For this year's Movies Issue, The New York Times Magazine commissioned lines from an eclectic and talented group of screenwriters — writers responsible for some of the best scripts of 2013. We asked them each to write a single line for us — not a scene, a script or a scenario, but simply an intriguing, amusing or captivating line of dialogue. Then we gave these lines to one of the great movie artists of our time: the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, a two-time Oscar winner. Kaminski used these lines as inspiration to create 11 original (very) short films. Each short evokes a style or genre of the cinematic past and stars an actor who gave an especially memorable performance in 2013.
A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.
Gyeong-tae, the husband who is tired of sleeping with his wife, posts that he is selling his wife on a second-hand website. After reading the article, Young-sik accepts the transaction and sleeps with Gyeong-tae's wife. Gyeong-tae, who is secretly watching, gets excited when he sees his wife having sex with another man.
A series of vignettes chronicling a few lonely people in Duluth, MN searching for a connection in a bleak winter.
Various experiences of childhood are seen in several sequences that take place in the small town of Thiers, France. Vignettes include a boy's awakening interest in girls, couples double-dating at the movies, brothers giving their friend a haircut, a boy dealing with an abusive home life, a baby and a cat sitting by an open window, a child telling a dirty joke, and a boy who develops a crush on his friend's mother.
Night riders are terrorizing homesteaders, and the town doctor tries to keep the locals from forming a vigilante group. After more towns people are killed, however, the rest of the town makes the doctor the town sheriff and tells him to clean up the gang.
Life's questions are 'answered' in a series of outrageous vignettes, beginning with a staid London insurance company which transforms before our eyes into a pirate ship. Then there's the National Health doctors who try to claim a healthy liver from a still-living donor. The world's most voracious glutton brings the art of vomiting to new heights before his spectacular demise.
Glimpses of Chaucer penning his famous work are sprinkled through this re-enactment of several of his stories.
An egg desperately tries to prevent being hatched. In this animated short from the Canada Vignette series, learn how societies in evolution are often in danger of self-destruction.
A newly engaged couple finds the home of their dreams and it quickly becomes a nightmare when the previous owner's friend continues squatting in their guest house. It leads to a turf war that ultimately ruins their house, their marriage and their lives.
Three overlapping stories showcase the power of love after the death of a child, a father, and a lover for those who remain.