily consume the rotten red hot with a gleeful smile on our lips. We then pair the film with a similar, but less metaphorical, snack food item themed to the events on screen. Or at least, that used to be the format to which we dogmatically adhered. Now, the warm, bosomy embrace of routine has been replaced by the shrieking, bloodletting scratch-fight of anarchy. In honor of our on-going, shoulda-called-the-doctor-at-the-four-hour-mark nerd boner for Roger Corman, we decided to celebrate this godking of b-cinema by featuring one of his most treasured, albeit dingy gems. Therefore, we head back to school and audit a few classes at Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. What we found was quite shocking. The following is a report detailing a few courses R’n’RHS does not offer, but probably should based on what we beheld.