by Jonathan Weilbaecher, May 2 2012 // 1:30 PM

Most of us will be seeing The Avengers in a few days and The Dark Knight Rises trailer is still on everyone’s mind. So Sony wants to remind you all that they have a pretty big deal super-hero movie coming out too.
The new posters for Amazing Spider-Man are nothing particularly exciting, although the standing Spidy one ditches that all too familiar blue-tinted cityscape for a far more intriguing and realistic color scheme. In fact I think that one now ranks as my favorite of the posters for this flick.
The second of the new posters actually reminds me of those classy Dark Knight posters with Batman standing watch over a blue-tinted Gotham from inside an office building. The Spider-Man poster has what looks like a very similar blue-tinted city, but it looks more like he is busting through the glass. Might it be a subtle dig at The Dark Knight, or might I be reading way to much into a similar image? I vote the latter.
You can check out these two new posters after the jump, and don’t forget to catch The Amazing Spider-Man in theaters this summer.
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Posted in: Action · Adaptation · Comics · Marvel · Movies · News · Photos · Posters · Reboots and Remakes · Sony
Tagged: Action, Comics, Marc Webb, Marvel, Movies, Posters, Reboot, Sony, Spiderman, The Amazing Spider-Man
by Joe Gillis, May 1 2012 // 3:42 PM

Even with Battleship already out in theaters in other countries, there’s still time for the big PR push to keep on going in the US of A. Case in point is this new clip from the movie which debuted last night on MTV.
In it we see some of our men and women of the Navy get their action on and try to attack and alien space ship. We also get more of our favorite cast in action as well.
One thing this clip does prove is that machine guns don’t really have much effect on giant alien ships and those aliens are not to be trifled with. We could have told you that.
UPDATE: As a bonus, we’ve also got another clip for you which just arrived in our mailboxes. Enjoy.
Check out the new clips after the break. Look for Battleship, directed by Peter Berg and starring Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgard and Rihanna, hits the US on May 18.
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Posted in: Movies · News
Tagged: Action, Alexander Skarsgard, Battleship, Clips, Liam Neeson, Movies, Peter Berg, Rihanna, Taylor Kitsch, Video
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Apr 6 2012 // 4:15 PM
When I started writing the weekly film score review, one of the things I wanted to do was shine a light on some of my favorite scores from the past. Now that I have just passed my one-year anniversary on The Flickcast I feel now is a great time to go retro and talk about one of my favorite scores of all time, The Fifth Element.
The film is one of my five favorite of all time, and it is one of those pesky films that I can’t watch more than five minutes of it without needing to stay put and finish the rest. A huge part of that attraction comes from the score. Eric Serra crafted a unique, original and forward thinking score that lays beautifully over the top of Luc Besson’s imaginative world.
Eric Serra is a french composer who often works with Luc Besson, crafting modern and non-traditional scores that can be very polarizing. The most famous example of this was his highest profile job in America scoring the excellent Goldeneye. The film was all about making Bond relevant to a 90s audience, and for the score, that meant getting a guy who would break away from the John Barry mold. This caused quite the stir among Bond fans, and ultimately lead to an innovative score that probably just didn’t work for the movie it was made for.
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Posted in: Action · Comedy · Film Music Reviews · Film Score Friday · Movies · Music · Reviews · Sci-Fi
Tagged: Action, Bruce Willis, Comedy, Eric Serra, Film Music, Film Score Friday, Luc Besson, Milla Jovovich, Movies, Retro Edition, Reviews, Sci-Fi, The Fifth Element
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Apr 2 2012 // 7:30 AM
Last week saw the debut of the monster hit The Hunger Games. This week that film held well enough to keep an iron grip on the weekend box office. Raking in an estimated $61 Million over the weekend, the super sized block buster is now over $250 Million in just over a week.
The movie did drop over 60% from it’s opening last weekend, but in comparison to films like the Twilight series that is a decent hold. Especially when you take into consideration that films like these are notoriously front loaded, the second weekend take for The Hunger Games is impressive.
Coming in at number two this weekend was Wrath of the Titans, the sequel to the 2010 film Clash of the Titans. With a total of $34 Million, Wrath brought in only just better than half of the original’s open in the similar weekend two years ago. Given the current trend of sequels performing at levels similar to the reception of the previous film, this low number had to be expected.
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Posted in: Action · Adaptation · Box Office · Fantasy · Movies · News
Tagged: 21 Jump Street, A Thousand Words, Act of Valor, Action, Box Office, Fantasy, John Carter, Journey 2, Mirror Mirror, Movies, News, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, The Hunger Games, The Lorax, Weekend, Wrath of the Titans
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Mar 20 2012 // 3:00 PM
Chris Pine rode a pretty big wave in the wake of Star Trek. He has great on screen presence, looks like a leading man and can even be pretty funny. So he started to pile up some more potential franchises to lead, one of which was a new Jack Ryan movie.
Jack Ryan, for those of who who don’t remember, is the hero of the Tom Clancy novels that were the basis of The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, and The Sum of All Fears. He was sort of like James Bond, if Bond were an american CIA analyst.
Unfortunately, according to Variety, the project has lost it’s director:
With his TV commitments piling up, director Jack Bender has fallen out of Paramount and Skydance Pictures’ untitled Jack Ryan project.
Bender is currently the exec producer on Fox’s “Alcatraz” and is set to helm the Syfy pilot “Rewind.” Par was hoping to get this project into production sometime later this summer, and Bender’s TV workload was making it difficult for him to find the time.
This puts the untitled Jack Ryan film on shaky ground, but there is still hope that this won’t delay the start of filming. The producers have until Star Trek 2 wraps before their movie was intended to shoot, so they have to work quickly to find a replacement.
Posted in: Action · Adaptation · Directors · Movies · News · Prequels and Sequels
Tagged: Action, Adaptation, Chris Pine, CIA, Director, Jack Bender, Jack Ryan, News, Paramount, Tom Clancy
by Douglas Barnett, Mar 19 2012 // 2:00 PM

Enemy Mine (1985) is one of those great, lost treasures of sci-fi from the mid 1980s. The film stars Dennis Quaid as a fighter jock who becomes marooned on a distant planet with an alien being known as a Drac, a humanoid, reptilian creature who perceive humans as a threat since humans have begun colonizing the far reaches of space.
Quaid’s narration opens up the film and explains that by the late twenty first century, humans put aside their differences and worked together to begin colonizing outer space in search of worlds and resources. The Drac race had colonized the universe a thousand years prior to man’s arrival and went to war to preserve their claim in the galaxy. During a surprise attack launched by the Dracs, pilot Will Davidge (Quaid) and his shipmate crash-land on the planet Fyrine IV, a hunk of rock in outer space that has a breathable atmosphere.
Davidge’s partner Joey (Lance Kerwin) dies due to internal injuries and Davidge is left all alone. After Davidge buries his friend, he looks off into the distance and sees smoke from the crashed Drac ship that was responsible for him being marooned. Davidge sets off to find the ship and to kill its pilot if it isn’t already dead.
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Posted in: 20th Century Fox · Action · Cult Cinema · DVD · DVD Reviews · Monday Picks · Movies · Netflix · Reviews · Sci-Fi
Tagged: Action, Brion James, Dennis Quaid, Lance Kerwin, Louis Gossett Jr., Sci-Fi, Wolfgang Petersen
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Mar 19 2012 // 7:30 AM
There is some good, some awesome, some sad and some well excepted news in this weeks box office results.
Coming in at number one for the weekend, 21 Jump Street makes a splash with $35 million, and it’s very good news. To see a successful TV adaptation that proves you can be R-rated, have a completely unexpected tone and still work is a wonderful trend starter for the industry.
Hollywood is a copy cat industry and if remakes and reboots have to happen, the only way you can maintain some artistic credibly is to bring something fresh to the table. Hopefully this success can grease the wheels with other creative folks and deliver something unexpected with these name brands. It will be interesting to see how the zany Dark Shadows is received in the wake of this win.
The well expected news comes in the form of our second place finisher, The Lorax. This Suess adaptation is performing well above initial expectations and is proving to have strong legs as it fell another soft 40ish percent to nearly $23 million. The Lorax will take a hit next week, but is well on it’s way to crossing the $200 million bar.
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Posted in: Action · Adaptation · Animation · Box Office · Columbia Pictures · Comedy · Disney · Movies · News · Sci-Fi · Sony · Universal Pictures
Tagged: 21 Jump Street, Action, Box Office Report, Casa de mi Padre, Channing Tatum, Columbia Pictures, Comedy, Danny Devitio, Disney, John Carter, Jonah Hill, Movies, News, Taylor Kitsch, The Lorax, Top 10, Universal Pictures, Weekend, Will Farrell
by Douglas Barnett, Mar 12 2012 // 2:00 PM

Not to be confused with the upcoming remake, this week’s pick is Paul Verhoeven’s classic sci-fi action film Total Recall (1990). It is based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel We Can Remember it for You Wholesale and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man trying to piece together who he really is on Mars in the year 2084. Noted for his unique blend of violence, extreme sexual situations, and gore, Verhoeven pulls no stops with Total Recall.
In the film Schwarzenegger stars as Doug Quaid, an everyday guy who has nightmare visions concerning the planet Mars that for some time has been colonized by humans. Disenfranchised with his work and everyday grind, Doug decides to visit a company called Rekall that sells memory implantations that makes you feel as if you have really taken a vacation without actually going anywhere.
While at Rekall, Doug is persuaded by the manager to purchase what is referred to as an “ego trip” where you assume the role of a particular individual. Quaid is intrigued and selects the persona of a secret agent who is on a mission to save Mars.
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Posted in: Action · Blu-Ray · Books · Classics · Cult Cinema · Directors · DVD · DVD Reviews · Lionsgate · Monday Picks · Movies · Sci-Fi
Tagged: Action, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Ironside, Movies, Paul Verhoeven, Phillip K. Dick, Rachel Ticotin, Rob Bottin, Ronny Cox, Sci-Fi, Sharon Stone, Total Recall
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Mar 12 2012 // 7:30 AM
That unfortunate loud thudding noise you just heard was John Carter‘s opening weekend. The mega budget, would be franchise starter came in at a beyond disappointing 30.6 million. Good enough for second place to last week’s winner, The Lorax.
Speaking of this week’s box office champion, The Lorax hauled in an impressive 39.1 million, representing a mild 44% drop from last week’s huge opening numbers. With a massive opening, and a mild drop, the Dr. Suess adaptation is in prime shape to be the break out hit of the spring. It really only has The Hungar Game to compete with, and that audience is similar but far from exact.
Project X held well, and preformed strongly in the wake of a solid opening weekend. This week it was announced that a sequel to the found footage party film was possibly underway, and a continued strong presence at the box office goes a long way in validating that decision.
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Posted in: Action · Adaptation · Animation · Box Office · Comedy · Disney · Movies · News · Sci-Fi · Universal Pictures
Tagged: 21 Jump Street, A Thousand Words, Action, Animation, Box Office Report, Disney, John Carter, News, Project X, Sci-Fi, The Lorax, Thud, Universal
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Mar 8 2012 // 12:30 PM
Yesterday we told you a bit about ‘the new iPad’, Apple’s 2012 model of everyone’s favorite tablet. One of the games that was shown to showcase the pad’s amazing power was a prequel Infinity Blade.
The trailer for this gorgeous game is now online and it really sells the gaming potential of the new iPad. The original games had a redundancy built in where you had to do the same thing over and over again until you were powerful enough to win. That limited gameplay scope allowed the developers to make every little detail of the game look stunning.
Now that they have the processing power to compete with home consoles they look to have created a game that maintains the level of beauty, but expands on the gameplay. Infinity Blade Dungeons looks to be a hack and slash dungeon crawler that is better looking than any that came before it.
By branching out into a more immersive game play style, Epic Games is finally establishing this IP as the first must have gaming title on the App Store for hardcore gamers. Once that bridge is crossed, the already blurry lines between mobile and home gaming could be shattered forever.
Check out the teaser after the jump.
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Posted in: Action · Announcements · Apple · News · Tech · Trailers · Video · Video Games
Tagged: Action, announcment, App Store, Apple, Infinity Blade, infinity blade dungeons, iOS, News, Teaser, Tech, Trailer, Video Games
by Jonathan Weilbaecher, Feb 10 2012 // 1:30 PM
Diablo is one of those franchises that exists in every gamers dreams. It was one of the classic Blizzard titles that has been long lost in the success of World of Warcraft and Starcraft, but there has always been hope that we would see a return to the action RPG franchise.
So a few years ago it was announced that Diablo 3 was officially on the way, and the world of video games seemed like a happier place. However, A funny thing happened on the way to Gamestop and the release missed an originally planed 2011 release window. Reports of an early 2012 release were heard, but alas we have at least a few more months to wait.
Activision announced in a recent financial report that Diablo 3 is currently expected for the middle of the year, killing any hope that we would see the game sooner rather than later.
That was not the only disappointing news for Blizzard fans in the report. The long awaited second part of Starcraft 2 and the next World of Warcraft expansion are on shaky ground for a 2012 release. Blizzard is only expected to ship one other title this year in addition to Diablo 3, meaning one or both of those two announced projects is going to be pushed to 2013.
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Posted in: Action · Activision · Announcements · Fantasy · News · Prequels and Sequels · Video Games
Tagged: Action, Activision, Announcments, Diablo 3, Diablo III, MMO, News, Release Date, RPG, RTS, Starcraft, Video Games, World of Warcraft
by Matt Raub, Feb 6 2012 // 10:30 AM
Last night was quite a show for the fans of commercials. We got some new favorites, a few call backs, and yea, even some full trailers of this year’s big movies. For the most part, the major films we got sneak peeks of are Act of Valor, John Carter, and Battleship. But the one that fanboys really got excited for is the extended trailer for The Avengers.
That’s right, more Hulk, more Hawkeye, the first look at the mysterious alien threat, and some pithy dialogue between Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. We got it all in this 60 second spot, and now you get it too.
For those who felt that the trailer was a bit Captain America-centric, we got the scoop in a recent interview with director Joss Whedon, where he explained that Chris Evan’s Cap will basically be the main protagonist in the film.
“So much of [The Avengers] story takes place from Steve Rogers’ perspective, since he’s the guy who just woke up and sees this weird-ass world,” Whedon says. “Everyone else has been living in it. He’s the guy that feels that sense of loss.”
Take a look at the extended trailer after the jump and catch The Avengers in theaters and in 3D IMAX on May 4th.
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Posted in: Action · Comics · Marvel · Marvel Studios · Movies · News · Paramount · Sci-Fi · Trailers · Video
Tagged: Action, Adventure, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Marvel, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Superbowl, Tom Hiddleston, tv spot