AICN sends us to this link for The Sinking of Japan–no subtitles necessary.

It’s funny how the medium of film is so universal that it creates nearly identical conventions in very different cultures. This trailer could easily be for an American disaster pic, right down to the annoying R&B ballad in the final third.

For real:

Monty Coles was 3,000 feet in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane’s instrument panel — a 4 1/2-foot black snake.

Coles had left Charleston earlier for a leisurely flight over the West Virginia countryside last Saturday in his Piper Cherokee and was preparing to land in Gallipolis, Ohio, when the snake revealed itself.

“Nothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this,” the 62-year-old Cross Lanes resident said. But the advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor immediately came to mind: “No matter what happens, fly the plane.”

An attempt to swat the snake only resulted in it falling to Coles’ feet under the rudder pedals. It then darted to the other side of the cockpit.

While maintaining control of the single-engine plane with one hand, Coles grabbed the reptile behind its head with his other.

“There was no way I was letting that thing go. It coiled all around my arm, and its tail grabbed hold of a lever on the floor and started pulling,” Coles said.

Mother of God.

So that’s where the amazing little French dude is from. Galley Brother B.J. suggests that District B13 might just be this year’s Ong Bak.

It’s third-rate, but still kind of fun: The School of Rock. Courtesy of Jenny.

Mike Russell interviews the guys who wrote Superman Returns–and has the answers to everything you wanted to know about the new movie.

Cars looks like another Bug’s Life–which is to say, better than Shrek, but far below The Incredibles in the animation pantheon. But who knows? Maybe we’ll all be pleasantly surprised.

But in the run-up to release, Cars has given us one very unpleasant surprise: the worst promotional tie-in in the history of movies.

After selling their souls back to Disney, Pixar went on a promotional-partner spree with Cars, signing up 17 corporate sponsors for the movie. Seventeen is a garishly large number, but what’s really striking is how few of these corporate tie-ins–Hertz, Goodyear, Porsche, State Farm Insurance, Georgia Pacific, Valvoline–have anything to do with the movie or its intended audience.

Yet all of that pales in comparison to Pixar’s least attractive partner: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Cars actually has a promotional tie in with the NHTSA’s Click It or Ticket campaign.

Surely you’ve seen the hectoring TV spots for Click It or Ticket. Somber state troopers pull over rambunctious young men (no female offenders are ever featured in these ads) and hand out tickets not for speeding or running red lights or any other actual traffic violations–but simply for not wearing a seatbelt.

I’m all in favor of seatbelts. They save lives and I wear mine every day. But, like red-light cameras, this is pure revenue-generation for the state gussied up as concern for public safety. It is the worst of the Nanny State: Instead of catching actual criminals, the police turn their attentions to the habits of law-abiding citizens.

The Click It or Ticket campaign is maddening in its own right, but it’s almost unfathomable as to why Pixar would allow the that sort of busy-body, nagging message to get mixed up with Cars.

Update: I should have added earlier that those interested in defending red-light cameras should read Matt Labash’s excellent series on them which explodes much of the junk science about how they promote safety. Labash argues, convincingly, that red-light cameras cause more accidents than they prevent. But they do gin up a lot of money for local municipalities.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO9zwhersfk]

“I’m sorry, I thought my Dark Lord of the Sith could protect a small thermal exhaust port that’s two meters wide.”

Bow down before the Robot Chicken.

Bonus: The Real World Metropolis bit is worth watching, too, if only for the final few seconds with Gleeck.

Is it the Gen-Y Clerks? Hard to say, but The Puffy Chair looks kind of fun and extra-super angsty.

If only the story didn’t sound so linear. When will American independent cinema finally shake free the shackles of narrative storytelling?