I firmly believe Zombieland was one of the best films of 2009. It simply came out of nowhere, defied expectations, and even went so far as to inspire some of us.  Given the films success it’s no surprise that a sequel would be on the horizon. Now, Variety is able to confirm that a sequel is in development and chances are it will be in 3D:

“Everyone had fun watching (the first) ‘Zombieland’; making it a more visceral experience can only make it better,” said the film’s producer Gavin Polone. “I don’t think you want to see ‘Ordinary People’ in 3-D. But ‘Zombieland’ is clearly one movie that will benefit from (the technique).”

Now, I’ve never been sold on the whole 3D thing.  Personally, I think it’s a gimmick and haven’t gone out of my way to see any recent 3D films.  Simply put, I have yet to find a compelling reason to see a film in 3D over its standard counterpart.

That being said, Zombieland may just be the film I actively seek out a 3D theater to see it in.  It was so brilliantly campy that it begs to bring that pseudo third dimension to the adventures of Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg). It’s perfect, and so would a title of Z3D.  Okay, that may work better for a third film, but it’s still cool.

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Now in its 25th year, The Independent Spirit Awards honor excellence in independent film. Films must cost less than $20 Million to be eligible for nominations. Nominees were announced on Tuesday. The Last Station (5), Precious (5), and The Messenger (4) received the most nominations.

Of note:  Anvil! The Story of Anvil and Food, Inc. are both up for best documentary. 500 Days of Summer got nods for Best Movie, Best Screenplay and Best Male Lead (Joseph Gordon-Levitt.) Precious received nominations for Best Female Lead (Gabourey Sidibe), Best Supporting Female (Mo’nique), Best Movie, and Best Director. Adventureland was nominated in the Best Screenplay category.

Ethan and Joel Coen’s A Serious Man will receive The Robert Altman Award for directing, casting and ensemble acting. Paramount’s Paranormal Activity received a nomination for Best First Feature.

The awards ceremony will take place in Santa Monica on March 5th, 2010. A complete list of nominees and other notable news may be found on the official Independent Spirit Awards website.

Meanwhile, The Gotham Awards, which is a New York based award ceremony, gave out their awards yesterday. Notably absent was Precious, which didn’t even garner a nomination.

Director Kathryn Bigelow took home Best Movie for The Hurt Locker, which also won Best Ensemble Cast. Food, Inc. won Best Documentary.  Kathryn Bigelow and Natalie Portman also received special tributes.  A complete list of the winners can be found on the IFP website.

While the idea of the “buddy cop” film has lost it’s luster here in the States since Riggs and Murtaugh hung up their guns, the sub-genre has taken on a whole new life over in France. Back in 2004, writer Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Taken, The Transporter Trilogy) brought the worlds of buddy cop films, action, and parkour together. The film was a hit across the globe, and the team is now reuniting to do it again.

The trailer for District B13: Ultimatum gives us a glimpse of the awesomeness that we can look forward to, including leaps from skyscrapers, driving through the second floor of a building, and outrunning a car on foot. Of course, we don’t recommend watching this film in it’s dubbed form over it’s original French dialogue, but you may not have a choice when the movie gets an American theatrical release.

Check out the first new trailer for the film after the jump, with no dialogue, cocky narration, and yes: lots of jumping and explosions. Expect to see District B13: Ultimatum in your local multiplex on February 5, 2010.

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I probably spend as much time playing brand spankin’ new video games as I do replaying my old favorites, not just because of nostalgia but just because they’re awesome games. Which is why it’s exciting to hear that Sega will be releasing a Sonic Classic Collection for the Nintendo DS next year, according to Kotaku.

Many Sonic classics have already been released for systems like the PS2 and Xbox, but what’s exciting about this collection is that since it’s on the DS, you’ll be able to take them anywhere. The collection will include classics Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles.

The game will also have a nifty “save anywhere” feature, which is a relief for those of us who used to just leave on their Sega Genesis  for hours on end while we had family dinner and did homework. The Sonic Classic Collection will ship in March 2010.

I used to hate Westerns.  I live in the wide and rugged expanse of Colorado, grew up in the shadow of the Rockies, and see cowboy boots on a daily basis. Heck, I even did a volunteer stint at a western museum. I couldn’t stand watching films that were basically set in my own backyard, even if the days of gunslingers and posses were long gone.

Later, I finally came around. I can’t say when this shift happened — probably upon my first adult viewing of Lonesome Dove, or maybe even as recent as James Mangold’s remake of 3:10 to Yuma. But I suddenly found Westerns to be a lot of fun, and I’ve enjoyed going back and watching all John Wayne and John Ford offerings that I’ve missed due to my snobbery.

Because I’m the type of girl who overshares everything, I thought it would be fun to chronicle this obsession, and encourage others to ride along with me. Thus, Wednesday Westerns was born. Every Wednesday, I’m going to explore this dusty and acrid genre, finding the good, the bad, and the ugly examples along the way. I hope you’ll watch and discuss along with me — and I’m going to try and make as many selections from online streaming options to prevent you from putting off the ride.

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Last night marked the first two episodes of the 9th season of Scrubs. The medical sitcom’s long life has helped it through a change in networks, and most recently a change in stories. This season, the series is taking a different direction by focusing on the lives of a new class of “scrubs”, while the original cast stays on as teachers at the medical school.

We got the chance to talk with stars Donald Faison (Turk) and Dave Franco (Cole) about this season. The two actors discussed the differences in this season to all others, how that has affected working on the show, and where Dave fits into all this.

The two also got a chance to discuss the new season 8 DVD, which is available now. Donald talks about some of the great features of the DVD, including collected webisodes, bloopers, and deleted scenes.

Check out our interview with the two after the jump, and be sure to catch Scrubs on ABC every Tuesday at 9PM/8PM Central.

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For those of you who don’t know who Grant Morrison is you’re likely to be made aware of him soon.  The groundbreaking comic book writer behind such legendary runs on X-Men, Animal Man, and Doom Patrol is getting his own biopic, and the director of that movie, Patrick Meaney, is profiled over at Wired.

In the profile, Meaney says Morrison is about to become one of those creators that will receive mainstream recognition that only creators such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller have enjoyed.

“Most ‘civilians’ that I talk to about the project still don’t know who Grant Morrison is,” Meaney said in the interview, “but Moore is definitely a name they recognize, as is Frank Miller. I feel like we could soon be seeing a bunch of Morrison film projects in the not-too-distant future.”

Currently in-development is Morrison’s work WE3, which is a favorite among many of us Morrison fans. The story involves pets enhanced with cybernetic weaponry to become assassins who rebel against their programming and their creators. The project is currently being handled by Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson.

Morrison’s sensibilities lends well to the screen, however, his ideas are far left of Richard Kelly-weird so I’m not sure how well they are likely to be received by the bigwigs in Hollywood, or by audience members for that matter.  But I applaud any would-be producer in developing an idea of Morrison’s, it shows a willingness to take chances and I appreciate that. But if WE3 gets a true to form adaptation for the screen, I would suspect many parent’s groups raising holy hell over it.

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Already being picked up by Brad Pitt’s production company, Capcom’s Dark Void has started making some serious waves in both the video game and movie industries. If you hadn’t heard of Dark Void, strap a jetpack on and pull yourself out from under the rock you have been hiding under.

Given a spotlight back at San Diego Comic-Con, Dark Void is a futuristic mashup of a sci-fi third person shooter combined with The Rocketeer. Add in the new “vertical combat” mode where players progress upwards as fire rains down from above from dozens of enemies and you have yourself an outstanding looking game with incredible graphics that only a company like Capcom can provide.

The story takes place in a mysterious place known as the Void where our hero Will must battle a group of mechanical aliens known as the Watchers who are hell bent on destroying humanity. With only the basic weapons and jetpack at his disposal at the game’s start, Will must overcome insane odds in this uniquely styled adventure.

Click thorugh for the game’s final cinematic trailer and stay tuned to the Flickcast for more coverage on Dark Void as it becomes available. Dark Void releases for the XBox 360, Playstation 3 and PC on January 19th, 2010.

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Excited for the upcoming SyFy adaptation of Lweis Carrol’s classic Alice in Wonderland tale? Well, if so you’re in luck because we’ve got a preview of that two-part drama for you right here. According to the network, this version of the story will be “an entirely new look at “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.”

For this re-imagined adaptation, writer/director Nick Willing “mines the bizarre ingenuity and twisted logic of Carroll’s work to create a daringly different, boldly colorful and delightfully skewed dreamscape of his own.” Well, that does sound interesting, doesn’t it?

I wonder what Tim Burton would say about that? He’s been known to create a few different and bold dreamscapes himself. Oh well, I guess we’ll get a chance to compare this version with Burton’s when his hits theaters.

Until then, check out the preview for this Alice after the jump. Alice, which features Kathy Bates, Tim Curry,  Colm Meaney and Natasha Calis, premieres this Sunday at 9/8C on SyFy.

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This week is a lighter week than last week, so I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about some of the books that came out last week that I didn’t get a chance to check out because of Thanksgiving. Which reminds me: comics do not come out today (Wednesday, Dec. 2) they come out tomorrow because of the holiday.

Last week the trade came out for one of the best miniseries that not a lot of people may know about. This book is Wildstorm’s The Winter Men by Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon. Lewis is responsible for the creation of Bulletproof Monk and this new book is incomparable. It involves the  development of a super soldier program in Cold War Russia to serve as a deterrent to America’s Superman. The trade came out last week, and if you can find it, you really cannot go wrong with this incredible book. It’s my pick of last week.

As for this week, we have Blackest Night Flash by Geoff Johns. I don’t know exactly why this book exists since the Flash is in the main Blackest Night book more than even Hal Jordan or other Green Lanterns, but I’m intrigued to see if this is different somehow. Other than that, I’m really only getting a couple more books.

Yesterday (December 1st) was Eisner award winning writer Matt Fraction’s birthday, and you can celebrate by buying the recent issue of Uncanny X-Men #518.  My second book of the week is the start of Marvel’s Siege with “The Cabal” by Brian Michael Bendis and art by the awesome Michael Lark. I think this event is going to be genuinely dynamite, and I can’t wait to get every damn issue of the book.

The other book is Hulk Winter Guard by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis, the brains behind the brilliant Zuda webcomic, High Moon. High Moon is a western supernatural story where a gun for hire hunts down supernaturals in the Wild West. There is just one hitch: this gun for hire, cut from a similar cloth to Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven, is also a werewolf. It’s awesome, trust me, go read.

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This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt again welcome recurring guest host Elisabeth Rappe and launch into a whole slew of new topics including Avengers casting and story news, The Road, potential Captain America actors, feature film adaptations of Magnum P.I. and ALF, films that should and should not be on Blu-ray and the films of Michael Mann.

Chris, Matt and Elisabeth also made some cool picks this week including Elisabeth’s pick of the Spanish thriller Alatriste, Matt’s pick of the Sly Stallone starrer Daylight and Chris’ pick of the Stanley Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove, featuring George C. Scott, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers. See the movie to get that joke.

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.

The Hobbit has been on everyone’s radar since the success of the Lord of the Rings films, but has been a long time coming. After New Line was sued by both director Peter Jackson and Tolkien’s heirs, Jackson is now reporting yet another delay to Variety.

Stating that writing on The Hobbit, which will be a two-part film, is slowing down production, Jackson said that he hopes that he along with Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens and director Guillermo del Toro will finish writing by the beginning of next year. Production would then start by the middle of next summer, a few months later than expected.

With Jackson as writer/producer and Del Toro at the helm, The Hobbit is sure to be worth the wait. However, fans of both the literature and the “Rings” trilogy are sure to be antsy to return to Middle Earth as soon as possible, so this latest delay won’t make them very happy.

The Hobbit films have reported release dates of December 2011 and December 2012, with no word as to whether the recent delays will push back these dates.