Kevin Smith may be in between major cult films at the moment, getting ready for his upcoming Jersey-set horror film Red State, but in the meantime, he’s been quite busy keeping his legions of fans happy with live performances.

In the last few months, Smith has created and built the popularity of LA’s SmodCastle, a small theater which is rent out to podcasters and his celeb friends for them to do small, intimate shows for the most die hard of fans.

Smith doesn’t have “small theater” in immediate future, though, as he’s just been booked at The Palms Las Vegas. Here’s the full scoop.

On the Novemeber 12th, after 9 years in holding funny guys “Jay & Slient Bob Strike Back” with a night full of fun and laughter in Las Vegas.  Funny man Kevin Smith is joined by longstanding partner Jason Mewes for a exuberant night of comedic laughter as they take a trip back to “View Askewniverse”.

On November 13th, get up-close and personal with one of Hollywood’s most gifted and hilarious filmmakers. See the raunchy, offensive, and convivial Kevin Smith for a Q&A that is sure to have you falling out your seat.

Tickets haven’t gone on sale through Ticketmaster just yet, but they will soon. In the meantime, check in at Smith’s View Askew site as more dates and events get announced.

It’s been a while since X-Men fans were really able to enjoy their favorite band of merry mutants in a video game that wasn’t part of a “bigger” picture. The last time was back in 2005 with the release of X-Men Legends II: The Rise of Apocalypse. Since then, the only certain X-Men like Wolverine or Cyclops have made their way into other titles like Marvel Ultimate Alliance or Marvel: Rise of the Imperfects. Now, alongside the announcement of the downloadable re-release of the X-Men arcade game comes a teaser for a new X-Men title, X-Men: Destiny.

The game is being written by current X-Men: Legacy scribe Mike Carey who has done a great job focusing on the secondary stories lately for the X-Men on their little island of Utopia, putting a lot of focus on Rogue, Magneto and Gambit as of late. Activision tells us that “The all-new original video game casts players as new mutant recruits in a rich, branching storyline that features a deep element of choice and gives players ultimate control of their destiny.”

Other than that, details of the game have been few and far between. The teaser below does a great job of hyping a big game but does little in terms of answering questions about it like, most importantly, just what kind of game it will be. Action platformer? Squad based combat? Action RPG? Everything is still up in the air.

Make sure to take a peek at the trailer after the jump and stick to the Flickcast for all news on X-Men: Destiny as it becomes available.

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Funny or Die is a website that has cultivated a rabid following by cleverly using celebrity cameos and exclusives, and providing a continuous supply of original content. You’ve probably seen a few of or more of their videos featured right here before.

The site was co-founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and in 2008 they partnered with HBO.  According to Deadline, the site will make its first foray into television with a series tentatively titled Undercover Karaoke.   The concept is loosely based on a a popular viral video from the site called “Undercover Karaoke With Jewel.”

Basically, they disguised Jewel under a wig and makeup, and dressed her up like a businesswoman.  She hits a karaoke bar with her business buddies and when it is time for “Karen” to sing, the crowd is flabbergasted.

TBS has ordered a pilot for the show, in which real celebrities will go various places  in disguise and then perform their own songs to shocked audiences.

The pilot will be produced and created by Funny or Die, using their creative team.  So what do you think?  The Jewel video is pretty funny.  You can watch the video after the jump.

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Ever since E3, Lost in Shadow is one of those games that I just had to try for myself before I made any decisions. Luckily, I was able to fight the crowds at last weekend’s New York Comic Con and secure myself a few minutes with this intriguing side-scrolling adventure, which I surely but quickly became enamored with.

In Lost in Shadow, you play as the shadow of a young boy that has been separated from his body for unknown reasons. By manipulating the physical world using his companion, a sylph, players traverse through the shadow world solving puzzles, collecting “memories” (these basically serve as hit points), and defeating any shadow beasts that may lie in the boy’s path, all in order to climb the tower where the boy’s body lies waiting for his shadow to return.

This game is so impressive because it really shows off the Wii in a variety of ways. With an easy to use control scheme that doesn’t rely too much on motion control and gorgeous art design, this game makes a big impression right away. When I took over the controls and started running around the starting level, I never found myself fumbling over the controls or forgetting which button did what.

Overall, my short time with Lost in Shadow was enough to more than sell me on the game. Be sure to check back here at The Flickcast for updates about Lost in Shadow before its release on January 4th.

Comics, comics, comics. This week brings new ones from our friends at Marvel. Among the ones dropping this week that we are particularly excited about are I am and Avenger #2, New Avengers #5, X-Men #4 and Shadowland #4.

As they usually do, comics hit stores on Wednesday this week even though Monday was a holiday for some. So, head over early tomorrow to your favorite comics shop for best selection.

Don’t know where your nearest comic store is? Use this handy guide to find one.

Check out the list of comics you can get below.

Comics On-Sale:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #645
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #645 SPIDEY VS. WRAPAROUND VARIANT
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS: BLACK CAT #4
CASANOVA #4
DAKEN: DARK WOLVERINE #2
DAKEN: DARK WOLVERINE #2 VAMPIRE VARIANT
DEADPOOL CORPS #7
I AM AN AVENGER #2
INCREDIBLE HULKS #614

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Sandman is a fascinating documentary that made the festival rounds way back in 2006.  It played at both South By Southwest, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Today the film is finally being released on DVD and Blu-Ray.  It is the perfect time for the film to be released, given that we have seen at least two documentaries this year that blur the lines between fact and fiction.

Catfish is out in theaters right now, and Exit Through the Gift Shop was out earlier this year.  Both films were controversial for their “is it real or fake” aspect, and they are still hotly debated by film types.

Director J.T. Petty made a film called Soft For Digging (how creepy is that title?) back in 2001, which has gained a bit of cult acclaim in horror circles. He approached HDNet about an idea for a documentary based on a voyeur who menaced his Washington, DC neighborhood while he was growing up.

Hours and hours of videotapes were confiscated, but the man remained free because the victims opted to drop charges rather than face the humiliation of having the tapes aired in public court.   The man still lives in the same house in the same neighborhood to this day. Pretty interesting stuff, huh?  Unfortunately, the man refused to participate in Petty’s film, and Petty had to find a new course for his film.

So Sandman explores the uncomfortable similarities between voyeurism and watching horror films, bringing in noted experts such as  professor Carol Clover, a PHD who wrote Men, Women, and Chain Saws.

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At New York Comic Con, we had the pleasure of stopping by the Sega booth to take peeks at both the new Captain America game as well as the upcoming Thor title (stay tuned for that story!). When we got to the Sega booth we were given a hands off demo from Brandon Gill from Next Level Games, the developers of Captain America: Super Soldier which is being published by Sega.

We were told right off the bat that one of the most fun parts of the creative process was working with Christos Gage on an original story as opposed to being shackled to the storyline of the movie. The version we saw will be on the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 but there will be a Wii and Nintendo DS version as well.

The entirety of the title takes place during World War II after his origin. One thing that quickly stood out was the change of Nazi villains to Hydra. In keeping with Marvel’s family friendly image and the youth skew that game may take, it isn’t surprising that they went this route. The entire game takes place with Hydra entrenched in a Bavarian castle with Cap running in to tear them down.

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As of last week, we officially have our Director (500 Days Of Summer’s Marc Webb), our Gwen Stacy (Zombieland’s Emma Stone), and our Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Social Network’s Andrew Garfield) locked in for the upcoming untitled Spider-Man reboot from Sony Pictures. Now, word is coming in that Welsh actor Rhys Ifans has been cast as the film’s unnamed villain.

It’s been said that Ifans’ most popular role was alongside Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in 1999′s Notting Hill, but fans of cheesy genre comedies remember him from such fare as Little Nicky, The Replacements, and Pirate Radio. Now Ifans is taking on more of a colorful role as he battles with Garfield’s Spider-Man in the upcoming reboot.

The film is said to have little-to-no correlation with the previous Sam Raimi trilogy and will reboot the entire franchise for a whole new audience. As we said, Ifans may be locked into the film, but Sony is keeping a pretty tight lid on which exact villain we can see him as.

Who would you cast Rhys Ifans as? Could he out-goblin Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin? Or is it time that Electro finally makes it to the silver screen?

Sound off and let us know what you think. Spectacular Spider-Man (tentative title) is currently slated for a July 3rd release date in 2012.

We knew that Microsoft’s launch date was nearing for their mobile strategy re-boot. Designed to go head-to-head with the current heavy-weights of the smartphone arena — the Apple iPhone and the myriad Google Android-powered devices — what we didn’t know is what the new Windows Mobile 7 would look like and what sort of handsets would be available on launch day. That officially changes today with a big media shindig in New York hosted by CEO Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft is really hitting the ground running, with 9 new handsets that will run Redmond’s newest flavor of mobile OS. For those of us in North America, we have a total of 5 to choose from depending on your intended network. If that  choice is AT&T, your selections will be limited to the HTC Surround, Samsung’s Focus or the LG Quantum (pictured). T-Mobile customers will have one fewer option with either the new HTC HD7 or the Dell Venue Pro.

All of the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 phones will include the high-performance Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, the processor of choice for most Android-powered phones these days. Microsoft has indicated that the new phones will begin shipping in time for the holidays this year with even more choices arriving in 2011, including phones from both Sprint and Verizon Wireless.

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This past weekend at New York Comic Con, we got the opportunity to sit in on the panel for director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s prequel of John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing. Carpenter’s 1982 classic was a remake of Howard Hawk’s 1950′s classic The Thing From Another World which was based on a short story entitled “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell.

Heijningen’s film covers the three days prior to Carpenter’s version. A Norwegian research team discovers an alien body frozen in Antarctica. Much like the Carpenter film, the alien is thawed and soon begins to wreak havoc on the  research team who discover that it is a shape shifting being that now wants to copy life on Earth.

Very quickly, the team doesn’t know which of them is human or the thing. The film stars Joel Edgerton as the main hero, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World), Eric Christian Olsen (Community), and Ulrich Thomsen also make up the cast.

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As we mentioned yesterday, there was a reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops single player campaign during the Monday Night Football game between the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings. Due to the late start on the game, it was late in the night when the trailer aired during the game’s third quarter.

And while Brett Favre and the Vikings may have disappointed a lot of people, the trailer sure didn’t. Make sure to take a peek below at the full trailer and give us your thoughts on everything Call of Duty: Black Ops as it gets closer to release.

We have already confirmed with Activision we will be reviewing a copy of the game for the site so keep your eyes peeled for that as well! Check out the full trailer after the break.

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This week’s pick is the Tony Richardson 1968 remake of The Charge of the Light Brigade which tells the story of a British expeditionary force sent to the Crimean peninsula in 1854 to halt the spread of Russian dominance over the vastly deteriorating Ottoman Empire. The Crimean War (1853-56) was considered to be the first modern war of the Victorian age. It was also a war fought by those which represented Christendom throughout Eastern Europe and throughout the holy lands.

The film stars some of Britain’s most celebrated actors: Trevor Howard (Maj. Gen. James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan), Sir John Gielguld, (Field Marshal James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron of Raglan), Vanessa Redgrave (Clarissa), Harry Andrews, (Lt. Gen. The Earl of Lucan), and David Hemmings, (Capt. Louis Edward Nolan).

The film opens with beautiful illustration which shows the mighty Russian bear terrorizing a Turkey wearing a fez hat. The other nations of Europe such as Italy, and the French Eagle look towards England, the sleeping Lion which awakens, lets loose a tremendous roar, and puts on a policeman’s helmet as a show of force that England will flex its might in this international affair.

The opening sequence which is done entirely through animation shows how Britain represents progress, industry, might, and the where with all to conduct policy in the name of the queen. It is a fabulous opening sequence which helps to establish the film and to allow the viewer to witness this pivotal time in Victorian history.

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