In a move some could consider a direct answer to Amazon’s announcement this week that Prime members can watch streaming content and its included with their membership, Netflix announced a new deal with CBS to bring shows from the network’s library to the service’s roster of streaming content.

Of course, Netflix and CBS did’t announce the terms of their deal but only said it will bring CBS content to Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service for the next two years. CBS also has an option to extend the deal for another two years. Some of the content available because of this deal includes episodes of recent shows such as Medium and Flashpoint, as well as full seasons of older shows like Star Trek, Twin Peaks, Frasier, Cheers and The Twilight Zone.

“We are thrilled to be bringing CBS shows to Netflix and are looking forward to growing our relationship over time,” Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in a statement. ”Netflix is now the only online premium subscription service with shows featured on all four broadcast networks and dozens of cable TV’s biggest brands.”

Click through to check out the full press release.

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With all the rumors circulating about a revised iPad it was only a matter of time before an announcement came from Apple regarding such a device. Well, it looks like said announcement has finally arrived.

This morning, Apple has begun sending out press invites to a March 2nd media event to be held in Cupertino, CA. The event, scheduled for 10AM Pacific, will most likely be the official coming out party for the company’s update to the iPad, which we will keep calling iPad 2 until we know different.

In usual Apple fashion, the invitation simply states to: “come see what 2011 will be the year of.” I’m going to go out on a limp and guess 2011 will be the year of iPad and maybe the year of a revised iPhone sporting LTE chipset with 4G capability. Although, that second device probably won’t be announced during this event. This one is going to be all-things iPad.

While all of this Superman news has been surfacing for Zack Snyder, most should remember that between now and then, we’ve got a full world of cerebral kung fu and militant battle sequences to look forward to with Sucker Punch.

For those who don’t know, Snyder’s world of hot chicks with guns has a pretty intricate plot. Here’s a synopsis:

Set In The 1950′s into the vivid imagination of a young girl placed at a mental institution by her step-father some time after her mother died, with only her dreams providing the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary.

Between the chick-heavy, star-studded cast, Inception-style plot, and tons of machine guns, dragons, and robots, this is setting up to be one of the most fan-friendly films in theaters for quite some time.

Take a look at the new trailer after the jump, and catch Sucker Punch in theaters on March 25th.

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News from the personal Twitter account of D.J. Caruso that he will be directing a big screen adaptation of the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon comic series Preacher will probably be taken as both good and bad by the more hard core fans. On the one hand, its nice to see that perhaps Preacher will finally be making its way to the big screen after many stilled attempts at adaptation as a movie or a TV series.

The cynics out there will probably have a problem with Caruso as the choice to take on the project. Sure, his track record might not install confidence that he’s the right man for the job. However, if you’ve ever seen his first film Salton Sea, you will know he has talent and therefore, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt here.

To be honest, I’m more concerned how screenwriter John August is going to fit all of Preacher into one two and a half hour movie. My guess is he won’t even try and will probably just use the first major story arc as the basis for the film. Whatever he does end up doing, I’m also a fan of August so I’ll be very interested in how he pulls it off.

No word on if this deal is completely done or pretty much anything else. Still, when we see things like this we feel compelled to bring them to you. So, we did. Now, what do we think of this and if it does go forward, who shall we pick to play the important roles?

Even with all the cool ways to be entertained these days, sometimes its just nice to sit down and read a few new comics. Speaking of new comics, as usual, this week sees the release of a bunch of new ones from our friends at Marvel.

Let’s take a look at what they have for us. Among the new ones coming out, we’re most interested in Astonishing X-Men #36, Avengers #10, Iron Man 2.0 #1, X-Men #8 and Secret Avengers #10.

As with most weeks, new comics arrive on Wednesday, so hit your nearest comics book store early for best selection.

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

Comics On-Sale:
AGE OF X ALPHA #1 AOX 2ND PRINTING VARIANT
AGE OF X ALPHA #1 CONRAD 2ND PRINTING VARIANT
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #655
ASTONISHING X-MEN #36
ASTONISHING X-MEN #36 KALUTA VARIANT
AVENGERS #10
CAPTAIN AMERICA #615
DEADPOOL #33
DEADPOOL CORPS #11
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #884
FANTASTIC FOUR #587 2ND PRINTING VARIANT
FANTASTIC FOUR #588
HALO: FALL OF REACH – BOOT CAMP #4

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Who doesn’t love stop motion animation? Hell, Seth Green and Matt Senreich have basically made a career out of it, so what’s to stop fans from the web to continue the trend with their own whacked out storylines?

Enter YouTuber Patrick Boivin, who showed us who would win in epic fan-requested battles like Iron Man vs Bruce Lee and of course the timeless battle of Michael Jackson vs. Mr Bean. Now, Boivin brings us exactly what (he thinks) would happen if/when Iron Man 2′s Black Widow goes completely nuts and takes out some of our favorite fictional characters.

See if you can spot them all, but we definitely noticed Jack Bauer, Robert Patrick, Predator, and Michael Jackson. Needless to say, things get pretty intense, and all to a pretty killer baseline.

Check out the video after the jump.

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Now that Henry Cavill has been cast as the Man of Steel, there is a good sigh of relief that WB has made a (hopefully) decent choice in casting. But what about the rest of the fictional world? There are still plenty of meaty parts in the Superverse that have yet to be cast, and apparently Kevin Costner is in the running for one of them.

From Deadline.

I’m told that there is heightened interest in Kevin Costner for a key role in the Superman reboot that is being directed by Zack Snyder for Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures. I’m not exactly sure what role Costner is likely to play, but he has certainly been in good guy mode lately.

With films like 300 and Watchmen under Snyder’s belt, we know that he’s no stranger to how picky fans can get about their casting. The only role we can see Costner filling is Jonathan Kent, but maybe Snyder and the brothers Warner have something more “out of the box” in mind. Zod? Perry White?

We’re hoping to have answers in the coming weeks on this and other casting news for the project.

This little comedy  features a terrific ensemble cast anchored by the ever more endearing Ed Helms.  After his break-out performance in The Hangover, and a regular role on television’s The Office, this is icing on the cake. Helms shows some range in this unexpectedly sweet, but raucous comedy.

Helms plays Tim Lippe, quite possibly the worlds most naive grown man. He’s never left his home-town, never been on a plane, and never been in a hotel before. He’s blissfully unaware of the world outside his job and home. Speaking of home, he spends his evenings bedding his old junior high teacher, played by Sigourney Weaver.

Lippe has managed to hold down a job at an insurance company, and thanks to his kind demeanor, he has a nice portfolio of clients. When the company’s golden boy dies under particularly embarrassing circumstances, Lippe is called upon to represent the company at a convention held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  It might as well be Paris or Rome, because Lippe is giddy as a schoolboy at the prospect of going to the convention.

He’s also quite nervous, because he has the responsibility of making the case for his office to win the “Two Diamond” award, which is tops for the folks heading to this convention.

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Are you one of the millions of Amazon shoppers that takes advantage of being a Prime member and gets free, unlimited two-day shipping on pretty much anything? And as good as that is, did you ever hope that your $79.00 annual fee for that service would ever give you more benefits?

If so, this is your lucky day. Today, Amazon announced that it will also offer Prime members “unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows” from Amazon’s Video On Demand library.Yep, you read that right. For the same fee per year you will also get free streaming of movies and TV shows.

As someone who’s tried Amazon’s streaming service before using my trusty Tivo Premiere, I can say that it works quite well. Better, in most cases, than Apple’s similar offering: the Apple TV 2.0. As I’m already taking full advantage of Amazon’s Prime membership, and have for years, this added benefit will definitely keep me as a member.

The new service is available right now to existing Prime members. Amazon is also offering a one month free trial to check out the service as well so what have you got to lose?

With all the comic book movies coming out the last few years and with so many more to come, fans probably have questions about them. Fortunately, Fox has decided to do something about that and let fans ask questions directly to the cast and fillmakers of the upcoming X-Men: First Class.

How does it work? Well, read and and we’ll tell you. This new program, called “X-Perts”, starts March 1st and allows fans to submit their questions via Twitter and Facebook. Each week a new cast member or filmmaker will answer them on the “X-Perts” page.

Following the above guidelines, fans can submit questions two ways: Via a Tweet @XMenMovies or by posting on the wall at the film’s official Facebook Page. Now before you go and get too excited you can be sure they won’t be ansering any spoiler questions or anything like that. For those kinds of answers you’ll just have to wait for the movie itself to be released.

Speaking of that, X-Men: First Class comes to theaters on June 3rd.

This week’s pick is the classic 1966 British colonial film Khartoum directed by Basil Dearden and written by Robert Ardrey. Charlton Heston stars as famed British General Charles “Chinese” Gordon who defended the ancient city against Muslim extremists in 1884-85 Africa. The film also stars Sir Laurence Olivier (The Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmed), Ralph Richardson (Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone), Richard Johnson (Col. J.D.H. Stewart), and Nigel Green (General Garnet Wolseley).

Khartoum is a thundering epic made when epics were the norm in Hollywood. After the success of Lawrence of Arabia, the studio system was looking for another fantastic story which would have the same effect as David Lean’s masterpiece had done. The events surrounding the siege of Khartoum are not widely known however, it was an incident which sparked controversy throughout the British Empire in the late nineteenth century, and threatened the stability of a region which is still plagued to this day by internal conflict.

The film opens with sweeping photography and music which helps to set the stage for a grand story of chivalry and adventure. After years of British rule trying to control various warlords and bandits, an Egyptian army which is poorly armed and trained is led by a Col. William Hicks whose army has marched from Egypt in order to pursue rebels under the command of The Mahdi (Olivier), a religious figure who believes himself to be “the expected one of Mohammad”.

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Every once in a while, you connect so deeply with a movie that it shakes you to your core. Thus was the case with Barney’s Version, a remarkable story about an unremarkable man. This movie made me do two things I have not done since I began reviewing films. About ten minutes into the film, I could tell it was something special, and I put down my notebook (which I’ve never done) because I did not want anything to interfere with the story unfolding before me. I just wanted to drink it in from beginning to end.

After I saw the movie, I sat in my car, and cried. Like big, huge, racking sobs that would not stop.  It was a full fifteen minutes before I was composed enough to drive home from the theater. The last time I had this kind of reaction to a movie was after I saw the traumatizing documentary Dear Zachary.  I cried for about three weeks after that.

But this is what movies are all about-how wonderful to find this hidden treasure that made me laugh, cry, and feel so deeply for the characters. I was emotionally devastated by this wonderfully quirky and unconventional love story.

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