The late Roger Ebert included the film among his top documentaries of 2012.

More recent At Google talks here.

Disconnect is Rubin’s first non-documentary. It’s described as “a drama centered on a group of people searching for human connections in today’s wired world.” It stars Jason Bateman, Hope Davis and Jonah Bobo.

More recent At Google talks here.

Bing is reportedly adding the Klingon language to Bing Translator as part of a marketing deal between Microsoft and Paramount, as the studio prepares to release Star Trek Into Darkness.

While we’ve been unable to bring up the language in Bing Translator so far, The LA Times (via Engadget) reports that it is coming today:

The Bing service will translate text written in any one of 41 supported languages — including English, French, Hebrew and Urdu — into Klingon. Fear not, native Klingon speakers: words or phrases written in that language can be translated into the more than three dozen available tongues.

According to the report, Microsoft engineer helped develop the feature, has he apparently speaks Klingon. The LA Times shares a quote from Bing’s Craig Beilinson: “We have people who understand the deep science of linguistics and we also have people who are passionate about the ‘Star Trek’ franchise. This was a labor of love from a lot of different avenues.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Klingon Language utilized by a major search engine. You can still see the Google Klingon homepage here.

Star Trek Into Darkness releases in the U.S. on May 17th.

Image: StarTrek.com

In addition to directing the Rob Lowe film, he has helmed a number of documentaries, including: Soundtrack for a Revolution, Nanking, and Hate.com: Extremists on the Internet.

More recent @Google Talks here.

Mozilla announced that this year’s Firefox Flicks competition will be open for entries on February 13. The competition challenges filmmakers to create a 60 second or less video “that help tell the Firefox story.” This year’s theme is “Get Mobilized.” Here’s how Mozilla describes it:

It’s about enabling more people to take advantage of the full power of the Web and giving them better access to easily discover, enjoy and share content that can change their lives. Through Firefox Flicks we are creating energy for our upcoming mobile OS that will deliver on this promise.

Firefox Flicks 2013 from firefoxflicks on Vimeo.

Those who decide to make a film have a shot at winning prizes in three categories:

If you find yourself interested in the idea of being featured in one of Mozilla’s marketing campaigns, or just winning a cash prize; you’ll want to check out the filmmaker’s creative brief for all the details on the competition. If you find yourself lacking inspiration, you can check out the winners of last year’s competition at the bottom of Mozilla’s blog post.

The Firefox Flicks 2013 competition will start on February 13 and run through July 31.

“Our primary objective at Amazon Studios is to develop great, commercial projects that our customers love,” said Amazon Studios Director Roy Price. “Ania Ahlborn’s SEED has been a top seller for Amazon Publishing’s 47North so we already have a sense of the mainstream attraction of the story and are excited to keep the project in-house for movie development.”

The book was released last year, and it reached the #1 spot on Amazon’s bestselling horror list (Amazon says this is due to word of mouth). It was re-released this year after Ahlborn restructured the story and added over six thousand words.

Here’s the book description (via Amazon):

With nothing but the clothes on his back—and something horrific snapping at his heels—Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was still just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. But years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead.

Country comfort is no match for spine-tingling Southern gothic suspense in Ania Ahlborn’s tale of an ordinary man with a demon on his back. Seed plants its page-turning terror deep in your soul, and lets it grow wild.

Here’s the book trailer from Ahlborn’s YouTube channel:

Here’s a book trailer contest entry for it:

Amazon will begin testing various big screen adaptations of the book. Up until now, Amazon Studios has only optioned scripts and episodic series projects. Earlier this year, the company announced that it was in the process of putting together some sitcoms and children’s programs. Still, Seed won’t be Amazon’s only horror-themed project. Horror icon Clive Barker also signed on to assist Amazon Studios with a project called Zombies vs. Gladiators.

Red Lights is the story of two paranormal researchers played by Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy who make it their job to debunk psychic frauds. Robert De Niro comes in to the picture as a powerful and revered blind psychic who goes by the name of Simom Silver. Weaver’s character, Dr. Margaret Matheson, used to go after Silver, but now wants to back off. This leads Murphy’s character, Tom Buckley, to take on Silver himself.

The premise, along with the great cast, lends itself to greatness. I love a good psychological thriller and Red Lights would appear to be one of the greats. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The film is sitting at a pretty bad 33 percent on Rotten Tomatoes which firmly plants it in rotten territory.

Most of the complaints from critics seem to stem from the film’s story being incoherent to critics saying the ending is even worse than what M. Night Shyamalan serves up. That’s some pretty stiff criticism, but those are the critics. You may enjoy the movie nonetheless. There are plenty of universally panned movies that I can’t help but love. Check out the trailer below to see if Red Lights looks to be worth your time and money.

Variety is reporting that EA is now shopping around a script for a “Need for Speed” film. The film is being written by George and John Gatins of Real Steel fame. John Gatins, alongside EA, are also producing the film. Apparently, Warner Bros., Sony and Paramount are all interesting in obtaining the film rights.

So let’s look at what this could possibly mean. In all honesty, as Variety says, this could be EA wanting to capitalize on the success the Fast and the Furious movies have seen. Any film studio would want to take on Universal in the underground street racing film genre and Need for Speed has the brand recognition for that.

A problem arises though when you consider what a possible Need for Speed plot would entail. While it’s easy enough to just make a street racing movie, people have already seen that in The Fast and the Furious. While it’s good enough for that franchise, audiences may not be so kind to another film trying to be just another clone.

While EA tried to introduce plot with last year’s, “Need for Speed: The Run,” it didn’t exactly impress critics or gamers. EA needs to rethink its strategy with a Need for Speed film. Need for Speed at its best, which I would argue was with Hot Pursuit, is all about sexy cars, winding tracks in the countryside and police chases.

So here’s the idea: Let’s combine the plots of Speed and Crank, but set it in the British countryside. Throw in a thin plot about street racers being kicked out of the city and have now moved to the countryside for their racing fix. Too bad there’s a bomb strapped to one of the cars that will destroy the tiny hamlet of Worcestershire. Maybe hire Michael Bay as a producer to add some Bay-splosions (anything to get him away from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). There’s your movie, EA. You can thank me once it makes you millions.

All joking aside, unless you really like the above idea, what do you think about EA shopping around a Need for Speed film? What do you think it should be about? Let us know in the comments.

TorrentFreak keeps a tally on the most pirated films each week, but this week is special as it comes on the coattails of the Oscars. People were aware of the nominations for a while so one would assume that the most pirated films would be those films that received the most nominations.

My hypothesis is partly true, but leave it up to the average Internet users’ taste in movies to always surprise you. Speaking of surprises, the most pirated film this week was Ben Stiller’s and Eddie Murphy’s crime caper Tower Heist. This is the second week the film has been at the number one spot.

The Oscar nomination may have helped Martin Scorsese’s Hugo as it was number five last week, but it’s been upgraded to number two this week.

The third spot goes to the animated epic The Adventures of Tintin. The Grey was at number eight last week but has been propelled to the fourth spot this week.

The rest of the list is populated by films that I forgot even existed, but BitTorrent users seemed to have liked them. From the number five spot to the tenth spot, the list goes: The Three Musketeers, The Woman In Black, Underworld Awakening, Immortals, Puss in Boots, and Jack and Jill.

So the Oscars seemed to have not had much of an effect this week on pirated movies, but there may be an effect next week now that the winners have been announced. I postulate that The Artist will definitely show up on the list next week at maybe even the number one spot due to its winning Best Picture.

The film’s director Siok Siok Tan tells WebProNews, “We have lots of exciting plans in 2012. We have just announced an open call for community screenings between February 1st and May 1st.”

“The first of the community screenings will roll out over Social Media Week in February,” she says. “We are screening in New York City on Feb 15th, London on Feb 17th and will be announcing more Social Media Week events in other locations soon. ”

Here are a few teasers for the documentary:

We first interviewed Tan here, where she explained the concept and process of making the film. The following year, we followed up with her, and it was getting a sneak preview in NYC. Now, many communities around the word should have a chance to see it.

Anyone can organize a screening for their community as long as they meet the guidelines discussed here.