Los Angeles Film Festival will host a pre-festival screening of Man Of Steel June 12th.

Man Of Steel, Pixar’s Monsters University Added to Los Angeles Film Festival
LAFF will host a pre-festival screening of Warner Bros. Superman feature, Man of Steel on June 12, two days ahead of its official release. Also joining the festival lineup is Disney/Pixar’s Monsters University, set for June 18 (it hits theaters June 21). Also at the festival, which takes place June 13 – 23 in downtown Los Angeles, is a conversation with Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze in addition to events spotlighting costume design and the inauguration of the Academy’s Costume Designers Branch and a look at women editors.

Athens to Take Toronto International Film Festival Spotlight
The Greek capital will be the focus of the 2013 City to City program at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival. Now in its fifth year, the City to City series showcases filmmakers living and working in a selected city, regardless of where their films are set. Past series featured in the series include Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and Mumbai. This year’s lineup in the program spotlighting Athens will be unveiled in July. The Toronto International Film Festival takes place September 5 – 15.

Sydney Film Festival Unveils Lineup
Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road will open the 60th Sydney Film Festival, taking place June 5 – 16. The world premiere is an Outback-set murder-mystery starring Hugo Weaving.  Among the films screening in its Official Competition are Only God Forgives, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, and Berlin Crystal Bear winner The Rocket. Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (NYFF50), David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche, Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight and Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo will screen as Special Presentations at the event. Sydney will close out with doc Twenty Feet From Stardom (opening at Film Society on June 14), by filmmaker Morgan Neville, Indiewire reports.

Danny Boyle Honored by Critics’ Circle
Filmmaker Danny Boyle received a special centenary award for “services to the arts” at the 100th birthday of the U.K. Critics Circle. Also honored at the event were theater director Max Stafford Clark and choreographer Sir Peter Wright. “It goes to show, I think… that the decisions about who should prosper and who should not should be left in the arms of the people who run the theatres, rather than the people who provide them with the money,” said Boyle. BBC reports.

Zach Braff Responds to Kickstarter Campaign Criticism
Braff raised a whopping $2.5 million from 35,000 backers for his planned upcoming directorial project in just two weeks via crowd sourcing site Kickstarter. While a complete success, Braff also faced criticism for being a successful millionaire filmmaker/actor raising money to fund what some called a vanity project. Said Braff: “Most of the backers of my film aren’t people on Kickstarter who had $10 and were deciding where to give it, and then gave it to me instead of someone else. They came to Kickstarter because of me, because of this project. They wouldn’t have been there otherwise.” TOH reports.