This week on The Flickcast brings more insight, innovation and innuendo from your favorite co-hosts. That’s right, Chris and Matt are back and discussing all sorts of new and returning topics.

Some of those topics include the Oscars, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Call of Duty: Black Ops Map Packs, the Verizon iPhone, Fantastic Four developments, Smallville’s final season and potential spin-offs, the Dead Space 2 ads and much more.

Chris and Matt also made new picks this week including Matt’s pick of the Sam Raimi film Darkman the and Chris’ pick of the new Starz series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.

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.

If you’re like the rest of the nerds around The Flickcast office, then you took your 30 minute lunchbreak on Tuesday to run out and grab Inception on Blu-Ray so you can relive all of Chris Nolan’s dreamworld madness. Of course, with the instant (and legal) accessibility of the film, come the bad ass fan edits.

We haven’t seen any cool Inception lightsaber fan edits like we have for Princess Bride, but there is one video that’s been floating around the Internets that needs to be shared as much as possible. Youtube user Weikang had the great idea (and was the first) to edit all of the dream worlds side by side at once, showing how they all played together.

Mind you, some worlds run faster than others because they are dreams inside of dreams (doesn’t sound as cool when you explain it, sorry Nolan). Check out the cool fan video after the jump.

Expect to see plenty more Inception fan films hit the web as more and more folks re-watch the psychological action flick over and over again. At least we hope so.

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For a while it seemed that every young starlet in Hollywood was vying for the part of Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming adaptation of the literary classic The Great Gatsby. Director Luhrman has finally announced that Carey Mulligan won the coveted role.

Leonardo DiCaprio has been cast as the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby, and Tobey Maquire will play Nick Carraway. The story is set in the 1920′s, and Daisy is Gatsby’s long-lost love, now married to another man.

Mulligan has made a quick name for herself by appearing in some critically acclaimed roles.  She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in An Education as Jenny, a naive teenager who is seduced by an older playboy.  She has also received accolades for her gut-wrenching performance in this year’s Never Let Let Me Go.

She beat out Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively for the role of Daisy.

The Great Gatsby has been filmed several times, but the 1974 version is most well known. It was written by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Robert Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, and Sam Waterson as Nick.

This week on The Flickcast Matt and Chris return from a week off with way more energy and sense of purpose. Or, they do their best and just try to get through the show by bringing you even more interesting and exciting topics for discussion.

Some of these topics include Batman: The Dark Knight Rises casting rumors, Captain America photos, TV programs getting canceled, potential Superman casting, The Walking Dead, Matt’s love for all things Nic Cage and much more. The team also made some picks this week including Matt’s pick of the movie Hellboy and Chris’ pick of season one of the original The Bionic Woman starring Lindsay Wagner.

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.

Welcome to this week’s On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage this week. Let is know if we missed something interesting. Otherwise, on to the links!

• The Fantastic Four reboot is still happening, and now with a completely CG Thing.

• We can’t wait for Stone’s Social Network, but these parody posters are pretty damned entertaining as well.

• Because we love lists, Adult Swim brings us a list of the Most Invasive Surgeries on the network. Mind you, this is before Children’s Hospital aired.

• Leonardo DiCaprio has passed on Mel Gibson’s viking picture. We can only imagine what that phone call sounded like.

• Want do get women like Don Draper? The Mad Men School of Seduction can help.

• The second half of Caprica‘s first season gets a trailer, and it looks pretty cool.

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I guess statistically speaking, it was bound to happen.  If you see enough movies, eventually you are going to witness a great movie that just doesn’t do it for you.  Such was the case with Inception.  I was poised to love the movie and declare it a cinematic masterpiece, if not one of my favorite films of the year.

I walked out seeing people high five each other and hug each other in a joyful embrace, no doubt exalted by the awesomeness of the film that they had just witnessed. How I envied them.

I left  frustrated, angry and annoyed. I desperately wanted to belong to that group of blissfully happy movie-goers, but I couldn’t fake it.  I just didn’t enjoy the movie.

Is that to say that it was not an excellent film?  Of course not.  On a purely technical basis, the film is amazing. It is also wildly imaginative, smart and original, all the things I clamor for during the summer film schedule.  Try as I might, though, I couldn’t get engaged in the story.  I never connected with any of the characters, and as a consequence, I never felt any urgency or peril regarding their situations.

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With Inception hitting theaters next Friday, and expected to be one of the biggest films of the summer, you can believe that Warner Bros. won’t be pulling any punches when it comes to promotion. We’ve already seen some pretty intense trailers, which have made the epic tuba noise a ringtone for thousands of fans. Now, the film is taking to building-sized posters to bend our minds.

Only two new advertisements have been spotted so far. Both in New York City, and both pretty cool. The first shows a flood of water shooting out each of the windows. The second, and arguable the cooler advertisement, shows the side of a building being peeled back to reveal the offices inside.

The film, directed by Dark Knight’s Christopher Nolan, is about the world of dreams, and how fragile each of us can be inside of them. Check out the two full building advertisements after the jump, and be sure to catch Inception in theaters on July 16th.

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To all who have survived the month of June by successfully traversing lines of blood-sucking twihards, I congratulate you. You can relax now because the steaming month of July is less about men of iron and teenagers who use SPF 60 and more about whiz kids, dreamers, and spies.

Movie studios may appear to be throwing grenades into your trench, but don’t let the eye-catching blue and orange of the movie posters fool you. These grenades are merely filled with smoke and a good amount of marketing slickness. They will explode in your face only when you yank the pin by paying $12. Then, they will have truly won the battle. Instead of succumbing to the propaganda, arm yourselves wisely with the reviews below.

Those in the know will hold their breath until August when the golden generation of action heroes team up to save the world, kick some ass before kicking the bucket, and get sweaty enough to take off their shirts- giving both men and women some very good reasons for sitting in an air-conditioned multiplex.

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If you’re hearing the ominous sound of clinking spurs, hissing rattlesnakes, and squeaking saloon doors, well, you’re probably crazy. But it also means it’s  Western Wednesday, and you’re just really excited!

I’m afraid I have to be a bit of a no-good yellow cheat this week due to a previous embargo engagement with one Mr. J. W. Hex.  (He just rides into town so rarely ….) but it never hurts to visit an old favorite, especially one that’s as much fun as The Quick and the Dead.

But first, I have to take you back into a sepia-tinted time of 1995.  I was 13, and I hated Westerns. I was all about sci-fi and fantasy, and no history was interesting to me unless it was medieval and European.   Westerns were a dusty, dull genre where everyone just drank whiskey,  had silly shoot-outs, went on cattle drives,  and visited brothels.

My family rented The Quick and the Dead, and my world was rocked. This Western starred a woman — a mysterious woman with no name.  She rarely spoke, and when she did it was always snarly.  She smoked a cigar.   It was the most original character I had ever seen. If more Westerns were like this, I thought, I would like them all.

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Inception, acclaimed director Christopher Nolan’s next project since the box office smash The Dark Knight, has had buzz surrounding it since it was greenlit at Warners. And while numerous trailers and a poster have been revealed, the details are still vague about this upcoming psychological thriller…until now.

The first full trailer has just hit the web, which finally gives us some more insight on Dicaprio and Ellen Page’s characters. We now know that the story surrounds the world of corporate espionage, with a sci-fi twist. Also revealed online was a brand new poster for the film, giving us a deeper look into the dark and twisted tone of Nolan’s world.

While the first poster just featured Leonardo Dicaprio, alone surrounded by a sea of water and buildings and vaguely reminding us of the The Dark Knight posters, this new IMAX poster features more of the cast. While Leo’s still at his prominent point front and center, other characters walk along the walls and upside down. This film has a really strong ensemble cast so it’s great to see the other actors and actresses of this film on this poster, like Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard, as the trailers have all featured Leonardo Dicaprio and Ellen Page.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Berenger. Check out the new poster and trailer (courtesy of TrailerAddict) after the jump and catch Inception in theaters and IMAX on July 16th.

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Even though they’ve tried as long as possible to avoid releasing anything like “official” word on the film and haven’t really even confirmed one is coming at all, it seem Warner Bros. has finally decided to let the cat, er bat, out of the bag and give some information most everyone assumed was inevitable. The studio has set July 20, 2012 as the release date for the third Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie, the sequel to 2008′s The Dark Knight.

According to the report, the studio is in the very early stages of developing the film and director Nolan is still in post-production on the soon-to-be-released Inception, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio. However, Nolan is reportedly working on the story with scribe David Goyer. At the moment the film has no title and no start date but you would have to think it would start filming sometime late this year in order make it’s release date.

Summer 2012 looks to be a busy one with Batman 3 now having a release date. Other films scheduled to come out around that time include The Avengers on May 4, Battleship on May 25, the next Star Trek on June 29 and the reboot of Spider-Man on July 3. Should be an interesting few months indeed.

It goes without saying we’ll be watching all the developments of Batman 3 very closely and will bring you the news as soon as we get it.

With The Flickcast’s own Shannon Hood covering all the excitement at SXSW this week yours truly is stepping in to take over box office duty. Don’t worry all you Hood fans, I have no doubt that she’ll be back next week, which means I’m only here for one week. That’s something that can’t be said about Alice in Wonderland, however.

Even with mixed reviews, Alice took the top spot again over the weekend. While it dropped 46% drop from last week, the 3D fantasy took in another $62 Million, bringing its total to $208 Million in only two weeks. As Shannon noted last week, this is Tim Burton’s biggest opening and the film is certainly finding an audience.

One concern from reviewers was whether or not audiences would be somewhat disappointed by the 3D aspect of Alice in comparison to Avatar. While Avatar was quite an immersive experience Alice in Wonderland presented more of your traditional 3D environment. It seems movie goers don’t mind the difference and are eager to see Johnny Depp and cast as they romp through Wonderland.

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