The Flickcast

AT&T Releases ‘Mark the Spot’ Network Failure Reporting Tool

Posted on December 7, 2009

att-mark-the-spot Most people who love a particular phone but are forced to use AT&T know that their network performance can sometimes leave something to be desired. Yes iPhone owners, I’m talking to you. Poor network performance, inability to use 3G data and the ever-present dropped and failed calls are pretty consistent issues when using AT&T — at least in many areas.

But now it seems the network is listening and is going to try and do something about it. No, they are not introducing a radical improvement to their network or anything like that. Instead, they’ve rolled out a tool for the iPhone that will allow users to report any failure to their service. This application, called Mark the Spot, uses geo-location to pinpoint your iPhone’s location and then asks the user to identify the type of problem they are experiencing.

Supposedly this data will be used by the carrier to help pinpoint trouble spots that they can then take steps to improve. While I would prefer an actual improvement in network performance, i guess this is a step in the right direction. This application is now available in the iTunes store so go it it.

I wonder if they’ll get very many reports?

Religion Discussed In Clip From This Week’s ‘Community’

Posted on December 7, 2009

Religion is sometimes a touchy subject to discuss in social situations, let alone in something as widely viewed as network TV. This is why most comedy programming vows to stay away from the taboo subject, in order to play nice with the millions of potential viewers. Luckily, NBC’s Community doesn’t seem to care about taboo, and they prove it in this week’s episode.

The mid-season break is coming up after this week, which means there’s even more pressure added to the final Community episode of 2009. The episode, entitled “Comparative Religion”, has Greendale College doing a “Christmas” theme for the last week of final exams. Also, special guest Anthony Michael Hall stops by to harass the gang as the stereotypical school bully.

The show was created by TV funnyman Dan Harmon, who’s other TV credits include Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program and the rare FOX pilot Heat Vision and Jack. Harmon also worked on several web-shorts including Laser Fart starring Jack Black.

Check out a new clip from “Comparative Religion” after the jump, and be sure to catch Community on NBC this Thursday, December 10 at 8PM/7PM Central.

Cortney’s TV Digest: What To Watch In December

Posted on December 7, 2009

Chestnuts are roasting and Jack Frost is nibbling. It’s December already, and here at The Flickcast we’ve got another TV digest for you, ready to keep you entertained in between all your caroling, pigging out, and gift exchanges this holiday season.

This month, we’ve got the season finales of some of our favorite shows.

Glee

After last week’s huge reveal and with sectionals ahead for the Glee kids, this is one mid-season finale you won’t want to miss. Musical tracks on the bill for the episode, which airs December 9th on Fox, include The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, and “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” from the musical Dreamgirls.

Glee will return for the remaining 9 episodes of the season April 13th, 2010.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The season finale of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia airs December 10th on FX. In this episode, the gang tries to reignite their old rivalry with another local bar in a local drinking competition appropriately named “Flipadelphia.”

Finding that they are in need of some serious practice, the guys head to Dennis’ old fraternity house at the University of Pennsylvania to get their game up to speed.

Box Office: Third Time Is A Charm As ‘The Blind Side’ Grabs The Top Spot

Posted on December 7, 2009

The Blind Side pulled off a pretty nifty feat this weekend. After three weeks in wide release, it finally nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office, making about $20 Million and standing at about a $129 Million cumulative total. It is on track to become the highest grossing movie of Sandra Bullock’s career.

In second place, New Moon looks like it is finally cooling off a bit. In its third week, the movie made about $15.7 Million, and dropped another 63% (after a steep drop off of 70% last week.) Domestically, it crossed the $250 Million mark.

Newcomer Brothers made a modest $9.7 Million. Starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhal, and Tobey Maguire, I thought the movie about an Iraq War veteran returning home would fare better. Holdover A Christmas Carol hung in for the number four spot, and made an additional $7.2 Million. Its cumulative take now stands at about $115 Million. Old Dogs managed to land the fifth spot in the top five.

Star-laden Everybody’s Fine (Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and Kate Beckinsdale star) failed to find an audience, and brought in an anemic $4 Million. George Clooney’s critically hailed Up In The Air only played on 15 screens. but made over $1.1 Million, for an impressive $79,000 per screen average.

As far as I know, Paramount is testing the waters for this film, and they should be pleased with the weekend performance. Hopefully they will go ahead and open wide now rather than roll it out slowly. Overall, it was a soft weekend, which is typical of the after-Thanksgiving weekend box office.

Marvel Launches ‘Dark Tower: Battle of Jericho Hill’

Posted on December 7, 2009

DT_BattleofJerichoHill_01_Cover If you happen to be a fan of Stephen King and always wished his works were available in comic book form, you surely have been devouring the adaptations of his Dark Tower series from Marvel comics, written by Robin Furth and Peter David. Now, Marvel has launched another new series based on King’s work, Dark Tower: Battle of Jericho Hill, and we’ve got a preview for that book to share with you today.

Check out all the info from the official press release. Also, be sure to click through to see a preview of several pages from this new comic as well as the cover.

Gilead lies in ruins, the pillars of reality itself begin to crumble and only Roland Deschain can save the world in Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill #1, on-sale now! The all-star, chart-topping creative team of Peter David, Robin Furth, Jae Lee and Richard Isanove reunite for the newest chapter in what promises to be the boldest Dark Tower graphic fiction series yet! Plus, this issue features a variant cover by superstar artist Brandon Peterson!

Plus, don’t miss Dark Tower: Treachery Premiere HC, collecting the red-hot, acclaimed limited series from Robin Furth, Peter David, Jae Lee and Richard Isanove, on sale now! The fate of reality rests in the hands of Rolaind Deschain and his ka-tet—but can they save the day? Find out in Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill #1, on-sale now!

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Apple’s Mac Pro Line Gets An Update

Posted on December 4, 2009

mac-pro-tower As Apple often does, everyone’s favorite fruit-flavored computer company quietly give their flagship line of professional computers, the Mac Pro, a bump in speed. They also included new storage options such as 2 TB 7200 RPM drives for the towers as well in this bit of enhancement magic. For the quad-core Mac Pro (but not the eight-core model), you can now order a 3.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor which, if you don’t know, is pretty darn fast.

This baby has 8 MB of fully shared L3 cache, Hyper-Threading technology, an integrated memory controller, Turbo Boost for short bursts of speed up to 3.6 GHz and can really blow the doors off any kind of intense rendering tasks like you find in Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro or similar. In short, if you’re a high-end graphics or video professional, your job, and making those tight deadlines, just got easier.

We were wondering what had happend with Apple’s top of the line Mac since the introduction the new 27″ Intel Core i7 iMac in October. Traditionally, the Mac Pro is the performance king and it was a bit odd that the line had not had an update. Fortunately, Apple has remedied that situation now. The new Mac Pro options are available today at Apple’s online store.

Latest Trailer for ‘Youth In Revolt’

Posted on December 4, 2009

michael-cera-youth_in_revolt Youth In Revolt is one of those movies that hasn’t really found much of a place on my radar yet. Sure, I know about it and have seen the previous articles we’ve had here which talk about it, but I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. Or, if I’m particularly excited about the movie or not.

If you’re in the same boat, perhaps this latest trailer for the film will help you (and me) get off the fence and decide if the movie seems worthy of our attention or not. In this new trailer, we get more of an idea about the story of the film and get a better look at some of the quirkiness that will be Michael Cera’s performance of not one, but two different characters in the film.

We also get more of a look at some of the film’s other characters and actors, which include Ray Liotta, Fred Willard, Justin Long and the great Zach Galifianakis. Check out the new trailer after the break. Perhaps after viewing it you’l be able to get excited for the film’s release on January 8, 2010.

TV RECAP: ‘Flash Forward: A561984’

Posted on December 4, 2009

Flash_Forward_Jack_Davenport This is the last episode of ABC’s FlashForward we will see until March. Yeah, until MARCH. Can’t say I’m happy about that. Well, at least this episode went out on a bang.

We open on the mystery woman (Shoreh Aghdashloo), who informed Demetri Noh (John Cho) that he will be assassinated. She’s sitting at her desk, her own Mosaic chart laid out on the glass spread like a spider-web with a picture of Cho with the number value: A561984. She is watching the classic A Christmas Carol.

A plane lands in Hong Kong, on it Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Cho get off, discussing their plan to track down Aghdashloo. They twice ignore calls from Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) only to be met by someone with “Kid N Play” hair, who calls himself Marshall Vogel from the Hong Kong FBI office. Vogel tells the Dynamic Duo to get out.

Fiennes picks up his phone walking away to only get into an argument with Vance about going to Hong Kong. He gets into this argument so that if anyone goes down for disobeying orders it’s him [Fiennes] because Noh needs to keep his gun on him if he’s going to live past March 15.

Vance breaks one of his televisions only to have another one where a press conference is on at National Linear Project [NLAP] as it’s called, where a stooge announces Simcoe (Jack Davenport) who will address the crowd on the experiments he and Monaghan were doing on the day of the black out. It gets hairy quick when this happens.

In this sequence, Davenport claims responsibility for the blackout and literally raises hell, saying their experiment was to reproduce the energies created by the Big Bang and may have contributed to the cause of the blackout. Total bedlam occurs when he says this: shots are fired, dogs and casts living together, mass hysteria!

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