Obviously, we’re big fans of Battlestar Galactica around here. It was a great show that, at least in our opinion, went away too soon. We’re also fans of the pioneering band The Beastie Boys and have always thought these two things should come together somehow and if they did, the results would be awesome.

Well, our wish has been granted because an enterprising person out there in the world (aka YouTube user katamaran78) has decided that it should be so and has created a cool video combining BSG with The Beastie Boys mega hit “Sabotage.” The result is very cool and very entertaining and in every way as awesome as we thought it would be.

Sadly, as good as the video is, it does remind us once again how much we miss BSG. Fortunately, we’ve always got Caprica to dull the pain. Check out the video after the jump.

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As I was watching the new Eclipse trailer, out of sheer boredom and a hint of curiosity, I found myself wondering why in the world two super-powered boys would fight it out over a girl clad in American Apparel who’s a hell of a downer.

How is there an entire film series devoted to one girl’s delusional obsessions of a fairy tale ending with a born-again killer? Sparkely vampires want to kill you, strapping werewolf shape-shifters want to keep you safe.

Do these Edward fans have a death wish and a yearning for abandonment? Is Bella Swan so heavily marketed as mesmerizing that it erases the history of the brazen blonde that came before her?

A long time ago, otherwise known as the 90’s, there was a series called Buffy the Vampire Slayer where a feisty girl from the southland slayed Urban Outfitted demons. This legendary show paved the way for multi-tasking girls who cheer by day, slay by night, and every once in a while hook-up with a tormented blood sucker.

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When you say the word “history” out loud, it’s usually met with a chorus of groans. “I hated history in school! All those dates and crap! So boring.” It’s depressing.

History, if taught right, is a story.  (That’s why it has “story” embedded into it. No joke.) It’s not names, dates, and places. It’s blood and sex, with a dash of art and higher aspirations. It’s the stuff you pay to watch in theaters or on HBO but with the kicker that it actually happened.

I couldn’t be happier that television has decided to take that idea and run crazy with it. The new trend on cable is taking finding some notorious era of history, populated with sex and swearing, and spin a few seasons out of it. HBO kicked off the trend with Rome and Deadwood (and promptly broke our hearts in the process), and now Showtime and Starz have taken up the gauntlet.

Showtime has been happily running around Renaissance England with The Tudors, which is about to wrap up in its fourth season now that Henry VIII is coming to the end of his wives. While it’s played a little fast and loose with history, it’s been a sumptuous watch, and fans won’t have to look far for a replacement.

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Since we started posting videos under our Fan Film Friday banner, some of them have been selected because they were well done and some have been because they were funny. But no matter what, they have always been entertaining. That’s just what today’s video is.

Fans of Lost have been known to take to the Internets with a plethora of fan films and bizarre edits as a show of honor to their favorite confusing sci-fi series. With that said, not many people would probably consider Lost and Miley Cyrus in the same sentence. That is, until now.

YouTube user xSoppySofax has made quite a few Lost-themed fan films, but “Hurley in the U.S.A.” may be the funniest. After the jump, check out how the user took footage of everybody’s favorite lottery winner-turned-castaway and edited it to become Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” music video. Funny? Yes. Disturbing? Maybe.

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Starting this week, The Flickcast will be taking our love of Machinima and turning it in to a weekly feature. For those who don’t know, Machinima is real time 3D rendering of graphics to generate computer animation. What that means is people take different video games and their associated mods and create different short films or series based off of them.

This week, we will be taking a look at Phil from Black Light Productions. Named after its main character and created using Halo 3, Phil revolves around a Halo newbie as he learns his way around the XBox Live world with the accompaniment of the standoffish Zack and overly nice and naive Wally. Unlike some Machinima which has the players reacting as if the events of the game are “real life”, Phil, Zack and Wally acknowledge that they are playing Halo 3 and communicating over Live.

Following them through the series’ thirteen episodes, we get to see some of the biggest faults in online gaming portrayed in a very humorous way. Everything gets covered through the series from trash talkers, glitchers, griefers, competition and clans… and even a little bit of romance.

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Every once in a while, we’ll get an opportunity to check out a new indie film from out of nowhere and get blown away by it. Sadly, this happens less often than we would like, but in this case, it was completely true.

We recently got to check out the short film The Legacy, written and directed by Mike Doto, about a boy who discovers that his father is the world’s greatest superhero. The film is, by all definitions of the word, fantastic. It captures some of the elements that made the original Superman films so great, without treading into campy territory.

With that in mind, we got a chance to sit down with the writer/director of the film, Mike Doto, about what it took to make the project, and where he goes from here.

The Flickcast: With a concept like The Legacy, what drove you to this idea? Were you a big comic fan growing up? If so, which books were you inspired by the most?

Mike Doto: For The Legacy I really wanted to get back to the roots of why I wanted to be a filmmaker to begin with. I feel like I grew up in a time when movies really connected with kids and I’ve never forgotten the impact that those films have had on me.

Most of these films starred a young protagonist that I could relate to quite easily, films such as E.T., Goonies, Wargames, D.A.R.Y.L., The Last Starfighter, and Back to the Future. What I’ve learned is that these weren’t just kid movies, these were movies for all ages, they appealed to the both the young and the young at heart.  So I thought about what movie I would have written when I was 10-years-old and I decided that I probably would have written a movie about being a superhero.

Superman was my boyhood hero so naturally that’s the hero I wanted to emulate.  In thinking further about the Superman story I decided that it would be more effective to write a film about the relationship between the father and the son since this is at the heart of the Superman character. I actually wasn’t a big comic book fan growing up. I was a huge fan of the Superman movies, but I didn’t really spend much time reading comics.

I would much rather dress up as a superhero or play with my action figures and imagine what that world would be like to live in. Even though a camera wasn’t rolling, I think this was the start of my filmmaking career although I didn’t realize it at the time.

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Much like other classic battles including Mac versus Windows, New Coke versus Old Coke, Nikon versus Canon, Edward versus Jacob and Democrats versus Republicans, the debate between fans of Star Wars and Star Trek rages on and never seems to be fully resolved. Fans on both sides of the isle vehemently defend their position that their choice of sci-fi entertainment is vastly superior to that other crap losers believe in.

Some fans intimately entrenched in this debate got together and decided to make a video and post it on YouTube. Of course, in this modern world of ours if you have such a debate, that’s what you do these days and this video is the result.

In the video the debate rages on between Star Wars and Star Trek. Which is superior, and why? Is Luke Skywalker a better hero than Captain Kirk? These questions, and many more, get discussed, debated and dissected in this video. Ok, actually none of that happens, but the video is still really inventive and well done.

Be sure to stay until the end. Check it out after the jump.

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The internet gods have come up with a few impressive time-wasters over the past couple of years. From the birth of flash games to pictures of kittens to an endless supply of “Vampire vs. Zombie vs. Tree”-style games on Facebook, there are certainly many things to do to keep you away from actual work.

In that same vein comes The Akinator, a mind-reading website that will tell you exactly what character–be it film or TV–that you are currently thinking of. While the name isn’t all that impressive (sounds too much like a machine that turns you into a former American Idol), but the service will definitely impress you.

We’ve been passing this around the Flickcast offices, trying to stump the so-called “web genius” and we’ve yet to find a wrong answer. From characters like The Stay-Puft Marshmallow man to Captain Mal Reynolds, the web-app is definitely a fun time-waster, and will even impress you along the way.

Be sure to check out The Akinator, and let us know if you finally come across a discrepancy in the system.

Hot Toys, a company that makes life-like renditions of famous movie and pop culture figures, has released images of their newest creation. Brad Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine, from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds can (hopefully) soon by yours.

The 1/6th scale recreation covers the smallest detail from the Nazi scalping knife to the unexplained noose scars around his neck. The resemblance to the actual Brad Pitt (of which, this is his first officially licensed figure), is uncanny.

Check out some neat images and the specifications for the figure, courtesy of our pals at SlashFilm, after the jump.

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In the first installment of TV Digest: Canceled, I talked about shows such as Moonlight, Jerico and Studio 60 that were gone too soon. This time I’ve got more shows that were canceled way before their time, and are a testament to both how amazing television can be but also how nearsighted executives can be when making the decision to cancel a show.

While these shows may no longer grace our television sets with shiny, fresh new episodes, they live on in our hearts and on our DVD shelves. These are what I consider to be the most beloved canceled TV shows of our time.

Arrested Development

Produced by brilliant filmmaker Ron Howard and starring a slew of incredible actors, Arrested Development ran for three seasons from 2003-2006. Shot in a documentary style fashion, like The Office, the show is about the wealthy but seriously crazy Bluth family after their father gets arrested and their company faces bankruptcy.

Oldest son Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is the glue that holds everyone together while siblings Gob (Will Arnett), Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) and her husband Tobias (David Cross), and Buster (Tony Hale) do their best to make a mess of things. I really can’t say enough about how good this show was.

Other than the incredible casting, this show has some of the best writing and comedic timing I’ve ever seen on television. I have watched all three seasons multiple times and I can watch an episode now and still find something brand new to laugh about, because of how well the writers reference old jokes and spin new ones in their wake.

But the show also can have these incredibly heartfelt moments, in between the insanity, that remind us how important it is to be a family despite how much money you have in the bank. And as the economy continues its slump, this crazy family in the midst of financial turmoil is looking far less eccentric and just plain average. As this show ages it becomes more and more relevant, and it becomes clearer and clearer just how great it is.

Despite all that, as well as numerous Emmy nominations and wins, the show was canceled. Luckily we’ll see more of the Bluth family soon, in a feature length movie that begins shooting this year.

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