The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a twisty, provocative British thriller featuring a breakout performance from Gemma Arterton. You may have caught her in the recent popcorn flicks Prince of Persia or Clash of the Titans, two movies in which she is largely relegated to arm candy for the leading men.

It is refreshing to see the sultry actress show us the  range of her acting prowess. As Alice Creed, she gives a gritty, brave performance  that you won’t soon forget.

The film begins with two men meticulously preparing a room to serve as a temporary housing for a kidnapping victim.  It seems that every tiny detail has been addressed.  The room is soundproofed and padded, the bed is bolted to the floor, and the room has been stripped bare of anything that could be used as weaponry.

The two men don masks and drive an outfitted van to their victim, a one Alice Creed.  Soon, she is shackled to the bed and stripped naked.  It’s a difficult scene to watch, and horribly degrading.

It would be very easy to write off the movie at this early juncture as being yet another torture-porn genre film, but don’t be so quick to judge.  That graphic and frightening scene sets up some interesting plot points for later, and makes better sense after you have the context  of the whole movie behind it.

Fortunately, it is quickly apparent that the men have no interest in Alice sexually.  They cloth her in a jogging suit they provide, and don’t seem to have much interest in actually harming her.  Instead, they want to extort some money from her wealthy father, by making him pay a kidnap ransom.

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In absentia of our diligent box office reporter Shannon Hood I’m stepping in to bring you up to speed this week. The top three spots were taken by two remakes and one sequel, the former making me feel like I’d gone through a time warp back to the ’80′s.  It was exciting and a little disconcerting all at the same time.

Taking the top spot was the remake of the 1984 classic The Karate Kid.  For the purists out there you can rest easy knowing the producers did not use the same characters from the original.  While the premise is basically the same Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio) and Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) have been replaced by Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Personally, I thought Jaden Smith was too young to portray the character properly but the audience seemed to disagree with me.

The Karate Kidwent onto make $56 million in its opening weekend.  Given that the budget was $40 million this is certainly decent returns and I have no doubt will lead to a sequel, if not a trilogy.  Way to go Jaden!  Your superstar dad, Will Smith, must be very proud.

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Killers over Splice?  Really?  What’s wrong with movie audiences? It was another dismal weekend at the box office, and Hollywood executives might be feeling the first pangs of panic over the Summer’s box office potential (or lack thereof.)  Audiences just don’t seem to be into anything that is out in theaters right now, and a three week holdover beat out four new releases for the number one spot.

Shrek Forever After nabbed the top spot with $25 Million, beating out Killers, Splice, Marmaduke, and Get Him to the Greek.  Shrek is still playing on over 4,300 screens, so even though its per-screen total was pretty week ($5,000) it still only dropped about 40% from last week.

Coming in at number two was Get Him to the Greek, the Jonah Hill/Russell Brand comedy produced by Judd Apatow.  The movie was a spin off of Brand’s character from Saving Sarah Marshall.  Interestingly, both movies made almost identical amounts of money on their opening weekend.  Saving Sarah Marshall made around $17.7 Million, and Get Him to the Greek made $17.4 Million (per Box Office Mojo.)

Killers, the “we’re not screening it for critics because we want them to experience the movie along with everyone else” movie managed to make $16.1 Million.  The reviews have started rolling in, and it stands at a proud 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.   For the life of me, I don’t know who was clamoring to see this movie, because merely watching the trailer made me want to gouge my eyes out.

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Who doesn’t love lists? Starting this week, we’ll be bringing you a brand new regular feature in which many members of The Flickcast staff will contribute to The Flickcast Five, a list of five films, TV shows, characters, plots, or other pop culture related items that we love (or hate) the most.

This week, one of the bigger films in this year’s Summer Blockbuster season gets its national release, when Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time hits theaters. Many know that the film is based on the classic 1989 side-scrolling game. In keeping  with the cross-genre of gaming and films we bring you our very first Flickcast Five: Video Game Movies. This time, it’s ones we love.

There have been plenty of flops in the genre, from films like Super Mario Brothers with Bob Hoskins, to Double Dragon with Scott Wolf and Alyssa Milano. While not all of them are watchable, most of them are enjoyable, and some are even accurate to the source material that we’ve spent hours, if not days and weeks, trying to complete.

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Earlier this week, we brought you three exciting new clips from the upcoming Disney blockbuster Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. We got our first look at the drama between Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Nizam (Ben Kingsley), as well as some of the immense action that the film plans to deliver.

Today, we’re bringing you even more. The screenplay comes from Boaz Yakin who was set to originally write the Batman Year One project directed by Darren Aronofsky. That film later became Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins. Also, the team of Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard helped move the Prince script along. They also wrote the script for Disney’s upcoming The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

In the clips today, we get our first look at Alfred Molina in the film, sporting a spiffy tan. Also, we get a bit more action and roof-jumping from Gyllenhaal’s Dastan, and a cool “Sand Trap” scene showing off some of the CG effects of the film.

Check out those clips after the jump. Catch Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as early as midnight tonight across the U.S.

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This week could mark the the continuation of an epic summer blockbuster season as Disney comes out of the box swinging with Prince of Persia. Robin Hood and MacGruber had pretty lame opening week’s, while Iron Man 2 and Shrek Forever After took home a nice chunk of change. Disney, along with Bruckheimer and most of Hollywood, believe they will continue that success with this Jake Gyllenhaal-starring vehicle.

In the film, Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, a character made famous by the classic side-scrolling video game Prince of Persia. The movie is set against an epic historical backdrop, with plenty of fantasy elements thrown in for good measure. Joining Gyllenhaal are Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans), Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina.

In the first three clips we’ve got for you (that’s right, there will be more), Dastan and Nizam (Kingsley) prepare for battle, we get some nighttime sneak attacks, and Dastan and Tamina (Arterton) have a lover’s quarrel.

Check out the clips after the jump, and catch Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in theaters Friday, May 28th.

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Disney made the most of their WonderCon time this weekend, treating fans and curious spectators alike with two exclusive clips from the Prince of Persia‘s fabled world of 1,001 Nights.

I gotta be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Newell and Bruckheimer have already spoken at length at WonderCon about their sensitivity to bringing this adaptation to the big screen, and on paper, it doesn’t seem like an odd bet. Bruckheimer certainly struck gold with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and given what Newell was able to do with the much beloved world of Harry Potter, I wasn’t as skeptical of his helming as I was at the odds of something getting completely lost in translation.

That being said, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time looks like it’s going to be a fun ride. The debut clip was an attack on a heavily fortified city and clearly shows off Gyllenhaal’s much talked about stuntwork (thanks to his acrobatic and Parkour training). There’s lots of sneaking around, last minute ingenuity and, of course, swordfighting (the hallmarks of any swashbuckler adventure film), but everything doesn’t always go according to plan. Yes, this is an action flick, but this is also a Newell film.

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During the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time press conference at WonderCon this weekend, it was evident that all major players delighted in each other’s company and thoroughly enjoyed bringing the swashbuckling action adventure to life (especially Jake Gyllenhaal, who appears to have developed a fondness for stuntwork). During the course of the interviews, Jerry Bruckheimer (Producer), Mike Newell (Director), Jordan Mechner (Writer / Creator, POP Franchise) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Prince Dastan) all talked about the challenges and joys of bringing the popular gaming franchise to the big screen, and whether or not Prince of Persia will become a franchise.

In preparation for his role as Prince Dastan, Gyllanhaal revealed that he stepped outside his “normal” process for getting into character. “I’ve never done research playing video games. I’ve never played video games as research before. Sometimes I’ve read books, or I’ve hung out with Marines, but you know, playing video games is great fun.” Gyllanhaal also related that he has been a fan of the game since it was first released in 1989, when sidescrolling play was a prominent feature.

“I played the original when I was a kid, and then I only started playing the game pretty intensely when we were doing research, particularly for stunts. I’d be in the middle of shooting and  I’d see a move and then I’d call the stunt guys and say ‘check out this move, can we try that?!’ I continue to play it to this day.”

Although the gaming franchise provided a jumping off point (literally) for the live-action flick, Newell was quick to point out that they weren’t interested in retelling and rehashing what has already been visualized in the game, or elsewhere in movie lore.

“What we wanted to do was based on a storyline, but we wanted to make it emotionally real,” Newell explains.  “We did a huge amount of work at the script stage and at the rehearsal stage to make it absolutely real. Even the fights have an emotional reality. The big pressure was to take it to an area where a game couldn’t go, while not destroying the game side of it. I believe that we went very carefully back to 6th Century Persia. We looked at the style, we looked at the behavior, how cities were made and so on, and I hope that we were faithful to it and didn’t come in and jump all over it without a certain sensitivity.”

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While more than half of the people gearing up for this weekend’s Super Bowl XLIV will be more excited for the commercials, we unfortunately won’t be getting as many movie trailers as we are hoping to see. It’s been reported that Paramount, Disney, and Universal are the only studios buying time to promote their upcoming films during Sunday’s broadcast.

During the last two Super Bowl games, studios amped up their marketing and promoted 9 films over the course of the game, while we’ll only be seeing ads for 7 films this Sunday. Paramount will be buying ads to promote Shutter Island, and The Last Airbender, leaving Iron Man 2 out in the cold.

Disney, who promoted films like Up and Race to Witch Mountain last year will be focusing more on Toy Story 3, Alice In Wonderland, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Meanwhile, Universal will be setting up promotion for The Wolfman, Robin Hood, and their 3D animated pic Despicable Me.

While it’s still mostly speculation that these films will get Super Bowl spots, it’s been confirmed that Overture bought time to promote The Crazies and Sony bought time for Bounty Hunter. Warner Bros and Fox will sit this one out, as they have since 2008.

Though we may be getting less movie trailers than previous games, this will be a big year for commercials. There are more than 60 spots that have been slotted for this year’s game, where last year’s telecast fell just short. This Sunday will be an entertaining show, for sports fans and entertainment fans alike.

This past weekend, Spike gave its annual salute to the video game world with their Video Game Awards show. Featuring performers such as Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg, the show has grown in to a larger spectacle each year to award the best in the video game industry. Along with all that hype has come exclusive trailers for the biggest premieres in the video game industry.

Some we knew were coming like the prequel to the Halo trilogy with Halo: Reach’s first in game footage while others were merely rumored and mired in PR confusion like Green Day: Rock Band.

Even more exciting were the surprise announcements like that of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II and Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 which had predecessors that dominated the video game charts of the past year. Take a look below at all of the trailers and let us know which ones get you most excited.

We already are placing our bets over in the Flickcast offices about which games are going to make the biggest splash in 2010. Take a look at some of our favorite trailers after the jump.

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We’ve been trying to cover the brand new Disney epic from the creators of the Pirates of The Carribbean trilogy, with the little promotional material that the studio has already released. That seems to have changed in the past few days, as the first trailer for the film has finally hit the ‘net.

The film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Star Trek’s Gemma Aterton, is based on the classic action/adventure video game about a A rogue prince who reluctantly joins forces with a mysterious princess and together, they race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time—a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.

The film is directed by Mike Newell, director of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and also stars Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina. Check out the first full trailer, thanks to our friends at Trailer Addict, after the jump. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time hits theaters May 28th, 2010.

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With both historical fantasies and video game adaptations hot properties to snatch up in Hollywood, how could a new film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as an “adventurous prince who teams up with a rival princess to stop an angry ruler from unleashing a sandstorm that could destroy the world” NOT be an amazing idea for a movie? Well, if this new picture tells us anything, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time may actually be a fun flick.

Entertainment Weekly had the pic up over the weekend (bigger size after the jump), which is the first of probably many to come. The film features only a few other names besides Gyllenhaal, which is surprising given the nature of the film, and the fact that it’s a Disney and Bruckheimer project. These include Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and rising star Gemma Arterton (Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace).

UPDATE: The first poster for Prince of Persia has also been released online. Check it out after the jump!

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