This week’s pick is the 1989 drama directed by Roland Joffe Fat Man and Little Boy which were the code names given to the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan, ending the war in the Pacific during World War II. The film stars Paul Newman in a tour de force role as Gen. Leslie Groves, the military head of what was to be known as the “Manhattan Project.”

The film also stars Dwight Schultz (better known for his role on the hit TV show The A-Team playing Murdock) as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant physicist which brought the scientific minds together to help create the project. Rounding out the cast is John Cusack (Michael Merriman) who is a young physicist who acts as the film’s narrator while keeping a secret journal of his time in the New Mexico countryside while research and development of the “gadget” was underway.

The film is a brilliant examination of how the hypothetical became reality. Groves and Oppenheimer begin pulling in some of the best minds in the world who are eager to create a super weapon which will smash the Nazi’s hold throughout Europe. Ironically, Hitler’s own notions of racial purity drove some of Europe’s greatest minds to England and the United States to help the allies come up with an atomic device that would grant them the terms to wage war on the aggressors.

Many of the scenes show how the scientists met crushing deadlines, near fatal accidents with high explosives, radioactive materials, and whether or not the $2 billion project was ethical in the hands of military men like Groves, and what the fate of the world would be with such an awesome new weapon?

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We’re you one of the people waiting in line lasts week to get your hands on a shiny new iPhone 4? If so, you weren’t alone as Apple has released the first official sales figures for the last three days and, to say the least, things are looking pretty good.

According to Apple, Inc. the company managed to sell 1.7 million iPhone 4 units from Thursday the 24th through this Saturday the 26th. At an average of 200 bucks each, that’s a good chunk of change the company received during that time. Hey, we hate math too, that’s why we run a website. However, that adds up to at least an additional $340 Million for the three days.

Not bad, not bad at all. Especially for a company that has been declared dead at least 53 times since 1995. How things have changed.

Click through to check out the full press release from Apple.

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Spend a lot of time on social networks like Facebook? Well then, this movie is for you. The Social Network, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, tells the story of the founding of the most popular social network around, Facebook, and we’ve got the first teaser for the film to share with you today.

Like many teasers this one doesn’t give much away except that the film will take a look at the darker side of Facebook’s creation and follow its founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and president Sen Parker (Justin Timberlake) as they create the site just six short years ago and see it grow into the juggernaut it is today.

The trailer, courtesy of Mashable, gives us at least something to work with, though it’s really only lines of dialogue. However, the tagline (also seen in the poster) of “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies” should also be telling in that this film probably won’t gloss over the troubles, both internal and external, that inevitably plague an undertaking as huge as Facebook.

Check out the teaser after the jump. The Social Network hits theaters on October 1st.

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In anticipation of the DVD release of The Crazies , I got to speak with director Breck Eisner about that movie and some upcoming projects he has planned. While I was doing my research on Eisner, I saw that he directed an episode of Fear Itself, an anthology that played on NBC in the summer of 2008.  As luck would have it, I just happened to have seen the episode Eisner directed (“The Sacrifice”) , so we began by talking about it.

THE FLICKCAST:  I was looking at your IMDB, and I saw that you did an episode of Fear Itself, and it just happened to be one I saw.

BRECK EISNER: Oh really, you’re one of the few. Fear Itself, I think it was miscast putting it on NBC in the summer.

FC: I know, I really pull for anything horror related on TV, and none of it makes it.

BE: No, it just doesn’t, unfortunately.

FC: Well, there are definitely horror fans out there, but I think that they just don’t bother with television.

BE: Certainly not network television.

FC: You previously directed Sahara. How do you get from Sahara to this movie? They are so radically different. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got drawn to The Crazies?

BE: Sahara was my first movie, and it is a very long story about how I came to be directing it. The short version of the story is that I initially was involved with optioning the material with a producer many years before with no intention of making it, it was a much bigger movie than I could make.

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According to the Little Big Planet website,  the worlds of Marvel and Little Big Planet will be colliding on July 7th. Starting on that day and continuing each week, there will be four costume packs for a total of 20 of Marvel’s greatest heroes and most despised villains.

It hasn’t been revealed which characters will be getting paired up for the packs as of yet. It is possible that they may be grouped by team such as an Avengers or X-Men pack or it may be a complete free for all where players can get Captain America, The Punisher and the Human Torch all in one oddball purchase.

In addition, there will be a Marvel Level Kit which contains four missions pitting the Sackboys and Sackgirls against Magneto. Beating these four stages will unlock Marvel music, objects stickers and a “Rooftop” background for your own level creations.

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Toy Story 3 had another stellar weekend at the box office and held off new releases Knight and Day, and Grown Ups.  It made over $59 Million over the weekend.  That is a drop of around 46%, but that is not unusual when a movie has a huge opening weekend.  The film still enjoyed a healthy $14,600 per/screen average.

Toy Story has now made $226.5 Million in its first 10 days in release.  It is on the fast track to becoming the number one animated movie at the box office this year (Shrek Forever After currently stands at $229 Million after five weeks.)  It’s also doing a bang up job abroad, earning another $100 Million overseas in the same time frame.  So far, it looks like Toy Story 3 will become one of the biggest films of the year.

Grown Ups may have taken a critical drubbing, but audiences didn’t seem to mind.  They snatched up a cool $40 Million in ticket sales, to make the movie the number two offering of the weekend. Love him or hate him, Adam Sandler is reliable at the box office.  This will be his tenth movie to open at above $34 Million.  There are not  many stars working today who can match those numbers.

The same cannot be said for Knight and Day, the Cameron Diaz/Tom Cruise spy caper/romantic comedy. The movie opened on Wednesday, but benefited very little from that early opening. Wednesday night the film earned a little over $3 Milion, a paltry sum for two former box office draws.

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For a series that was once created in order to save of a game studio, Final Fantasy has become one of the defining RPG series in video games. With twelve traditional releases, one MMO, and over a dozen spinoff titles, Square Enix is readying itself for a fourteenth Final Fantasy, again jumping back towards the MMO routes of Final Fantasy XI.

Since its announcement at 2009′s E3, only a small sampling of information has been released about the game, mostly to not get in the way of the hype of Final Fantasy XIII, released earlier this year. The game will follow a skill progression system, mostly resembling the structure of Final Fantasy II. Developers have taken what they have learned from Final Fantasy XI and admit to also borrowing inspiration from other titles such as World of Warcraft (the MMO industry leader), Diablo and Warhammer Online.

Coming to both the PC and PlayStation 3, Final Fantasy XIV already looks to surpass Final Fantasy XI. With a console generation to build upon and not being hampered by PlayStation 2′s internet limitations, Final Fantasy XIV may have a shot at becoming the dominant console MMO.

Below, take a peek at a side by side comparison of footage from the Alpha build of Final Fantasy XIV compared to the Beta build. For those who don’t understand that difference, Alpha code is an earlier version in the game’s creation life cycle. This is where more of the bare bones of the game is laid out. In Beta, more testing occurs and polish has been put over details in both gameplay and graphics.

Still set for an unannounced 2010 release date, be sure to check back right here for more news on Final Fantasy XIV. In the meantime, check out the video and some pics from the game after the jump.

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A host of  recent indie films have specialized in caustic characters and unlikable leads.  Greenburg, Mother and Child, and Please Give have all featured some of the most unpleasant fictional characters of recent memory.  However, none of their characters can hold a candle to Ben Kalmen in Solitary Man, played with gleeful abandon by Michael Douglas.

The former movies at least  allowed us to believe that those characters wanted a chance at redemption.  Those characters would have liked nothing more than to assuage their guilt over their toxic actions toward others.  Not Ben.  He gets a couple of opportunities to redeem himself,  he thumbs his nose at said opportunities. He is one of the most narcissistic characters ever brought to life on film.  He’s also a misogynistic pig.

Ben is sixty years old, yet he won’t even look at a woman over twenty.  The lone exception to this disturbing rule is his current girlfriend (Mary-Louise Parker) who he keeps around because she is wealthy and has a well connected family. Ben is trying to rebuild his life and fortune after an embarrassing career-ending swindle he pulled when he was a car-salesman guru.

Disgraced and penniless, Ben tries to make up for his shortcomings by bedding as many women as is physically possible for a man his age. He treats the women with cool disregard and cruel contempt after they succumb to his charms.  He is truly awful. He espouses offensive observations such as, “No one over forty is stick-thin.”

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Welcome to this week’s On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage this week. Let is know if we missed something interesting. Otherwise, on to the links!

Jimmy Kimmel brings us a phenomenon of pop icons clashing in The Jersey Shore Saga: Friggin’ Twilight.

We’ve been to Comic-Con, so our standards for costumes are pretty high. This General Grevious costume still takes the cake.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone Magazine has seen Inception, and he says you’ll love it.

The Food Network can be pretty boring for non-foodies, but unnecessarily censoring parts of it can make it fun in a whole new way.

Megan Fox is campaigning to play Rainmaker in a Gen 13 movie. Considering how Jonah Hex went, shouldn’t she just stop?

The world of independent film keeps growing in quality and professionalism, and the newest film The 3rd Letter is proof of just that.

What if Nintendo made Halo 3? Only hilarity, that’s what.

In other Twilight news, Robert Pattinson is allegedly a descendant of Dracula. With that brow, our first guess would’ve been Frankenstein’s Monster.

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It’s Friday so that means previews of tonight’s shows on Syfy. This week, however, we’ve only got a preview of tonight’s Merlin to share with you. But don’t worry, this episode of the show has enough going on so we don’t really need anything else.

In the preview for tonight’s episode, called “The Fires of Idirsholas,” Merlin’s loyalty is pushed to the limit by Morgause’s plan for revenge. What will Merlin do and how will he manage to keep his word yet prevent an even bigger disaster from happening? Tune in tonight to find out.

Before that, check out the preview for tonight’s episode after the jump. Merlin airs on Syfy at 10/9C.

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As we’ve been doing, here’s another in our ongoing series of previews of new shows coming either in the Summer or the Fall. This time around we’ve got another preview for NBC’s Fall show The Event to share with you today.

The show, which concerns a super secret event, a cover-up so big the President didn’t even know the full details and the average guy who accidentally uncover the secret, promises suspense, drama, action and fodder for those who love these kinds of stories. It also boast a pretty impressive cast including Jason Ritter, Sarah Roemer, Laura Innes, Zeljko Ivanek and Blair Underwood as The President.

In these new clips some of the stars of the show try to explain what they think The Event is all about and what their theories are. So far, after watching all the previews for this show, it does seem pretty interesting. Will it replace something like Lost for an audience hungry for a new show to latch onto? We’ll see.

Check out the new videos after the jump. The Event will air Mondays at 9/8C on NBC.

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Rodrigo Garcia’s new film is entitled Mother and Child, but it might more accurately have been called Mother and Daughter, as variations of that freighted relationship play out in the interconnected lives of three women in Los Angeles, depicted with stellar ensemble work by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Kerry Washington.

Annette Bening’s role is the most attention-getting, as Karen, a woman so angry and closed that she becomes apoplectic when a co-worker (the wonderful Jimmy Smits) attempts to give her a bag of home-grown tomatoes. Karen lives with a mother possibly even grimmer than herself, but her true wound is the loss of the baby she was forced to give up for adoption when she was fifteen years old.

It soon becomes apparent, at least to the viewer, that this baby is now the adult Elizabeth, played by Watts, a corporate lawyer who protects herself with clinical detachment and a sexually sadistic streak. Meanwhile, Washington plays Lucy, a young wife desperate to adopt and become a mother.

Far apart at first, these lives overlap in that hyperlink way popularized by movies such as Babel and Syriana, but in this case the collisions are not so much a matter of chance or fate as it is of deep connections having to do with motherhood, and all revolving around the character of a social-working nun (“Mother Superior,” representing Mary, the Holy Mother?) played by Cherry Jones with appealing compassion. If such nuns were the rule rather than the far-apart exception, we might all be tempted to convert to Catholicism.

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