Pixar and Dreamworks may monopolize the film animation market, but relatively small effects company Starz Animation is looking to creep up with their latest film, Gnomeo and Juliet. The film is even getting a Disney bump by being distributed through their Touchstone subsidiary. Starz is best known for producing 9 and Space Chimps, unfortunately

The name leaves little to the imagination in terms of plot, but just in case you need it spelled out, the official synopsis should help.

The greatest love story ever told, starring…garden gnomes? In “Gnomeo & Juliet,” Shakespeare’s revered tale gets a comical, off-the-wall makeover. Directed by Kelly Asbury (co-director of “Shrek 2″) and showcasing both classic and original songs by Elton John, the film features the voices of James McAvoy and Emily Blunt as Gnomeo and Juliet, who have as many obstacles to overcome as their quasi namesakes when they are caught up in a feud between neighbors. But with plastic pink flamingos and thrilling lawnmower races in the mix, can this young couple find a happy ending?

Produced in the US with a mainly British cast and music by Elton John, what could possibly go wrong? Check out the full trailer after the jump, and be sure to catch the family-friendly laughs of Gnomeo and Juliet on February 11th.

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As summer dies down with explosive fire power and spiritual journeys to other lands, I recall the glorious action fest that was The Expendables. In turns out Julia Roberts has nothing on protein packed men with a mission on their minds. My female counterparts have voiced their love of meaty men in droves and unexpectedly taken away business from Julia’s love fest. Nearly 40 percent of The Expendables‘ audience was women. X-Men Origins: Wolverine‘s audience raked them in as nearly 50 percent of the audience was female. It seems women have tired of the boys akin to Michael Cera and instead jones for something with a little more muscle. Stallone should have learned the key to Hugh Jackman’s success to driving women in throngs- taking off his shirt.

I hear Hugh gave up his lead in Avon Man to start his insane work-out to become the ferocious mutant once again. If you take months upon months to beef up like these 80‘s action legends did, you’d think they’d want to show it off. Plus, wasn’t it super hot in Louisiana and Brazil where The Expendables shot? It was like 100 degrees with 100 percent humidity. Stallone couldn’t have been the only one who was feeling the heat.  Take off those shirts and up your female movie-going audience to 51 percent.

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This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are back after not doing a show last week. Fortunately, the boys are in good spirits and ready for action diving into a bunch of new topics for this week’s show.

Some of these topics include Scott Pilgrim and its box office performance, XXX parodies of mainstream film and television programs, X-Men First Class casting news, Fantastic Four casting news, the films of Edgar Wright and Piranha 3D and its sequel. In addition, the boys discussed the latest Machete clips, the new Black Swan trailer, the fake Comic-Con Captain America trailer and the brand new trailer for The Walking Dead.

In addition, Matt and Chris made some new picks this week including Matt’s pick of Operation: Endgame, featuring Rob Corddry, and Chris’ pick of the “bloody good time” film Piranha 3D.

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.

The Expendables is a prime example of a “because they can” movie: Why do they have a moment where Jason Statham takes on five guys at a basketball court for roughing up his girlfriend? Why do they have Terry Crews marching down a hallway eviscerating an army of South American militants? Why do they have Mickey Rourke give five-minute monologue of complete incomprehensibility? Why? Because they can.

There’s no pretentious want of consistency or deeper meaning other than Stallone wanting to show you that he can still blow shit up and make people laugh when a man’s head gets twisted 180 degrees around (complete with bone-crunching sound effects). When the first scene of the film shows the top half of a man getting blown up in gooey detail, you know what you’re in for. When the camera lingers for a second on the bloody stump of his lower half, you know you’ve got it.

This is the kind of movie reviewers love because the entire plot can be recapped in one sentence: The Expendables are a team of mercenaries sent to some fictional South American country to overthrow the government. That’s about it. At a time when action movies are overly concerned with psychological depth and ponderous plot complications, The Expendables is like mouth-to-mouth from a humongously well-buxomed lifeguard.

First and foremost, it’s a throwback to the mindlessly fun action movies of the ‘80s that were drenched in blood, muscles, and testosterone. Stallone knows this material well, and delights in showing us the innumerable ways in which he and his five-man army (made of himself, Statham, Crews, Jet-Li, Randy Couture, and, for a time, Dolph Lundgren) can kill.

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Congrats to all those who have made it past Comic-Con’s endless Hall H lines, sat through countless hours of the studio’s pleading with you to buy movie tickets, and made it back home in one, tired piece. What awaits you is a month filled with the studio’s last line of blockbuster attack ads until the holiday season.

Fear not, as the lines will be vastly shorter than the wait for Eclipse. Instead of emos and soccer moms in “Team Edward” T-shirts, you’ll find yourself beside teenage boys who watch Rocky V on their Evos while waiting for The Expendables.

Curiously, the generals of Universal and Lionsgate both decided to fire missiles into the 13-30 years old guys camp. With the troops dispersing, you should be able to deftly maneuver yourself to the safety of a comfy recliner at the multiplex.

My advice, do like Julia Roberts and Eat some buttery popcorn, Pray for a film worth the ticket price, and Love the below reviews. Let’s check out what’s in store for us in August.

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This weekend, the movie going masses will be split into three camps. Some will be buying tickets for Julia Roberts’ new film Eat, Pray, Love while the younger generation will be headed to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That leaves the rest of us to go see the biggest collection of action stars together for the first time in one film. You know it as The Expendables.

The film’s premise isn’t all that important considering what most people are probably seeing the movie for. However, if you do care about that sort of thing the film is basically about a group of renegade mercenaries who uncover a international plot that they are called in to take down. The film is written by, directed by, and stars Sylvester Stallone and also includes some of the biggest names in action cinema. Here’s a brief list:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Steve Austin, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, & Eric Roberts. Not bad, right?

We’ve got a brand new clip from the film in which Sly and Statham argue about which is faster: Sly’s bullets or Statham’s throwing knives. Check out the clip after the jump and catch The Expendables in theaters this Friday. You know you want to.

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Now that Inception is far behind us, there’s one more film slated for release this year that we can’t wait to see. Of course, that film is Stallone’s action masterpiece The Expendables. The cast alone is enough to bring in most passerby’s, but we fans of the film genre only need to hear the names Arnold, Bruce, and Sly in order to pre-order our tickets.

The casting alone is proof that Stallone is making this film for fans of the genre, and anyone else caught in the crossfire is OK, too. With that in mind, Lionsgate has done a neat new viral ad to promote the film on YouTube. Unlike the last viral web spot we’ve seen for the film, which called for us to prove our manhood by buying a ticket, this one is official and actually sanctioned by Lionsgate. Still, they’re both pretty awesome.

Be sure to check out the full video over at YouTube, and make sure you’ve got about 2 minutes to kill, because there’s no pausing allowed. With this kind of ad possible over at Youtube, you can expect to see plenty of studios taking the chance and trying out viral marketing for the first time.

Expendables is set to hit theaters on August 13th, and stars Sly, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dolph Lundgren.

The fan with knowledge of video editing is a marvelous creature. They are just like the rest of us, but they are able to show their love and geekdom off by producing some pretty high quality viral videos, thus creating an infitine loop of fans and enjoyment.

The Monocular Group, who also brought us the famed 2012 retro trailer last year are at it again, and this time they are sending out a call to arms for men everywhere to go see The Expendables on August 13th.

The trailer takes a pretty strong stand against the state of Hollywood lately, and points out that Expendables, which can easily be considered the quintessential “guy movie”, will be opening against the film adaptation of Eat Pray Live starring Julia Roberts. Basically (according to the message of the trailer) if you are a “real man”, you’ll go see The Expendables that weekend, and help it beat out the alleged “chick flick”.

Check out the fun fan trailer after the jump, and be sure to live up to it’s directions and catch Stallone’s The Expendables on August 13th.

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No, this isn’t a plug for the world premiere of one of the Transporter films to hit basic cable. Creator Luc Besson’s production company, EuropaCorp, has gotten the greenlight to go ahead with a full season of a Transporter TV series to be produced in Europe.

Though Jason Statham may be too big an actor to reprise his role as the car-speeding, bad guy-kicking lead Frank Martin, the show’s budget may just be enough for him to reconsider. From Variety:

Luc Besson’s powerhouse EuropaCorp has greenlit a 12 episode one-hour series, produced with Takis Candilis’ Atlantique Prods.

Move marks the first series, and a big one at that, for EuropaCorp as it diversifies into TV, producing spin-offs from its hit movies.

Series will be shot in English, and will start lensing in early 2011 in Canada and France. The producers are in talks with major international television channels.

At $4 million per episode, it’s a pricey project for Europe, but by U.S. broadcast network standards, it’s still being made on a low budget.

This could mean a lot for foreign-produced series to make their way to the US, giving one more avenue for networks to use when buying up new projects. EuropaCorp is not worried about the money being a loss, as the Transporter films each cost roughly $30 million to make, and brought in a total of $238 million worldwide.

No word on a cast yet, but expect to hear new soon, with the large budget behind the series, and production to begin in less than a year.

Back when we heard that Stallone called upon his old Planet Hollywood buddies Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis to make a cameo in his upcoming tough guy extravaganza The Expendables, we were all taken back a bit. This would be the first time that all three actors, who basically set the bar for action films in the 80s and 90s, would be on screen at the same time.

While we were a tad skeptical how they would pull it off, we figured they would find a way around the scene by potentially having one or both actors shoot their scenes in a different location, and later splicing them together. Well, with the newest trailer hitting the web yesterday, we got our answer, and it looks awesome.

The film is about a group of renegade military operatives (not to be confused with The Losers or The A-Team) who face the biggest threat they’ve ever encountered. Written and Directed by Sylvester Stallone, the film also stars Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Steve Austin, and Eric Roberts.

Check out the newest trailer after the jump, and catch The Expendables in theaters on August 20th.

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For a few years now there has been plenty of talk about the possible remake of the 1972 film The Mechanic, which starred Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent. Many different major action players were considered for the role that Bronson originally played, including Sly Stallone and Vin Diesel, but it wasn’t until recently that pen hit paper and Jason Statham was signed to play hitman Arthur Bishop.

From there, it was a pretty easy decision to cast up-and-coming star Ben Foster as Steve McKenna, a role first made famous by Jan-Michale Vincent. In the film, Bishop is a hit man who is on his way out of the business and takes McKenna under his wing as a protege to pass along his legacy. Things, of course, go awry from there in an action-packed cacophony of violence.

Now, with both Statham and Foster filling in, it almost carries the same the same impact, with Statham coming off of a nearly 10 year run as an action star, and Ben Foster still working his way up the “leading man” ladder. The remake is also directed by action director Simon West, who has brought such films as Con Air and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider to the screen.

Check out the first trailer for the film after the jump, and be sure to catch The Mechanic in theaters on December 15th.

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Even with SXSW Film being just over a week away, more events are still being added to the already impressive program. This time around it was revealed today that Robert Rodriguez and Director Nimród Antal will present a “first look” at their upcoming movie Predators during the fest, which is a reboot of the film originally starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Said Rodriguez about the event: “My director Nimród Antal and I are excited to bring this first look at Predators to Austin’s SXSW Film Festival, an event that’s become vital to the filmmaking scene. Austin is my home and I’m proud that Predators was conceived and filmed here.”

In addition, it was also announced that the world premiere of Géla Babluani’s 13 would take place during SXSW as the previously announced Super Secret TBA screening. The event is part of the SX Fantastic midnight section.

The Predators “first look” will take place on Friday, March 12th at the Alamo Ritz Theater in Downtown Austin at 10:15pm and will also include a Q&A session after the event. The screening of 13 will take place at Midnight on Saturday, March 13 at the Alamo South Lamar Theater. We advise getting in line early for both of these events.

Also, be sure to check back here at The Flickcast for our extensive coverage of this years SXSW Fest.

For more info on these events, check out the full press release after the jump.

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