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A man-like creature — one that resembles a sentient peanut with a pair of stick legs and a severe overbite — is watching his partner wash their newborn baby when he’s suddenly distracted by the little basin being used as a bath. That little semi-circle activates something within him. A repressed and wounding memory from his childhood erupts into an idea that will rewire his species’ relationship to time itself, and our humanoid peanut friend begins to obsessively toil away at his new invention at the expense of being present with his family.

What that invention actually does is somewhat difficult to say; my best guess is that it allows people to Zoom with a younger version of themselves. But the sad fact of its origin story — which spans the first chapter of Don Hertzfeldt’s seemingly infinite 21-minute new short — is as obvious as the one stray hair on the Mr.

Following up his sci-fi trilogy World of Tomorrow, animation extraordinaire Don Hertzfeldt unveiled his latest project earlier this year. Beginning a few months ago, his 22-minute, dialogue-free musical Me embarked on a nationwide tour, screening alongside his 2012 masterpiece It’s Such a Beautiful Day.

If you missed your chance to see it on the big screen, it’ll now arrive digitally this Friday via the director’s site bitterfilms.com. Described as “a musical odyssey about the retreat of humanity into itself,” not much else is known about the film but Hertzfeldt has now unveiled the first brief teaser packed with intrigue.

Hertzfeldt’s next feature project was recently revealed to be a “big/expensive project that he had been developing and trying to get made for the last 15 years,” describing the Ari Aster-backed project as a “horror film in the same way his existentialist shorts are often seen as horror films.

It's time to return... to the mind of Don Hertzfeldt. The acclaimed, award-winning animation filmmaker is ready to debut his latest short film. It's titled Me and it's launching on Vimeo to watch later this week - after playing at film festivals including Overlook Film Festival, Chicago Critics Film Festival, and a few others. Me is a 22-minute musical odyssey about trauma, technology, and the retreat of humanity into itself. Described as a "mysterious new musical." Not much more is known beyond that, but reviews do add a bit of detail. One explains: "We are in a representation of a world we are familiar with, there is a narrative but it is more of a parable, and what we are shown is personal and political. Things are bleak and depressing, but occasionally beauty and hope break through our cacophony of suffering.... It was funny and sad, and it made me...

Netflix’ Paris Theater, NYC’s longest-running arthouse and Manhattan’s sole single-screen cinema, is marking one year since reopening with the return of screening series Big & Loud.

Special presentations include a new 70mm print of Alfred Hitchock’s Vertigo screening for the first time in New York, new 70mm prints of North By Northwest and The Searchers, as well as 70mm screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Boogie Nights, Hamlet (1996), Inception, Lawrence of Arabia, Malcolm X, Nope, Phantom Thread, Spartacus and The Untouchables.

Netflix reopened the historic theater last year following upgrades to present 70mm projection and make it the largest Atmos cinema in Manhattan. It called Big & Loud “a screening series of eye-popping 70mm prints, thunderous Dolby Atmos and cinema worth celebrating.”

Highlights include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Days of Heaven, Dazed And Confused, East of Eden (in Atmos), Gravity (in Atmos), The Green Fog (double bill with Vertigo), Koyaanisqatsi,...

Don Hertzfeldt understands why fans are jumping to conclusions after learning he’s already hard at work on a mysterious new feature with Ari Aster.

But anyone in attendance at the fourth-ever screening of his new film “Me” and the Q&a that followed at The Overlook Film Festival can confirm: Don never said anything definitive about what genre that movie would be.

“It’s funny it’s being described as an ‘existential horror’ movie, two words I didn’t actually say,” Hertzfeldt told IndieWire in a text. “I guess maybe it will end up being an existential horror movie in the end, but that’s not really how I’d describe it today. But I also get why people might think that when you squash our names together.”

Hertzfeldt, who thought the news of his and Aster’s collaboration was already out there, confirmed for IndieWire that the film...

Mardi Gras is long over, and Halloween is still months away. But over the next four days in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Overlook Film Festival will celebrate the strange and unusual with a salute to horror that couldn’t be timelier.

“As we are talking, we have just seen two brand-new horror releases — ‘Immaculate’ and ‘Late Night with the Devil’ — have the highest openings for those distributors in their histories,” festival co-director Landon Zakheim told IndieWire. [The nun nightmare, starring Sydney Sweeney, earned $5.3 million for Neon, while IFC’s supernatural talkshow took home $2.8 million, in their respective opening weekends.]

“On top of that, we’ve got the new ‘Godzilla,’ which was made by filmmakers who are alums of many festivals, including ours. And Disney is shepherding in an ‘Omen’ franchise film from a festival circuit filmmaker as well,” he said. “That’s all just if you look at the last couple of weeks.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Art-House Animation

If your eyes are tired of the latest cookie-cutter animation from the Hollywood mill, Criterion is featuring quite a line-up of inventive arthouse offerings in the field. With works by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more, the series includes The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962), Belladonna of Sadness (1973), Fantastic Planet (1973), Watership Down (1978), Son of the White Mare (1981), Alice (1988), Millennium Actress (2001), Mind Game (2004), Paprika (2006), Persepolis (2007), Waltz with Bashir (2008), Mary and Max (2009), It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012), Tower (2016), The Wolf House (2018), No. 7 Cherry Lane (2019), and more.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Neo-Noir

One of the greatest series to arrive on the Criterion Channel thus far is this selection of neo-noir offerings, including Brian De Palma’s masterpieces Blow Out and Body Double,...

The July lineup at The Criterion Channel has been revealed, most notably featuring the new Wong Kar Wai restorations from the recent box set release, including As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his shorts Hua yang de nian hua and The Hand.

Also among the lineup is a series on neo-noir with Body Double, Manhunter, Thief, The Last Seduction, Cutter’s Way, Brick, Night Moves, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and more. The channel will also feature a spotlight on art-house animation with work by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more.

With Jodie Mack’s delightful The Grand Bizarre, the landmark doc Hoop Dreams, Orson Welles’ take on Othello, the recent Oscar entries Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time and You Will Die at Twenty, and much more,...

Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow series began in 2015 with an odd, wistful animated sci-fi short film, largely born out of a surreal, and somewhat baffling storytelling choice: The plot of its initial “episode” would be based entirely around recorded conversations with his four-year-old niece, Winona. Her adorable, babbled musings (“I drew….a Tri-angle!!!”) became the voice of the pigtailed Emily Prime, who is visited by an older, cloned version of herself (voiced by animator Julia Plott) through time travel.

The first World of Tomorrow’s hilarious yet poignant tour of a tech-obsessed,...

We're already in withdrawal. Tuesday are when we normally get a new episode of Michael Cusamano's insightful and engaging series "The New Classics," which focuses on top-notch 21st century films by dissecting a single defining scene. But season 2 just ended last week so no new episode today. But if you missed any of his great great articles, please catch up. We're just assuming you might need cinematic healing / distraction tonight and tomorrow given all the anxiety and stress of waiting for election results.

Season 1 of The New Classics (22 episodes)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) | Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) | Sexy Beast (2001) | Master and Commander (2003) | Shattered Glass (2003) | Before Sunset (2004) | Collateral (2004) | Eastern Promises (2007) | Michael Clayton (2007) | No Country For Old Men (2007) | Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)  | The Hurt Locker (2009) | Inglourious Basterds (2009) | In the Loop (2009) | I Am Love (2010) | Meek's Cutoff (2010) | A Separation (2011) | Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) | It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) | Blue Ruin (2014) | 20th Century Women (2016) | The Florida Project...

In 2014, DIY animator extraordinaire Don Hertzfeldt wrote a loopy sci-fi story around some ridiculously cute audio recordings he made while playing with his four-year-old niece Winona. He cast her as a pigtailed stick figure named Emily Prime, and roped in friend and animator Julia Pott to voice the time-traveling adult Emily clone who zaps into the past on a mission to retrieve something from her younger, original self (and leads Emily Prime on a whirlwind tour of the future along the way). It was just supposed to be a fun way for Hertzfeldt to teach himself how to use digital tools, but — oops! — the morbidly hilarious “World of Tomorrow” went on to earn Hertzfeldt his second Oscar nomination, and is now celebrated as one of the best short films of the 21st century. People have Emily Prime tattoos. The rest of us should get them.

Hertzfeldt never looked back. 2017’s...

In 1969, when “Sesame Street” premiered, it invented a thing called children’s “educational” television, and few would deny that it fulfilled that mission — to teach kids and delight them at the same moment. The legacy of “Sesame Street” is vast, to the point that dozens of children’s shows that don’t call themselves educational, or even think of themselves that way, now subscribe to the same mission. In our era, some of the best kids’ TV has been fast and furious, diabolically witty and smart — the educational equivalent of a roller-coaster ride. I’m thinking of shows like “Team Umizoomi,” “The Loud House,” “Apple & Onion,” and “Phineas and Ferb,” which ended its four-season run on the Disney Channel in 2015. So it’s no surprise that “Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe” is one of the sharpest kids’ movies in a while.

Like the show it’s now effectively reviving,...

2020 has been full of unwelcome surprises, but a great one has finally arrived: Don Hertzfeldt is working on a new “World of Tomorrow” film — the third in the franchise — and the acclaimed animator released a teaser trailer for the project on Monday morning.

The animated teaser is as strikingly beautiful as it is brief; a stylized landscape of some barren alien planet sets the scene, while a small creature that seems to be receiving signal inputs and jarring robotic sounds stumbles and falls. It’s not much to go on, but the melancholic music and beautiful art contrasts nicely with the jarring, whirring electronics and seemingly distressed creature. It’s artsy and contemplative — in other words, it’s just what fans of Hertzfeldt’s work will expect.

The film is subtitled “The Absent Destinations of David Prime” — take that for what you will. A release date was not provided.

The...

Exciting news! Michael Cusamano's engaging series "The New Classics," which focuses on top-notch 21st century films by dissecting a single scene, begins its second season April 28th --weekly editions Tuesdays at 1 Pm! Here's what's been covered previously if you'd like to catch up. Any suggestions for season two? 

Season 1 of The New Classics

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) Sexy Beast (2001) Master and Commander (2003) Shattered Glass (2003) Before Sunset (2004) Collateral (2004) Eastern Promises (2007) Michael Clayton (2007) No Country For Old Men (2007) Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)  The Hurt Locker (2009) Inglourious Basterds (2009) In the Loop (2009) I Am Love (2010) Meek's Cutoff (2010) A Separation (2011) Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) Blue Ruin (2013) 20th Century Women (2016) The Florida Project (2017)...

"The Triplets of Belleville" (Sylvain Chomet, 2003) Sylvain Chomet's 2003 masterpiece was an international co-production between France, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Canada, and each culture gets its fair share of respect in this wonderfully textured adventure about an elderly women's quest to find her kidnapped grandson with the help of his loyal dog and three music hall singers she meets in the surreal city of Belleville. Hijinks abound left and right as the film creates its own unique and universal language, substituting a majority of dialogue for music and pantomiming. The result is a buoyant animated adventure that owes much to the frenetic rhythm of Buster Keaton and the pathos of Charlie Chaplin, animated like a golden-hued Saturday morning cartoon by way of Ralph Steadman and E. C. Segar. No wonder it was a breakout at Cannes and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film.  "It's Such a Beautiful Day" (Don Hertzfeld,...

Meet some of the best directors working today, who haven't gone down the blockbuster movie route...

Ever find it a bit lame when the same big name directors get kicked around for every high profile project? Christopher Nolan, Jj Abrams, maybe the Russo Brothers? With so much focus on blockbuster films these days, getting a major franchise job seems like the main acknowledgement of success for a filmmaker. And yes, both the financial and creative rewards can be great. But there are plenty of other directors out there, doing their own thing, from art house auteurs to Dtv action specialists.

Here are 25 examples.

Lee Hardcastle

Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen Lee Hardcastle’s ultraviolent claymations shared on social media. He first started getting noticed for his two-minute remake of The Thing, starring the famous stop motion penguin Pingu. Far from just a cheap one-joke mash-up,...