What ultimately surprised me about this comedy is how sweet it is underneath the prickly premise. Based on a more scathing French film called The Dinner Game (1998), this Dinner has been toned down a bit for American audiences but it still has a bit of bite.

Paul Rudd plays Tim, a mild mannered businessman trying to get a promotion at work. He has earned the promotion but is forced to deal with typical office politics in order to seal the deal. He is horrified to find out that the good old boys at the office partake in a monthly dinner party in which each man brings the biggest idiot they can find to amuse the masses. They ask Tim to join them in a few days, promising that if he can find such a person, the job is all his.

Tim wrestles with the moral dilemma he faces. He’s visibly disgusted with the whole idea, but he really, really wants the job. He has been trying to get his beautiful girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) to succumb to his marriage proposal, and he believes that if he is financially secure she’ll be more likely to take the plunge.

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The remake none of us were waiting for, and that has been rumored for a year, has finally been made official today. You will soon once again be seeing Total Recall at a movie theater near you.

Columbia Pictures officially announced Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard, Underworld films) as the director for the project. It has been report that he will be working off a script written by Kurt Wimmer, who recently wrote Salt and Law Abiding Citizen. Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach, presidents over at Columbia Pictures, stated that negotiations are almost finalized.

The original Total Recall, was based on the immortal Philip K. Dick’s story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. The original follows Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Quaid who is a seemingly unsophisticated construction worker, who is haunted by a recurring dream of journeying to Mars.

He buys a literal dream vacation from a company called Rekall Inc., which sells implanted memories. It turns out he is a freedom fighter from Mars who has been relocated to Earth, and he must restore order, and reverse the corrupt influence that commercial powers had over the red planet.

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At Comic-Con, we got the chance to sit down with Matt Tieger , one of the developers for Transformers: War for Cybertron and discuss his work on the game. Also, check out some screens and the trailer for the Transformers: War for Cybertron Map and Character Pack which was released this week for the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 which features five new multiplayer character models and four new multiplayer maps.

The Flickcast: Activision just announced that we are going to be getting five new DLC characters and a map pack with four new maps for the game so obviously this is going to be a multiplayer focused DLC pack. Can you talk to us a little bit about why you wanted to do some DLC for this game?

Matt Tieger: What we do is we try and listen. We read the forums. We talk to Transformers fans. We talk to gamers. And we listen to all the things they were really excited about within the game and wanted more of, were hungry for more of and that’s what we put in this pack.

So, five new characters right, several new of those you know were pre-order characters and people were just rabid to get them so we listened and we put those in the pack. Shockwave, Jazz and Demolisher, all available in this DLC pack.

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Huston doesn’t give much time to Key Largo in his autobiography, save for sharing his dissatisfaction with Warner Brothers in the late 1940s and some epic stories of his gambling debts. Offhandedly he mentions that it was nominated for Best Picture and Claire Trevor won the award for Best Supporting Actress.

What small part that does focus on the film mentions Edward G. Robinson’s reluctance to take up another gangster role, having played so many of them in the past. However, there is a spot-on description of Robinson’s first scene in the movie, where he’s soaking in a bathtub and smoking a long cigar: “He looked like a crustacean with its shell off.” To put it succinctly, it’s perfect.

But despite Huston’s reticence to talk about it (or write, as it were), Key Largo is still very fun. Not as deep as The Maltese Falcon, but not quite as bang-out, mindless entertainment as Across the Pacific.

Based on the play of the same name (I would use “eponymous,” but I don’t want to sound like a snob) by Maxwell Anderson, Largo stars Bogie as WWII veteran Frank McCloud, who’s made the trip down to the eponymous Key Largo to seek out the father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall) of a former war buddy.

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There’s been a lot of sequels to the Kingdom Hearts franchise ever  since the first game hit the Playstation 2 in 2002, and while Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep won’t be the last, it certainly looks to be the best Kingdom Hearts game we’ve seen in awhile. I fought the crowds and cosplayers at San Diego Comic-Con and made my way to the Square Enix booth, where I was able to play a few short (but very sweet) minutes of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

Firstly, I couldn’t help but notice how vibrant the graphics were in Birth By Sleep. Maybe I’ve been playing too much of Kingdom Hearts: 356/2 Days on my Nintendo DS and I’m just used to lower resolution, but the PSP is definitely one powerful portable and Birth By Sleep looks great. I demoed the Lilo and Stitch level, Deep Space, and the backgrounds and characters were super detailed and vibrant.

In Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, you play through three different scenarios as characters Terra, Aqua, and Ventus. While playing, I found that the standard hack and slash gameplay was pretty standard and I was finding everything unfamiliar. But a huge problem I had with the gameplay was using the analog stick instead of the D-pad.

While this sounds like a simple change, it won’t be easy for someone like me who’s played a ton of similar RPGs like Final Fantasy on the PSP and is used to using the D-pad. I was constantly accidentally using the D-pad to run around and as a result selecting things I didn’t mean to, which was wasting some of the short time I had to play. This isn’t something that is going to deter me from playing the game straight through, it’s just something annoying that needs some getting used to.

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Much like J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon’s epic team-up during Comic-Con to show they are probably way geekier than you are, two other powerful film titans that you love (or love to hate) have decided to team up for a project as well. That’s right, Guillermo del Toro and James Cameron are working together on a big screen adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness with del Toro directing and Cameron producing.

Of course, the film will be shot in 3D for studio Universal Pictures. According to reports, the studio was a bit nervous about he high budget project but Cameron’s stamp of approval and support for del Toro apparently won them over. Cameron had said in the past that he wouldn’t put his name on many future movies outside of the 3D reboot of Fantastic Voyage at Fox, but he’s apparently making an exception for del Toro and this project.

In case you’re not familiar with Lovecraft’s work, this particular story centers around a gruesome discovery made during a scientific expedition to the South Pole in the 1930s. This discovery hints at the true origin of mankind and our having come from elder gods from another planet. Of course, bad things start to happen when those life forms are awakened. If you’ve ever read any Lovecraft, you know if they stay faithful to the source material this movie will be one wild time.

At the Mountains of Madness is expected to being filming next Summer for a 2012 release.

When you work at a film website it’s often difficult to see trailers, pictures and the rest of the tidbits that come out about films without forming an opinion. Sure, in a perfect world we could go into these things with no prior knowledge at all and enjoy them (or not) the first time we see them. Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way.

By the time a film is actually released we know pretty much everything about it from the cast to the visual effects to the story to almost every kind of Easter egg it has. It’s just the way things are done now. Case in point is Marvel’s upcoming Thor adaptation. We’ve seen quite a bit of stuff from it including lots of photos and more. In this case it’s hard not to form an opinion and this opinion is, unfortunately, leaning to the negative.

The footage shown at Comic-Con last week in glorious Hall H doesn’t go that far to moving that opinion into the plus column. However, it is nice to see something from the film other than pictures and some pieces of it looked pretty good. Let’s hope the footage subsequently released keeps pushing things in a positive direction. Heck, let’s hope the movie ends up being good.

Until then, check out the footage after the jump. After you watch it, tell us what you think of it in the comments.

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To the relief and delight of fans everywhere, Futurama finally returned to Comedy Central in June, with an anticipated season of 26 new episodes that will air through the rest of 2010 and into 2011. Riding the wave of elation and acclaim (what Comic-Con wouldn’t be complete without the presence of Groening) Matt Groening (Creator) and David X. Cohen (Executive Producer) shared their ideas for the future of Futurama and what they love most about being in San Diego for Comic-Con.

Groening thanked the fans who are devoted to the show and attributed Futurama‘s return to their persistence. He also teased fans with the vague spoiler of two characters kissing in an upcoming episode, but that it will be completely unexpected and the audience won’t see it coming (anyone want to start a betting pool?).

Fans who are patiently waiting for the early seasons of not only Futurama and The Simpsons to be released on Blu-Ray are going to be waiting for a while. There aren’t any current plans for their release, but they will be available on Laser-Disc very soon!

As for the future of the show, Groening stated that back when he was developing the show with David X. Cohen, they made a list of all the things they wanted to write about, and they still haven’t exhausted that list. Additionally, he revealed that there aren’t any current plans to do direct to DVD movies, but that the ultimate goal would be to develop and release a full-length film that will be released in theaters.

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With the resurgence in popularity for comics over the decades, there have been plenty of incarnations of our favorite heroes. In that time, we’ve had two Hulks, three Clark Kents, and nearly a dozen Batman’s. The likes of Christian Bale, Jeremy Sisto, Diederich Bader, and the always talented Kevin Conroy have played the Dark Knight in the 5 few years, and now it’s time for Bruce Greenwood to step in.

This time, Batman faces his greatest foes, one of his former sidekicks. Taken straight from a story arc by Judd Winick about the resurrection of Jason Todd, this story has to be one of the darkest DC animated films to date.

You may know Greenwood best as playing Captain Pike in J.J. Abram’s Star Trek. He joins a star-studded cast including Futurama’s John DiMaggio, Neil Patrick Harris, and even Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles.

We got the chance to discuss playing the World’s Greatest Detective with Bruce Greenwood, as well as his interesting relationship with his on-screen nemesis. Check out the interview after the jump, and pick up Batman: Under The Red Hood in stores today.

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Julie Benz appears to have gone from victim to hero in one fell swoop. After leaving behind Rita Morgan after four seasons on Dexter, the actress is primed to portray Stephanie Powell on ABC’s upcoming family show, No Ordinary Family.  No longer the dead body in the bathtub, Powell is a busy professional scientist and researcher who develops super speed following a crash landing in the Amazon on a trip with her family. After deciding to move on from Dexter, Renz related that she was looking for a new challenge and the character of Stephanie was just what she was looking for.

“When pilot season started, my quest was to find a character that was strong female character, a character that is more active than Rita. I was getting offered a lot of parts that were similar to her and I was turning them down because I wanted to find something that was different.”

While there might be the temptation to compare Rita with Stephanie, Benz insists that she didn’t pull inspiration from portraying a mother on a previous show. For one thing, the personalities are incredibly different.

“I think they’re both mothers, but other than that, there’s really no commonality. Rita was not career driven at all, she was very dependent, very damaged with a lot of  vulnerabilities, very emotional. Stephanie’s very controlled, a Type A personality, goal oriented and has a hard time interacting with her own family.”

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There’s a lot of cool tech on the horizon, but there wasn’t much I’ve wanted to try more than Sony’s motion controlled software, Playstation Move. Luckily, Move was in full force at this year’s San Diego Comic Con, and I got my hands on that lolly pop-looking controller and gave it a go. My first experience with Playstation Move came in the form of a game called Beat Sketchers, which was just as good a game as any to give me a feel for this new technology.

Beat Sketchers is essentially Microsoft Paint, except for your television. Using the Playstation Move’s camera and the Playstation Move controller, players can draw, splash, and doodle all over themselves and everything around them on screen, using the Move as a paintbrush and their surroundings as a canvas.

I had a lot of fun using this game to test out the Playstation Move, which was more responsive than I expected. Since it does use the Playstation Eye instead of a sensor bar to sense your movements, gameplay never felt interrupted by a connection problem between the controller and the system.

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There’s a pretty fine line to walk when it comes to remaking a classic. Sometimes the studio gets it right and stays as true to the original as possible, and sometimes we get Cedric the Entertainer’s Honeymooners. Thankfully, the live action Yogi Bear film falls under the umbrella of the former.

If the film is nothing else, it deserves an award for voice directing. Both Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake lend their voices for the film, and you really couldn’t tell unless you were told, which is exactly how it should be.

Joining the cast is Tom Cavanagh as Ranger Smith, Anna Faris, and after an astounding audition with a live bear, T.J Miller was worked into the script as Ranger Jones.

The trailer looks like it could do the franchise justice, or at the very least, do better than the upcoming Smurfs film. And yes, the film will be in 3D, as if there was any doubt.

Check out the trailer after the jump and catch Yogi Bear in theaters and in 3D on December 17.

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This week may mark the time when fanboys and fangirls recover from last week’s Comic-Con, but it also marks a pretty big week for fans of DC Studios, and more specifically, their animated DVD division. On Tuesday, the studio released their next film in the continuing direct-to-DVD film series in an adaptation of Judd Winick’s Batman: Under The Red Hood.

Much like many of the other DC animated films, this story follows very close to the source material, with a few tweaks to allow a 70 minute film to flow nicely. That also means that this is one of the darkest films that the studio has done to date, with plenty of death and violence. The film is definitely a must for any fan of the franchise or comics in general.

We got a chance to speak with DC Animation guru and producer of the film Bruce Timm about this and a few upcoming projects including All-Star Superman, Batman: Year One, and Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. Also, we spoke with voice director Andrea Romano about casting Bruce Greenwood as this film’s Batman and Futurama’s John DiMaggio as The Joker.

Check out the full interview after the jump, and keep it here all week for more interviews with the cast of Batman: Under The Red Hood.

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Yes, you read that headline correctly. Syfy is preparing a new Battlestar Galactica series, currently entitled Blood and Chrome, that will follow the exploits of William Adama during the Cylon War.

However, before you start to get too excited the series won’t actually be a full blown TV show airing on Syfy. Instead, it will be a web series with about 10 episodes, each around 9 minutes long. Not that I have anything against web series, in fact I kinda love them. I was just hoping for a new network show with a big budget and lots of awesome Cylon heads exploding and big space battles.

Oh well, here’s more on the show from Syfy:

According to Mark Stern, Syfy’s executive vice president of original programming and the co-head of original content for Universal Cable Productions, “Battlestar Galactica” and “Caprica” co-executive producer Michael Taylor will write the the script for the new venture.

“Blood & Chrome” is “about a young man’s initiation into war: both the realities of war as fought by soldiers on the ground (and in Battlestars and Vipers), and the somewhat less real version portrayed in the media,” according to Taylor.

“Blood & Chrome” would consist of nine or 10 episodes of nine or 10 minutes each, and it would make use of cutting-edge digital technology and special effects to depict the Cylon War. If it is greenlit to production, it will be filmed using green screens and virtual sets, not unlike Syfy’s “Sanctuary” or James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Before “Battlestar Galactica” ended, high-tech scans were made of all the show’s sets, so that the special-effects team will be able to re-create them (possibly even in 3D).

But wait, there’s more:

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As you Flickcast readers know, I’m a huge fan of SyFy’s Destination Truth. I’ve urged you to watch it. Are you? If not, why? You know I have impeccable taste and that I never steer you wrong.

Perhaps this final bit of evidence will convince you. I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Gates at Comic-Con this year. Just being around him is an adventure. Do you know how many White Shirts (the preferred color of security this year) I had to dodge just to get into the SyFy press room? Do you know how many times my phone went out as I was trying to find them? Do you know how dehydrated and shaky I was? Yeah. You have no idea. This was hardcore. Press badges mean nothing in the wilderness of Comic-Con.

All humor aside (and I’m quite ill as I’m writing this, so it’s probably not as funny as I think it is), it was fantastic to talk to Gates. He talked about the dangers of filming Destination Truth, the things he still can’t explain, and just how they do laundry in far-flung locations. After the jump, watch the delight that is Josh Gates, and be sure to check out the exotic delight that is Destination Truth when it returns to SyFy on September 9th.

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