It reminds me a lot of Attack of the Clones, but this full trailer for John Carter is still jolly exciting. Who knew that Taylor Kitsch (aka Gambit from X-Men Origins: Wolverine and That Kid from Snakes on a Plane) could go all Conan and run around an alien civil war without it all looking like a load of ridiculous nubbins?

Answer: Andrew Stanton. Who probably watched Attack of the Clones several times to avoid falling into the same traps that George Lucas did. John Carter is out in March next year. For more on the film, check out the new John Carter stills released this week.

Some new John Carter stills have been doing the rounds this week, along with a new poster. And while a lot of people are rightly praising Andrew Stanton (Mr. WALL-E) for his jump from the animated director's post to the live action helm, CGI geniuses Pixar aren't the people doing the effects.

That would be a lovely London company called Double Negative.

I first heard of Double Negative back when Let Me In director Matt Reeves was doing the rounds for Cloverfield. I can't find my notes from then in my filing cabinet (read: drawer full of crap), but here's what Reeves said to Den of Geek:

"Double Negative are amazing. They did the Bourne movies, they did United 93 - in fact I saw the crash in United 93 and I said 'That crash is just burned into my memory, and when we have a similar sequence I want to pull on that for inspiration,' it was so convincing. They also did the latest Batman films..."

Being mightily impressed by Cloverfield, I moseyed on over to Double Negative's website. After Reeves' handheld monster madness, you might expect to see them on credits such as Green Zone, but they've also worked on everything from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to Inception and Attack the Block. Plus they were responsible for getting the boat to sink in The Boat that Rocked (the only good part of the film).

Go back to 1998 and they even worked on Pitch Black. Now that's an awesome start to a CV. In short, Double Negative? Yeah, they're the dogs bollocks. And they could probably even create a convincing pair for you if you wanted.

The longlist of films eligible for the 2012 Best Animated Short Oscar was announced earlier this month by The Academy - and in among the 45 shorts that will eventually be whittled down to a handful of nominees (via a shortlist), I'm delighted to see that The Monster of Nix has made it. Along with, bizarrely, two different films about hamsters.

The Monster of Nix turned up at the 2011 London Film Festival in one of the International Animation Panoramas. It's got Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits both on vocals. And it really is quite staggeringly unique, both in terms of visuals and story. It stuck with me for weeks afterwards. Here's the first trailer:

And here's the main song from the Monster of Nix soundtrack, Lost in the Woods:

Can you name another film that includes the sentence "What good is a rolling nudist giant"? I'll be seriously rooting for this one next year (even over Pixar's effort) - presuming it makes it through to the next stage.

Read on for a full list of all 45 nominees (warning: contains The Smurfs) - or check out our Monster of Nix review instead. 

Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe
Certificate: TBCRelease Date: March 2012

From Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”—a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present.

The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

It's always the same at the Oscars and BAFTAs - everyone knows the big stuff, but nobody's seen the shorts.

If you're lucky, your local arthouse cinema will put on a showreel of all the ones that are up for awards, but more often than not, people just don't get the chance to watch the Oscar-nominated Best Animated Short Films.

And so we all end up just randomly guessing which film we think will win. And that's a shame - especially when there are cupcakes at stake for the person who gets the most predictions right (see The Oscar Nomnomnom Challenge).

Which leads us neatly to a rundown of this year's nominees for Best Animated Short Film - complete with full videos.

UPDATE: Hello to Jason Isaacs, Emily Mortimer, Joe Mantegna, Peter Jacobson and Thomas Kretschmann. They're all in the cast too.

"Finn McMissile, British Intelligence."

IT'S MICHAEL CAINE!

That's pretty much the reaction of everyone when they see the new teaser trailer for Cars 2. Yes, The Caine will be in Pixar's animated sequel, playing a missile-toting, handbrake-skidding secret agent. He's a car, of course.

Now that doesn't sound much like the original Cars, does it? That's because it isn't. Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Larry the Cable) head to Tokyo for the world's first World Gran Prix. And promptly enter a world of international espionage.

"What about Radiator Springs?" some children with shiny lunchboxes will cry. Screw Radiator Springs! I hated the first Cars, so thank God they're driving in a completely different direction. Pixar's 12th feature length film promises "secret agents, menacing villains and international racing". So it's basically Speed Racer. Which might not be a bad thing...

Cars 2 is revving up next year on Friday 22nd July. Read on for the trailer. And then sign our petition for Larry the Cable Guy to stop voicing imaginary pick-up trucks and start fixing my Virgin Media box.

Remember Cars? That lacklustre piece of dull Pixar animation? The film with the cars? Well, now we have a teaser trailer for Cars 2. And surprise, surprise, it's got cars in it.

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) are back in new secret agent roles, causing havoc and chaos with their incompetence. Which, you know, fits in nicely with the sentiment of John Lasseter's Route 66-loving original. Yawn.

Cars 2 (in 3D) will arrive in June next year. Lunchboxes will be available from Christmas onwards. 

Director: Stephane Aubier
Cast: Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Jeanne Balibar, Bruce Ellison
Certificate: PG
Trailer

One upon a time there was a Cowboy, an Indian and a Horse. They lived together in A Town Called Panic and were all made of plastic. Then, one day along came a crazy Belgian who started moving them about and taking funny pictures. The result is one of the craziest films you've ever seen.

Doug Sweetland, the director of animated short Presto, has signed with Sony to make his feature debut.

The Oscar-nominated animator, whose tale of a hungry rabbit and a magical hat charmed everyone with a heart or brain before Pixar's WALL-E, will direct The Familiars. A tale of three young wizards who get kidnapped by an evil queen, it's based on the book by Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson.

Sweetland has worked at Pixar for the last 16 years, so it's great to see him finally stepping out into his own full-length project. Especially one that involves a cat, a blue jay and a tree frog as magical familiars. And Sam Raimi as an exec producer.

Toy Story has topped Titanic to become the second highest grossing movie in UK Box Office history.

In a week where the Eli Roth-produced horror The Last Exorcism hit number one with £1.1m, Pixar's animated masterpiece stayed firm at number three in the charts, taking home £934k.

That figure was higher than new release The Switch (Jennifer Aniston's spermy rom-com) and Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs the World - a film which joins Toy Story 3 as one of the standouts of 2010. Unlike Woody and pals, though, that dropped 56% to take only £702k in its second week.

Now in its seventh week of release, Toy Story 3 continues to boast strong family appeal. It's now amassed a current total of £69,878,376. That just beats Titanic, which grossed £69.2m the UK.

Way ahead at the top of the all-time UK Box Office chart, of course, is Avatar. James Cameron's 3D sci-fi epic has taken a total of £93.4m.

With Avatar on re-release in the UK and Toy Story still in the top end of the weekly takings, expect both of those figures to keep climbing. Although don't expect too much from Avatar - it only got £274k this week. Which was less than Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And Marmaduke.

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