The Flickcast – Page 746 of 1030 – Stuff Nerds Love

War Movie Mondays: ‘A Bridge Too Far’

This week’s pick is Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far (1977) which was based on the Cornelius Ryan novel about the Allied airborne invasion of Holland in September 1944. A Bridge Too Far is a sprawling Hollywood epic, filmed in the same tradition as Ryan’s earlier adaptation The Longest Day (1962) which was based on the D-Day invasion in France. A Bridge Too Far has over thirty of the most acclaimed international stars of the seventies, and even today, as the military and civilian individuals involved in what was known as “Operation Market Garden.”

By September 1944, the German army was in full retreat from France and the low countries (Belgium & The Netherlands) as the allied push from Normandy and Belgium began advancing East towards the German frontier. Due to supply shortages having to be driven from the Normandy beach head, to over five hundred miles away, made the advances come to a screeching halt due to Patton and British General Montgomery needing supplies for both their armies in order for the assault into Germany.

Montgomery proposed an idea to American General Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of the allied expeditionary force in Europe) to invade Holland with over 35,000 paratroopers, and seize a series of bridges over the Rhine, and then advance into Germany to capture industrial factories in the Ruhr, which was the industrial heart of Germany, and where most of their war manufacturing plants were located. Like all battles in the middle of long wars, it was hoped that this bold plan was to end the fighting by Christmas. General Browning (Bogarde) was quoted in a meeting with General Montgomery that they might be going “A bridge too far” with such a plan.

Continue Reading

First Trailer for ‘The Other Guys’ Looks Funny

Will Farrell and Adam McKay have been an unstoppable force in comedy for nearly a decade now. They first started getting audiences to split sides together with the 2004 film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and have been keeping us laughing ever since. In that time, they’ve also revolutionized time-wasting with their video streaming site Funny or Die, which has brought us some great internet hits, and is now a weekly HBO anthology show.

It seems like the dynamic duo of comedy is back at it again, with their upcoming film The Other Guys. The film starts off as any modern buddy cop film would, two badass detectives (played none other than Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) are taken out of the game, so it’s up to the two pencil pushers in the squad (Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) to step up and get into the action.

The trailer already looks this film is going to be worth the price of admission. The fact that actors like Jackson, The Rock, and Whalberg are able to mock their stereotypical roles means that this will be a no-holds-barred comedy.

Check out the first trailer after the jump, and catch Ferrel’s Other Guys in theaters on August 6th.

Continue Reading

Box Office: ‘Date Night’ Squeaks Out A Victory

At  the time of this writing, the Tina Fey/Steve Carell comedy Date Night is reported to have narrowly won the box office.  However, The Clash of the Titans was so close behind that it is possible adjusted totals may flip the positions of the two movies. Box Office Mojo is reporting that  Date Night made around $27.1 Million, while Clash made $26.7 Million, a tight margin of victory, to be sure.

This was the biggest opening weekend of Tina Fey’s career thus far, although Carell has had larger openings before.  The $27 Million take is quite good for a comedy.

Clash of the Titans dropped about 56% from opening weekend, which is higher than usual. Most films see about a 30% drop. The larger drop signals that interest for the movie may be waning quickly.

Good thing the flick had a big opening weekend. Clash has now made a total of $110 Million after two weekends, and looks like it will recoup its $125 Million budget. Incidentally, it looks like about 40% of that total was from 3D screens, meaning more than half came from 2D screenings.

Continue Reading

DLC Review: ‘DJ Hero: Jay-Z vs. Eminem Mix Pack’

As we reported last month, DJ Hero received a three pack of downloadable mixes and they sure didn’t hold back. For it, they got series icons Jay-Z and Eminem and took some of the most popular songs of each artist to make these mixes. You’ll notice that I am referring to them as mixes and not mashups.

Taking a slightly different step from the traditional DJ Hero song formula where one song’s lyrics are used over another song’s background, these three mixes showcase both sets of lyrics.

The three mixes featured in the pack are “Can I Get A…” by Jay-Z with “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, “Shake That” by Eminem with “Show Me What You Got” by Jay-Z, and “Without Me” by Eminem with “Encore” by Jay-Z. All of the mixes fall into the High intensity category.

If you have opened up other songs in this category then these should be reasonably playable for you but if it wouldn’t be recommended to play them without working your way up to High intensity. Even at medium, these songs feature some fast track switches as well as simultaneous scratching and crossfading.

The “Without Me/Encore” mix is a very unique mix as it takes a rather fast paced Eminem song and combines it was a background that sounds like it would have been the theme song of a 1970s TV show. But it works. One thing that no one can dispute about DJ Hero is the level of quality brought by the unique and expertly done mixes in the game. Without a doubt, it is leaps and bounds from the original cover songs that used to be featured in the Guitar Hero series.

Continue Reading

Hollywood Working On ‘Danger Girl’ Adaptation

The term “adaptation” has gotten a bad reputation lately. When it’s thrown into the same sentence as “E*Trade baby” or “Battleship” or “Stretch Armstrong”, the last thing we want to hear about is yet another unnecessary movie property.

Luckily, this isn’t one of those cases, as producer Adrian Askarieh, who’s currently working on other comic-to-film properties such as Hack/Slash and Leonardo da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever, is currently planning a Danger Girl movie. The LA Times recently got a chance to sit down with Askarieh and ask him about about the progress of the project, and it seems like they even have a director signed.

It is the story of a lost girl who, through this incredibly kick-ass adventure, finds her destiny, comes of age and helps save the world. What’s interesting is that our director, Todd Lincoln, who will also be executive producer on the project, my producing partner on this, Daniel Alter and myself were all independently huge fans of the book. When the opportunity arose to do this together and to work closely with creator J. Scott Campbell, we couldn’t resist because of that “tip of the hat” sensibility the book so effectively embodies.

Continue Reading

‘Gears of War 3’ Accidentally Announced

Everyone assumed that Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski’s appearance on The Jimmy Fallon Show Wednesday night was to announce a third installment to the Gears of War franchise. But when he canceled and Justin Bieber had to take his spot, suspicions arose.

Today, however, Kotaku reported that this advertisement showed up on the Xbox 360 Dashboard, stating that Gears of War 3 will be released sometime in April 2011. Oopsies, Microsoft!

The third installment is a follow up to 2008’s Gears of War 2, which broke sales records by selling over 2 million unites in it’s opening weekend. The game also set online records, as they clocked over 1.5 million players logging on to play the game at one time.

While the game hasn’t officially been announced by any other sources, rumors of the game have been abound for some time, including some new features like underwater combat and mech suits. Whatever the case, we’re sure to hear something when Bleszinski appears on Jimmy Fallon on April 12th.

The Flickcast’s ‘On The Radar’

This week On the Radar a bunch of gaming news about Halo and Gears of War, Red Sonja switches up celebrity hotties, Mark Strong talks Sinestro in Green Lantern and Tom Arnold takes to the sea to fight aliens!

Court dismisses Marvel, Stan Lee law suit.  Excelsior!

While Stan Lee has been working overtime on film cameos and convention appearances he’s also been dealing with legal fights.  This one was between Stan Lee Media Inc. and it’s former board members.  At it’s most basic level the case was over ownership of mainstream characters like Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Fantastic Four.

The judge dismissed the case based on two primary factors.  First, the shareholders did not acquire their shares until a year after the issue of ownership occurred and second, said shareholders should not have waited nearly a decade to file their case.  No word yet on whether the decision will be appealed so until next time true believers…

Halo movie will be happening at some point

What should be an easy sell as far as a video game adaption, Halo has struggled to gain traction with studios.  However, Frank O’Connor of Microsoft Game Studios has said the film will happen eventually:

“We’re going to make a movie when the time is right,” he said. “We own the IP. If we want to make a movie, the scale of all the other stuff that we do changes dramatically. We make tens and tens of millions of dollars on ancillary stuff, toys, apparel, music and publishing. If we do a movie all of that will grow exponentially. We have some numbers if we do a movie, but it changes everything. It also changes our target and age demographic.”

Continue Reading

Play PC’s ‘Modern Warfare 2’ Free This Weekend

As we have seen, tons of you have been closely following the Flickcast’s coverage of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. We even love it so much, we are giving away a download code for the Stimulus Package on the next episode of the Flickcast.  And luckily, there seems to be more news every day for us to cover about Modern Warfare 2.

First off, anyone who hasn’t played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, immediately drop what you are doing and head over to Steam for the chance to play the game’s multiplayer for free all weekend. Everyone can immediately download the full multiplayer version of the game with absolutely no obligation to purchase the game. For the PC gamers out there who are clamoring for something to play other than World of Warcraft, this is it boys and girls.

In XBox 360 news, the recently released Stimulus Package set records for XBox Live. Despite technical glitches with its launch, the downloadable content sold more than a million units sold in the first day and over 2.5 million units in its first week. At $15 a download, Activision rang in over $37.5 million dollars in just a single week. With the positive response and sales, players are already looking forward to the second timed exclusive pack to make its way to the XBox 360.

Continue Reading