Okay, okay, there aren’t many summer movies that you’re willing to take the younger kids to, and something has to fill that void, so Mr. Popper’s Penguins is pretty much your only non-animated choice.

It’s odd, because I don’t think of Jim Carrey as being much of an attraction for kids, but it’s likely intended as a draw for the 30-something parents looking for a non-panda-centric film to placate their brood. Or for those who loved the 1938 book as kids themselves, though I never read it, and, from what I gather, it’s vastly different.

Carrey plays Popper, a semi-weasel (would that make him a ferret?) of a real estate agent with a golden tongue and flair for convincing hard cases to sell their property to his high-risin’ New York firm. In this, he’s ably aided by his alliterative assistant Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond), an adorably saucy little Brit with an impediment that causes her to pepper her speech with a proliferation of p’s. One day Popper receives a crate from his recently deceased father, a world-renowned explorer who never had time for his son, and in it is a penguin, which proceeds to destroy Popper’s apartment and provide the first in a series of unnervingly graphic defecations.

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Harry Potter has been a generation defining cinematic event. Never before has a film franchise gripped the collective imaginations of so many for nearly an entire decade. Since 2001 there have been 8 Harry Potter movies, all of them have been well received, some are bordering on classic of an age. Today Warner Bros. released the latest and likely last trailer for the final chapter.

Apple has the new trailer and it delivers on just about every note. Showcasing large battles, epic moments and even some love sprinkled in for the ladies, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is primed to be the most exciting Potter movie yet.

The trailer plays heavy on the idea that this is not just the last movie in a series, but it is the finale of one the biggest things ever on the big screen. There are elements of past films in the trailer that really sell the notion that something bigger than a standard blockbuster is at play here. Also seeing as many of the side characters as possible getting screen time in the trailer is such a fitting way sell the best cast fantasy franchise this side of middle earth.

Check out the trailer after the jump.

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Now that E3 is becoming more and more of a distant memory, we’ve got some goodies that folks who couldn’t attend may have just missed. One of which ties in with one of the most anticipated superhero movies of this year, Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

Though the title is different (the game gets Super Soldier as the subtitle), there are still some great similarities to the film, such as the look and even the voice of Chris Evans himself.

The first ever video game based solely on Cap, this one is expected to be a pretty fun and impressive gaming experience, giving the user full capacity to utilize that Super Soldier syrum running through Steve Roger’s veins.

We’ve got the prologue movie from the game itself, which has some of the better graphics we’ve seen in superhero games of the last few years. In it, we even get a look at the film’s (and definitely game’s) main antagonist, The Red Skull.

Take a look at the prologue trailer after the jump, and be sure to grab your shield and helmet when you pick up Captain America: Super Soldier for all next-gen systems on July 19th.

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The upcoming film Moneyball has already had its share of problems. After being shutdown only days from shooting in 2009, the film finally found its way back into production with a new director, Bennett Miller, and will be released later this year.

As the release is getting closer, we’ve got the first trailer for the film today from the folks over at Yahoo Movies. In this one we get an earnest Brand Pitt and a rebellous and wisecracking Jonah Hill.

Together, they make an unusual odd couple but at least in the trailer, the odd pairing seems to work. Now if the film can only live up to all the hype surrounding it and Pitt and Hill can really pull things off.

Well then, friends, we may just have a homerun on our hands. See what I did there? Sports metaphors and all that. . . nevermind.

Moneyball, which in addition to Pitt and Hill features Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright and Chris Pratt, hits theaters on September 23rd. Check out the trailer after the break.

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There’s a moment in Radio Days when a young Allen and his parents have a chance encounter with a “Whiz Kid,” one of those freakish adolescents who spend every moment of their day memorizing trivia. Allen’s parents are in awe of the kid’s diction and “intelligence” while to Allen and ourselves he comes off as a stuffy automaton.

That single scene exemplifies the theme of Midnight in Paris: (and I take this line from Tyler Cowen’s excellent summation) “if we somehow managed to meet the cultural titans of previous eras, how many of them would come across as blowhard hacks, if only because their own subsequent work has made their personae obsolete?”

The Allen surrogate is Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), an American Hollywood hack in Paris with his shrewish fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her disapproving parents John (Kurt Fuller) and Wendy (Mimi Kennedy). Gil, currently engaged in his novel, longs for the Paris of the 1920s and, after a walk one night, meets a cab that whisks him back in time to a party with F. Scott (Tom Hiddleston) and Zelda (Alison Pill) Fitzgerald.

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Even though the premise of the upcoming film Warrior is a bit hard to believe (the two people fighting in the “big fight” at the end of the movie are actually brothers) that doesn’t mean we’re not interested. Especially because we happen to be big fans of actor Tom Hardy around The Flickcast offices.

His previous work in films like Bronson and Inception have proven his ability and mark him as an actor to watch. Plus, he’s playing a signifcant role in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming third Batman film so naturally, we’re going to be keeping track of him.

Next up for Hardy is Warrior, an action drama from director Gavin O’Connor, whose previous film Miracle shows he knows his way around sports action movies. Here’s some info on the film as well as a brand new poster for it after the jump.

Haunted by a tragic past, former Marine Tommy Conlon (Hardy) returns home for the first time in fourteen years to enlist the help of his father (Nick Nolte) to train for SPARTA, the biggest winner-takes-all event in mixed martial arts history. A former wrestling prodigy, Tommy blazes a path toward the championship while his brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), an ex-fighter-turned teacher, returns to the ring in a desperate bid to save his family from financial ruin.

But when Brendan’s unlikely, underdog rise sets him on a collision course with the unstoppable Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront each other and the forces that pulled them apart, facing off in the most soaring, soul stirring, and unforgettable climax that must be seen to be believed.

Warrior hits theaters on September 9th. Judging from the poster they seem to be going for the female audience just a bit. I guess that’s a good way to get them to see this kind of movie.

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When you’ve got the best selling FPS video game of 2010, what do you do for an encore? Why, keep releasing expansion and map packs of course to enhance the experience even further.

That’s just what Activision is  doing with the announcement today of Annihilation, a brand new content pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops, that’s set for release for XBox 360 on 28 June.

Annihilation will include four new multiplayer maps “Hangar 18,” “Drive-In,” “Silo” and “Hazard.” There will also be a new add-on for the popular Zombie mode, in which players must defend themselves against hordes of the undead. Of course. Who doesn’t love zombies?

“With Annihilation, Black Ops fans will get four exciting and unique multiplayer settings with Hangar 18, Drive-In, Silo and Hazard,” said Treyarch Studio Head, Mark Lamia. “Players will also enjoy an all-new Zombies experience, Shangri-La, an exotic and mysterious map filled with deadly traps, dark secrets and innovative gameplay that will challenge even the most daring Zombie hunters.” Sounds cool.

Of course, as you already know, Call of Duty: Black Ops is a huge success having grossed over $1 Billion worldwide. With content packs like Annihilation and previous releases First Strike and Escalation, it’s popularity is sure to continue. The only thing that might displace it, or at least knock it down a few pegs, is the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 — which I got to check out recently at E3.

I’m sure there’s room at the top for both of these games. More info on Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation as we get it.

With X-Men: First Class blowing people’s expectations out of the water, there has been some more movement in other X-Men film properties, because Fox just loves to strike while the iron is hot.

For a while, the Wolverine sequel was held up in pre-production hell because they couldn’t seem to lock in a director. Darren Aronofsky was originally set to direct, but he dropped out back in March. Now, Fox is announcing that 3:10 to Yuma and Walk The Line director James Mangold is a lock and the film will continue into production. From Deadline:

Negotiations are about to get underway, but I’m told that Mangold will take the helming job on the sequel to the X-Men spinoff film, a post that became vacant when Darren Aronofsky dropped out of the film in March. I’d heard that Mangold was on a very short list coming into this week, along with Warrior director Gavin O’Connor and Brooklyn’s Finest helmer Antoine Fuqua.

I’ve heard that Fox will look to start principal photography in the fall. Scripted by Christopher McQuarrie, The Wolverine takes place mostly in Japan.

The main problem that Aronofsky had when going into the film was that he’d have to leave his family and work it Japan for up to 6 months. It seems that Mangold is more into the idea. We hope to hear more and get a glimpse at the film’s look and feel as we enter production later this year.

Nick Frost has taken on zombies, suburbanites, and a friendly alien that sounds like Seth Rogen, but his newest flick, Attack the Block looks like it may just be his time to step away from Simon Pegg and shine.

Directed by friend and collegue of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, the film looks to do all of the things that Skyline and Battle of Los Angeles failed to do. Here’s the premise.

Set on a council estate in South London on Bonfire night, the film follows a street gang, Moses (John Boyega), Pest (Alex Esmail), Dennis (Franz Drameh), Jerome (Leeon Jones) and Biggz (Simon Howard). While they are mugging nurse Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a fiery object falls from the sky, crashing through the roof of a nearby car. When they investigate, they discover a creature from the meteor and they kill it. Soon more aliens crash land and the gang has to defend themselves and their council estate from the alien invaders.

The tagline alone, “Inner City vs. Outer Space”, should be enough to get you to see the film, but if you need more incentive, you can check out the brand new red band trailer for it after the jump.

Attack the Block is set to hit select US cities on July 29th.

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Casting for this film just gets weirder and weirder. First we learned that redhead Amy Adams would be playing the brunette and love interest of the titular Man of Steel, Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman reboot from director Zack Snyder. Then we learned that both Kevin Costner and Diane Lane were both cast to play the Kents, Superman’s Earth parents. And now we’re getting probably the weirdest of news.

THR is reporting that Russell Crowe is interested in portraying the late Kryptonian father of Superman, Jor-El. This comes as a bit of a surprise, considering the pickiness that Crowe has established in picking his previous roles.

One can only imagine that it’s the pedigree of following Marlon Brando as the character, who reportedly was paid $3.7 million back in the mid-70′s for a measly 15 minutes of screen time. Could Crowe be going after that same easy cash? Or is he a closet Superman fan that we never knew about?

The film also stars Tudors actor Henry Cavill as the red-caped hero, and Boardwalk Empire star Michael Shannon as the film’s villain, General Zod. With Zod being the villain in the film, we can expect Crowe’s alleged Jor-El to play a slightly larger role in the film, as it was he who imprisoned Zod in the Phantom Zone all along.

We hope to hear more (and hopefully get a title) soon as the film begins shooting later this year in Vancouver.

Page One: Inside the New York Times focuses on several facets of the paper itself—its day-to-day operations, the folks who write, edit, and run the paper, and its struggle to remain competitive in the age of the digital news, but it also provides a glimpse into the quickening change of newsmedia as well.

Director Andrew Rossi (Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven) was granted a year’s access inside one of the oldest papers in America to film, and from what must have been a warehouse of footage, he scaled it down to a mere 88 minutes that covers an exhaustive array of topics through the camera’s own eyes and those of The Times‘ colorful cadre of show-runners. Among the faces we meet and follow are the paper’s Executive Editor Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, the Managing Editor, Brian Stetler, the cherubish Media reporter, and, mostly, Media Columnist David Carr, the plain-talking, ex-cocaine addict.

Rossi does an excellent job of capturing the toils, trials, and tension of a daily newspaper with practically every shot. We see reporters and editors ensconced in their workspaces, surrounded on all sides by endless stacks of books, papers, and computer monitors. We see them plan a day’s paper and then go to work furiously, bicker amongst themselves, check their facts, chew out interviewees, and feel the tension as they wait for a call back from one source minutes before the deadline.

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We don’t feature enough Indie films around here so to remedy that, I’ve got one for you today that looks especially interesting. It’s called Bellflower and before you snicker and turn away because of the title, you really should watch the trailer.

Here’s some info about the film from the official synopsis:

Best friends Woodrow and Aiden spend all of their free time building Mad Max-inspired flamethrowers and muscle cars in preparation for a global apocalypse. But when Woodrow meets a charismatic young woman and falls hard in love, he and Aiden quickly integrate into a new group of friends, setting off on a journey of love and hate, betrayal, infidelity and extreme violence more devastating and fiery than any of their apocalyptic fantasies.

Written and directed by Evan Glodell, the film features Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson, Rebekah Brandes, Vincent Grashaw and Evan Glodell. It opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, August 5th.

Check out the trailer to this very interesting film after the jump. You won’t be sorry you did.

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