OK, horror fans, what’s better than relaxing on the couch with a scary movie, good friends, and a large pizza while the scares roll in? Not a whole lot, that’s what. That’s exactly what we’ve got for you with a brand new Rite Twitter Giveaway!

Be sure to stick to our Twitter feed later today as we tweet out a horror trivia question. If you’re the first few tweeter with the right answer, you will win yourself this sweet prize pack:

-Papa John’s Pizza Card

-iTunes gift card for the purchase of The Rite

It’s going to be a pretty deep horror question, so be sure to get your brains ready, watch our Twitter feed, and check out the synopsis and clip from The Rite after the jump to prepare you. Good luck!

Continue Reading →

I’m more interested in coming up with cheap puns that could’ve titled this review were it not for the fact that we have formats to follow regarding the titles, so, no matter how awesome it would be to call it “THORing” or “This Movie Is Asgard,” I can’t. (“Thor: A sNORSE-fest” would be good, too.)

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), for those of you who skipped the Norse mythology part of your childhood or avoided the comic (does anyone know a die-hard Thor fan? I’ve been told they exist, but then people say there’s some dedicated Hulk and Dr. Strange fans, too), is the Norse god of thunder and son to Odin (Anthony Hopkins), king of Asgard, an alien planet or alternate plane of existence (I’m not entirely sure).

A thousand or so years ago the Asgardians fought the frost giants, led by Laufey (Colm Feore), to protect earth and preserve something called the Casket of Ancient Winters. Fast-forward to the present, when those knucklehead frost giants are at it again. This time they invade Asgard to back steal the casket, and Thor disobeys his father when he travels to Jotunheim to rough up Laufey.

Continue Reading →

Truth be known, this isn’t the review I wanted to write. Trust me, it would be a lot easier to heap glowing praise on this over-hyped tale of a Norse God who is banished to earth, but the movie just wasn’t my cup of mead.

I’m convinced someone must have messed with my 3D glasses. Based on ecstatic word of mouth, I should have seen a thrilling, well executed, well acted, and good looking film. Instead, I saw a dull, erratically paced film with gaudy set pieces, tacky costumes, and inconsistent writing.

Admittedly, I am no master of the Marvel universe, so take that with a grain of salt. However, I am game, and have enjoyed several of the movies culled from their stable of superheroes in recent years.  Throw director Kenneth Branagh into the mix, and I am not only intrigued, but a little giddy. I guess that might be part of the reason I was so disappointed in the film; I expected better with Branaugh at the helm.

The film tells the story of Thor, a Norse God who wields a mighty wicked hammer as his weapon of choice against the bad guys. Thor resides in the realm of Asgard, and he is a sure shot to take over the throne from his aging father Odin (Anthony Hopkins).

Odin has maintained peace between his kingdom and the Frost Giants, a rival population, for years.  When they threaten to infiltrate Asgard, Thor makes a hasty decision to attack the Frost Giants. This infuriates his father, who banishes Thor to Earth, and strips Thor’s hammer of any real power.

Continue Reading →

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are back to doing what they do best: working alone and without a net. Not only that but, as usual, they discuss and debate all manner of new and returning topics.

This week those include HBO’s Game of Thrones, The Avengers, Smallville and Lex Luthor’s return. In addition, they talked about the Thor movies (yes, both of them), Portal 2, a brand new, exciting product from Apple called the HumancentiPad and pretty much whatever the hell ‘else they want to talk about..

Of course, your hosts also made some picks this week including Matt’s pick of the movie Matinee and Chris’ pick of the returning HBO series Treme.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

While we may have brought you a very spoilerific Thor video on Friday, we can assure you that this one won’t ruin anything for you. Back during the Super Bowl, Volkswagon had one of the better commercials of the night with their Little Darth Vader spot.

Now Marvel is taking a page from their book with their very own Little Thor commercial. It almost seems like it could be a normal commercial, with the exception that not many kids would want to dress up like The God of Thunder on a whim (at least not yet).

The end of the commercial also has a bit of a WTF ending that may not have gone over so well if this were a real car commercial. Fortunately, its just a spoof — and a pretty funny one at that.

The real Thor is set to hit May 3rd and stars Chris Hemsworth as the title character. Alongside Hemsworth, the film stars Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Kat Dennings, Clark Gregg, Idris Elba, Ray Stevenson, Rene Russo, and Tom Hiddleston.

Until then, enjoy the commercial after the jump.

Continue Reading →

As the release of Kenneth Branagh’s Thor draws near we can expect the usual deluge of marketing materials to bombard us and try to influence us to see the movie. Not that we really need help in that department.

We’re gonna see it. Duh.

Still, seeing more of the movie before it comes out is cool. Fortunately, Paramount keeps releasing more videos. Case in point is this latest featuring Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and a taser.

Plus, it helps give us more insight into the story and, in particular, the sequence where Thor crashes to earth and is discovered by Portman and pals. And yes, it is pretty cool.

So, to experience this new video, be sure to click through to watch it.

Thor hits theaters on may 6th. As if you didn’t already know that.

Continue Reading →

Okay, this is starting to look really good. I’m talking about, of course, Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming big screen adaptation of the Marvel comic Thor.

The studio has released a new trailer for the film and posted it over at Yahoo Movies. But because we like you and want to make it easier for you to find as much of the cool stuff as possible, we’ve gone ahead and put it up right here for you.

In this new trailer we get a much better look at the bad guys of the film, including Thor’s brother Loki and the giant mechanical being “The Destroyer”,  as well as a big helping of the humor we can expect. Fortunately, the film looks pretty funny. . . in addition to its awesome visuals of epic battle scenes, explosions and the like.

Check out the full trailer after the jump. Thor hits theaters on May 6th. I’ll be there on day one, how about you?

Continue Reading →

The whole exorcism theme has been to death in movies, and The Rite is one more reason it should be shelved for a while. No movie has been able to live up to the grand-daddy of them all, The Exorcist (1973).  The Rite doesn’t even try.  It’s an embarrassment to the genre.

The tale is based on the true story of Father Gary Thomas who serves as an official exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose. This is presumably the tale of how he came to be an exorcist, and it is dreadfully dull. Journalist Matt Baglio chronicled Thomas’s time in Rome in the book ”The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist”.  I’ve got to imagine the book was far more compelling than the movie.

Director Mikael Håfström (1408, Derailed) centers the movie around fictional character Michael Kovak (playing the role based on Thomas) and his crisis of faith, which he must quickly sort out before, you know, he is possessed by the devil. Flashbacks show that  Kovak was raised in the family mortuary, à la Six Feet Under. He has a tense relationship with his father (Rutger Hauer) and after his mother dies, he decides to flee the family business and attend seminary school.

Continue Reading →

This is what happens when the entire office goes out for happy hour. We miss cool trailers that drop late on a Friday. Case in point is the new teaser trailer for Marvel’s upcoming sure-to-be-epic Thor.

In this new trailer, which is a mix of new bits and footage screened during Comic-Con last July, we get the basic premise of the film which is that Thor is banished from his home planet to earth by his father. Once there he meets up with a human girl and then discovers he will have to fight an evil that followed him to earth. Of course, there’s also going to be some giant battle scenes and several sequences with Chris Hemsworth, sans shirt, to appeal to the ladies.

We’ve gone back and forth on this one as it seemed like less of a sure thing than Iron Man. However, more and more it looks like director Kenneth Branagh, the cast and the rest of the team know what they’re doing. Will Thor be next year’s Iron Man? We’ll see. But as huge fans of what Marvel is trying to do with these films, we sure hope so.

Check out the new teaser after the jump. Thor arrives in theaters on May 6, 2011.

Continue Reading →

We’ve had some pics, some footage, a video game and now with the Marvel/Disney marketing machine ramping up even more, we’ve got the first poster for the upcoming Thor film to share with you today. The film is, as you probably know, being directed by Kenneth Branagh and features Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder.

With this new poster we get a good look at Hemsworth as Thor as well as something I’m sure fans are thrilled about: Thor’s mighty hammer Mjohnir. Gotta say I like the look of this poster and Hemsworth strikes an impressive pose as the title character. Kudos to the marketing department for this one. It’s simple yet gets the job done.

As the items have arrived giving us a better look at the film and what’s going to be in it we’ve become more excited about it. At first, I’ll admit, we were a bit skeptical but each successive bit of information has made the film look better and better.

Check out a larger version of the new poster after the break. Thor hits theaters on May 6th, 2011.

Continue Reading →

When you work at a film website it’s often difficult to see trailers, pictures and the rest of the tidbits that come out about films without forming an opinion. Sure, in a perfect world we could go into these things with no prior knowledge at all and enjoy them (or not) the first time we see them. Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way.

By the time a film is actually released we know pretty much everything about it from the cast to the visual effects to the story to almost every kind of Easter egg it has. It’s just the way things are done now. Case in point is Marvel’s upcoming Thor adaptation. We’ve seen quite a bit of stuff from it including lots of photos and more. In this case it’s hard not to form an opinion and this opinion is, unfortunately, leaning to the negative.

The footage shown at Comic-Con last week in glorious Hall H doesn’t go that far to moving that opinion into the plus column. However, it is nice to see something from the film other than pictures and some pieces of it looked pretty good. Let’s hope the footage subsequently released keeps pushing things in a positive direction. Heck, let’s hope the movie ends up being good.

Until then, check out the footage after the jump. After you watch it, tell us what you think of it in the comments.

Continue Reading →

We’ve been having a debate around The Flickcast water cooler for the last few months about if we feel Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Thor film will be any good. At first, when info started to surface we were pretty sure the film was in good hands and would be another great superhero film in the same vein as Iron Man.

Then, more recently, we saw more pics, including one of Anthony Hopkins seemingly doing his best 40 Year Old Virgin imitation, and our faith wavered. Fortunately, things seem back on track now with this brand new pic of Chris Hemsworth as Thor that has just dropped over at USA Today.

In it we finally see what all the fuss is about and get our first real look at the God of Thunder at his muscled best. If this is an indication of how Hemsworth is going to look as Thor and how the film will portray the character, Mr. Branagh we are sorry we doubted you.

Let’s just hope our faith is rewarded. For a bigger look at the pic, click through. As if you didn’t already know, Thor hits theaters on May 6th, 2011.

Continue Reading →