Max Landis’s Death and Return of Superman is a very long sketch. No, it’s a really funny short film. No, you know what it’s like? It’s like, after a long night of gaming, when you’re hanging with your best nerd friends having a laugh, debating movies and video games and all things geeky. Tie all that together into a 17 minute short film and you’ve got The Death and Return of Superman.

Screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle) decided to film his late night nerd philippic and brought some familiar friends along for the ride.

Death and Return of Superman, affectionately dubbed DAROS, cuts back and forth between Landis recounting the story of Big Blue’s demise directly to the camera and live-action re-enactments by actors using Landis’s voice (much in the style of the Drunk History series).

The star-studded short features Mandy Moore, Morgan Krantz, Elijah Wood, Elden Henson, Dustin Romero, Matt Bennett, Zach Cregger, and Jimmi Simpson in key roles. Sharp-eyed viewers can also spot cameos by Simon Pegg, Sarah Shahi, Whitney Moore, Chloe Dykstra, Micah Sloate, Chris Hardwick, and Ron Howard. 

Check out the full film, which was released for free on YouTube Friday, after the jump.

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Over the past two decades, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens has almost been made into a movie several times. Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam tried for years to put the comic fantasy on film, but the infamously unlucky auteur (see the wonderful doc Lost in La Mancha) could never make it happen.

There has been talk lately of a possible TV miniseries, but many of the book’s fans still hold out hope for a feature. But who could bring Good Omens‘s outrageous characters to life?

Take a look at our picks after the jump.

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Even though the title sounds suspiciously like a video game, the lastest installment in Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible franchise, known as Ghost Protocol, is arriving soon.

Previously, we brought you the first trailer for the film, which we thought looked pretty darn good. Now, we’ve got a clip from it to share with you today.

We won’t do much to set this one up. Suffice it to say you don’t really need any explanation about what’s going on. It should be pretty obvious.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is directed by Brad Bird. It co-stars Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Vladimir Mashkov, Michael Nyqvist, Josh Holloway, Simon Pegg, Lea Seydoux and Anil Kapoor.

Check out the clip after the break. Look for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol to arrive in theaters on December 16.

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Even though Tom Cruise occasionally does some unusual stuff in his personal and public life, that doesn’t mean his movies aren’t often entertaining. Let’s face it, he’s had some pretty good ones over the years from Risky Business and Taps to Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men and more.

So, when Cruise has another movie coming out soon, we tend to take notice. This time around it’s the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise subtitled Ghost Protocol.

Of course, now that there’s new trailer for the film, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, we’ve got it for you to check out right here. The trailer is also currently playing in front of Transformers: Dark of the Moon but since you probably not dumb enough to go see that flick, we’ll save you the trouble.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is directed by Brad Bird and hits theaters on December 16th. The film co-stars Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Vladimir Mashkov, Michael Nyqvist, Josh Holloway, Simon Pegg, Lea Seydoux and Anil Kapoor.

Click through for the trailer and enjoy.

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Just when you thought Spielberg was going to pack it all up and stick to producing, he announced that he was going to direct a new epic film (with the potential of sequels). Could he be working on big budget superhero flick? A giant alien sci-fi adaptation? Nope, we’re talking about the adventures of the French boy-detective in The Adventures of Tintin.

The crew is pretty star-studded, as well as the cast, with such names as Edgar Wright, Steven Moffat, Joe Cornish, Simon Pegg, Peter Jackson, Daniel Craig, and Spielberg himself joining in. Here’s the synopsis for those who aren’t caught up on their classic French comics.

Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures Present a 3D Motion Capture Film “The Adventures of Tintin” directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish. Starring Jamie Bell (“Billy Elliot,” “Defiance”) as Tintin, the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure, and Daniel Craig (“Quantum of Solace,” “Defiance”) as the nefarious Red Rackham.

Though there are plenty of big names and TONS of money behind this flick, the concept of motion-captured animation still leaves a bad taste in our mouths after such gems as A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express. Looks like we’ll have to wait and see if this falls in the same “dead behind the eyes” category of animation.

Check out the trailer after the jump and catch The Adventures of Tintin in theaters on December 23rd.

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Bradley Cooper’s mind twisting thriller Limitless outperformed box office predictions and handily won the weekend box office with $19M. It also was a hit with audiences, earning a B+ cinemascore.

This is Cooper’s first true starring vehicle, and with a budget of around $27M, it should easily prove profitable. With The Hangover 2 right around the corner, Cooper will surely confirm his status as an A-list talent.

Johnny Depp helped propel Rango to number two with $15.2M.  It dropped a respectable 32% from last weekend, bringing its three week total to $92.6M.

Battle: Los Angeles took quite a tumble; dropping off 59% from its opening weekend. It managed to make $14.6M over the weekend.

Matthew McConaughey scored fourth place with his Lincoln Lawyer debut. The film made $13.4m and was well received by audiences.  Entertainment Weekly reports that this is the first film to join forces with Groupon.  The popular daily coupon site sold discounted tickets to the movie for $6.  They sold almost 200,000 tickets.  It will be interesting to see if this model will be adapted by future films.

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That’s right this week bring an all new episode of The Flickcast. On this week’s show Chris and Matt take on another bunch of new and recurring topics to amuse, entertain and try to keep you awake for at least thirty to forty minutes.

Some of the things discussed this week include Battle: Los Angeles versus Independence Day, Super 8, X-Men: First Class, Paul, PAX East, Super, SXSW, proper movie marketing and a whole lot more. And this week, virtually no Charlie Sheen. You’re welcome.

Of course, your hosts also made some picks this week including some great things you’re just going to have to listen to to find out. Sorry, we sometimes like to have our secrets.

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.

With the impeding release of Paul, featuring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, it’s a good time to check in and see if the pair of Brit funnymen have anything else to offer this week. It should be no surprise that they do.

It should also be no surprise, that is if you’ve been following their careers, that the boys have a love for all-things sci-fi and for Star Wars in particular. If you’ve never seen their show Spaced, you should. It will give you a great idea what I’m talking about.

In the meantime, we’ve got a very funny video from College Humor featuring the twosome doing their best Star Wars imitations of R2-D2 and C-3PO. It looks like this video was done during the making of Paul and is definitely worth checking out.

So, to that end, check out the video after the jump. Paul opens this Friday.

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I’m a shameful(less?) Anglophile, which in turn makes me an unabashed(ful) Francophobe, and some of the tenderest English patches of my otherwise iron heart are reserved for Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and, of course, Edgar Wright, the three gents who, through their collaborations in such fine works as the sitcom Spaced, and the films, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, demonstrated a mutual respect, appreciation, love for American pop-culture—something I’ve seen very seldomly outside of America.

In fact, it’s so rare, I don’t think there’s actually a term for it (Americaphile? Colonialphile? Washingtonian-a-philia?). So when there’s a project featuring at least two of three, I take notice.

And now we have Paul wherein another favorite, Seth Rogen, voices the titular Paul, an alien who came crashing to earth some 60 years ago and was immediately kidnapped by the US and taken to mysterious Area 51, never to be heard from again…

…until 60 years later, specifically while two British, alien-obsessed Americaphiles Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost) are making a tour across the US on their way to Comic-Con, simultaneously hitting every E.T.-related point of interest along the way.

Naturally that leads them through the (evidently) lone highway toward Area 51, with the only other car on the road being piloted by the freshly escaped Paul. Crashes ensue, and the boys meet Paul, who explains he’s fleeing from government agents and asks, his ride being totaled, to tag along.

He does, of course, and farther along the way they attracted the attention/pick up a collection of equally strange and terrible characters, including flighty Bible-thumper Ruth (Kristen Wiig), her truck-driving, shotgun-wielding father (John Carroll Lynch), and a handful of spooky government agents (Jason Bateman, Bill Hader among them), the collection of which all builds up for the big cameo at the end.

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A few months ago, we first brought you the trailer for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s newest comedy, this time taking place in the US, titled Paul. Fanboys (especially those who attended Comic-Con this year) had heard nothing but great things about this upcoming film, and when the first trailer hit, we got anything but tickled with humor. The trailer showed us all of our favorite actors and actresses that could make a good flick, but was cut in a way that was lacking in any comedic payoff whatsoever. It looks like things have changed with a brand new trailer, however.

This new International trailer finally gives us the goods. For those who don’t know, the film follows Pegg and Frost’s characters across country to their first ever San Diego Comic-Con. On the way, they decide to pass through the famed Area 51 and come across Paul, an escaped alien, voiced by Seth Rogen. After choosing to befriend the little guy, they are forced to keep him safe from a shadowy government figure (Sigourney Weaver) who sends her best men after him (Bill Hader & Jason Bateman).

The flick has plenty more cameos, nods to other geeky franchises, and yes, alien nudity. Check out the full trailer after the jump and catch Paul in theaters on March 18th.

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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.

While things are a bit shaky in terms of what we’re calling the newest Mission: Impossible film, one thing is for sure: the cast is going to kick ass. Hawkeye himself, Jeremy Renner joined the cast a few weeks back, which was already headed by returning Cruise, Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg, and the newly added Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q.

Now, a brand new face of awesome is jumping in, as LOST star Josh Holloway has been signed to join Cruise’s new team of super spies. This marks Holloway’s first major role since leaving the island, or dying, or staying in purgatory, or however you want to interpret that ending.

Between this cast, Incredibles director Brad Bird taking the helm, and J.J. Abrams supplying the story, there is very little room for this film to fail, or at least we hope. Megastar Cruise even took a pay cut in order for this film to get made, so it has that going for it.

The movie is set to go into production before the end of the year, with a release date of December 16th, 2011. Expect to hear plenty more news coming out of this camp in the coming weeks as we lead up to principal photography.