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If there's a director out there who is deserving a larger audience, it's Guy Maddin. I plan to write more about that another time, but for now, I wanted to direct you to this piece of awesomeness. The Toronto International Film Festival is already planning a pretty killer line-up, and it's now been boosted by Mr. Maddin himself. The NFB has announced that Night Mayor will have its world premiere at the festival. (The picture above is one of the stills from the film.)

As I told you back in March, Night Mayor is a short drama that came out of Maddin's experiences immersed in the NFB archives. That might suggest that this will be some sort of creative montage, but nothing is typical in Maddin's world. The film is set in 1939, when Scottish immigrant John Grierson (father of Brit and Canadian documentary film) founded the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). "The deliberately implausible story portrays Nihad Ademi, a Bosnian immigrant, serving also as Winnipeg's 'night mayor,' who recruits his family to harness the multi-coloured waves of the Aurora Borealis, and use its power to broadcast images of his beloved adoptive country to its identity-starved citizens from coast to coast."

Alas, it's only a short, but hopefully another Maddin fantasia will be on the way soon.

We've been giving away a bunch of free movie tickets this summer to special advanced screenings, but this one has to be the coolest so far. Here's what we've got: Two (2) pairs of tickets to the premiere of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds at the historic Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday August 10th. Not only is this a premiere screening, but it's a premiere screening for a new Quentin Tarantino movie, which means the stars will be out in full force and things may get a little crazy/sexy/cool.

So you wanna go, like, real bad, right? Here's what you have to do: please leave a comment below telling us why you want to attend the premiere screening of Inglourious Basterds. You have until Thursday August 6th at 5pm EST to leave your comment, and at that time we'll randomly pick two winners and they'll each win a pair of tickets. In order to win these tickets you need to live in or around the Los Angeles area, and Cinematical will not be responsible for transporting you to and from the theater. Inglourious Basterds hits theaters on August 21.

Head after the jump to watch the trailer and read the official rules ... then sound off below.

I sometimes wonder if the best way to enter Hollywood is with the littlest splash, whether that be with a terrible feature one can look back at with humor, or a moderately good film -- one that pleases without setting up terribly high expectations. Would Richard Kelly's path had been different if Donnie Darko wasn't his introduction to the cinematic world?

After being juggled back and forth like an angry pinball, and almost getting a breath of relief with a Halloween release date, Bloody Disgusting reports that The Box has been bumped again. It's not going back to the Thanksgiving release it once had, but rather November 6 -- up against A Christmas Carol, Precious, Men Who Stare at Goats, Pirate Radio, and The Fourth Kind. Will this date stick? Your guess is as good as mine. Once a film gets shot around, anything is possible.

More at HorrorSquad!

I am not an apologist for the MPAA. As Cinematical's Eric D. Snider astutely observed recently, the Classification and Rating Administration of the Motion Picture Association of America continues to 'arbitrarily enforce and haphazardly apply' their own ratings, generally favoring big-budget studio pictures while lowering the boom on lower-budgeted independent films. With a track record of more than 40 years, though, does any parent today believe that the MPAA is solely responsible for telling them what is suitable for their children to watch?

Evidently Deborah Knight Snyder does. The mother of two children wrote an article for the GateHouse News Service in which she wondered about the movie rating system, which she described as an "imprecise, almost backward process." No argument there, but then she described Alex Proyas' Knowing as a movie that "scared the hell" out of her and questioned: "What parent in their right mind would let a 13-year-old see such a movie?" She continues: "Thank goodness our 13-year-old was otherwise occupied and chose not to join us for the film," and then relates an experience suffered by her older son when he saw The Ring just before he turned 13 several years ago. He later told her: "That movie was terrifying for a 12-year-old!"

Snyder doesn't address her own accountability in these two incidents, of course. One son "chose not to join us" and the other went with a friend's mother: "I confess I didn't think much about his going to see it." From this, we can surmise that an adult who has been watching movies for several decades and has two children -- one of whom is now in college -- had, until this very week, abdicated responsibility for deciding what her children could watch, ceding that role entirely to the MPAA.

It's that time again -- time to throw down a comment and potentially win a pair of tickets to an advanced screening of a film that's slowly turning up the heat. Cinematical has been handed 10 pairs of tickets to a super secret advanced screening of Julie & Julia in New York City on Monday, August 3rd. The film, which stars Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, follows the lives of two aspiring cooks trying to find purpose in their lives: Julie Powell and the legendary Julia Child. Based on two bestselling novels, Powell's "Julie & Julia" and "My Life in France," by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme, Julie & Julie intertwines the lives of these women through their ups and downs as each targets their own passion with fearless determination and pride.

As with our other ticket contests, all you need to do is leave us a comment telling us why you'd like to go see Julie and Julia in New York City on Monday, August 3rd. You have until Thursday July 30th at 5pm to enter a comment. We'll then randomly choose 10 commenters, and each will receive one pair of tickets to the screening. In order to enter, you will need to live in and around the New York City area, and you will also need to provide your own transportation to and from the theater.

For official rules, head after the jump. Julie and Julia hits theaters nationwide on August 7.

Oh, and Bon Appetite!

The future of movies on the Internet -- and how you get to watch them -- may be largely determined by a new lawsuit filed in Swedish courts. Over a dozen production companies, including Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises and Universal Studios, have filed a suit against file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, demanding that the operators be fined and prevented from distributing movies and TV series, according to the Associated Press.

The original owners of Pirate Bay, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom, were found guilty in a Swedish copyright trial earlier this year, and sentenced to a year in prison. They were also ordered to pay over $4 million in damages.

On Friday night at 7pm, after most fanboys had already fulfilled their quotient of nerdgasms and geek-freakouts, Peter Jackson and James Cameron appeared together at a panel hosted by Entertainment Weekly entitled "The Visionaries." Rather than just talking about their current projects, however, the two iconic filmmakers offered a sort of State of the Cinematic Union, addressing problems and challenges they face, even as they addressed a few rumors about what their respective futures hold.

The most important of their observations and revelations:

As a friend pointed out yesterday after watching the panel, it seems impossible given the fact that Screen Gems is often a studio imprint that means anything but the mark of quality (Boogeyman, anyone?), but the studio's upcoming film Legion looks pretty kick-ass. Screening an extended trailer and fielding questions from attendees Friday afternoon, cast members Paul Bettany, Adrianne Palicki, Tyrese Gibson, Doug Jones, and director Scott Stewart introduced what could be a surprisingly entertaining film that combines epic scope, an ensemble cast, and of course, lots and lots of guns.

The highlights of the panel:

• Tyrese Gibson is a shameless promoter – sometimes not even a self-promoter. Though he took an opportunity to shill his new comic book and longstanding Twitter page at the end of the q&a, he devoted a surprising amount of time – perhaps even unhealthy – to discussing Bettany's chiseled physique as Michael, the archangel who aligns with humanity to defend it against a horde of violent angels.
• Oh yeah, the movie is about Michael the archangel aligning himself with humanity to defend it against a horde of violent angels.
• Doug Jones reportedly took the role because it was the first one he'd been offered that didn't demand he cover up his face. After playing Silver Surfer and Abe Sapien, the lanky charmer said he embraced the chance to play one of the film's most fearsome creatures, The Ice Cream Man. (I know that sounded anticlimactic but the short clip in which he appeared was truly creepy.)
• The best scene from the footage shown featured a geriatric female diner patron (imagine your sweet grandmother) with a filthy mouth, by which her use of profanity is only a prelude to her devouring other customers with razor-sharp teeth and literally climbing the walls.

Friday afternoon Hall H attendees were treated to their second chance to speak to Tim Burton (following his appearance Thursday for Alice in Wonderland), and their first look at the new film 9. Directed by Shane Acker, the film is produced by Burton and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, both of whom offered a few insights about their own work as they showcased the results of the first-time filmmaker's adaptation of his own animated short film.

Among the details revealed during the 9 panel:

Saturday was another busy day at Comic Con, and two of the movies a lot of folks were chatting up on Twitter and around the convention floor were Zombieland and 2012. Zombieland, of course, is that awesome-looking zombie comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and Woody Harrelson. We already shared a report from the set with you (read that over at Horror Squad), but only at Con did Cinematical's Kevin Kelly have a chance to chat up the film's director, Ruben Fleischer, along with its star Jesse Eisenberg. Zombieland hits theaters on October 9. Watch both of those videos after the jump.

Meanwhile, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) is back to destroy the world with epic amounts of special effects in his new movie 2012. Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, and Thandie Newton, word is this flick will be the mother of all disaster movies -- and while Emmerich has made a name for himself destroying cities using a number of creative ways, this movie looks to take that up a notch and then some. 2012 hits theaters on November 13. Check out what Emmerich had to say to Kevin Kelly about 2012 (he calls this his "flood movie") and the end of the world after the jump.