Alex Dudok de Wit

Animation is a wide world, much wider than the well-known studios that soak up much of the attention. Sure, Disney, Pixar and Studio Ghibli have put out absolutely classic feature-length films. But search beyond those monolithic companies, and you’ll find some of the best animated movies are little longer than a standard YouTube video.   Indeed, the number of animators who get the opportunity to make a feature film is relatively small. But there are many illustrators who’ve manage to cram an entire film’s worth of ideas into a brief runtime – and you’ll find many of them on this list of the best animated short films ever made. Recommended: ✍ The 100 best animated films of all time🇯🇵 The 20 best anime movies of all time🐭 The 50 best Disney movies for family night🤯 The 40 best cult movies of all time

Almost since movies began, the camera has loved the City of Lights. No wonder: Paris is as picturesque a city that exists, a kind of urban dreamland where iconic landmarks are situated around every corner and romance practically radiates from the pavement. And as much as the movies have obsessed over the French capital, Paris has been obsessed with the movies. After all, it’s where the first-ever commercial film screening took place, at the Grand Café in 1895. From the earliest Lumière brothers productions to Mission: Impossible, the city has formed the backdrop for some of the most striking films ever made. Here are 54 of the absolute best. Recommended: 🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies of all-time, ranked💂‍♀️ The 32 best London movies🗽 The 101 best New York movies

O potencial cinematográfico (e não só) da ficção científica é quase infinito. É nestes filmes que os nossos maiores pesadelos podem tornar-se realidade e os nossos sonhos concretizar-se, ao mesmo tempo que é dito e posto em causa algo sobre o nosso presente. E o género sempre fez as delícias do público, desde o tempo dos efeitos especiais básicos e rudimentares dos filmes mudos ao excesso digital dos blockbusters contemporâneos. Hoje, no entanto, é a própria crítica quem aplaude e celebra muitos destes filmes, tal como acontece com os super-heróis e o terror. A pensar nisso, elegemos os 100 melhores filmes de ficção científica de sempre. Recomendado: Filmes em cartaz esta semana

Animation as in Disney? Not so much. The festival aims to dispel the idea that animation is just for kids (though it has family-friendly screenings too). Launched in 2004, it’s grown into the UK’s biggest animation shindig off the back of grown-up fare for adults and bigger kids alike.  So more stuff like ‘BoJack Horseman’? Kinda. The fest’s biggest strength is in its eclectic programming. It’s screening 306 films from 37 countries, grouped into offbeat themes like ‘From Absurd to Zany’ and ‘Being Human’. Every form of animation is represented, from claymation and CGI to collage and paint-on-glass.  What should I see? Look out for animated docs about face blindness, The White Stripes and (yep) Brexit. A special programme, ‘Aftermath’, spotlights timely shorts about World War One. The time-pressed can catch repeat screenings of all the prize-winners on the final day. Does the fest only screen short films? There’s also a feature film, ‘The Wolf House’, a freaky stop-motion fairy tale about Nazis hiding in Chile, and Q&As. Don’t miss the opening-night gala and Q&A with Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson, an irreverent Scottish duo whose works touch on everything from Robert Burns to the existential angst of a GIF. Where and when, then? Mostly at the Barbican from Friday November 30 to December 9. The more experimental stuff plays at the Horse Hospital and Close-Up Cinema. Tickets generally cost £12 and a festival pass is £95. 

Those who don’t believe that contemporary art (think ‘pretentious, highbrow, trendy, urban’) and the suburbs (‘rough, dodgy, uncultured, rude’) could ever go hand in hand should pop over to the other side of the périphérique from time to time. In the last 20-odd years, between the narrow belt covered by the underground and the oh-so-distant terminuses of the RER lines, contemporary arts centres and galleries have been cropping up all over the place, each bolder and better than the last. Artists’ residences, shiny new exhibition spaces, restored historical monuments: here, between concrete and countryside, is where you’ll find all the region’s best contemporary art.

Whether Halloween be looming or no, Paris hides some genuine scares. A city this old is bound to be haunted by its past, but Paris is positively colonised by the phantoms of its bloody history. We steeled ourselves and ventured out to verify their existence. Read on for our countdown of the ten eeriest ghosts in the City of Fright.Want more creepy Paris Halloween activities? Check out our full Halloween Paris guide here.

MCM London Comic Con powers its way to ExCel again this October, running from Friday October 23 to Sunday October 25. A firm fixture on every fanboy's annual calendar, London Comic Con is the UK's biggest modern pop culture convention. It’s the perfect place to get all the latest news in the world of comics, manga, anime, film, cosplay, games and cult fiction, and a great place to pick up a perfect outfit for Halloween in London and a couple autographs along the way. Read on for our pick of the weekend's nerdy fun.

If Paris is something of a mecca for watching films, it also remains one of the great cities in which to debate them. Here, the moviegoing experience doesn’t end with the closing credits but in the neighbouring bar, several hours and as many bottles of wine later. Cinemas often rise to the occasion by providing an in-house bar or café; what’s more, thanks to the city’s wealth of eccentric independent venues, many of these retain a unique character. They run the gamut from kitsch film themes to sleek designer interiors, beer-inspired snacks to elaborate salads, rickety bar stools to downy sofas. Yet they all share one thing: a clientele of passionate film buffs who you can expect to be debating auteur theory or the relative merits of Woody Allen at all times of day and/or night. And who knows? You may even bump into Catherine Deneuve (see Le Salon du Panthéon).Around half of Paris's independent picture houses, and a fair few chain branches, offer some kind of space in which to grab a bite or a drink. We've done the rounds, and sorted out the beauties from the beasts. Below, we present our 10 favourites, as well as a map to help you get your bearings. Think we’ve missed out on some good ones? Let us know in the comments box at the bottom of the page. 

From gritty Southie to swanky Beacon Hill, fulcrum of the Revolution to bastion of sport, Boston juggles multiple identities—each of which has fired the imagination of filmmakers over the decades. Yet it's the city's mighty academic tradition, the sweeping quads and stately bricks of its college campuses, that have come to define its cinematic character above all. Even as Harvard's authorities continue to deny entry to film crews, the university remains a byword in cinema for "very brainy people," while MIT specifically designates "very brainy scientists." To celebrate this strand of Hub-set cinema, we take a look at ten of the best Boston movies through the prism of ten stock characters from the world of academia.Have we missed any out? Assess our performance in the comments box below.

Ever since a young Confederate family went up to the capital to meet Abe Lincoln in D.W. Griffith's 1915 racism-fest The Birth of a Nation, Hollywood has been very much in love with DC. But it's a one-sided affair: Washingtonians accuse Hollywood of misrepresenting their city, as directors swoop in to film a few mood-setting shots of political landmarks before decamping to an LA studio. While few DC movies manage to avoid politics altogether, some branch out beyond the White House into less familiar locations. Read on as we explore the overlooked corners of the District in ten movies.

This documentary about the early years of Greenpeace is a measured, even-handed profile of an organisation with its own firmly-established identity. Framed by the memoirs of co-founder Bob Hunter, which are narrated in voiceover, the film often hews to his version of events. But the story is broadened by a good range of talking heads, and filled out with ample archive footage, some of it extraordinary. Thus we’re introduced to the colourful cast of ecologists, shroom-eating hippies and I Ching-reading mystics who launched the organisation in the ’70s, and we’re guided through its evolution from ramshackle pressure group to slick global operation. The filmmakers clearly identify with their subjects, but they aren’t blind to Greenpeace’s flaws. The bruised egos and internecine fighting make for a sobering corrective to the founders’ utopian rhetoric (as well as good drama). Nor are we spared the fallout from their members’ more controversial practices, such as their disruptive stunts and strident language (viewers may question one activist’s equating of seal hunting with rape). ‘How To Change The World’ tells an engrossing tale intelligently.