In the eyes of many, Microsoft knew they were the underdogs going in to E3′s press conferences this year as it had barely any top titles set to come out the rest of the year. But today, they came out with all guns blazing, being the first to show footage, trailers and song announcements for Beatles: Rock Band. To be released on 9.9.09, Beatles: Rock Band features a uniquely animated visual take on the Beatles entire career and musical catalog, starting off in their simple black and white suits to the psychedelic color explosion of their later years.

Of the 45 songs coming with the game, 10 were announced: “I Saw Her Standing There”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “I Feel Fine”, “Day Tripper”, “Taxman”, “I Am the Walrus”, “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Octopus’ Garden”, “Here Comes the Sun”, and “Get Back”. In addition, the entire Abbey Road album will be released as downloadable content as will “All You Need is Love” which will give a donation based on sales to the charity Doctors Without Borders. Making sure to have E3 be the top spectacle of the industry, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison were welcomed to the stage before the first major celebrities of the event, Paul McCartney and Ringo Star.

Both men seemed excited to be there and about the game, despite Paul joking that they couldn’t actually play it themselves. Also for the Beatles: Rock Band demonstration, a Rock Band team played “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on stage using a Beatles: Rock Band kit including a drum set with cymbals and a bad ass looking Bass.

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Chuck is one of those shows we really like here at The Flickcast. Along with some others like Dollhouse, Fringe and Sons of Anarchy, we’re glad to say we’ve been on the Chuck bandwagon since the beginning. Of course, with rumors of the show being canceled and other hindrances to a new season, we were glad to hear, and bring you the news, that Chuck would be back for a third season — albeit a shorter and more budget conscious one.

The season three premiere of Chuck is still months away, but recently over at Sci-Fi Wire, they spoke to the show’s star, Zachary Levi, about the third season of the show and about what he hopes will happen to his character. AMong the many thing discussed, Levi told Sci-Fi Wire he hopes his character will have a chance to be do more action next season.

“I just want to do more action, man,” Levi said in the interview. “I want Chuck to kick some more ass, shoot some more guns,” he continued. “I’ve been sitting on the sidelines for two years watching Adam and Yvonne have all of the fun. Literally all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid was be in war movies. … You run around in the backyard and go, ‘Bang, you’re dead!’ And throwing dirt clods as hand grenades. So to really get to participate in the action more, as opposed to just running away or falling off a building or whatever, would be really awesome.”

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Last night during the MTV Movie Awards, which we highlighted for you here, they debuted a few new clips from some of the most anticipated movie releases coming up this Summer. One of those clips was this new one from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which we’ve brought you some details about before and are pretty excited about. What can I say, the movie looks cool.

And now, the full length of the footage is available online. In fact, its right there below for you to watch and enjoy. I think it looks kinda cool and maybe you will too. The footage features some of the main characters from the film doing their “Real American Hero” thing including Duke (Channing Tatum), Baroness (Sienna Miller), Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans).

The action looks great and all the actors seem to be taking their roles very seriously — which is a good thing. This could have easily devolved into camp. But so far, it looks like its just a fun, straight up action movie. Thank goodness.

Check out the footage after the jump. The Stephen Summers directed G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra hits theaters on August 7th.

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The past few years the Electronic Entertainment Expo has gone through a few strange iterations. After the week long gaming binge trade show became the nerdcore equivalent of Las Vegas, the video game industry decided it needed a change. Two years ago, it was spread throughout LA with conferences occurring all around the city at different hotels, which made it a nightmare for attendees and the press covering the event. Last year, E3 invaded a large hangar in Santa Monica but got virtually no coverage by the mainstream press.

This year, E3 returns to the LA Convention Center to its full, overindulgent style with huge press conferences, over the top million dollar booth displays and, of course, what every attending GameStop employee dreams of: booth babes. What reporter attending the event doesn’t love trying to get information about a huge upcoming title from an extremely hot yet air headed and underpaid Los Angeles model/actress who barely knows the name of what she’s promoting, let alone any useful information about it? Sign me up!

So, with the show returning to its former lavish size and style, what are E3′s biggest announcements going to be this year? Unfortunately, I’m not a mind reader so I don’t know what they are yet, but I will tell you that there are five possible times when this big news might come down. Starting tomorrow and streaming live on the shows’ official site E3 Insider, Microsoft will be giving their press conference at 10:30 am PT. This year, Microsoft has been very quiet as to what could be announced at E3. Most likely are Xbox 360 exclusives Alan Wake, Halo 3: ODST and Mass Effect 2 but it wouldn’t be E3 without a big surprise announcement such as the Grand Theft Auto 4 and Gears of War 2 announcements from previous years.

While Alan Wake has garnered intrigue based on the lack of information being given out about it, Halo 3: ODST has not gotten the attention like previous Halo franchise titles. Most likely because players will not be able to be Master Chief for the first time in this new game. Along with Microsoft’s expected announcements, there has been a rumored big announcement from Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios, the man behind hits such as Fable, Fable 2 and Black and White. What he will be announcing, if anything, remains a mystery at this point.

The rest of day one’s big press announcements will come from publishers EA at 2 pm PT and then Ubisoft at 5 pm PT. After all of Activision’s Guitar Hero announcements over the previous week, EA will probably give a big splash for their upcoming Beatles: Rock Band game along with footage of other EA staple franchises such as the next Madden. Ubisoft will likely follow up on last year’s hit, Assassin’s Creed with this year’s sequel and the upcoming Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, a new FPS set in the Old West.

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We open on a group of sixteen year-olds wandering through a marble, sex covered, blood stained club. These three teenagers watch as a girl their age is sacrificed. One locks eyes with another girl close to the sacrificial altar. The girl close to the altar feels the glare and looks up to see an exact copy of herself staring her down. They are Zoe Graystone, one is alive and the other is a virtual representation.

Caprica the pilot is a clean, tight and intriguing episode set fifty-eight years before Battlestar Galactica and follows the Adama and Graystone families.  There is a Philip  K. Dick quality to this pilot with 1930s style, flying cars and monorails. It is a tight noir that explores the question: if you could have a loved one back from the dead, would you do whatever it took to make it happen?

Boiled down, that is what this entire show is about, including the creation of the Cylons by Dr. Graystone (Eric Stoltz). It also explores how Cylons may have become sentient humanoids. “Skin jobs” as they were called in the original series, and it may have something to do with the virtual representation of Zoe Graystone played with Blake Lively-like attitude by Alessandra Torresani. It is with Zoe and her friends that you can tell former Buffy: the Vampire Slayer writer Jane Espenson is really having fun.  Co-written by Ryan Mottesheard*, the writers also pose a possible solution to how the Cylons believe in one God.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but it is quite literally the Graystone’s legacy in both of these aspects, and the possible answer to the question: “how did we get to the first episode of Battlestar Galactica?” That is essentially the premise of the entire show and is literally what the entirety of this 93-minute premiere is beholden to, that you liked BSG enough to find out where it all started. With characters that were at best merely a spectre in BSG (as in Joe Adama played by Esai Morales) and at worst never even mentioned (as in Stoltz’s Graystone).

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Earlier, we brought you a sneak peek at the first trailer for The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Now, thanks to the folks over at Trailer Addict, we’re able to bring you the entire thing to help fulfill all your tween vampire warewolf love triangle needs.

Those of you familiar with the Twilight story need no explanation as to what’s happening in the trailer. For those of you just joining us, the sequel to Twilight follows the tortured and troubled love affair between the vampire Edward and the human Bella. In this film, things start to go very bad and Edward leaves Bella in order to protect her from his potential blood lust. This, of course, leaves her vulnerable to other vampires.

Luckily, as it turns out she’s got a pack of werewolves to protect her, led by her close friend and third member of the troubled tween triangle, Jacob Black. You just know Edward isn’t going to like that. Check out the full trailer after the jump.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon opens November 20th. As if you didn’t already have that date circled on your calendar.

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