Extras! 2 Really cool sci-fi short films, The making of Movie: The Movie, Harry Potter breaks some horrific records, Twilight: The Video Game and Clint Eastwood was going to be Batman? Plus much more!

Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!

It seems I didn’t get the memo that marked today as Brilliant Sci-Fi Short Film Day. Earlier we brought you news about how Aaron Sims’ Archetype was being made into a full length film, and now I’ve come across two more absolute gems.

The first is actually from 2010 already, despite me only discovering it today. It’s a Russian film called The Gift, by Carl Erik Rinsch, and is part Half Life, part Bourne Identity, all ridiculously impressive. There is some Russian dialogue, but if you’re fluent in awesome, you should be just fine:

Rinsch is actually Ridley Scott’s protege and was once tapped to be the director of the Alien prequel film that eventually became Prometheus. He is currently in production with the Keanu Reaves samurai film, 47 Ronin. I never had much anticipation for that film, but that’s all just changed.

The second short film is totally different in theme and tone, but still just as impressive. Narrated by a crack-lipped man with a voice like somebody who eats hot ash on a regular basis, Gamma is an grim industrial-fueled vision of the future where… well, I’ll let you make that harrowing discovery for yourself.

It’s small time “studios” like Factory Fifteen that are the breeding grounds for our future cinema gods, and I can’t wait to see what they can achieve.

Did you know that after the neon-coloured lobotomy that was Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin, that Darren Aronofsky and Frank Miller wanted to show the world a more gritty and grounded in reality Batman (Chris Nolan, you just got caught cheating!) by adapting Miller’s Batman: Year One comic for the big screen. And as to who they wanted inside the pointy-eared gimp suit… None other Gritty McBadass himself, Clint Eastwood. All of this is revealed in a new book by David Hughes titled Tales From Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made.

Slashfilm has an exclusive excerpt from the book which details this and other unmade films.

Remember Jimmy Kimmel’s Movie: The Movie, the greatest film the world has ever seen that also has the word “movie” in the title more than once? Well, now you can go behind the scenes on that movie: the movie – movie movie (movie).

Most important thing I learnt from the behind the scenes look? Josh Brolin was in fact not really kissing Edward Norton. He was actually kissing a little green ball on a stick. Actually, that may me more awkward than him kissing Norton.

Chris Nolan’s Memento is in my opinion one of the greatest films in modern cinema history. It tells the temporally jumbled tale of Lenny, a man trying to find his wife’s killer, except that Leo has a condition resulting in him never being able to remember more than an hour at a time. It’s an incredible piece of film, but also very complex due to the continuous time shifts in the narrative. Well, now Greg Burney has created a gorgeous infographic, displaying the entire timeline, for those of you who are still left a bit befuddled and it’s as simplistic in beauty as it is informative:

Gunaxin has a list up of Great Acting Performances of the 200’s That Were Virtually Ignored. I do disagree with their choice of Zoe Saldana in Star Trek though. It’s not that she was poor or anything, there was just nothing all that memorable about her performance. However, the rest are all solid choices, and it just goes to show how often great performances get overlooked, simply because a film is not raking it in at the box office.

It seem like Daniel Radcliffe still has that ol’ Harry Potter magic, as his new film, Woman in Black, has now officially become the most successful horror film in UK history. The Hammer Studios ghost story brought in £14 million in just three weeks. Because clearly Radcliffe doesn’t have enough money already. To claim this ghastly crown the film beat out other English rivals, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. The film has thus far has grossed about £56 million ($90 million) worldwide.

And I know, I know… I promised to cut down on my Twilight bashing, but this is just too good not to post. Those witty folks over at Adult Swim have released this video for Twilight: The Game. Not only is it hilarious, but it’s also 100% factually accurate!

And that’s all for now. I’m off to go try my hand at making my own post-apocalyptic sci-fi short film. Now it may be true that I have no script, no decent actors, no budget and even less talent, but hey, that never stopped Uwe Boll before!

Last Updated: March 1, 2012