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A few months back I was fortunate enough to attend BNAT, which is where I saw a brief collection of (mostly finished) sequences from Pixar's next film, Up. This was an Alamo Drafthouse crowd full of amazingly hardcore movie nerds, so when I tell you that the whole damn room loved the Up footage, you should take that as a good omen indeed. (In other words, if the whole film is as good as those individual sequences, then Up will be in my top ten of the year.)

ANYway, the flick is about an old man and a little kid who travel (by way of balloon-powered domicile) to a far away land of amusing adventures, strange creatures and nifty gizmos. One such doo-hickey is a dog collar that allows humans to understand what a canine is thinking, as you'll soon see in this very cute clip from Up, which hits the screens (and I can't wait) on May 29. And yes, "squirl?!?!" will probably become an internet catch-phrase once this movie comes out and makes a billion dollars.


(Thanks to Hulu.com -- and their new-fangled trailer section -- for the clip!)

Last April I saw a film at the Tribeca Film Festival, enjoyed it, reviewed it, and then promptly forgot all about it. (Hey, I see lots of movies. Sorry!) So imagine my pleasant surprise when a friend pinged me and said "Hey, that porn mockumentary you liked is now up on Amazon's VOD site." The flick at hand is The Auteur, and it comes from the guys who brought you Film Geek a few years back. I was lukewarm on that film, but this one I like a lot more.

I'll include a trailer after the jump, but I should say it right now: Aside from the title, pretty much all of The Auteur is what the kids call "NSFW." It's an enthusiastically R-rated sex comedy, basically, that feels like the amusing spawn of Christopher Guest and Howard Stern. And if that sounds fun to you, then hooray for you: The flick is available for your viewing pleasure at this very minute. (At Amazon and / or iTunes.) And if the premise / trailer have piqued your interest, then here's the official site.

And for those who drop the duckets to see the flick online, definitely stop back and share your opinions on The Auteur.

In addition to being a fine horror site (where you can watch full movies for free if you like!), FEARnet is also a movies-on-demand channel that's available to Comcast subscribers. Generally the FEARnet cable channel offers old-school time-wasters like Leprechaun, Wishmaster and Child's Play ... which is great when you're in the mood to flip through some options and settle in for a nasty little horror flick.

Anyway,as of right now FEARnet is offering their very first "original" movie! It's a flick called Catacombs -- and yes, horror fans, it's that one with Shannyn Sossamon that's been sitting on a shelf at Lionsgate Central for the past two years. I haven't seen the movie yet (probably later tonight!), but I think it's pretty nifty that the channel has a "first-run" title to offer the viewers. Even if it sucks, Catacombs is definitely a horror movie you haven't seen yet, plus it's a freebie anyway.

Here's what the IMDb says about Catacombs: "On her first trip to Paris, a young woman hits a party in the Catacombs, the 200-mile labyrinth of limestone tunnels under the city that's lined with the remains of 7 million people. Separated from her friends, she becomes convinced that someone or something is chasing her." The flick was cooked up by writer / directors Tomm Coker and David Elliot. (The former is a comic book artist and the latter wrote The Watcher.) It's also a Twisted Pictures production, which means it comes from the same checkbook that birthed the Saw series. (Lionsgate will release the flick on DVD early next year.)

So let's say you're dying to see Catacombs now ... but you don't get the FEARnet cable channel. Well FEARnot, because if you really want to watch the flick (online, for free), you can do so right here starting on October 31. (Full disclosure: I write horror reviews for the FEARnet website, just so you know. But I'd be sharing the news on FREE NEW horror movies no matter where they were hosted.)

American Eagle Outfitters is dipping its leather sandal-clad toes into the film business. Variety reports that the clothing manufacturer has launched an entertainment production arm called 77E. 77E will produce "original web series and content around events it sponsors, but also will use the entity to segue into TV, movies and music." The first self-produced AE project is a "webisodic comedy" about mall employees called It's a Mall World. The project was directed by Heroes star and Rocky's son, Milo Ventimiglia, who once asked out a friend of mine. The series stars Sam Huntington (Not Another Teen Movie, Superman Returns), and was written by Adam Green (Hatchet).

Where can you see these videos? Content will be available on AE.com, on video screens in American Eagle stores (can't a man shop in peace?), and through outside partners like MTV, which is showing Mall World. Clips will also be available on myspace, facebook, and youtube, which I am told are popular internet webbysites. Kathy Savitt, executive Vice President of American Eagle Outfitters, says of the kids today: "Content is so important to who they are and how they're living their life. They're so smart and discriminating. We need to make deposits into the cool jar." I would think step one on the path to being cool would be eliminating phrases like "cool jar" from one's vocabulary, but what do I know? AE's first film tie-in is expected to debut shortly. Can a deal between Abercrombie & Fitch and Larry Clark be far behind?

Like it or not, the option to download films and TV shows from the internet is here to stay. In fact, if things continue as they are it might not be too long before more "traditional" outlets for films and TV shows -- such as brick and mortar stores or even movie theaters -- are a thing of the past. It's already happened with the music business. Look around and tell me if you can find a Sam Goody or Tower Records in your neighborhood. You can't, and one of the biggest reasons why is due to people downloading music from online stores like iTunes.

However, all is not doom and gloom -- especially for producers of film and television shows like the major studios. If you happen to be a major studio, things look pretty good for you -- unless for some reason you haven't gotten into the online distribution business yet. If you have, this recent Variety article should make you pretty happy. If you haven't, well, it might be time to start -- that is, if you like to make money. According to the article, the next few years will find the online content delivery business exploding with record profits. Revenue in the U.S. alone from legitimate downloads of films and television programs will go from $538 million last year to $6.3 billion by 2012 -- a tenfold increase.

Some of the factors contributing to this dramatic increase are broadband penetration and changing consumer habits. Or, as Adam Thomas, a researcher at Informa, the group which released the revenue projections, puts it: "These trends are now so pronounced that the term 'social revolution' no longer seems too much of an exaggeration. With social change occurring on such a large scale, traditional media companies are being forced to change their behavior and business models to adapt their offering to consumer demand." You hear that traditional media companies? Time to change or get left behind.

What's the best way to give your own flagging video distribution a shot in the arm? Buy the most popular one on the planet. Google announced today that it was buying the popular online video sharing service YouTube for a cool $1.65 billion dollars in stock -- really nice payday for a company that hasn't even turned two yet.

YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the planet, breaking into the top ten with sites like Yahoo, MySpace, and of course -- Google. Earlier this summer, it was reported that YouTube was serving upwards of 100 million videos a day, with 65,000 new ones uploaded by users every day. That number will surely climb as they have more money and server space available to them through Google. Google's own GoogleVideo service tried to compete with YouTube, adopting a similar look and feel, but they never could match the popularity of the upstart company. If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

Now, why should movie lovers pay attention? With the announcements of both Apple's iTunes movies, and Amazon's Unbox services, mainstream movie distribution on the web has become something to start thinking seriously about -- ya know, it's not just speculation around the water cooler anymore. While there are other sites on the web that offer movie downloads, both Apple and Amazon have been the first mainstream sites to offer them in an easy-to-understand and affordable format. Google seems to be setting the stage for their own effort in the same arena.

Holy gosh, we made it to week two! First off, I want to thank all of you for embracing Eat My Shorts, welcoming this brand new Cinematical feature into your home and onto your computer with open arms. For those of you who missed last week's inaugural edition, Eat My Shorts is a new weekly feature dedicated entirely to short films. Did you know there were thousands of wonderfully entertaining shorts available online for free? Yes, it's true! And each week, I'm going to span the internet in search of a few fun films to bring back here and show you.

Oh, but you get to play too. See, there's only so much content I can cover in one week's time. Thus, I'm going to need your help in tracking down some of these hidden gems. Last week, a ton of you wrote in with tips and suggestions, a few of which I'm using today. So, thanks! You're awesome. I love you. Blah blah blah. But let's keep going. Should you come across a neat film that would be perfect for Eat My Shorts, feel free to send all tips, suggestions and comments (ie: "Mr. Davis, you're the greatest guy in the history of the human race!") to shorts@cinematical.com. Please use the email. That's why it's there. For comments related to this particular edition, well, there's a little comment button towards the bottom of each post. See it? Wave to it. Make it feel special. Trust me, it loves the attention.

After going all weird and experimental last week, I figured, for this edition, we would lighten things up a bit -- ya know, have a little fun. And what's more fun than love? And sex? And all that other stuff? The following short films all focus on the different phases of a relationship. Early, awkward beginning? Check. Horrific ending? Check. You, alone and with a copy of the Sears underwear catalog. Priceless. Let's go watch some shorts ...

If you're looking for a few yucks on a lazy weekend afternoon, Cold Hard Flash points to a funny series of shorts on the BBC's Web site called A Fairly Reliable History of British Film in which Keith Guttenberg, who has been in more movies than anyone in history, talks about what he's learned while working in the world of cinema, and shows clips from some of his appearances in famous movies. Think of it as a kind of English version of The Critic with plenty of sly references to famous filmmakers and historical events.

Suddenly, it's all very clear.

I signed up for Netflix a few months ago and recently switched to three DVDs at a time rather than just one. I figure with over one hundred movies in my rental queue I'd have to speed things up a little. One movie, The 40 Year Old Virgin, has been in my queue for probably over a month now, and it's due to what some Netflix subscribers call "throttling."

"Throttling," not a word Netflix uses, is the company's policy of giving people who rent fewer DVDs priority on new releases. A revised section of their "terms of use" also states that frequent renters like myself are more apt to experience delays in shipping. 

Most of me doesn't really care about this. They're just movies, and they're movies I get without having to, like, you know, move around too much. Still, the whole allure of Netflix has been the concept that you can receive a buttload of movies each month at a really good price. What wasn't acknowledged until recently is that heavy renters like myself actually cost the company more money because of postage. It's not a perfect world, but in a perfect world I'd be married to Winona Ryder and own a unicorn farm. It's not enough to make me quit Netflix, but people who get into this "online rental thing" need to be made more aware of the caveats that are a part of transactions like these.

[Thanks to Beth for the tip]