Lists are fun. Lists are, at least in some cases, easy to create. In this case, the list in question for today is The Five Best Movies Adapted From Comics.

I know what you’re thinking. Why five? Well, it sorta works with the word “Flickcast” and we’re fans of alliteration around here, so that’s one reason. Of course, it also means I only need to come up with five items to fill the list, so that might have something to do with it too. I’ll never tell.

I’m also in the process of preparing a list of the worst movies adapted from comics as well because what’s a “best” list without a “worst” list, right? Right.

However, in this case, we’re talking best. And do we have a lot of great “best” ones to choose from. That’s not a question, we do.

The ones I’ve chosen are not only great examples of comic book adaptations done right, they’re also great movies too. From a clever screenplay to expert direction, exciting visuals, to compelling characters and performances, these five films deliver on many levels and also manage to demonstrate a real love for their source material.

Okay, enough setup. On with the listing of the things.

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It’s Comic-Con! Hurray!

In honor of this geek-stravaganza, today’s Film Score Friday is taking a break from the standard review and instead going through the top ten comic book scores of all time. So without further adieu, I present to you the top ten comic book scores of all time:

10. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim is a melting pot of geekdom. Mixing together video games, movies, TV, comics, music and many more into a singular generational experience. The movie has so much going on in it that the references and structure starts to bleed in on itself, making a seamless cinematic experience. A huge part of that is the music, which flows between songs and score better than almost any film before. The score bit in particular is what makes this list, making use of some great digital sounds that fit the movie like a glove.

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Portland, OR based Oni Press is probably most well know for it Scott Pilgrim Versus the World comic series and feature film. They also have many more projects in what Hollywood likes to call “various stages of development” so that means they need a bit of help getting those set up.

Enter the William Morris Agency which has just signed Oni Press for (here’s another Hollywood term for you) “Representation in all areas.” What does that mean? Well, it means the agency will work with Oni and its sister company Closed on Mondays Entertainment to develop more Oni properties into film and television shows.

At the moment, those projects include feature film adaptations The Last Call with producer Barry Josephson, The Leading Man with producer Marc Platt, Frenemy of the State with Imagine Entertainment, The Return of King Doug starring Ben Stiller and produced by Red Hour Films and Ciudad with Joe and Anthony Russo writing and directing.

Closed on Mondays also has what’s called a “first-look deal” with CBS TV Studios to adapt Oni properties for the small screen. That means Oni takes its stuff to CBS first and if CBS decides to make it, great. If not, they can take it somewhere else. In exchange for that right, CBS pays Oni some sort of fee and more if the projhect actually goes into development, is made or ends up on the air.

As someone who’s spent some time with the guys and gals at Oni, I’m always happy when I hear they are doing well. They have some great comics and it would be nice to see more of them brought to the small or big screen.

NBC’s Thursday night lineup may be some of the funniest comedies on TV today, and that is in no small part due to the outrageous ensemble cast on Parks & Recreation. Sure, people love Amy Poehler and Aziz Ansari, but another performance that stands out beyond many others is the dry one-liners of Aubrey Plaza.

She’s done great things on Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Parks & Rec, and seems to have a continuing relationship with College Humor. A few years ago, she worked on a Twilight spoof for the online comedy site, titled Three Wolf Moon. Now she’s back again, this time spoofing Star Wars.

Sure, they avoided a heavy budget and a letter from Lucas Ranch by using knockoff stormtrooper helmets, but that doesn’t mean the skit didn’t capture the true essence of the Imperial prison from A New Hope.

Sadly, you can’t add Plaza to the list of actresses like Olivia Munn and Alessandra Torresani who have donned the epic Slave Leia outfit, but that doesn’t mean she still doesn’t have the hair buns. Check out the skit after the jump.

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While here in the states, we’ll be fighting off the alien threat out of Hollywood in Battle:LA, they’ve got a less conventional way of taking down evil extraterrestrials overseas. What happens when aliens are met with a bunch of street-savvy hoodrats from South London? Nothing good.

Here’s the official synopsis.

From the producers of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD comes ATTACK THE BLOCK, a fast funny, frightening action adventure movie that pits a teen gang against an invasion of savage alien monsters. It turns a London tower block into a fortress under siege, and a weapon wielding teenage thugs into heroes. It’s inner city versus outer space.

Because Paul just wasn’t enough of an alien encounter, Nick Frost steps into this film as well, as the only well-known comedic figure in the film. Overall, an interesting take on a classic story, played to today’s social culture.

Check out the full trailer for Attack the Block after the jump, and the film hits UK screens on May 13th, so you can expect it to hit the states sometime shortly after.

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Or at least, that’s the role we think they are casting for. In a recent interview with Sam Jackson, who will play Nick Fury in just about every upcoming Marvel film from Captain America: The First Avenger to The Avengers, the actor spilled the beans on the shortlist of actresses the studio is looking at for a potential “sidekick” role for his character. From THR:

Marvel is conducting screen tests Friday for one of the final roles still looking to be cast in The Avengers, the all-star superhero ensemble being directed by Joss Whedon. Last night Samuel L. Jackson revealed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon it is that of his “sidekick.”

V star Morena Baccarin is on that list. Also said to be vying for the part are Jessica Lucas, Cobie Smulders and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who are still negotiating their test deals for the part of a key member of the espionage agency run by Nick Fury, played in the Marvel movies by Jackson. Some earlier speculation pegged the role to be that of Avengers team member Janet van Dyne/the Wasp, but Marvel declined to comment.

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While Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are off discovering aliens named Paul in the desert, and Edgar Wright allegedly helps the Marvel Universe get an Ant Man, fans of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead everywhere are pacing back and forth for the next time the three will do another film together. Well, you may not have to wait forever, just until the end of the world.

In a recent chat with io9, Wright explained that he’s taking some time off from the easy genre-spoofing and work on a really meaty project. One about the end of the world.

“You start to think that people assume you have a blindfold and a dart board, and oh, okay, kung fu, let’s do that. I think what I would like to do now is to make stories that appeal to me.”

“Maybe [the title is The World’s End]. I don’t know. I think so. We liked that idea. It had a sort of resonance in a different way. It might be that we continue with that idea, or it might be that we start all over again. […] We never said it was post-apocalyptic movie, though. To be honest, in a weird way, I regret saying anything at all because then people start speculating. It’s more we probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. I’ve found that I regret speaking too soon about stuff. Because you end up sounding like the boy who cried wolf.”

Pegg and Frost’s Paul can be seen in theaters on March 18th and Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is currently available on Blu-Ray and DVD everywhere.

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.

It’s no secret that we’re all pretty big fans of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World around the Flickcast offices. We proved that with our review of the film, handful of clips we presented, and disappointment we showed in it’s performance at the box office. Now we’re taking solace in other fans like us taking to the internets with creativity and ingenuity.

The running theme with fan films as of late has been a so-called trailer “mash-up” where the audio from one trailer overlays the visuals from another, making it into a cool new concoction of geek and hilarity. This, of course, shouldn’t be confused with the brand of “trailer mash-ups” that swept the web a few years ago which brought us some gems like Scary Poppins or the immortal Shining trailer. These new mash-ups are a bit less imaginative, and slightly more lazy, until now.

Enter YouTube user AEmovieguy, who has taken that style of mash-up to a new level by matching up the visuals to the audio and getting the actors to actually look like they’re speaking the lines. It doesn’t sound as impressive as it looks, but we assure you, it’s pretty amazing.

Check out what he did with a few minutes of footage from all three Matrix films and the audio from the Scott Pilgrim trailer after the jump. You won’t be disappointed.

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Well, Stallone and company have still got it. Score one for the aging action geezers, they dominated the box office with over $35 Million for the weekend. Expendables, a testosterone laden action movie, was a big hit with men, particularly those who grew up seeing members of the cast in iconic 80′s action movies.

Most people I know who saw it admitted that it was not a great movie, but thought that it delivered exactly what one would expect-lots of senseless action.  That is more than can be said for the priv-lit drama Eat Pray Love.

As you read in our review here on The Flickcast, the movie failed to capture what many women fell in love with from the book.  The inner turmoil of the protagonist was glossed over, disappointing fans of the book.  Still, Eat Pray Love, starring Julia Roberts managed to make  $23.7 Million.  This is the best opening Julia Roberts has had since 2001, when she co-starred in America’s Sweethearts, with Catherine Zeta Jones and John Cusack.

Sadly, Scott Pilgrim vs The World (one of my favorite films of 2010) didn’t fare very well at all. The film placed fifth, and only made $10.5 Million, far below expectations.  This is very similar to what happened with Kick Ass back in April.

Kick Ass was widely anticipated in film circles, hailed by critics and fanboys  alike as a great, original  movie, yet it failed to muster much at the box office.  Kick-Ass debuted to $19 million its opening weekend, shocking prognosticators.  After its entire run, the film only made $48 Million domestically.

Now, we have a film that has gotten even better reviews (as of this writing, it has an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes), and has had most  industry insiders cheering for its success, yet it barely registers in the top five for the weekend.  *Sigh*

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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!

• In honor of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World hitting theaters today, here’s a frame-by-frame trailer replaced with the panels from O’Malley’s comic.

• EW’s Michael Ausiello says that the replacement for Steve Carell on The Office comes down to Danny McBride and Rhys Darby. If we put money on it, we’d say that NBC can’t contain the awesomeness of Kenny Powers.

• Comics meet games in this awesome list of your favorite comic books turned into classic 8-bit video games.

• U2′s Broadway musical about Spider-Man, unfortunately titled “Turn Off The Dark” is back on. Darn.

• Disney is relaunching their Star Tours ride at both parks next year. The new ride offers a tour of Bespin, Alderaan, and Endor. Sadly, you have to pay extra to hunt an Ewok.

• For those of you who missed it, here’s the Bangladeshi Hulk movie trailer that has been sweeping the monitors and hearts of everyone for the past week.

• Your weekly list worth reading: The 9 Worst Children’s Movies of the 1980′s.

• What would an Avengers film from 1952 look like? These guys have it covered.

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