Rome was an incredible show on HBO. It was big, it was bloody and it was epic. In a lot of ways it was a spiritual forebearer of Game of Thrones, which is currently the best thing ever. So there is a nice symmetry in the most recent casting addition to Thrones season 3.

Entertainment Weekly was able to score the exclusive news that veteran character actor Ciarán Hinds has signed on to one of the big new roles for the upcoming season:

The Rome actor has been cast as Wildling leader Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall. Rayder has united the disparate clans of the Far North behind a single mission: To attack The Wall. He’s been frequently referenced (though unseen) in the HBO hit fantasy drama’s first two seasons.

Ciarán Hinds has some serious gravitas, so the show might regain some of the heft that has been missing since the dear departing of the one and only Sean Bean.

Not content to just bring in Caesar to the world of Westeros, Brutus from Rome has previously been cast in a prominent role in the next season as well.  Et tu Brute indeed!

Keep your eyes peeled to The Flickcast for any more updates that spill from the upcoming filming of the new season of Game of Thrones. 

You may not have the chance to see the Oscar-Nominated Live Shorts (or the Animated ones, for that matter), and you probably will not even see who wins at the ceremony.

Hell, you may not even know that there are Academy Awards for shorts. I forget from time to time myself. After all, who goes to see shorts anywhere outside of a film festival? Do they even exist outside of film festivals?

No matter. Honestly, as far as the Academy’s selections, you’re not missing too much this year. I have a bit of a beef with the Academy for overlooking the best short of last year (hell, one of the best movies of last year, Jon Goldman’s fantastic Diplomacy).

There’s some charming films, and the best part is that all five directors look very promising. Only two of the selections (Pentecost and Raju) feel constrained by the running time; the former stretches on too long and the latter needed more. Time Freak andThe Shore are comfortable and left me wanting more, and Tuba Atlantic is a pleasantly self-contained eccentricity that’s totally Norway. Totally.

Anywho, on to the films. I’m going to provide a quick, TV-Guide-style summary and then include my thoughts.

Like a successful spy, the quiet and grippingly brilliant Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sits unobtrusively amidst the flashier year-end Oscar contenders—alternately heartwarming (We Bought a Zoo), Artistic with a capital “A” (Hugo, The Artist), tragic (War Horse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close), scene-devouring and envelope-pushing (Shame), glossily true to life (Iron Lady, My Week with Marilyn) or purpose-built to sweep awards (The Descendants, Carnage).

Based on the classic spy novel, this film adaptation necessarily abridges Le Carré’s densely plotted story far more than did the famous 1979 six-episode BBC miniseries starring Alec Guinness (who, for generations of fans, is the quintessential George Smiley). And yet it feels in no way over-simplified or dumbed down. Quite the opposite.

A raft of the world’s finest actors (nearly all male—this is a man’s world)—Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones and Gary Oldman as protagonist George Smiley—play high-level operatives in the British Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. When a mole is detected, it’s up to Smiley to ferret out which of his colleagues is the double agent.

We all remember the taste that was left in our mouth the moment we first heard Nicolas Cage would be playing our favorite damned motorcyclist from Hell, Johnny Blaze in 2007’s Ghost Rider, and that feeling didn’t go away after walking out of the theater.

With that said, it’s hard to believe that the new trailer for the sequel looks halfway decent, but you may want to start believing. Directed by Neveldine & Taylor, the guys that brought you the Crank films and the good parts of Jonah Hex, and a story written by Dark Knight’s David Goyer, the film looks like it may be the bad ass we were missing back in ’07. Here’s the overly detailed synopsis.

In the successor to the worldwide hit Ghost Rider, Johnny – still struggling with his curse as the devil’s bounty hunter – is hiding out in a remote part of Eastern Europe when he is recruited by a secret sect of the church to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the devil (Ciaran Hinds). At first, Johnny is reluctant to embrace the power of the Ghost Rider, but it is the only way to protect the boy – and possibly rid himself of his curse forever.

You may be thinking to yourself “a sequel with a kid sidekick? Pass!”, but after looking at the style Neveldine and Taylor are best known for, you can only imagine what insane ideas they can bring to a character and universe like this. One hint? Fire piss.

Take a look after the jump and let us know what you think. See Spirit of Vengeance in theaters on February 17th.

If you’ve been the star of one of the most successful film franchises of all time and now that’s over, you might want to consider trying to go in a different direction with your career. If you’re Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, that’s kinda what you’ve done with your upcoming film The Woman In Black.

In the film Radcliffe plays a lawyer who travels to a remote English village and discovers that the ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals. The horror thriller is a remake of a 1989 TV movie which was adapted from a play which, itself, was adapted from a novel by Susan Hill. You follow all that? Good.

We’v got a new trailer for the film to share with you today. In it, Radcliffe does his best to overcome the notion that he should just pull out his wand and blast the ghost with his magical powers. Does he succeed? You be the judge.

Check out the trailer after the jump. The Woman In Black is set to hit theaters on February 3rd of 2012.