Happy New Year to one and all! Yes, you can still say that even if it’s already January 11th. A new year and a brand new episode of The Flickcast to start things off right.

Hell, we all need some good things in the world right now, right? So, we’ll do what we can to bring one to you. To start off this first episode of 2021 Chris and Joe get back into it and talk about some old stuff and some new stuff. Some of the old and new stuff includes discussions about the recent Warner Bros./HBO Max deal, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984, Justice League, the state of the world and what they’re looking forward to in 2021.

They also talk a bit about what things helped get them through 2020 including 3D printing, Enola Holmes, The Queen’s Gambit and one of Chris’ new favorite shows Ted Lasso. And yes, there’s the usual and ever-present more.

It’s a big show. What better way to kick off a new year? Thanks for listening!

WARNING: This episode may contain discussions about COVID-19, mental health and quarantine. We understand not everyone is in a place to talk about or hear discussions surrounding these issues. Please do what’s best for you. Stay safe everyone.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, Instagram or, yes, even Facebook. Or shoot us an email. We don’t mind.

Photo: Warner Bros./DC

Opening and end music by Kevin MacLeod under Creative Commons License

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Another week and another new episode of The Flickcast. How do we keep it going? We just love doing the show, that’s all. We do it for the love.

On this week’s episode, Chris and Joe discuss and debate the new Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation trailer, the merits of self-aware computers, William Shatner’s birthday, the alternate ending of Interstellar, the Transporter reboot, the nature of art, the controversy over a Batgirl comic book cover and a whole lot more. It’s a big episode full of controversy, so be prepared!

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the latest Punisher comic from Marvel and Joe’s pick of the Flash TV series on the CW.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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It’s an all-new episode of The Flickcast for your listening pleasure. Eight new ones in a row. Come on, that’s gotta be a record. Or, at the very least, damn cool.

On this week’s episode Chris and Joe discuss a bunch of new and recurring topics. Some of these include the next Star Wars movie, the upcoming Evil Dead TV series on Starz, Net Neutrality, movies, TV, comics and whatever else they happen to think of at the time. Of course, there’s always that “more” too.

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Joe’s pick of a podcast called EOS 10.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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That’s right folks, it’s a brand new episode of The Flickcast. And only one day late! Woot! Sorry, we tried.

Anyway, on this week’s show, Chris and Joe discuss and debate all-things Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, they even settle the bet. Who won? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out, won’t you?

They also find some time to talk about Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and a few other things too. That’s right, there’s also the usual “more.”

The pick this week is another dual one. Yes, the hosts are getting lazy, thanks for asking. Said pick is the new “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” from Guardians of the Galaxy. Check it out, it’s a good one.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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Whatever happened to The Man of Tomorrow? In the late ’70s, when Richard Donner and Mario Puzo were making their Superman movie, they realized that the lead character, when in costume, lacked a personality. He’s tough, he’s fast, he can fly, and those abilities define him. It may be impressive as spectacle, but it’s a hard lead for an audience to connect with, and so they chose to focus on Clark Kent — in short and in a bad pun, theirs was a classic because it was more Man than Super. Now, with Man of Steel, Snyder, and his writers David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, do precisely the opposite.

The film opens with the usual prologue, though seeming far more extended here, on Krypton. Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is arguing with the planet’s elders about mining the core of their world — he warns them that the planet has only weeks left before it implodes, and as soon as he’s dismissed, General Zod (Michael Shannon) appears and starts blowing the elder’s palace up. Jor-El escapes to his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer), who has just given birth to their son, Kal-El, Knowing the planet is doomed, they place him in a shuttle and shoot him off to earth, but not before Jor implants a whatsit codex into the ship.

Zod attempts to intercept the shuttle, killing Jor-El in the process, but is overpowered, tried, and sentenced to the Phantom Zone, a kind of black-hole prison. Krypton implodes, and Kal makes his way to earth, specifically to the Kansas farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), who adopt the boy and impart to him the lessons of compassion and anonymity. I will say that it’s clever of Goyer and Nolan to handle Kal-El’s childhood in flashback, lest we sit through another hour or so of an origin story whose end we already know.

With the release of two completely freaking awesome trailers this week, the J.J. Abrams’ directed Star Trek: Into Darkness and the Zack Snyder directed/Christopher Nolan produced Man of Steel also release one viral advertisement each. Oddly enough, both viral videos have a similar production value to eachother.

First, the viral for Man of Steel launched, with heavily distorted imagery of General Zod warning Earth that “You Are Not Alone” and Zod demands Kal-El to surrender to him or watch Earth suffer the consequences. The video is insanely distorted, something like a scrambled message from an alien world might possibly look like if our primitive video software tried to encode it.

Most of the audio is pretty clear, stating Zod’s message loud and clear to the people of Earth. When I first saw it, I was ecstatic at what it looked like the Nolan/Snyder camp had put together for what could be a nice string of viral promotional ads.

Then, on Friday, the first viral for Star Trek: Into Darkness launched. Slightly more traditional, perhaps, with a viral video, with clips from the actual movie being shown in between distorted shots of lead villain John Harrison (played by Benedict Cumberbatch). This one plays out as more like you, the viewer, are seeing this message displayed on a screen, and Harrison is telling a tale of James Tiberius Kirk, and the misfortune that lies ahead for him and his crew.

As of the time of this writing it is still January, 2013 and all we have seen from Zack Snyder’s Superman film is a couple of teasers and a couple of posters. Why then, you ponder, am I already dismissing the film as a misstep from the Brothers Warner?

I am ready to cast off hopeful anticipation of this film because yesterday the final nail in the coffin was resoundingly hammered in. David S. Goyer spoke to Empire Magazine and had this to say:

“We’re approaching Superman as if it weren’t a comic book movie as if it were real…  I adore the Donner films. Absolutely adore them. It just struck me that there was an idealist quality to them that may or may not work with today’s audience. It just struck me that if Superman really existed in the world, first of all this story would be a story about first contact. He’s an alien. You can easily imagine a scenario in which we’d be doing a film like E.T., as opposed to him running around in tights. If the world found out he existed, it would be the biggest thing that ever happened in human history.”

Soak that in boys and girls, the most iconic comic book character of all time is going to be presented (once again) as if he were not a comic book character starring in a comic book movie.

With the successes of Nolan’s Batman trilogy and his involvement in the upcoming Man of Steel, it seemed like Nolan was going to be getting the Joss Whedon treatment with the DC movies moving forward. Though no director or producers have been formerly assigned to the Justice League movie, it was assumed that Nolan would have some level of involvement in it. But it seems that Warner Bros. faith in their own franchise isn’t as strong as the fans would hope to believe.

Variety has stated that “Warner’s top brass has indicated that they are awaiting results of Man of Steel, which opens June 14, before moving further ahead.” Now while this doesn’t specify the exact results they are looking for, it is a very worrisome statement to hear Warner already discussing Man of Steel in this way as well as the future of the Justice League movie with it.

You can say a great many things about The Dark Knight Rises, but brisk is not one of them. The film is long, and while it might not feel like nearly three hours long, it does feel well over two. Which is noticeable when the last third of this long film somehow felt rushed and bloated all at the same time.

Which is why the rumor coming out of Nuke The Fridge holds a tiny shred of merit. The movie feels like it does have scenes, or at least extensions of scenes on the cutting room floor:

Sources have informed Nuke the Fridge that not only is a Director’s Cut being developed by Warner Bros. for “The Dark Knight Rises,” but it’s going to include Bane’s origin plus a bit more screentime for Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) which were omitted from the current theatrical cut of the movie.

Generally, director Christopher Nolan does not believe in director’s cuts, and he allegedly also has final cut on his films these days, so our first reaction to this talk was complete dismissal. Then, as you think back on the flawed final Bat-film, it kind of actually makes sense. Especially if the sources are to be believed and the major additions are Bane’s back story and more Ra’s.

Right now the smart thing to do would be to file this under B for ‘believe it when we see it’, but keep tuned to The Flickcast for any future confirmations or denials about a Dark Knight Rises director’s cut.

Ten years ago if you told me the Avengers would be one of the highest grossing films of all time, I don’t think I would have believed you. Even when Marvel Studios started pushing out the solo films that would introduce the cast of the Avengers, most people would ask me (being their “comic book” friend) who Captain America, Thor and Iron Man were. For the most part, people knew who the Hulk was because of the cheesy television series and on occasion had at least heard of one of the other members of the team, but if you had asked them if it was a film they were going to be excited to see, most would probably have passed at the opportunity.

Conversely, a decade ago if you had talked to people about a Justice League movie, you probably would have gotten a much higher positive response rate. Just from DC’s Big 3 of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman (even before the Christopher Nolan series of films), people would have cared about the series. Fond memories of Christopher Reeves as the Man of Steel and any of the previous Batman movies were still acceptable enough to get people behind the idea of seeing them all together in one movie. But now, it’s a very different story if someone was going to try to put together a Justice League team movie.

This weekend sees the release of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan’s final piece of his Dark Knight trilogy. There are two ways you can look at this film and the series as a whole, as films or as Batman adaptations.

The differentiation between those perspectives is something that I have been struggling with since the classic The Dark Knight hit theaters in 2008. Nolan is a master cinema craftsman, his Dark Knight movies are some of the most well made blockbusters in the history film.

The problem I encounter, is that these films have become increasingly less ‘Batman’. It is not that I think Nolan doesn’t ‘get’ the character, I think he just doesn’t really care.

So at the end of the day I am stuck with two opposing sides to my opinion, one that respects the cinematic merits of the Nolan’s trilogy, and one that is increasingly frustrated with its seeming disrespect shown to some key aspects of the source material.

From this point on my review will weave in and out of spoiler territory, so proceed at your own risk. If you are on the fence about seeing the film this weekend and want a non spoiler recommendation, I can say to you see the film. For all the qualms I have, it is still a well made piece of cinema that should be seen on the big screen with an eager crowd.

The final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy comes out next week. It’s a bittersweet time to be a Batman movie fan because although we’re looking forward to the movie, its the last one Nolan is going to do. So yeah, we have mixed feelings.

Anyway, there’s a new clip from The Dark Knight Rises that’s been released featuring Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The clip is called About That Night and features some good info to help you get ready for the big debut.

Check out the clip after the break. The Dark Knight Rises arrives on