We’ve been following Modern Warfare 2‘s development pretty closely here at The Flickcast because we love first person shooters, modern weapons and because it just looks so cool. Back in May, we brought you the first extended trailer for this highly anticipated game and it was, in a word, awesome. This time around, we’ve got the brand new trailer for Modern Warfare 2 called “Flag Runner” to share with you today.

In this one, which also looks awesome, we’re treated to extended scenes of action and gameplay footage sure to excite even the most jaded FPS fans out there. The Call of Duty series continues to be one of those game franchises that never fails to disappoint and this game, especially based on this new trailer, looks to not only continue that trend but to smack it in the face, turn it in another direction and make it even more awesome.

In case you’re one of the few people not familiar with the game, its brought to you by the folks at Activision and Infinity Ward and takes up where the first game (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare) left off several years later with Sergeant “Soap” MacTavish who leads an elite, multinational commando unit, Task Force 141, to counter the resurgent Russian Ultranationalist organization. Of course, lots of gunfire, explosions, helicopters and mayhem ensue. That’s gonna be fun.

The game hits store shelves on November 10th. In the meantime, check out this brand new trailer after the jump. Because this game is an M-Rated game, by clicking through you certify you are eighteen years of age or older. Enjoy!

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The director of such films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and the upcomimng Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law and Rachel McAdams, has just landed a brand new directing gig to expand his already extensive resume. What’s next for Ritchie? The director has signed on to helm the live action adaptation of the DC comic book Lobo for Warner Brothers and producers Joel Silver, Akiva Goldsman and Andrew Rona.

In case you’re not familiar, the movie, adapted by Don Payne, concerns a seven foot, blue skinned, heavily muscled anti-hero and interstallar bounty hunter who comes to earth in search of some fugitives intent on destruction. Once here, he teams up with a small town teenaged girl to help stop the mayhem and in the process learns a little something about humanity. Or, I might have made that last bit up. Either way, the film sounds pretty cool and Lobo is a pretty great character that will do well as a movie.

At any rate, according to the report, Warner Bros. is looking for a PG-13 rated experience which will hopefully bring in the audience that stayed home instead of watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film will also, which is no surprise, be heavy in the special and visual effects areas. The movie is expected to start production early next year and I can’t wait to find out who ends up playing Lobo. Thoughts?

If you’re one of those people who thinks nothing cool happens outside of LA, NYC or San Francisco, this news might just do something to change your mind. What am I talking about? Well, the University of California at Irvine has opened up a school to research video games and virtual world technologies. Don’t know exactly what that means?

Well, you’re in luck then because we’ve got all the info from the official press release. And hey, we support education so this might be something worth checking out.

UC Irvine establishes new Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds Center to join forces with Institute for Software Research and Game Culture & Technology Laboratory

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 1, 2009 – UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences has established the Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds, led by ICS associate dean Magda El Zarki and senior research scientist Walt Scacchi of the UCI Institute for Software Research.

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With all the praise and cult status bestowed on Mike Judge’s film Office Space, sometimes people forget he’s also responsible for creating two of the most popular and recognizable animated characters of the 90s. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about Beavis and Butt-head.

Fortunately, even though they’ve been in retirement for several years, they’ve decided to make an appearance this week to help promote their old pal Mike Judge’s brand new movie Extract. And, because we’re cool like that, we’ve got that new Beavis and Butt-head video right here to share with you. In the video, our old friends talk a little about the movie and introduce some clips, paying for sex and the humor in star Jason Bateman’s name. In other words, its pretty much busines as usual for these two characters.

Mike Judge’s Extract, which stars Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, J.K. Simmons and Ben Affleck, hits theaters on Friday. Until then, check out all the Beavis and Butt-head action after the jump.

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If last week broke your wallet, this week is pretty light.

From DC/Vertigo we have The Nobody writer/artist Jeff Lemire’s ongoing series called Sweet Tooth. This one is about a boy named Gus who has deer-like antlers and is part of a group of kids with human/animal attributes that has made them immune to a recent pandemic. Its a little like the Vertigo epic Y: The Last Man and for a buck why not pick it up?

From Image we have the Chew reprints. I’ve been hearing nothing but positive things about this book, but have yet to even try it so I think picking up these four issues are a must have for me this week as well.

From Marvel, we have Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2, which has beautiful David LaFuente art and the usual Bendis fun. We’re just going to have to face facts here, Brian Bendis will probably go down as the best Spider-Man writer ever and even though he is that, its not necessarily a terrible incident that you miss whole arcs as there is very little that ever happens.

Also, we have the profile book of Immortal Weapons #2. The last issue on “Fat Cobra,” written by Jason Aaron, was a gem of gluttony.  This issue is on the “Bride of Nine Spiders.”

As always, we here at The Flickcast care about what you read, so leave us a comment and let us know what you liked/didn’t like from this week’s comics. For a more complete list of what comes out this week, Midtown Comics has a great listing of everything.

Happy reading!

As we had done with the Summer of Arcade, The Flickcast has done its best to keep you abreast of the latest downloadable releases for XBox Live Arcade. (Keep an eye out for special download code giveaways for XBLA games in the near future). To help with that, we recently got some time with today’s XBLA release, Defense Grid: The Awakening . By the time of this posting, it should be available for download with a trial and the full game for 800 Microsoft Points ($10.00) on the XBox Marketplace.

For those who are unfamiliar with the title, Defense Grid: The Awakening is originally a PC tower defense game. With the popularity of the up and coming genre from simple Flash-based games, it has recently made its way to handhelds and consoles with titles like Pixel Junk Monsters and Crystal Defenders. Developer Hidden Path set out with the goal to make the definitive tower defense game by looking at what they considered the 84 best tower defense games, such as like Vector TD .

For their efforts, Defense Grid: The Awakening received numerous PC game awards such as PC Gamer Editor’s Choice, one of IGN’s Top 10 “2008 Games You May Have Overlooked”, and Gameindustry.com’s 2008 Game of the Year: Puzzle. We got the chance to sit down with Hidden Path developer Jeff Pobst who talked with us about the process of creating a tower defense game. In their research they found out there were two main types of tower games.

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This week on The Flickcast Chris, Matt and Christina talk about a whole bunch of new topics including the Disney/Marvel deal, Rob Zombie making a new Blob movie, Star Wars comics on the iPhone, the remake of the classic film Heathers as a TV show, Summer Glau heading to the Dollhouse, Apple’s latest OS Snow Leopard, Avatar tickets already on sale and much, much more.

The team also made some great picks again this week including Christina’s pick of The Simpsons Season 12, Matt’s pick of the sci-fi thriller Cube and Chris’ pick of Dollhouse Season One.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email.

Thanks for listening.

Grand Theft Auto is without a doubt one of the most infamous names in video games today. Ever since the debut of Grand Theft Auto III where players could pick up a prostitute and then get a “refund” by killing her, it has been at the top of the media by pushing the envelope further and further. With Grand Theft Auto IV as one of the most popular games of 2008, Microsoft saw the opportunity to further their lead in the console war with Sony by commissioning two exclusive episodes of downloadable content for the game for a hefty price tag.

The first, “The Lost and the Damned” reintroduced players to a minor character from Nico’s Grand Theft Auto IV campaign as he fought his way to the top of the food chain to become leader of The Lost biker gang. With the changes in gameplay and the engrossing story, many people felt “The Lost and the Damned” was better than the core GTA IV experience. Now, Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive hopes to catch lightning in the bottle a second time with “The Ballad of Gay Tony”, the second and final exclusive episode for the XBox 360.

“The Ballad of Gay Tony” revolves around, shocker, a character named Gay Tony who is the owner of the most popular straight club and gay club in Liberty City and what he has to do to keep that from being taken away from him. As far as pushing the envelope further, it’s pretty safe to say that anything could be on the table for this episode as “The Lost and the Damned” featured a full frontal shot in it (and no, it wasn’t female.) With virtually no limits to what they can’t do and an epic landscape like Liberty City, take a look at the first trailer of Grand Theft Auto “The Ballad of Gay Tony” after the jump.

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Previously, we brought you news of this motion comic (MOCO) and told you that Episode One was one of the fastest selling videos on iTunes. In addition, we were able to bring you a trailer for another new Marvel MOCO yesterday that we’re all pretty excited about: Astonishing X-Men: Gifted. Now, courtesy of the folks at Marvel, we’ve got a preview of Episode Two of Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D. to share with you this morning.

And, as is often the case with these types of Marvel goodies, they’ve got something to say about the video.

Marvel is proud to unveil new footage from the critically acclaimed Spider-Woman motion comic! The New York Times Best-Selling team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev (Halo Uprising) continue Marvel’s first ever original motion comic as Spider-Woman finds herself at odds with the law in Madripoor and that may spell the end of her mission as an Agent of S.W.O.R.D.! Spider-Woman Episode 2 hits iTunes on September 2 and no True Believer can afford to miss it! Discover more at www.marvel.com/motioncomics

So far, this Spider-Woman MOCO is pretty awesome and we can’t wait to see Episode 2 in its entirety. Until then, be sure to click through and check out this brand new trailer for it right here.

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Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic and not-so-classic movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies like Braveheart, Gladiator and M*A*S*H as well as the latest season of Heroes — season 3 if you’re wondering — also on Blu-ray.

Check them out.

Movies

Braveheart ~ Mel Gibson (Blu-ray)

Bring it On: Fight to the Finish ~ Christina Milian, David Starzyk, Nicki SooHoo, and Gabrielle Dennis (DVD)

The Girl Next Door (Unrated Edition) ~ Emile Hirsch, Elisha Cuthbert, Timothy Olyphant (Blu-ray)

Gladiator ~ Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, and Oliver Reed (Blu-ray)

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With their Hills and Tila Tequilas, MTV has never really been considered a leading network when it comes to scripted TV shows. But they’re trying because back in January it was announced that the music network was putting together a reboot of the 1980s classic Teen Wolf for the small screen, and we’re even closer as the pilot is on it’s way.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the series will be a direct remake of the 1985 film starring Michael J. Fox about a teenager who learns that he comes from a long line of werewolves.

“It has a fresh take and is very different from the original,” said Liz Gateley, senior vp MTV series development. “It has more of an ‘American Werewolf in London’ feel to it. It’s a dramatic thriller with two best friends in the center who provide a great comedy element: They are two very relatable characters on the outer circles of popular cliques.”

The series will be written by Jeff Davis, who created the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds. The show will be produced by the individually successful team of Marty Adelstein (Prison Break) and Rene Echevarria (Castle). No word on casting yet, but with MTV behind the pilot, you can expect to see a hot new name riding the roof of a van and getting covered in fur.

On top of Teen Wolf, MTV is expanding their scripted TV department with a remake of the popular-yet-raunchy U.K. series Skins about a group of teens growing up and living life tot he fullest. Somehow, the latter show sounds more like MTV’s style than a teenage werewolf.

With the ultimate success of both the Twilight book franchise and it’s film counterpart, it was inevitable that fans would eventually backlash against it. While it’s teen romance theme and sparkly vampires leaves it open for ridicule, there are still plenty of anti-Twilight troops out there on the web, and some of them know Photoshop pretty well.

Earlier today, one non-fan in particular felt that the end of the first Twilight film was missing something. A certain vampire hunter needed to be brought into the fray, taking down the sparkly Edward and saving Bella from, well, herself.

Check out the image after the break, and maybe this will inspire some non-fans who are precision film editors as well.

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