The Flickcast – Page 472 of 1030 – Stuff Nerds Love

TV RECAP: ‘Parks & Recreation: Fancy Party’

Maybe I’m biased, but Amy Poehler gets cuter and cuter each episode (something about those devilish eyebrows); Jerry gets more pathetic; and Ron is more and more of a badass.

First off, this may be my favorite cold open so far—though it’s in close competition with the one where Leslie goes up the dreaded fourth floor of Pawnee’s City Hall (“POPCORN?”)—it’s nice to see the twistedly playful side of Ron and even nicer to see that he’s almost aware of how the rest of the parks department perceives him.

He almost fooled me, too, but then my Ron Sense is calibrated enough (or at least more than Tom’s) to figure out that even he wouldn’t perform an impromptu tooth removal in the middle of a meeting.

The episode lives up to that open as well; it keeps the humor coming but also injects some character development that ranks right up there with the best of The Office’s second season: Ben’s crush on Leslie is getting more overt; Donna’s finally getting more face-time; the writers deliver a great moment from Chris; and, oh, April and Andy get married.

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Twitter Giveaway: ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ Part 1 Prize Pack!

Harry Potter fans, listen up! Or, at the very least read carefully as we’re doing a giveaway to celebrate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 coming to On Demand, download and on Blu-ray today. And believe us, you want to win.

Just be ready on our Twitter feed sometime this afternoon and able to correctly answer a Harry Potter trivia question. Two lucky winners who answer the trivia questions correctly will get all this amazing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 swag:

• iTunes download of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
• T-shirt (adult size)
• Keychain
• iPhone sticker skin

Amazing, right? So be ready and glued to our Twitter feed for your chance to win. Also, be sure to check out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 available today via On Demand, download at iTunes and other places and on Blu-ray.

Plus, don’t forget the official Harry Potter podcast, available via iTunes right here.

Also, in case you’ve forgotten (but how could you?) here’s the official synopsis of the film and a clip to get you even more excited. After the break, of course.

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TV RECAP: ‘The Office: Training Day’

This may be a tough one to summarize because it’s not so much a plot-oriented installment, but more a series of skits featuring Will Ferrell interacting with everyone else around the office—Andy, Jim & Pam, Erin, Kevin, and, naturally Michael. That’s pretty much the recap right there.

But that won’t suffice, so here’s some more details: Ferrell, whose guest appearance for a few episodes has been in The Office news for what seems like the past three seasons, plays Deangelo Vickers (which sounds like a name Ferrell chose for himself), the guy brought in to replace Michael. After a surprisingly long cold open in which he ingratiates himself to Michael, Deangelo hits it off with the rest of the office, talking kids with Jim & Pam, immediately spotting/assigning the role of office clown to Andy, and earning the respect and admiration of the rest of the gang (especially Kelly, who orchestrates her own “meet cute” to nab his attention).

For those of you who’ve seen the original BBC Office, this is the long-awaited arrival of the “Neil” character, someone I never thought they’d get to—particularly seven seasons in. And, like Neil, Deangelo is great with first impressions but turns out to be a shallow, humorless jerk.

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‘The Dark Knight Returns’ Animated Movie Could Be in the Works

DC Entertainment has been losing ground to Marvel at the multiplex over the last few years, but during that same time their animated movie department has reigned as undisputed king. Bruce Timm started crafting animated DC stories with Batman: The Animated Series in the early 90s, and has been virtually flawless ever since.

Now Bleeding Cool is reporting that the seminal comic ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ is going to be given it’s time to shine as an animated epic.

Bleeding Cool have heard from multiple sources (enough with the multiples already) that work is underway on a movie adaptation of Frank Miller and Klaus Janson’s classic The Dark Knight Returns. As you might have guessed, however, this is to be an animated adaptation, much like the recent All Star Superman or in-the-works Year One.

This won’t be the first time Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ has been animated. The classic Batman: The Animated Series episode Legends of the Dark Knight, where different era’s of Batman were lovingly homaged, including a segment modeled after ‘The Dark Knight Returns.’

Batman regular Kevin Conroy has had time to age into a great voice for this role. So hopefully the trend of keeping actors from the original series carries forward into this project.

Film Review: ‘Rio’

I don’t have much experience reviewing children’s movies, so, before writing this, I did some research to glean a few of the points prescient to their reviews. Fortunately the standard kid-flick critique doesn’t differ much from your standard, well, non-kid-flick review. The only theme uniting them all is to note whether adults will enjoy it as much as their brood (or whether either audience will enjoy it).

So let’s get that out of the way: The kids will probably enjoy it (the ones invited to my screening didn’t make too much noise, but that may have been due to the iron fists of their handlers); adults won’t mind it. Rio isn’t particularly sophisticated and comes with your basic (and I use this term only because it does very much apply here) cookie-cutter plot in which you already know everything that’s going to happen within the first 12 minutes, and, beyond that, there’s not a whole lot else—save for the location shots, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The story is that Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) is a rare Spix macaw, taken from his homeland of Brazil when he was a chick and shipped to Moose Lake, Minnesota, where his crate falls off the back of the truck and he’s adopted by Linda (Leslie Mann), a bookish girl who raises him over the next 15 years. Linda doesn’t make many friends in that time, but she does open a bookstore, and the story proper begins when Tulio (Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro), a bird scientist, drops by to inform Linda that Blu is one of the last of his species and must go to Brazil to mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway), the other last of the species.

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John Davis to Produce Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’ for Paramount

Paramount announced they have picked up the rights to The Martian Chronicles, a collection of classic sci-fi short stories by Ray Bradbury.  While you may only know Bradbury from his most famous piece of work, Fahrenheit 451, or the mediocre film adaptation of the same book, he has become to be known as one of the leading names in 20th century science fiction.

Producing the film is John Davis, who has been trying to get this project off the ground ever since Universal acquired the feature rights in 1997.  But even before that, NBC and the BBC made a TV miniseries based on the same source, but judging by the photos and lead actor Rock Hudson, it’s safe to say that it was exactly what you would expect from a low-budget, early 80s TV show.

Originally published by Bradbury in late ’40s as separate stories in science fiction magazines, The Martian Chronicles is more of an episodic novel rather than a collection of short stories.  The main plot chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans following the atomic destruction of Earth, as well as the conflict between the native Martians and the new colonists.

The original script being worked on with Steven Spielberg, among other producers, when Universal first acquired the film rights, focused on a spaceship commander investigating two missing missions on the red planet.  Nothing has been said as of yet to whether Davis will be using this same premise, or go back to the original material for inspiration.

The original stories were broken down into three sections: the stories dealing with the attempts to colonize and settle on Mars, the native Martian’s efforts to fight off the colonists, and the eventual nuclear war that forces most of the humans back to earth and the remaining to become the new Martians.  Can we say franchise?

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First Trailer For Will Ferrell’s Spanish-Language Comedy ‘Casa de mi Padre’ Hits

If you thought you could get inside of the mind of comedian Will Ferrell and try to anticipate what his next career move would be, you’d were way off.

From high-budget comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers to a multi-episode run on NBC’s The Office, to running and starring a website dedicated to indie comedy shorts, and now to a comedy done completely in Spanish. That’s where Casa de mi Padre comes in. Here’s the official synopsis.

Armando Alvarez (Will Ferrell) has lived and worked on his father’s ranch in Mexico his entire life. As the ranch encounters financial difficulties, Armando’s younger brother Raul (Diego Luna), shows up with his new fiancé, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). It seems that Raul’s success as an international businessman means the ranch’s troubles are over as he pledges to settle all debts his father has incurred. But when Armando falls for Sonia, and Raul’s business dealings turn out to be less than legit, all hell breaks loose as they find themselves in a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal).

The flick comes from Funny or Die regulars Andrew Steele and Matt Piedmont, and from what we can tell from the trailer after the jump, it will be very tongue-in-cheek. Take a look for yourselves and let us know what you think.

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Film Review: ‘Scream 4’

Good lord, has it already been over 10 years since the last Scream movie?  It’s hard to believe that Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven first turned the horror genre on its head way back in 1996 (Scream 3 came out in 2000).

That first Scream film felt fresh in the stale horror market, offering up a tale of teenagers being stalked and killed by the “Ghostface” killer. What was so fun about the series was that the kids being stalked were horror movie fanatics, thus they new the “rules” of the genre. The movie playfully skewered the very genre it was depicting. The film spawned two sequels featuring original heroine Sidney (Neve Campbell) reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Deputy Dewey (David Arquette).

All three characters return in Scream 4, which takes place in Sidney’s hometown of Woodsboro. Sidney has authored a successful book about her ordeal, and has come home for a booksigning. No sooner does she arrive than the bodies starting stacking up. Like all the Scream movies, the film is essentially a whodunit.  This time Sidney’s Aunt (Mary McDonnell) and cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) get pulled into the fray, since Sidney is staying with them.

The film opens with a bunch of teenagers watching Stab 6 and 7 (based on the Woodsboro killings) and lamenting the state of Asian cinema and torture porn.

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