Whoa.  The first clip from Pixar's next short, The Blue Umbrella, is making the rounds online, and though its brief, the clip showcases an incredible amount of charm and a total command of character.  What will blow your hair back on first inspection, however, is that The Blue Umbrella is entirely animated yet looks more or less photorealistic and textured.

With Moonrise Kingdom continuing to successfully expand in ever more theaters nationwide, a new promotional short film set within the sepia-toned 1965 world of the film has landed online.  Directed by co-writer and director Wes Anderson, this short makes excellent use of regular Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman as Cousin Ben, Camp Lebanon's finest Khaki Scout Master and lowball entrepreneur.

What if I told you there was a new short film in which Jennifer Garner uses flamboyant lies and occasionally bawdy innuendo to attract the attentions of Alfred Molina as an increasingly exasperated priest?  You'd want to check that out, right?  After all, it's the erstwhile Elektra Natchios and Doc Ock sharing a confessional.

Garner and Molina star in Serena, a short clocking in at just under twelve minutes, during which Garner plays the title character, a woman who is running out her priest's patience, but for fascinating reasons.  Serena is written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, the man behind last year's Oscar-nominated Albert Nobbs and episodes of the HBO series In Treatment and Six Feet Under.

Not only does Pixar generally provide top notch feature films, but the preeminent animation studio in the world also insists on running short films before every feature presentation.  These shorts are not only the perfect primer for films like WALL-E, Toy Story, Up, or Finding Nemo, but more often than not, they're perfect bite-sized little works of art that stand on their own.  La Luna is the latest upcoming Pixar short film, and with around four months until we'll be able to see the whole thing, a new thirty-second clip has arrived online.

Though Cars 2 wasn't Pixar's biggest hit with critics or grown-ups, pretty much everyone enjoyed the short film that preceded it, what with that short starring the Toy Story gang and all.  Audiences may have walked away from Toy Story 3 broken and sobbing, but the lovely folks at Pixar have thankfully decided to bring back Woody and Buzz on the regular with a series of short films preceding Disney movies, and today, we have our first look at an image from the next Toy Story Toon, titled Small Fry.  In this completely-new seven minute adventure, Buzz Lightyear, voiced once again by Tim Allen, finds himself stranded at a fast food restaurant after a Happy Meal version of Buzz conspires to take his place amongst the toys.

What with the presence of Johnny Depp and all, Dark Shadows is the 2012 Tim Burton film that's been hogging the attention as of late, but today Disney released the first official images from Frankenweenie, the director's feature-length stop-motion expansion on his 1984 short film of the same name.  These two stills introduce Sparky, a dog, and Bob, the suburban boy who uses science to play god and resurrect his beloved pet when Sparky dies unexpectedly.  Of course, this leads to all manner of complications.  For the first time since Ed Wood, Burton's doing an entire feature in black and white, and I'm sort of astonished Disney is allowing it.  The lack of color carries over from the original short, is inarguably stylish, and fits the tone of the material like a glove.

Synopsis: In 1965, three young Israeli Mossad agents on a secret mission capture and kill a notorious Nazi war criminal. Now, thirty years later, a man claiming to be the Nazi has surfaced in the Ukraine and one of the former agents must go back undercover to seek out the truth.