There are few actors these days that can play just about any part in most geek-driven properties these days. Neal McDonough has gone from playing Bruce Banner in the animated Hulk series, to having a part in Star Trek: First Contact, M. Bison for some reason in Street Fighter, and even playing the fan favorite Dum Dum Dougan in last year’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

Now, McDonough is taking the center stage again with Frank Darabont’s upcoming TNT series based on the video game L.A. Noir. Deadline reports.

LA Noir tells the true story of a decades-long conflict between the LAPD, under the determined leadership of Police Chief Parker (McDonough), and ruthless criminal elements led by mobster Mickey Cohen, a one-time boxer who rose to the top of LA’s criminal world.

Now that this year’s superhero season is safely in our rear view mirrors, it’s time to look forward…to next year’s superhero flicks! One of the big ones is obviously going to be The Avengers which hits mid year.

With that, Marvel is getting us ready for the epic flick with an awesome series of shorts to connect films like Iron Man 2, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, and Captain America: The First Avenger to the upcoming film about the superteam. We heard a while back about these shorts, titled Marvel One-Shots, in which S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Coulson (played by Clark Gregg) helps tie all of the films in together.

Now that Marvel’s first of two films from this year, Thor, is hitting DVD and Blu-Ray on September 13th, we’re getting a first taste of the release’s One-Shot in which Coulson has to enlist “The Consultant” in order to get Gener “Thunderbolt” Ross to help out the Avengers.

Now we’re getting the tie-ins that we’ve been making up in our heads since Marvel’s strategy to tie all of their films together began, and you get a first glimpse right now!

Check out the clip from the short after the jump, and catch the full mini-movie on the DVD and Blu-Ray release of Thor, in stores on September 13th.

Marvel and Disney have been on a roll this year with their films Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger. Both films have pulled in three quarters of a billion dollars in the worldwide box office, and that number is still growing. So what’s the plan now?

Joss Whedon’s Avengers is already half in the can, and films like Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 are already in the works for a 2012/2013 release, but Disney has just inked a deal for two Marvel films to get 2014 releases on May 16 and June 27. What could those films be?

Popular opinion states that the June 27th release will likely be a sequel to Captain America, which makes the most amount of sense, as it’s a good amount of time after the first round of sequels hits. Another thought is a possible Hulk sequel/reboot as Mark Ruffalo is progressing the character’s story in next year’s Avengers.

Every time we hear about an announced comic book movie being tied in to a game, we get a little nervous. There have been so many failed attempts with it in the past. Between Iron Man 2 and most recently Thor: God of Thunder, SEGA hasn’t had the best track record with them. Knowing they’d be publishing the action adventure based Captain America: Super Soldier, the cringing was understandable.

Fortunately, Next Level Games, the people who brought us Super Mario Strikers for both the Gamecube and Wii as well as Punch Out!! for the Wii, tossed a mighty star spangled shield at us and bucked the trend to produce a fun classic beat ’em up that fits well into the Captain America mythos and uses the movie signature in a positive way.

Gameplay:

Captain America: Super Soldier takes place in an “open world” much like that of the classic Metroid. We use the term loosely because players have the option to back track and explore the European castle to find hidden collectibles but the majority of the game can be done without ever needing to turn back. The size of the level is fairly impressive too with both a castle to explore and the underground workings below it.

Last weekend, the world was taken by surprise as Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger blew past the final Harry Potter film and made it to the #1 spot in its very first weekend. Since then, the film has grossed over $115 million here in the US and upwards of $170 million worldwide. Not bad for the best superhero film of the year (according to Rotten Tomatoes).

This weekend, Cap may have gotten knocked off the top spot and only made roughly $24 million, but the more interesting part is the battle between Universal’s Cowboys & Aliens and Sony’s The Smurfs. Both films opened with an estimated $36.2 million in the domestic, and while Smurfs may be the winner overseas, with a total of $40 million worldwide, that’s simply because it’s the only film to have a foreign opening.

Not a very strong opening for either film (unless you consider Smurfs to be a small film), but the true champion will be determined tomorrow afternoon when the official numbers arrive for the domestic box office.

It turns out, after tons of doubt that Captain America: The First Avenger would undertake the final Harry Potter film in the box office on the biggest nerd weekend of the year, San Diego Comic-Con, we were all wrong.

In reality, the film actually did just that, and took the #1 spot for the weekend, totaling an impressive $65.8 million here in the US. While this is excellent news for the new films from Marvel Studios and Paramount, the real story here is how much of a drop Harry Potter had.

From last weekend’s $169 million opening to a mere $48 million this weekend, the film dropped over 70% in just a week. Either everyone who was going to see this film saw it in the first weekend, or the word of mouth wasn’t as good as the folks at Warner Bros were hoping for.

Also opening this weekend, the R-rated version of No Strings Attached, starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis and titled Friends With Benefits managed to stay in the top 3 with an estimated $18 million. Just a simple million less than the one that starred Kutcher and Portman.

Looks like Old Spice is still producing weird commercials, but now they’ve  got a brand new spokesman in Fabio. Improvement?

While the Dark Knight Rises teaser was pretty awesome, it’s nowhere near as awesome as the trailer mashed up with Batman: The Animated Series.

Lady GaGa’s Born This Way has got an X-Men makeover, and now there’s even a killer video to go along with it.

Beastie Boys get an amazing new music video for the classic hit Sure Shot, but this time with the Muppets from Sesame Street.

As if it was much of a surprise to anyone who has seen the films or read the books, or even casually knows of the phenomenon surrounding J.K. Rowling’s characters, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final film in the franchise, broke records worldwide this weekend and made the top of the list in terms of opening weekends in history.

At a record-smashing $168 Million in the first three days, the film went on to break even more records overseas, and tolled upwards of $475 Million worldwide. Surely a huge break for both the recurring cast of the film, and Warner Bros. in general. This make make that Green Lantern sting feel a little less harsh.

Also opening this weekend, another children’s classic as Disney and Buena Vista tried to breath life back into the Winnie The Pooh franchise. The only problem was its timing, as the film was in half as many theaters as HP, but only pulled in $8 million in the domestic box office, and $14 million worldwide.

With Captain America: Super Solider coming out next week, SEGA brought forth one last set of character dossiers to look at before the game’s release. From what we can see, Captain America: Super Solider is already visually more impressive than Thor: God of Thunder, which is a huge plus. Maybe because Chris Evan’s face is more obscured than Chris Hemsworth’s was in the Thor game but this title doesn’t leave us cringing when we see the trailers on TV.

What we are most curious about is the actual gameplay of Captain America: Super Solider since we haven’t gotten any advance hands on time with it. When we get our review copy next week, just in time for Comic Con, we will find out if developer’s promises live up to the hype they have given us for the game. While Thor: God of Thunder was a poor God of War / Dante’s Inferno ripoff, Captain America: Super Solider looks to be more of an action platformer instead of just a simple beat ’em up.

We are looking forward to giving you our full review of it next week. Until then, enjoy the final look at the characters coming to Captain America: Super Solider for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and Nintendo DS on July 19th.

In this all new behind the scenes feature for Captain America: Super Soldier, Game Director at Next Level Games, Brandon Gill, talks about the balancing movie, comic and video game in the creation of Captain America: Super Soldier.

Going back to the early days of comics, heroes have been created to stand for something. Peace, justice and the American way has been a strong theme since this trend began and never seemed to falter.

As time as passed, the simple blind patriotism has faded and led to more complex characters that have evolved with the times. Today, on the anniversary of America’s independence, we take a look back at some heroes and even some villains who have proudly worn the red, white and blue.

While there are many we don’t have the chance to look at below such as the Flag, Liberty Bell, the Shield or even the Spirit of 76, we look at all those heroes and what they stood for, the men and women who helped give us the freedom to be able to live in a land where these characters actually exist.