The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HAFTA) announced its 2009 nominees for the Golden Globes this morning. The Golden Globes are considered a harbinger of the Oscar season, even though they  generally throw a few wacky choices into their slate.

For those keeping track, Up in the Air nabbed six nominations, followed by Avatar with four.  Sandra Bullock continues to enjoy a stellar year, as she was nominated for The Blind Side as well as The Proposal. Other double nominees include Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia, It’s Complicated), and Matt Damon (Invictus, The Informant!).  Directors Quentin Tarantino and Jason Reitman each got a nod for directing and screenplay as well.

The Golden Globes ceremony will take place on January 17th, 2010, and will air on NBC.

Here is a list of the nominees in major film categories:

Best Picture, Drama

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious

Up in the Air

Best Picture, Musical/Comedy

500 Days of Summer

The Hangover

It’s Complicated

Julie and Julia

Nine

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This past weekend, Spike gave its annual salute to the video game world with their Video Game Awards show. Featuring performers such as Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg, the show has grown in to a larger spectacle each year to award the best in the video game industry. Along with all that hype has come exclusive trailers for the biggest premieres in the video game industry.

Some we knew were coming like the prequel to the Halo trilogy with Halo: Reach’s first in game footage while others were merely rumored and mired in PR confusion like Green Day: Rock Band.

Even more exciting were the surprise announcements like that of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II and Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 which had predecessors that dominated the video game charts of the past year. Take a look below at all of the trailers and let us know which ones get you most excited.

We already are placing our bets over in the Flickcast offices about which games are going to make the biggest splash in 2010. Take a look at some of our favorite trailers after the jump.

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There’s a lot of interest in Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass these days and now there’s a couple of new items that have been released, in the form of a new poster and trailer courtesy of UGO.com, which give us a better look at one character in particular: Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy. The character, fairly obviously modeled after Batman right down to the yellow-highlighted utility belt, is standing on a rooftop overlooking Manhattan and features the caption “I can’t be invisible. But I can kick your ass.”

The new clip shows Cage’s character not in costume, but in a secluded location training his daughter Hit Girl, played by Chole Moretz. Said training involves learning how to take a couple bullets to the chest while wearing a bulletproof vest and then negotiating with her father to allow her to shoot him a couple more times. The clip further reinforces the humor, and how dark it is, that has previously been established in prior trailers.

I’m sure these latest two releases will bring interest in the film to an even higher pitch. Unfortunately, we’ve still got to wait until April, 2010 to wait to see it in theaters. Until then, check out the clip and a larger version of the poster after the jump.

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The Courier Mail has a gallery of photos from the new Robin Hood film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, Danny Huston and Matthew Macfadyen. The series of images focus mainly on showing Crowe on horses, either sitting idly with what appear to be his merry men, charging into battle, and a couple of Ridley Scott and his crew working.

The movie is supposedly written as a more historically accurate telling of the Robin who becomes the famous hood. Apparently we’ll be treated to visuals of battles in France, battles in England, and the beauty of Cate Blanchett all dirtied up to look authentic. But, not too dirtied up.

The casting and obviously the pedigree of the filmmakers behind this movie have me interested. The screenplay is by Brian Helgeland, who has written a number of great movies (Payback, Man on Fire), along with a couple stinkers (The Taking of Pelham 123). But he has a couple of interesting projects coming out soon with the films Green Zone, with Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon and Salt, with Angelina Jolie and Phillip Noyce.

The newly released international trailer for the movie is pretty bombastic with it’s drum and cymbal soundtrack, but it works. It definitely has the Ridley Scott vibe to it, and it’s nice to see Crowe in action – and fit – again. Robin Hood hits theaters on May 14, 2010. Check out the trailer and the larger photos after the jump.

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With it’s common threads of obsession and neckwear, the Harry Knowles-hosted birthday bash was also host to a number of movie premieres and rare to find films this year. First was the coup of getting Avatar screened in 3-D, which garnered praise from most of the audience of guests and film critics. Knowles was also able to get a copy of Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s latest which has been pushed back until next year.

About this film, according to Anne Thompson’s blog, a viewer said: “It’s a version of Angel Heart without The Devil…I figured it out a third of the way through.” I still hold out that it’ll blow me away, much like it seemed to “Head Geek” Knowles, who called it a “brilliant movie.”

But apparently, the movie that overshadowed them all was Matthew Vaughn’s comic book adaptation Kick-Ass, which is about people (mostly kids) who put on superhero costumes, fight crime, get beat up, and a 10 year old that kills lots of people. Knowles compared it to John Woo’s Hard Boiled, only calling it “far more entertaining than that though, creating many iconic and thoroughly mind blowing sequences.”

Some of the other interesting movies to screen at the event were the Scorsese-suggested The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger’s classic about ballet; Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s newest, Micmacs, which is labeled as “satire on the world arms trade” and, finally a sneak peak at the Iron Man 2 trailer. The full list, and Knowles’ description of how all the films fit together, can be found on Ain’t It Cool’s website.

WARNING – This article does, in fact, contain spoilers regarding recent comic book releases. If you have not read your comics, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

In this day and age it is very hard to keep things secret for too long. The secret cameo in Zombieland or the end of the fourth Twilight novel or that Bruce Willis is a ghost in the 6th Sense just to name a few. The big surprises are not longer allowed to surprise us because some people insist on ruining them for us because they want to show off that they were the first in the know.

Still other times, we often experience inadvertent spoilers because of marketing efforts. This is especially prevalent in comic books where the description of a comic in Previews gives enough information most times to allow the reader to know the end result of the current story arc as the next is already being promoted. Recent “big moments” like Magneto’s return to the X-Men series were ruined for anyone who picked up previews to see his face on the cover of an issue still two months from release.

It can be said though that someone is reading Previews “at their own risk” knowing that there may be spoilers within by the nature of the publication.

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With Christmas fast approaching, if you’re still not sure what gifts to get for your favorite geek, why not some cool comics? Our friends at Marvel want to help and are coming out with all new comics this week which would make perfect gifts for that geek in your life, or even for yourself. Come on you work hard, why not reward yourself with a few comics too, right?

To help you in your gift-giving quest, here’s a list of all the comics coming out this week from Marvel. And, as always, be sure to click through to check out some cool art and overs for these books.

Comics On-Sale:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #615 (GNTLT)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #615 VILLAIN VARIANT (GNTLT)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS: ANTI-VENOM – NEW WAYS TO LIVE #3
ASTONISHING X-MEN #33
BLACK PANTHER #11
CABLE #21
CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBORN #5 WRAPAROUND COVER
CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBORN #5 CASSADAY VARIANT
CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBORN #5 FINCH VARIANT
DAREDEVIL #503
DARK AVENGERS #12
DARK WOLVERINE #81
DEADPOOL: MERC WITH A MOUTH #6

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We’re in what most fans like to call a “Muppet Lull” right now. Hard to believe, but The Muppets haven’t been in theaters since 1999, when Muppets in Space was panned by critics. Sure, we’ve been given a few TV movies to snack on in the past few years, but they barely hold a candle to the originality of The Great Muppet Caper or Muppets Take Manhattan.

Then, suddenly about six months ago, a few Muppet viral videos started popping up on YouTube, in which the famed Waldorf and Statler would comment on certain “new” and “hip” Internet fads. Those videos became instant hits, and Muppet Studios started putting out more and more.

As of late, on of their more popular videos surfaced in the mainstream, in the form of a “Bohemian Rhapsody” spoof. The video tallied over 20 million views, and the faith in the Muppet generation was immediately revitalized.

Last week, the epic studio released a new holiday song. Carol of the Bells, in Muppet form. Starring some of the fan favorites that aren’t necessarily the A-list characters; Swedish Chef, Animal, and Beaker. Check out the new video below, and if this doesn’t get you into the holiday spirit, nothing will.

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Overall, it was a pretty quiet weekend at the box office for Hollywood. Invictus and The Princess and the Frog were new releases vying for the top spot, and Disney’s Princess easily won. Princess made about $25 Million on 3400+ screens.  This is good news for fans of hand drawn animation, as this is the first time Disney returned to the method since 2004, when Home on the Range was released.

It’s been all computer generated ever since. I haven’t seen Princess, but people I’ve talked to really liked the look of the movie, and said it looked like the older Disney movies. The Blind Side also continues to impress, and came in at number two with $15.4 Million.

In its fourth week of release, it only dropped 22% from last week. It now has a domestic gross of over $150 Million. With a budget of around $30M, this movie is shaping up to be one of the biggest hits this year.

Invictus made a paltry $9 Million over the weekend. Considering the star power (Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman) and the director (Clint Eastwood), I think everyone expected this movie to perform better. Critical and audience feedback has been positive, so perhaps it will pick up a bit.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon placed fourth, with about $8 Million, bringing its domestic total to over $267 Million. In fifth place, A Christmas Carol only dropped 11% from last weekend, and made about $6.8 Milion. Now in its sixth week of release, the movie continues to perform , but it has not yet recouped its budget of $200 Million.

Holdovers Brothers, 2012, Old Dogs, Armored, and Ninja Assasin rounded out the top ten. Outside of the top ten, Up In The Air also did very well, making $2.4 Million on only 72 screens for an average of $34,000 per screen. The film will roll out more theaters next weekend.

According to Variety, the movie likely to be Mel Gibson’s next directorial effort will be a viking story, written by William Monahan (The Departed, Kingdom of Heaven), and starring once and future heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s really early in the process to be saying this – as Gibson is finishing up The Beaver with Jodie Foster, and DiCaprio just finished principal photography on Christopher Nolan’s Inception – but I got pretty excited when I read the headline to the story.

Of course, I initially had hoped that maybe Gibson was going to star in the movie as well, but he’s done well enough with the period movies where he was just behind the camera (Apocalypto). Monahan, has been on a steady role since breaking in, with KoH being his first credited feature writing gig. He also scripted the soon to be released Martin Campbell, Mel Gibson starring movie Edge of Darkness.

DiCaprio’s ventures into periods, beyond the 30′s or 40′s, has been the 17th century Man in the Iron Mask, and the 19th century Gangs of New York. So, it’ll be interesting to see him stepping back further to meet the time frames of Gibson’s previous movies (13th century in Braveheart, 16th in Apocalypto, and the first century in The Passion of The Christ).

According to the L.A. Times, in Men in Black 3 Josh Brolin’s role has been more clearly defined as a young K (Tommy Lee Jones in the previous two films), who J (Will Smith) will somehow travel back in time to meet. Yeah, that’s pretty much all the news there is to report at the moment, other than the script is being worked on by Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy), pretty much everyone else rumored to return, Barry Sonnenfeld possibly directing, Jones and Smith, in their respective roles, and hopefully Tony Shalhoub.

I can always stand to see his character get his head blown off a couple more times. As the article also mentions, another hurdle the movie faces – other than the whole time-traveling bit – is scheduling.

We know that Jonah Hex has had some reshoots, Brolin’s scheduled for a number of other movies (including The Coen Bros. remake of True Grit), so what that does for the scheduled shooting of MIB3 sometime in 2010 is anyone’s guess. However, it is Josh Brolin, and whether it’s this or the number of other movies he has coming out, the consensus is that we’re all just excited to see him in more genre fare.

When I first saw The Punisher: War Zone I pretty much hated it.  Yet another Punisher reboot that simply didn’t work.  However, upon further reflection over subsequent months I realized War Zone wasn’t bad. Actually, it was Ray Stevenson’s performance as Frank Castle that single-handedly saved the film.

Stevenson continued to flesh out his bad ass resume as Titus Pullo in the mini-series Rome. While Titus was a more benign individual at times it didn’t take much to bring out the Punisher-esque tendencies when he reverted to his soldier role.  In fact, Rome had some of the best action sequences ever and Stevenson again was brilliant in this capacity.

So, what happens when you combine The Punisher and Titus Pullo? How about one of  Thor’s Warriors Three: Volstagg? Of course, the most obvious question was how Stevenson would fill out Volstagg’s large, um…physique:

“…a solution is at hand, in the shape of a fat suit. “It’s fantastic,” said a beaming Stevenson. “I’ve tried the suit on, and what they’ve done is kind of sex him up: he’s sort of slimmer but rounder.”

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