We at The Flickcast are pretty diligent about serving up all the news that comes out each week. However, try as we may to cover it all, some things occassionally slip by. Well, no longer.

Welcome to On The Radar! This weekly post will be your premiere destination for a comprehensive roundup of items that may be developing stories we’re watching, Twitter commentary, or other relevant news that wasn’t quite ready for prime time just yet.  In short, a grab bag of geek items which are sure to please.

Let’s see what blips are on the radar this week.

‘Zombieland’ devours video rentals

Zombieland dominated the video lists this week, “…on the Nielsen VideoScan Blu-ray Disc chart, “Zombieland” went three for three, bowing at No. 1 and …racked up 31% of its total first-week sales from the Blu-ray Disc.” Way to go Zombieland, we can’t wait for the sequeal.

‘Avatar’ 3D boosts Cineplex ticket sales in Canada

3D showings of Avatar did wonders for Cineplex’s bottom line in Canada, “Despite running for only 13 days during its latest financial frame, “Avatar 3D” was Cineplex’s biggest boxoffice performer during the fourth quarter to Dec. 31, and has done around $74 million in Canadian ticket receipts to date.” No surprise really given the popularity of this film and the fact 3D showings are still being sold, out or causing line-ups.

Geek flicks drive Viacom profits

DVD and Blu-Ray disc sales from Star Trek, Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe stimulated Viacom’s fourth quarter earnings to the tune of $694 million.  Not bad considering the $173 million it made in the same quarter in 2008.  Also helping was the indie hit Paranormal Activity which increased operating expenses by 24%.

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Late yesterday the SXSW Fim Festival, which runs from March 12-20 in Austin, TX, announced the full lineup of films that will be screening at this year’s event. And baby, it’s quite a list. Mixing big name films with intimate indie gems, the sheer number of films and the vast array of talented filmmakers is sure to be a hit with attendees and critics alike.

This lineup includes premieres of studio films such as Universal’s MacGruber, Lionsgate’s teen superhero actioneer Kick-Ass and smaller films like Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart and Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine. With so many films to watch, it will be very difficult to find time to seem them all during the events nine days. But hell, we’re going to try.

For more on the SXSW lineup and these films and everything related to the event, be sure to visit the official SXSW site. The complete press release announcing the lineup follows:

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival is thrilled to announce the complete features lineup for this year’s Festival, March 12 – 20, 2010 in Austin, Texas. Over the course of nine days, 119 features will screen at the festival, with 55 of those having their world premieres at SXSW 2010. These films were selected from a record 1,572 feature-length film submissions composed of 1,206 U.S. and 366 international feature-length films.

Among the major films added to the lineup are: Rogue’s MacGruber, from director Jorma Taccone, Jay & Mark Duplass’ Cyrus, Bernard Rose’s Mr. Nice, Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart, Alexandre O. Philippe’s The People vs. George Lucas, Shane Meadows’ Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine, Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas’ American: The Bill Hicks Story, Mike Woolf’s Man on A Mission, Jacob Hatley’s Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm, Mark Landsman’s Thunder Soul, Daniel Stamm’s Cotton, Chris D’Arienzo’s BARRY MUNDAY, and Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways.

They join previously announced films such as Opening Night film Kick-Ass, as well as narrative features Cold Weather and Elektra Luxx, and documentaries Hubble 3D, Lemmy, SATURDAY NIGHT and The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights.

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Steven Soderbergh’s latest offering suffers from some major pacing problems.  On my drive home from the screening, I kept mentally comparing the experience of watching the film with childbirth. Going through the labor is very unpleasant, and you swear you will never do it again, but the payoff is so fantastic, that you forget about all the pain you endured and immediately want to do it again. That’s right, I want to see this movie again.  After all my sighing, seat shifting and a subliminal kiss-off of all future Soderbergh projects, I want to see this film again. That, my friends, is the talent of Soderbergh.

Based on the  true  story of Illinois agriculture executive turned FBI informant Mark Whitacre, The Informant! takes a slightly satirical spin on actual events. Far from being the ribald comedy the trailers lead you to believe it is, this is actually a character study of a very complicated man. There are funny parts peppered throughout, but if you go to this movie expecting a flat-out comedy, you will be disappointed. Several people walked out of the screening that I attended, and based on the marketing, I didn’t blame them.

Matt Damon is stupendously good as the nerdy executive at an agriculture plant that produces lysine, a corn by-product.  He is a shoo-in for best actor this year.  Whitacre’s bizarre and inappropriate inner dialogue garners most of the film’s laughs. He’ll be shaking the hand of a business prospect while thinking ” I wonder if bees ever get sad.”  He does this through the whole movie, and Damon provides the voice-over for Whitacre’s running stream of consciousness, which allows the audience to  be privy to the fact that Whitacre has some serious social flaws. He lives in his own little world, observing the minutiae of day to day life. Cliff from Cheers has nothing on this guy, they both recite useless knowledge they have collected in lieu of having actual conversations with people.

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Two and a half weeks ago, Columbia Pictures shut-down the Steven Soderbergh helmed Moneyball, just days before it was to start production. Last week, Soderbergh formally bowed out of the project.

Since then, the explanations as to why the project was put into turnaround at the last-minute, especially with a big star like Brad Pitt have been fast and furious, with each side wanting to get their view across.

Trying to parse the entire situation is very (forgive the pun) “inside baseball.” That said, here is a brief summary of this summer’s hottest off-screen drama.

Initially, the explanation for the “Moneyball” axing was blamed on a script that had deviated from its original awesomeness. By all accounts, the original script by Steve Zaillian was great. Soderbergh’s rewrite, well, the consensus was “not so great.”

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