In the next couple of weeks a very interesting new movie will be hitting theaters nationwide. What makes Haywire so intriguing is that it has a fantastic pedigree, yet it is being released in the January doldrums. Normally this would speak to the poor quality of the movie, but early word has been strong and it is hard to bet against Steven Soderbergh.

The movie is released in a couple weeks, but to help drum up more excitment the first five minutes of the movie have been released on Hulu. For those of you who are unaware of what the film is about, here is the synopsis:

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The Holiday Season is a great time for films, but on the cusp of one of the more anticipate years in cinema history, it is the trailers for 2012 films that might be the highlight. One film that fans are eagerly awaiting is Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, sequel to the instant classic that took the world by storm in 2008.

The first long form trailer was released a few weeks ago, and now some adventurous do-gooders have taken upon themselves to recreate the magic in their own “sweded” version of the trailer. Complete with action figure action shots, and an ingenious football stadium collapse scene made with paper cut outs.

The sweded trailer is great, but we implore you to check out their youtube channel. There are more sweded trailers for your viewing pleasure and a really interesting side-by-side that plays the sweded trailer next to the original. It is extremely interesting to see it play with the original right next to it, showing how accurate these guys get with their shot construction and timing.

There are also a couple of funny little jabs at the original hidden within the sweded version of the trailer which is part of why these can be so charming. Particularly, the chanting of “que pasa,” golden stuff. You can check out the sweded Dark Knight Rises Trailer after the jump.

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The Amazing Spider-Man is one of the biggest upcoming movies of 2012. As anticipation continues to grow, Sony has unveiled the official website for the new web-slining blockbuster. Most noteworthy on the site are a series of new stills and a synopsis that promises more Spider-Man films in this new universe.

“Like most teenagers his age, Peter is trying to figure our who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. In his journey to put the pieces of his past togetherhe uncovers a secret that his father held… a secret that will ultimately shape his destiny as Spider-Man. This is the first in a series of movies that tells a different side of the Peter Parker story. On July 3rd, 2012, the untold story begins.”

The movie is going to be a very important step in the evolution of the comic-book movie. Up to this point comic book movies have generally held to the Hollywood rules of modern franchises, but one of the aspects of the comic book medium that keeps these characters relevant for so long is their ability to adapt and evolve on the fly. Even if that means rebooting a character that is still incredibly popular.

If The Amazing Spider-Man is a hit than we can see studios more willing to allow new filmmakers a chance at established characters with out waiting for the character to grow stale in it’s current style. The movie is set to hit theaters July 3rd, 2012.

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Syfy is preparing a new Battlestar Galactica series, currently entitled Blood and Chrome, that will follow the exploits of William Adama during the Cylon War.

However, before you start to get too excited the series won’t actually be a full blown TV show airing on Syfy. Instead, it will be a web series with about 10 episodes, each around 9 minutes long. Not that I have anything against web series, in fact I kinda love them. I was just hoping for a new network show with a big budget and lots of awesome Cylon heads exploding and big space battles.

Oh well, here’s more on the show from Syfy:

According to Mark Stern, Syfy’s executive vice president of original programming and the co-head of original content for Universal Cable Productions, “Battlestar Galactica” and “Caprica” co-executive producer Michael Taylor will write the the script for the new venture.

“Blood & Chrome” is “about a young man’s initiation into war: both the realities of war as fought by soldiers on the ground (and in Battlestars and Vipers), and the somewhat less real version portrayed in the media,” according to Taylor.

“Blood & Chrome” would consist of nine or 10 episodes of nine or 10 minutes each, and it would make use of cutting-edge digital technology and special effects to depict the Cylon War. If it is greenlit to production, it will be filmed using green screens and virtual sets, not unlike Syfy’s “Sanctuary” or James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Before “Battlestar Galactica” ended, high-tech scans were made of all the show’s sets, so that the special-effects team will be able to re-create them (possibly even in 3D).

But wait, there’s more:

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Today, as anticipated and as we reported previously, online content provider Hulu introduced its Hulu Plus paid subscription service. It is currently in the preview stages, offering sneak peeks at the service to select users who request an invitation.

The service costs $9.99 a month and offers an big ibrary of current NBC, ABC, and FOX shows, as well as episodes from previous seasons and shows that are off the air. Hulu Plus will offer support for several devices, including Apple products like the iPad and iPhone, Internet-enabled Samsung TVs, game consoles such as the XBox 360 and PS3, and more. Videos will be presented in high definition.

So, I guess the days of free content on the Internet have been shortened once again. I wonder, though, who will actually take advantage of this service? Will you?

For more on this service, check out the full walkthrough after the break.

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On Friday, Google quietly rolled out a new beta feature for it’s core search service, dubbed ‘Google with SSL.’ While a post on the official Google blog implied that while this new secure connection would eventually be made available on the vast majority of its ancillary services, only the core search property would be part of this public beta for now.

Most consumers are used to seeing banking or e-commerce services use what are known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections to encrypt information that travels between your computer and their service. However this is a first for any major search engine and something that competitors Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing have yet to implement.

Usually recognized by a web address starting with “https” along with a browser lock icon, this technology is regularly used to secure log-in areas and to prevent sensitive data from being intercepted. But now, search users will be able to take advantage of this privacy-enhancing feature to help protect their search terms and their search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network.

U.S.-based users can begin using the new secure version of Google Search by simply adding a ‘https://’ in front of the standard ‘www.google.com’ URL. The new secure search mode will be rolled out to the rest of the world over the next few days.

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I think it’s pretty much a given that DVD looks much better than something like VHS. Of course, now there’s something even better than DVD: Blu-ray. If you’re as big a fan of this awesome High-Def format as we are here at The Flickcast and you love saving money, then this post is for you.

Starting  today, at the all-new DVD2Blu site, over 85 Warner Bros. films including Gran Torino, 2001 Space Odyssey, Superman II, Ocean’s Eleven, V for Vendetta, The Shining, Pans Labyrinth and dozens more are available on Blu-ray for as low as $4.95. Yes, you read that right.

What’s the catch? Well, in order to get this rock bottom price you need to exchange your old standard def DVD’s for band new, shiny Blu-ray versions. You simply select the title you to upgrade, and mail in your standard DVD with pre-paid postage.

Then, a short time late you’ll get a copy of the same film on Blu-ray. They even offer free shipping on orders over $35.00. Cool, right?

Of course, you still have to have the standard def DVD’s to trade in for the lowest price but if you do already have them , why not get a Blu-ray copy instead? Seems like a pretty good deal, especially if you were going to buy the Blu-ray version anyway.

If you thought it was just a matter of time before Steve Jobs would come around, see the error of his ways and embrace The Flash (no, not the superhero) well, to put it nicely, you were wrong. Not gonna happen. . . ever. How do we know? Simple, Steve told us so.

In a statement signed off on by Jobs himself, Apple has posted their “Thoughts on Flash” which highlights most of what has been said in the past about why Apple won’t be supporting Flash on iPhone OS devices like the iPhone and iPad. They will also be blocking programs that attempt to recompile and be used as iPhone OS applications, especially games.

Still not convinced? Think it’s all just a misunderstanding at that Steve’s resolve will weaken? Well, take a look at what Apple said and tell us there’s room for doubt that Steve Jobs hates Flash:

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years.

The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

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Facebook's "Open Graph" Concept

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a series of updates integral to their next-gen Facebook Platform today at their third annual f8 conference held in San Francisco. At the heart of these updates is the technology to allow Facebook data to flow more easily outside the carefully-controlled confines of Facebook itself.

Building on the success and widespread adoption of Facebook Connect, first announced at the inaugural f8 in 2008, a new concept dubbed “Open Graph” will expose your Facebook connections and public data to third-party web sites and mobile apps. In doing so, these outside services can better personalize your experience based on the data it finds. Expect the data to flow in two directions as services like Pandora, Yelp, Foursquare and other connected services feed even more behavioral data into your personal Open Graph.

You can easily imagine a scenario wherein after analyzing your Foursquare check-ins, Yelp decides that you really have a thing for Thai food and helpfully displays all of the Thai Restaurants in your immediate area upon start-up. Or perhaps you’ve favorited so many female singer-songwriter tracks at your favorite music-streaming service, that Yelp notifies you that Sara Barailles is playing at the Hotel Cafe nearby in Los Angeles this evening.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably marveling at the glorious levels of personalization you might experience while simultaneously cringing at the potential privacy issues that Open Graph may unleash on unsuspecting users. But wait, there’s more!

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If you’ve been using Google Docs because you’re looking for a collaborative platform to work in that resides in the “cloud” or you just hate Microsoft and its Office products, then this post is for you. This week, the search giant announced a series of updates to Google Docs which are sure to make fans of the cloud-based service very happy indeed.

Some of these updates included the documents editor, which received additions such as a margin ruler, tab stops, comments, a re-worked system for placing and maintaining bullets and numbers and support for real-time collaboration of up to 50 people. In addition, spreadsheets now allows for cells to be edited from the formula bar, the use of auto-fill and the dragging and dropping of columns.

Plus, the system is reportedly going to be much faster, smoother and more intuitive. In truth, there are so many improvements announced by Google that it would almost be a disservice to them to try and list them all. Besides, why read about something when you can watch it instead, right?

Fortunately, Google has put together a little video highlighting the changes and we’ve got it right here for you after the jump. Check it out.

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You have to give it up for Marvel. They truly seem to be embracing the online and “digital” new media. They’ve got an iPad application that lets you read comics on the device, they offer comics online at Marvel Digital and they’ve released a series of very well done motion comics, which you can play on your iPod Touch or iPhone.

They don’t just phone it in or do a half-assed job on the motion comics either. Everything is professional and of the highest quality. Heck, they even get superstars like Joss Whedon and Brian Bendis to write the motion comics and artists such as John Cassaday and Alex Maleev to draw them, so they must be taking these projects pretty seriously.

The latest character to get the full Marvel treatment is Iron Man in the new Iron Man Extremis motion comic, which is written by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov. To commemorate this event we’ve got a behind the scenes video of the making of the new moco, courtesy of Marvel. As we’ve done in the past, here’s the synopsis provided by Marvel:

Experience Iron Man in a whole new way – IRON MAN: EXTREMIS Motion Comic. From the story by Warren Ellis & Adi Granov, this incredible epic blends seamless motion, dynamic voice acting, and stunning special effects, bringing to life the story that redefined Iron Man for the 21st Century. Now you can get an exclusive sneak peek at this breathtaking visual breakthrough in motion comics with a brand new behind the scenes video! The first episode of IRON MAN EXTRMIS goes on-sale Friday, April 16th!

Check out the video after the jump and just like it says above, get your own copy of Iron Man Extremis this Friday.

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It’s got to be tough being the odd man out. The PlayStation 3, the Wii, even the portables like the PSP and DS have fairly robust browsers built-in that allow you to surf the web as you wish, but Xbox 360 owners who dream of watching video via Hulu or YouTube on their 360 just had those dreams dashed.

Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox, put the kibosh on such extracurricular activities. Chalking the 360’s browser omission up to, “…the web browsing experience on TV is a poor one,” Greenberg clarified Microsoft’s Xbox online strategy just a little further. Despite recently adding support for specific properties like Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and perhaps most importantly, the Netflix streaming service, Xbox seemed to be moving towards opening up the web experience for their console gamers.

And yet, what these latest comments signal instead, is a move towards built-in support for specific web properties wherein the experience can be optimized and managed by Microsoft, versus opening the console’s masses up to the web at-large. This seems contrary to the consensus of PS3 users, who seem to feel that while browsing the web on a console is by no means perfect, they value the utility in having the capability to do so.

In his interview with CVG’s sister magazine ‘Edge’, Greenberg commented on the PS3’s browser specifically. “No disrespect, there’s things I love about the PS3, but that’s not one of them. We want the online experience to be fun and optimized for the living room, and we’ll continue to add more applications to get more richness.”