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Thirty-six years ago today, on April 25th, 1976, filmmaker Carol Reed passed away. One of the greatest directors ever to come out of the U.K., Reed started out as an actor, but gained fame as a writer-director in the late 1930s and 1940s, thanks to films like "Night Train To Munich," and the outstanding "Odd Man Out" and "The Fallen Idol." Later, he'd also find success with films like "Trapeze," "Our Man In Havana," "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "Oliver!," for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, beating out Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers."

But Reed's undisputed masterpiece is "The Third Man," a 1949 film noir based on a screenplay by the great British writer Graham Greene. The film involves a writer of Westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who comes to post-war Vienna after being promised a job by his childhood friend Harry Lime.

Even if Shane Black were to never write another script again, he will always be one of my favorite Hollywood writers. From the late 80s to the mid-90s, nobody scripted better action than Black, producing films like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. Also not to be ignored is the insanely amazing and criminally under-seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which Black both wrote and directed in 2005. Since then, however, he has been a ghost, writing a short film called A.W.O.L. back in 2006 under the pen name Holly Martins (taken from Carol Reed's The Third Man), but not making any features. Lucky for us, that changes today. Deadline reports that Shane Black has signed on to direct a live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga Death Note. The writer/director will also oversee the script being written by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry, ...

Actresses Jennifer Aniston and Bryce Dallas Howard will show off their directing skills at the 2007 Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films & Short Film Market, set for Aug. 23-29 at the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs.

Aniston's short film, Room 10, and Howard's Orchids are scheduled to screen at the fest, which, in its 13th year, will present 332 films, selected from more than 2,500 worldwide entries.

Other familiar names who will appear in some of the shorts on display include James Gandolfini, Louis Gossett Jr., Joe Mantegna and Steven R. McQueen in Club Soda; Patrick Stewart and Joanna Lumley in The Audition; Ron Livingston in Life Happens; Margaret Cho and Jane Lynch in Love Is Love; David Morse in A.W.O.L.; Ron Silver and JoBeth Williams in Call It Fiction; and Wendie Malick in Waiting for Yvette.

The opening-night program Aug. 23 will include such award-winning live-action and animated films as "Contact/Raak" from the Netherlands and Everything Will Be OK from the U.S.

The festival will showcase 54 world premieres, 12 North American premieres and 20 U.S.