Synopsis: In The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Hugh Grant stars in his first animated role as the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain - a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award. It's a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London. Along the way they battle a diabolical queen (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a haplessly smitten young scientist (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

A new behind the scenes featurette for this summer's The Pirates! Band of Misfits serves as a three-and-a-half minute reminder that the stop motion animation process is really, really difficult.  Moving a puppet tiny fractions of an inch one frame at a time is time-consuming and meticulous work, and this new video will instill in anyone whose never considered a fuller appreciation for the old fashioned technique. 

With Arthur Christmas and Flushed Away British studio Aardman Animation has branched out into digital features, but thankfully, the institution behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run still work in stop-motion as well.  The Pirates! Band of Misfits looks to be very much in the Aardman wheelhouse, with no shortage of lovably odd characters, absurd humor, ingenious animation, and dose of British wit.

Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve.  For two consecutive years, director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate served up holiday-themed ensembles unreasonably packed with bankable movie stars and romantic comedy cliches.  Had New Year's Eve been a bigger hit, you can only imagine that we have spent the next several years besieged by these novelty offerings until the holidays were finally exhausted.  That could still happen, actually.  But even if it does, we'll always have MLK Day, a parody trailer for a fictitious romantic comedy that expertly eviscerates the cloying, manipulative style of those films.

Just by virtue of its existence, Cloud Atlas should pique an audience's curiosity.  The material it adapts, a much-loved virtuoso of a novel by David Mitchell, is so ambitious, sprawling, strange, and lovely that it seem impossible to adapt faithfully.  Nonetheless, production has just wrapped on Cloud Atlas, and in order to commemorate the conclusion of principal photography on the unlikely cinematic endeavor, an official behind-the-scenes image has been dropped online.  The image features props from each of the six stories the comprise the film, as well as Mitchell and several producers.  Front and center, though, are the trio of co-writers and directors: German helmer Tom Tykwer, and the famously publicity-shy Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski.

You may or may not remember that back in March, inconspicuous private citizen Charlie Sheen was fired from his day job on Two and a Half Men, the highest-rated comedy on television, despite the thespian's wholly reasonable protestations.  Chuck Lorre, the show's co-creator and executive producer, said that the show would indeed go on, provided a suitable Sheen-placement could be found to join Jon Cryer and 1/2 man Angus T. Jones.  Expect another wholly logical treatise from Sheen tomorrow, as it looks like Ashton Kutcher has closed a deal to play the resident cad on Two and a Half Men.