Like the dinosaur blood found inside ancient, tree sap-encased mosquitoes, short films can often be cultivated and grown into something bigger and more rewarding: a feature film (sorry if you were hoping for a T-Rex). Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, there are more and more quality short films popping up everyday (and we’ve been trying our darndest to pay them their due around here), many of them hoping to hit it big and make a name for the filmmakers. It’s not an impossible dream — in fact, while you have heard of most of these writers and directors, they weren’t all that famous back when they made their shorts. Here are twelve films that started small before hitting the cineplexes:

Why Watch? Because this short is a display of CGI visuals (the comparison’s to 9 are unavoidable) and story. A voodoo doll wakes up to find himself in danger of being stabbed with a pin through the heart while his fellow dolls wait for their destruction. He must escape and take down the voodoo Priest before everyone dies. But since we’re dealing with voodoo, is it really just a doll? The amount of tension this short creates in less than four minutes is astounding, and should be a lesson to any filmmakers out there trying to build drama or make rag-based action. What Will It Cost? Just 4 minutes of your time. Does it get better any better than that? Check out Sebastian’s Voodoo for yourself:

Hopefully 2009 prepared you for brilliant science fiction. Back in 1936, it’s Christmas in Everytown, and there’s talk of war coming to their doorsteps.

Seeing as it is the week after Christmas, you might expect a little more out of the Blu-ray release schedule. But as you will will see in This Week in Blu-ray, it is a light week for Blu-ray buyers.

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves working for the Ghostbusters to serve all your supernatural elimination needs. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVDs. This week: Paranormal Activity, A Perfect Getaway, Glee, and more!

Rob Hunter recalls a year of marketing with 15 of the most exciting slices of cinema to hit big screens this year. The best trailers.

While 2009 may have been a weak year for movies overall, animated films shined in a way they haven’t in a very long time.

Yesterday, Variety published the list of films that have made the cut of 20 for the race to get the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Allow me to break this down for you…

We’ve got some heavy A-list talent on hand this weekend at the theaters: Matt Damon! Jennifer Aniston!! Megan Fox!!! And in the end these folks may all end up losing at the box office to 3D CGI spaghetti and meatballs.

This week on a very special episode of Reject Radio that we forgot to post earlier in the week, I name more than 5 great Stephen King film adaptations and make Robert Fure look like the fool he is, we take a look at Sorority Row, and Diane Lane looks great in a cop uniform.

It was the most predictable first place finish ever this weekend, as Tyler Perry continued his usual domination of the box office against all the usual September also-rans and flops. Such is life in September at the theaters.

Kevin Carr takes a look at this week’s movie releases, including 9, Sorority Row, Whiteout and Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself..

All I gotta say is thank you very much Tyler Perry for making I Can Do Bad All By Myself. You have made my decision about who finishes first at the box office a whole lot easier.

Gremlins of all kinds invade the Magical Studio in the Sky. It’s either a sign of the apocalypse or a sign of bad movies in September. The first wave caused a glitch in Neil’s gender clarification surgery, so he had to return to the Netherlands to reclarify. Fortunately, David Medsker from Bullz-eye.com filled in.

I really want to see dolls gnawing on an old woman as she goes insane, so obviously I’m stoked to see Elijah Wood anxious to get cameras rolling on the forthcoming horror flick The Home.

Watch the Academy Award-nominated short film that launched the film of the same name hitting theaters today.

A movie that (I swear to you) wasn’t directed by Tim Burton explores the limits of ragdoll action sequences with a gorgeously envisioned post-robot-devastated world where the population is sparse and so is the story line.

It’s time now to turn our attention to the fall though, and what’s traditionally known as Awards season, but nestled between the blockbusters of summer and prestige films of fall is a little dumping ground Hollywood calls September…

9, the CG-animated film from up and coming director Shane Acker and producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, doesn’t hit theaters until September 9th. These photos, however, are hitting your computer screen right now.

We have no doubt that 9 is a desperate fight for survival, packed with amazing visuals, as evidence by this cool new featurette that Focus Features has released this week.