Okay, here’s my official take on the Academy Award show this year. The entertainment world is abuzz today with reports of how horrible James Franco and Anne Hathaway were as hosts of the show. I think that they are being unfairly maligned. I found Hathaway charming, beautiful, and eager to please.

On the other hand, Franco seemed like he didn’t give a crap about the show or his performance. He was obviously stoned out of his mind, and I am not one to judge, but that is flat out disrespectful. Do that stuff on your own time, not when you are in front of a billion people. Anne Hathaway didn’t stand a chance when she was saddled with the stoner from hell. I genuinely felt bad for her.

Franco has had an amazing year. I used to dismiss him as a joke, until I saw his performance in 127 Hours. He was astounding. Shortly after I saw the film, I spoke at a public event, and swore that I would never sell him short again. Until now.

Franco has squandered all the good will he has earned in one catastrophic hosting gig. Back in the penalty box you go, Mr. Franco. This time it won’t be so easy to earn your way out. For a very funny take on Franco’s questionable frame of mind, check out this Gawker.com article.

To be fair, I truly didn’t feel that the two were given much to do. Outside of a great film montage at the beginning of the show, they were barely present. Perhaps that was a blessing. Still, Hathaway deserves props.

Franco’s quick little appearance in drag was bizarre, jarring and random. I felt like I was watching an SNL skit.

As it is every week, this week’s episode of The Flickcast is brimming with fun, entertainment, knowledge and all sorts of humor and insightful commentary. Well, it’s sorta funny at least.

Anyway, this week Chris and Matt are joined by Chief Gaming Guru John Carle to talk all things DCU Online, Sony PS2, PSP2, Activision and Toy Fair. In addition, they discuss new trailers for X-Men: First Class and I Am Number Four, Smallville‘s series finale featuring Lex Luthor and a whole lot more.

Chris, Matt and John also make some new picks this week to help guide you and highlight movies, TV shows, games and more that you may not have heard of. What were the picks? Well, you’ll just have to listen to the show to find out. We can’t always give everything away.

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.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

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. Yeah, we copied that into from last week, what of it?

Some of those topics include the recent Superman casting of Henry Cavill, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Call of Duty: Black Ops Map Packs, the new PSP 2, 3D movie madness, how English actors are taking over Hollywood and much more.

Chris and Matt also made new picks this week including Matt’s pick of the Mel Brooks classic Silent Movie and Chris’ pick of the John Woo action classic The Killer.

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.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

We’ve seen a lot of mock-up PSPs in the past. Whether they were imitation PSPGos, PSP Phones, or PSP2s, these were either very good, or very bad, models of the gaming system we all know and like.
However, the supposed PSP2 pictures that have recently leaked onto the internet don’t look like mock-ups.

Perhaps that’s due to the crappy image quality, but it’s definite these weren’t thrown together on Photoshop by a fanboy. From what we can see, this PSP slides like the PSPGo, but looks much bigger. It’s also got two analog sticks, a microphone, touchpad, and camera.

We’re unsure whether this model will ever see the light of day, as Sony has stated they’ve designed several different variations of the PSP2, but it’s definitely interesting to see what they’ve been thinking about for the device.

According to Kotaku‘s report, the images have been confirmed by a development source. You can make your own conclusions after the jump.

So E3 starts tomorrow officially while today is the Microsoft Press conference. As you have already seen, we have gotten some advanced notice on some of the happenings going on at the event.  A few changes will be happening with our coverage of the event compared to last year.

This year we won’t be giving a fully detailed recap of the BIG 3 Press Conferences from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo as a formal post. We will, however, be posting our thoughts and coverage on the big announcements and trailers as well as give a full indepth discussion with Matt Raub, Chris Ulrich and myself on this week’s episode of the podcast.

We have also gotten official word from various industry sources on what companies will be showing at the event. These have come from various press releases, other industry insiders and various leaks from the LA Convention Center itself regarding the event.

There has also been tremendous speculation around the event. Some of those rumors will be examined below as well. Finally, some of my own personal E3 2010 theories and predictions will be put out there too.

Continue Reading →