For those getting ready for Nicolas Cage’s version of 1992′s Bad Lieutenant, they should do two things. One: check out our review of the new film before they decide to buy a ticket, and two: check out this amazing video that SNL’s Bill Hader and Mean Magazine put together about a year ago when the remake was first announced.

Hader is currently one of the “Not Ready For Primetime Players” on Saturday Night Live, but he’s also one of the more popular character actors of the past few years. Most will remember him as one of the officers from Superbad, the Shaman in Year One or the park owner in Adventureland. His next big role will be alongside Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Paul.

Check out the video after the jump, and join us in complaining that Werner Herzog decided to cast Nic Cage in the lead role in Bad Lieutenant rather than going with Hader.

Continue Reading →

I don’t particularly like Sandra Bullock, and I really dislike sports movies, so logic dictates that I would not care for The Blind Side. I saw the trailer, and like everyone else I wrote this film off as a heaping pile of Hallmark Channel goo.

I gritted my teeth and vowed to trudge through the movie, and instead I got one of the biggest surprises (to me) of the year. The Blind Side is good. Really good. Sandra Bullock gives her best performance to date. The story is touching, inspirational and timely.

In the tradition of Rudy, The Rookie, Remember the Titans, and Hoosiers, The Blind Side is based on a true story. Michael Oher is wandering the streets in Memphis in the bitter cold clad only in shorts and a t-shirt, when the wealthy Tuohy family sees him. After the daughter recognizes him from her school, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) demands that her husband pull over the car.

She offers him a couch to sleep on that night, but after she discovers he has nowhere to go and no clothing, she buys him a wardrobe and eventually offers him a room in their palatial mansion. The Tuohys eventually adopt Michael, who went  on to play football at Ole Miss, and currently plays for the Baltimore Ravens as a rookie tackle.

Continue Reading →

While Thanksgiving is right around the corner, Christmas is coming up right behind it and will be here sooner than you think. In fact, there are only 35 shopping days left before Christmas so if you haven’t started shopping yet for the geeks on your list, you better get to it.

Besides, geeks love Christmas which is great, considering Wired has pointed us in the direction of the coolest desk ever: “The Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite” desk. Not only will this desk make you the coolest person at your office or in your home, it’ll be a great distraction from whenever you don’t want to do work. It’ll also please any overweight gangsters you might know who are owed money by Han Solo.

You’ll have to pay Jabba a steep U.S. $5,500 bounty for this desk, but it’ll surely be worth it. Check back with The Flickcast all this month for some more awesome holiday gift ideas for your favorite geeks.

I can’t really say that I enjoyed watching Precious. To do so would make me categorically misogynistic. Precious ( Based On The Book ‘Push’ by Sapphire) is a brutally punishing look into the life of an economically depressed 16 year old living in a ghetto with her insidiously evil mother. It is jarring, unflinching, and depressing. That is not to say that it is not a good movie, but don’t go expecting a joyful denouement to the story arc. Things are not wrapped up in a typical tidy Hollywood bow.

Precious is played by outstanding newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. She is an obese, dark-skinned, illiterate 16 year old pregnant with her second child. Her first child is mentally handicapped (Precious lovingly refers to her as Monglo) and is kept from Precious at a grandmother’s house. The only time Precious gets to see her child is when it is time for a social worker to visit the home.

The child is brought into the home so that the social worker will believe she lives there. This ensures that Mary, the mother of Precious, (played  by Mo’Nique) gets her welfare check. As soon as the visits are concluded, Mary drops the toddler like unwanted garbage.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the two pregnancies are the product of her very own father, and his repeated raping of Precious. Mary resents the “attention” that her mate has given Precious, and acts out her hatred toward the girl every single day. Her seriously warped logic concludes that Precious brought the rape(s) upon herself, and caused her father to abandon the twisted family.

Continue Reading →

Well, if you’re a fan of NBC’s Chuck, as we certainly are here at The Flickcast, then this news will make you very happy indeed. In spite of its previously uncertain future, it seems NBC has finally decided to give the show more love and has officially announced its premiere date. Chuck will return on January 10, 2010 with a two-hour premiere episode and then move to its regular time, Mondays at 8/7C on January 11.

To commemorate this special event (Hey, we think its special) our friends at NBC have sent us a video featuring series star Zach Levi talking about season 3 and offering a sneak peek at all the action, suspense, romance and cool guest stars. Who might some of those cool guest stars be, you may wonder? Glad you asked.

Actors making appearances on the show this season include Angie Harmon as Sydney, an enemy operative; Brandon Routh as CIA Agent Daniel Shaw; Robert Patrick as Colonel Keller, a soldier and spy from Casey’s past and Kristin Kreuk as Hannah, a potential love interest for Chuck.

Also, Armand Assante guest stars as dictator Premier Goya, who is the target of an assassin; Steve Austin will play Hugo Panzer, who becomes entangled in Chuck’s first solo mission and Vinnie Jones will play Carl Stromberg, an arms dealer.

Of course, also returning for the season are series regulars Colonel John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), Joshua Gomez as Morgan Grimes, Sarah Lancaster as Chuck’s sister Ellie and Ryan McPartlin as “Captain Awesome.” Now that sound great, doesn’t it? Check out the video after the jump and be sure to catch all new episodes of Chuck in January.

Continue Reading →

While Twilight was a guilty pleasure, its sequel New Moon just made me feel guilty. Guilty for paying a sitter, guilty for the gas I wasted, and guilty for buying into the Twilight phenomenon to begin with. A wretched excursion into franchise baiting, New Moon is flat out an embarrassment for everyone involved.

Briefly, if you don’t know the story of the sequel, Bella Swan is a mortal in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen. Towards the beginning of New Moon, Edward realises that it is too dangerous for Bella to continue seeing him, so he pretends that he doesn’t love her anymore and disappears. Bella behaves like a petulant infant and doesn’t leave her room for months because she is a narcissistic, co-dependent teenager.

When she finally emerges after months of alienating friends and family, she sidles up to Jacob, a local boy of Native American descent, who also is a werewolf. Bella then becomes co-dependent on Jacob, because that is what she does. She also becomes a thrill seeker, because whenever she endangers her life (via cliff diving, motorcycling, etc) she sees a floating spectre of Edward pleading for her to quit engaging in said risky behavior. In her melodramatic mind, this is how she can be close to her beloved Edward, if only for a second. That’s a healthy depiction of true love, right?

Continue Reading →

To some, nothing is scarier than spiders, unless you consider William Shatner’s career in the late 70′s (zing!). But there were a few exceptions and even Chris Pine can admit it’s pretty difficult to follow Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk. One film that Shatner did before throwing the maroon jumpsuit back on was a little film called Kingdom of the Spiders in which he takes down a legion of evil spiders.

Shatner played Dr Robert Hansen, who is sent to a small town after a serious of mysterious animal deaths, only to discover that it was only the beginning, and that an evil spider army was behind the whole thing. Finally, the film is making it’s way to DVD for all of us to relive, and we even have the original trailer for you to get excited for all over again.

Kingdom of Spiders was one of the first films involving evil spider kingdoms, which spawned such films as Arachnophobia with Jeff Daniels and Eight Legged Freaks with David Arquette. Special features on the DVD include an all new interview with Shatner, audio commentary by Director John Bud Cardos, Producer Igor Kantor, spider wrangler Jim Brockett and Cinematographer John Morrill. Also included is a Spider Wrangler featurette and rare behind the scenes footage.

Check out the full trailer after the jump, and grab the Special Edition DVD of Kingdom of the Spiders on January 19th, 2010.

Continue Reading →

The Apple Tablet, a device that Apple has neither announced or confirmed, has reportedly been delayed and will go into production later than expected. This means that you can line up for the mythological device sometime in late 2010 now instead of the rumored and unconfirmed early 2010. Don’t you feel better knowing that information?

The release delay, according to DigiTimes, is reportedly being caused by last minute design change, specifically, the use of a 9.7″ OLED LG display. The article also speculates that the delay is a strategic move by Apple due to the current cost of the OLED panels, which run around U.S. $500.00 wholesale. The price of LG’s panels are expected to drop quite a bit in late 2010 as they revamp production with newer facilities and equipment.

Of course, this whole Apple Tablet is still just a rumor, so delays in manufacturing a product that doesn’t actually exist should not be much cause for concern. Although, you might want to tell that to publisher Conde’ Nast, who are reportedly already grearing up to feature their magazine content on the device, starting with their flagship publication Wired. Hey, maybe there is something to this Apple Tablet thing? Guess we’ll find out sometime late in 2010. That is if it isn’t delayed again by a shortage of something like pixie dust.

Welcome to another edition of The Pull List Comic Reviews! An incredibly solid week as we’ve got three Blackest Night tie-ins, some speedster action and a particularly “horrible” tale, but only one issue each week tops the “list.” Be sure to let us know what you thought of these issues, we’re always interested to hear from you, the readers. As always, WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

PULL OF THE WEEK:

Dark Reign: The List – Amazing Spider-Man One-Shot – Marvel Comics – $3.99 US
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Adam Kubert
Score: 9.5

Norman Osborn made a list and he’s checking it more than twice as certain thorns in his side have gotten his full attention. Everyone from the X-Men to the Avengers have had to deal with him, and by now you’ve heard of how the Punisher went to pieces over his clash with the H.A.M.M.E.R. Director, so how will Spider-Man do? Hint: Spidey doesn’t win this one.

I’ll start with Dan Slott’s writing in this issue, and simply state that he crushed it. There’s no other way to say it, really. Sure, an argument could be made that Spidey should have done something by now, especially considering his history with Stormin’ Norman. Put that aside, if you ever wanted to see Peter Parker triumph at anything – he’s had a ridiculously long losing streak since “Brand New Day” – then this is the issue for you.

It’s been a few months since artist Adam Kubert penciled some pages, but with that amount of lead-time you knew this issue would be stunning. He failed to disappoint. Crammed with gorgeous visuals, the entire one-shot was a treat, even when the action had decidedly died down for the last act. One look at the very first page is all you need to know in regards to how good the art is.

Continue Reading →

Not many people say it, but Nicolas Cage gets a bad rap. Often, even from me. Sure, he’s made some questionable script choices in the past, and been known for a few colorful and even over-the-top performances, but if there’s one thing he is known for, it’s consistency in a role. That’s exactly what he brings to the table with Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

The film is an almost-modern-day reboot of the 1992 film starring Harvey Keitel. This time, rather than the rough streets of New York City, the setting has been changed to a post-Katrina New Orleans, with crime high and morals low, the only thing left to keep the streets safe is a deranged lieutenant on a path to his own personal hell.

Continue Reading →

Anyone who has tuned in to the USA cable network over the past few years cannot avoid noticing that their focus has been on characters. Whether the eccentric star of Monk or the artist who created the “Hope” Obama design, every level of character has been put in an ad campaign for the network. Now, USA has launched their own gaming site with USA Character Arcade that lets players create their own characters by playing through a varied collection of USA themed flash games, earning points and trophies along the way.

Like most Flash based gaming sites, many of USA Character Arcade’s games are fast pick up and play action and puzzle games. Some are simple reskinned versions of other games like the Where’s Waldo-esque Where’s Bunny? in which a player must find a hidden rabbit throughout various snapshots of NYC. Others take a simple formula like that of Kitty Cannon and add a whole new level of strategy to it like Psych Food Fight . Instead of merely picking an angle and power level, a player now decides which item they’d like to chuck at the opposing side of the lunch room, each with a different level of bounce, as they try bounce their food all the way to their best friend’s face.

Continue Reading →

Oh, how time flies. It feels like J.J. Abrams’  Star Trek was still hovering out in the distance, a big question mark of a concept. Now the DVD is in the hot little hands of fans, and no one can stop talking about the sequel. Oh heck, they were talking about the sequel two minutes after it premiered. Over at Sci Fi Wire, they pinned down Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Roberto Orci to talk about Star Trek 2. While it’s being touted as being very spoiler filled, it’s really just the creators thinking out loud and seeing what’ll stick.

Abrams confirms that he will direct the sequel, despite all rumors to the contrary, and that we shouldn’t look for it to hit theaters before 2012. While they’re predictably tight-lipped, Lindelof dropped one intriguing hint as to the new film’s place in the timeline. Citing the timeline of the Bourne films as an inspiration, Lindelof suggested that a squishy LOST continuum might come into play.

“One of the things we like to do as storytellers is drop you in the middle of something. And the question that you’re asking yourself is: Where am I in relation to the last time I left these guys? Could this be something that predated even, perhaps, some of the adventures that they had in the first movie? Does it happen five years later? Is it happening two seconds later? Who knows? So we’re not going to tell you.”

Continue Reading →