At San Diego Comic-Con International in 2009, a short film by Clare Grant and Rileah Vanderbilt and their Danger Maiden Productions (along with Ariescope Pictures) called Saber won the awards for both Best Action Short and Audience Choice in the 8th Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards competition.

You loved Saber. Now, the long-awaited release of it’s sequel, Saber 2: Return of the Body Wash is finally here! What’s more, it’s everything fans of the first video could have hoped for. Rileah Vanderbilt and Clare Grant returning for more light sabering, more suds, and more comedy. Saber 2 is is directed by Grant’s husband, Seth Green.

The last remnants of the Empire have been defeated, and it is a period of peace in the galaxy. The Jedi Order, no longer needed in their role as defenders, have scattered across the stars and started new lives…while the Sith wait quietly hidden in their midst.

Such a Jedi and her Sith counterpart have found common ground and established a new business together on a remote planet. United by a love of animals and a belief in the force, they have rededicated their lives to the art of grooming.

Their latest mission leads them to the base of a former Rebel. Though the war is over, they have not forgotten where their true allegiances lie.

Once you’ve had your fill, check out this behind-the-scenes photo gallery and subscribe to the Nerdist YouTube Channel.

Team 2X is a professional martial arts performance consisting of members with experience in Hollywood films and television. With their unique talent in creating mind blowing fight sequences and GakAttack’s passion for combining Visual FX with Martial Arts action. Jedi Ninjas became the result of this collaboration.

This fifty-five minute French fan film is set inside the Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix trilogy. In follows Kaydara, a human bounty hunter living apart from the humans of Zion. Not only does Kaydara not believe in the prophecy of “The One,” he believes that the prophecy is a threat to the self-awareness of the humans still trapped inside the Matrix. In the film, he hunts Neo, seeking to confront him before he can ruin humanity’s hope for the future.

Source: Kaydara film site via Quiet Earth

“My name is Blinky, and I just want to be your friend!” A well-crafted short film by Ruairi Robinson

Somnolence is a short film based on a feature treatment written by Patrick Kalyn and shot in just two days on a budget of ten thousand dollars. For all its small scale, though, it packs an enormous punch. Its special effects are simply outstanding.

This poetic spot promotes NASA’s recent attempts to educate Americans about its mission through social networks. The beautiful narration is distinctly reminiscent of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, which I whole-heartedly applaud.

The original idea behind The Nightmare Before Christmas told through poetry, narrated by Christopher Lee.

This is a hugely enjoyable animated short, made all the more enjoyable by the fact that it is almost entirely eye candy.  Created by Simon Prager, Christopher Hempelm, Christian Stadach, and Martin Köhler, this animation was entered for the Steampunk Challenge on cgssocieyt.org.

Motion graphics studio 39 Degrees North needed a Christmas card, so they turned to Neil Gaiman’s poem, “Nicholas Was…” from the anthology Smoke and Mirrors into a short film. The result is a brief but powerful Christmas nightmare.

You can read the original poem on the author’s website.

This short animation is inspired by the silent movies of Buster Keaton made in the 1920s. A young woman leaves on a train, looking back epectantly. Her paramour dashes after her, but only after the train has departed. Cue some toon gymnastics as he tries to catch up to his lost love.

But watch til the end, as not everything goes as expected. This film was created by Jenna Bors of the Ringling College of Art and Design, Department of Computer Animation. All modeling, and lighting was created using Autodesk Maya. The textures, effects, and composting were done in After Effects, Photoshop, Corel Painter, and Premiere.

Website: poeticomecano.com

The above film is based on a short story written by Polish sci-fi author Jacek Dukaj, “Katedra,” and animated by Tomasz Bagiński using 3ds Max. In 2002, it was nominated for an Academy Award in the Animated Short Film category, but it lost to Sony’s The Chubbchubbs.

The film is visually breathtaking, and although not a single word is spoken in seven minutes, it’s riveting. Its conclusion, which is left open-ended, leaves audiences with more questions than answers, imparting a great deal of re-watchability to the piece.

On this day in 1909, E.M. Forster published the science fiction short story “The Machine Stops” in The Oxford and Cambridge Review. The story explored the consequences of a complete technological break down on a society dependent on information technology.

The story will turn out to be remarkably prophetic, predicting a number of social and technological developments, including television and videoconferencing, which Foster dubbs “cinematophote,” and the social phenomena of excessive participation in virtual communities in a manner that foreshadows the later advent of the internet and social networking.

You can now watch the 1966 adaptation of the story for the UK science fiction series “Out of the Unknown” at Google Video.

Listen to an audio recording of the story.
Read “The Machine Stops” online.
Watch the adaptation on Google Video.

Continuing with the theme of teddy-inflicted violence, we present Teddy Saw by Ben Schwartz. In it, a toy abuser learns that toys have a looong memory.

Tis the season for Zombies! “Dawn of the Ted,” is an excellent short film about a teddy bear named “Misery Bear,” who fights against the evil forces of plush zombies.