This week’s pick salutes the valiant fliers of United States Army Air Corp in the 1949 release of director Henry King’s 12 O’Clock High. The film stars Gregory Peck (Brig. Gen. Frank Savage), Hugh Marlowe (Lt. Col. Ben Gately), Gary Merrill (Col. Keith Davenport), Millard Mitchell ( Maj. Gen. Pritchard), Dean Jagger (Maj. Harvey Stovall), and John Kellogg (Maj. Cobb).

12 O’Clock High was one of the first post World War II studio projects that was made on a grand scale and depicts the hardships of America’s earliest campaigns of daylight precision bombing against German held targets in Europe. The film opens in London in 1949 where Maj. Stovall (Jagger) discovers a toby jug in the window of a London antiques shop. He asks the shop keeper the price and demands that he must have it.

Stovall then proceeds by train and by bicycle to the fictional town of Archbury, England where the 918th Heavy Bombardment Group’s base of operations was. The camera pans off and the scene flashes back to the fall of 1942 when the USAAF first came to England to assist the British in bombing campaigns.

The 918th HBG has suffered major casualties as they begin to meet heavy German opposition over Fortress Europe. The group commander, Col. Keith Davenport (Merrill) has become too emotionally attached to his men and is affected by the losses the group has suffered. Maj. Gen. Patrick Pritchard (Mitchell) believes that Col. Davenport should be relieved of his command and that a new CO take his place and turn the 918th into an effective fighting force. Gen. Pritchard believes that Gen. Savage is the man for the job.

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One of my favorite movies (mostly for the gratuitous violence and sardonic humor) is Mel Gibson’s Payback. In that 1999 film, director Brian Hegeland takes a rather unsympathetic character, an underworld thug, armed robber, and cold-blooded murderer named Porter, and transforms him into the story’s victim who blazes a blood-soaked trail of revenge and ends up getting the girl, even if she is a high-priced hooker.

What was most surprising to me was that, at the end of the film, Porter was the same amoral thug he was in the beginning with no noticeable character change. And even though character change is pretty much de rigueur by Hollywood story standards, its absence does not appear to have affected audience reaction to what went on to become a fairly successful movie.

Much the same appears to be the case with The Lincoln Lawyer and Matthew McConaughey’s character, Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller. Haller, to be fair, is a manipulative, unethical, bottom-feeding lawyer who lies to his clients, bribes pubic officials, and uses his membership in the legal profession to influence judges and get the system to work for his convenience.

His office is a black Lincoln town car driven by a former client, Earl (Laurence Mason) who is working off his debt, and his current clients include a biker accused of drug dealing and a hooker with a cocaine problem, all of whom play key roles in making this story work.

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This week’s pick is the classic World War II commando caper The Guns of Navarone (1961) directed by J. Lee Thompson, and written by acclaimed author Alistair MacLean, (Where Eagles Dare). The film stars Gregory Peck (Capt. Keith Mallory), David Niven (Cpl. John Anthony Miller), Anthony Quinn (Col. Andrea Stavrou), Stanley Baker (Pvt. “Butcher” Brown), Anthony Quayle (Maj. Roy Franklin), James Darren (Pvt. Spiro Pappadimos), and Irene Pappas (Maria Pappadimos).

The film is set during the rather forgotten Dodecanese Campaign from September 8th to November 22nd 1943. As the Germans had smashed southerly through the Balkans into Greece beginning in late 1940, their Italian allies held several of the Greek islands in the south-eastern Aegean Sea and used them for staging areas to help the Germans conquer Greece next. Fascist leader Benito Mussolini referred to the island of Leros as “the Corregidor of the Mediterranean.”

It was also hoped that Germany could cajole neutral Turkey to enter the war as a member of the Axis. The Allies tried several attempts to capture the islands in order to counter the German push through the Balkans into Greece.

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This week’s pick is the real life story about the Bridge over the River Kwai, and a fantastic war drama about a group of allied POWs who are forced to build the infamous Burma “Railway of Death” in director David L. Cunningham’s To End All Wars (2001).

The film stars Robert Carlyle (Maj. Ian Campbell), Kiefer Sutherland (Lt. Jim “Yanker” Rearton), and Ciaran McMenamin as Capt. Ernest Gordon who plays the film’s narrator and was the man who wrote the book Miracle on the River Kwai a.k.a. Through the Valley of the Kwai about the accounts depicted in the film.

The film opens as a flashback where Ernest Gordon (McMenamin) tells why he decided to enlist in the second “war to end all wars” as he was attending university in Scotland at the outbreak of World War II. He says that he decided to stop reading about history and became a part of it.

Gordon joined the ranks of Scotland’s legendary Argyll Sutherland Highlanders who were Britain’s first and last line of defense. His brigade marches from Edinburgh Castle to cheering Scots seeing the men off to war.

The film then flashes forward to the allied defeat in Singapore in February 1942 as the Japanese seized the great British naval base which was the gateway to the East Indies. Thousands of British and other allied prisoners including Dutch, Australian, and one American Merchant Marine, Lt. Jim Rearton (Sutherland) who attached himself to the surrendering forces. They don’t know it yet, but these men are to be brought to Burma where their Japanese captors plan to use them as slave labor in order to build a railway in order for the Japanese to attempt an invasion of British colonial India.

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Whenever a new high-profile project gets going rumors pretty much instantly start to circulate concerning who is writing, directing or acting in a particular film or TV show. In the case of the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, we already know some pieces of the puzzle.

For example, we already know Timor Bekmambetov is the director, Seth Grahame-Smith is the writer (based on his own novel) and that Bekmambetov, Jim Lemley and Tim Burton are producig. What we don’t know is who will be taking on the titular role of Abe — although we now have a few clues who it might be.

Over at Deadline (yes, again) they’ve got some exclusive scoop on who some of the actors, both known and unknown, who are in contention for the role. Some of the names being mentioned include Benjamin Walker, James D’Arcy, Adrien Brody, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Josh Lucas, and Timothy Olyphant.

You probably recognize some of those names and some you probably don’t. It’s an interesting mix of actors and from what we’ve seen pretty much any of them would probably make a fine Abe Lincoln.

However, if we had to pick, one our choice would be Timothy Olyphant. Even though one or two of us here at The Flickcast don’t understand or respect his talent, the rest of us do and think he would do a great job.

What do you think? Is Olyphant the right man for the gig? Well, whatever happens, we will know soon enough.

Look for the film to hit theaters on June 22, 2012.

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) is the ultimate black comedy, war movie which pokes fun at the absurdity of nuclear war and those responsible for escalating tensions throughout world during the Cold War. The film stars the great Peter Sellers as three of the film’s major characters, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of her majesty’s R.A.F., U.S. President Merkin Muffley, and as crippled ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove who tries to educate the president and his staff as to the intentions of the Soviets, and how America can survive World War III.

Other talents include Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper, (the commander of Burpelson A.F.B.), and George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, a fanatically anti-Soviet member of the president’s staff, and loosely based on actual American Air Force Gen. Curtis “bombs away” LeMay who was one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a veteran of the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Dr. Strangelove was based on the novel Red Alert written by Peter George. The screenplay was written by Kubrick, George, and satirist Terry Southern as a film which shows just how crazy and simple it truly is for the super powers to plunge the world into nuclear Armageddon. As tensions flare around the world due to Soviet and western policy expansion, Gen. Jack Ripper (a stellar performance from actor Sterling Hayden) orders the air wing of his B-52 bomber squadron to initiate “Wing attack plan R”, a plan which gives lower echelon commanders the authority to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union if the normal chain of command is disrupted, e.g. if the president and Washington D.C. were taken out by a sneak attack.

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If you were one of many fans who thought that if Peter Jackson wasn’t going to direct The Hobbit a really great alternative was Guillermo del Toro, prepare to be disappointed. After spending the last two years developing the adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic as his next directing effort, Guillermo del Toro has announced he is now stepping down as director of the project.

The director was obviously disappointed about the decision but said: “In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming “The Hobbit,” I am faced with the hardest decision of my life,” Guillermo wrote in his announcement on “Lord of the Rings” fansite TheOneRing.net. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures.”

However, all is not completely lost as the director also indicted he would stay on the project co-writing the screenplays for parts one and two with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens. Of course, now that del toro has stepped down it would seem like a perfect choice would be for Jackson to step up and take over the film.

After all, he’s been intimately involved with the production and did a pretty good job with those Lord of the Rings movies. Sadly, with Jackson’s other commitments, he won’t be taking on the film either.

“New Line and Warner Bros. will sit down with us this week, to ensure a smooth and uneventful transition, as we secure a new director for ‘The Hobbit,’ said Jackson. “We do not anticipate any delay or disruption to ongoing pre-production work.”

Well, there you go. With del Toro out and Jackson out, who’s the best choice to take on The Hobbit now?

What can we say, there’s a brand new preview of the trailer for the upcoming third chapter in The Twilight saga, which is better known as Eclipse, and we’ve got it for you today. Courtesy of the fine folks at Extra, the teaser doesn’t really give us all that much to go on because, basically, it’s just a preview.

Still, what it does do is provide yet another reason to show shots of the cast of the film, which includes all your favorites such as Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, and have them walking, standing, talking and otherwise looking as good as possible. The preview also clues us in just a bit on some plot points of the film, which, if you’ve read the book, you probably already know by heart.

Still, seeing even this short preview reminds us in some way why these movies are just so damn popular. They feature attractive people going through emotional times and doing it with a certain sense of urgency.

While I’m not much of a fan of these books or movies, I can certainly understand the appeal to their target audience. People love them and these characters and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

Check out the new teaser after the jump. The full trailer will debut on Friday at 9AM ET. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse hits theaters June 30th.

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UPDATE: Apparently, the image wasn’t supposed to be let out of the proverbial bag yet so at the request of Summit Entertainment, we’ve taken it down. But fear not, we’ll be back with it, and more, when we can.

Over at FearNet they’ve got the first pic of Bryce Dallas Howard as the vampire Victoria in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. She takes over the role occupied by Rachelle Lefevre in the first two films.

In this new pic, it looks like Howard is looking to sink her teeth into Robert Pattinson’s Edward and have him for a nice snack. Edward, obviously, doesn’t look to happy about it.

According to the site:

The new image shows Victoria (Howard) with her hands around Edward’s (Pattinson) head, preparing to kill him the old-fashioned way: by tearing his head clean off. Victoria’s boy-toy Riley (Xavier Samuel) is also present, restraining Edward who kneels in pain.

Twilight devotees will notice that nothing exactly like this happens in the book, although Edward does face off with the vengeful Victoria in the snow, so it seems as though screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has taken some creative liberties to raise the stakes in the third, and more suspenseful, film installment.

Well, there you go. For more pics from the upcoming film, head on over to Screencrave and also check back right here for further updates on Eclipse as we get them. In the meantime, click through to see the full image.

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This clearly falls into the “no surprise” category as Columbia Pictures has confirmed that Dan Brown’s novel, The Lost Symbol, will get the big screen treatment. The third film in the Robert Langdon series, this time we find Langdon traversing the mysteries of the Freemasons in Washington D.C.

Scribe Steven Knight is set to adapt the screenplay from the novel which sold over 1 million copies in the first day. Knight’s other credits include drafts for Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Shutter Island as well as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

While both Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are set to return no word on whether Tom Hanks has committed to the project. That said, I find it highly unlikely that he would not reprise the title role of Robert Langdon.

While the second installment of the series, Angels and Demons, performed less then The Da Vinci Code, $486 Million compared to $768, the resounding popularity of  The Lost Symbol is sure to help.  Moreover, The Da Vinci Code was wrapped in controversy which had people eager to check out what all the fuss was about by seeing the film. Angels and Demons had little to no controversy surrounding it. Regardless, a $400 + million take is by no means a failure.

I, for one, was not blown away by either film. However, they were serviceable thrillers with solid production value. While all these stories involve enigmas at some level, there’s no mystery as to why they’re popular and I’ll certainly check out The Lost Symbol when it hit theaters.

This week more than one thing involving Conan seems to be getting settled. Yesterday, we told you about Conan O’Brien making a deal with NBC to step away from The Tonight Show. Now, word comes from Deadline Hollywood that Millennium Films, Lionsgate and Paradox Entertainment have chosen an actor to take on the role of Conan the Barbarian in their brand new Conan movie — and that actor is Jason Momoa.

Momoa, who has appeared in Stargate Atlantis and also stars in HBO’s Game of Thrones, reportedly beat Kellan Lutz of Twilight fame for chance to play the titular hero. Apparently, Conan director Marcus Nispel was sold on Momoa, and won over the filmmakers by shooting some test scenes that allowed Momoa to wield a sword and behave very “Schwarzenegger-like.”

The film, which re-boots the Conan franchise and tells the origin of Robert E. Howard’s famous character, is now on course for a March 15 production start in Bulgaria. No word yet on additional casting or a release date but we have heard that producers have reached out to Mickey Rourke to play Conan’s father in the film. More on that as it develops.

The Hobbit has been on everyone’s radar since the success of the Lord of the Rings films, but has been a long time coming. After New Line was sued by both director Peter Jackson and Tolkien’s heirs, Jackson is now reporting yet another delay to Variety.

Stating that writing on The Hobbit, which will be a two-part film, is slowing down production, Jackson said that he hopes that he along with Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens and director Guillermo del Toro will finish writing by the beginning of next year. Production would then start by the middle of next summer, a few months later than expected.

With Jackson as writer/producer and Del Toro at the helm, The Hobbit is sure to be worth the wait. However, fans of both the literature and the “Rings” trilogy are sure to be antsy to return to Middle Earth as soon as possible, so this latest delay won’t make them very happy.

The Hobbit films have reported release dates of December 2011 and December 2012, with no word as to whether the recent delays will push back these dates.