Time is short so we’ll make this quick. Here’s another new episode of The Flickcast.

In this one the second episode of 2014, Chris and Joe spare to expense and pull no punches discussing the reboot of Point Break, the latest Man of Steel 2 casting rumors, the return of Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Brooklyn Nine Nine, the slow death of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and a whole lot of the more you’ve come to expect from a quality program like this.

This week’s picks include Chris’ pick of the TV show Brooklyn Nine Nine and Joe’s pick of the X-Files Season 10 comic from IDW.

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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This week on The Flickcast , Chris and Joe are back at the same Bat-time and the same Bat-channel to talk all-thing Superman/Batman. That’s right, a big casting announcement has come down from the Warner Bros. tower and it’s one that’s sure to spark controversy.

We won’t keep you in suspense: the actor chosen to play Batman in Zack Snyder’s Superman/Batman is none other than Ben Affleck.

Of course, Chris and Joe debate and discuss this one quite a bit, but their final conclusions and opinions just may surprise you. They also discuss J.J. Abrams Star Wars and a whole lot more stuff that you’ll just have to tune in to find out.

This weeks picks include Joe’s pick of the great works of Elmore Leonard, who sadly passed away this week. They include TV’s Justified and the novels Get Shorty and Outta Sight. Chris’ pick this week is the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola film The Conversation.

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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This week on The Flickcast, we’re just going to pretend nothing happend and move on. Although, that’s not really fair. Okay, let’s try this instead.

Welcome to an all-new episode of The Flickcast featuring new co-host Joe Dilworth! How’s that? Yeah, we like that better because we’re happy to have him on the show.

To kick things off on this week’s episode, Chris and Joe discuss all manner of new topics including Pacific Rim, Oldboy, Man of Steel, the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con and much more.

In addition, the boys made some picks this week including Joe’s pick of the new album by Kirby Krackle and Chris’ pick of a geeky piece of hardware known as the Nest. Yes, he picked one of those. He’s a geek, we get it.

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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One was a slam dunk, the other was a blockbuster to be that came into the weekend stinking of behind the scenes drama. Yet in the end both hit theaters this week and obliterated expectations.

Monsters University is the prequel to one of the older PIXAR classics, telling the tale of how everyone’s favorite boogie men, Mike and Sully, learned their scare trade. The film took in $82 million over the weekend giving PIXAR its second highest opening ever, and their 14th strait number one debut. Lets just ponder that for a second, even as the creative armor of the premier animation house of the west shows some chinks in their armor, they maintain a perfect record on the financial side of the movie equation. The quality of the recent PIXAR films is up to some debate, but what can’t be denied is they still know how to make a movie people want to see.

While everyone and their mother knew MU would be a hit, the big surprise of the weekend came from the Brad Pitt zombie blockbuster, World War Z. The studio had modest expectations initially, and the general geek community had no expectations. The film veered far from the source material that is much beloved, the movie was plagued by re-shoots and seeming instability from the set, and it is a PG-13 zombie film which just feels wrong. Despite all of that working against it in the buzz department, the film was well sold and generally positive reviews helped to make all those other issues all but disappear. The net result was $66 million at the box office and a lot of turned heads.

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.

It’s getting harder and harder to contain our enthusiasm for Zack Snyder’s upcoming Man of Steel. We’re really expecting it to be something awesome.

Well, most of us are anyway. Still, even with Wally’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, we can still bring you the latest trailer from the movie, an exclusive one from the folks at Nokia.

Yeah, that means some Nokia advertisign and probably Supes using a Nokia phone in the movie. He also goes to Burger King apparently. Whatev.

Anyway, Check out the trailer after the break. Look for Man of Steel to arrive in theaters next week.

Summer is a great time for movies, especially if you’re a geek. With Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness already in theaters, we can next look forward to Man of Steel.

Another new trailer for the Superman reboot has arrived. In this one General Zod issues an ominous message to the people of the Earth: “Your world has sheltered one of my citizens. … To those of you who know his location, the fate of your planet rests in your hands.”

Uh, oh. Does Superman end up kneeling before Zod? What do you think?

Check out the trailer after the break. Man of Steel arrives in theaters on June 14.

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.

This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt discuss a bunch of new topics and revisit a few old ones. Some of these include the upcoming Superman reboot, Star Trek: Into Darkness, the relative merits of Scary Movie 5, 3D versus non-3D box office, boardgames, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars dream and a whole lot more.

They also made some picks his week, as usual, with Matt’s being the ABC TV series Once Upon a Time and Chris’ being the 1980 mini-series Shogun.

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 or via email.

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Today has been a great day for trailers, especially if you’re a fan of sci-fi or comic book action. First, the new Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer arrives and now we’ve got a brand new Man of Steel trailer too.

In this one we get much more Superman action as well as some more insight into the movie itself and the cast of characters surrounding the Man of Steel.

We also get some great Superman action and a bit more, shall we say, humanity than we’ve seen in awhile from a Zack Snyder movie. We like it, and so will you.

Check it all out after the break. Look for Man of Steel to arrive in theaters on June 14th.

Last week when I spoke about the looming doom that is Man of Steel I might not been clear what I was so worried about. I was not convinced Man of Steel itself was going to be a bad film, I was more worried about what the creative choices of the new Superman movie would mean for the immediate future of the DC cinematic universe.

It looks as if those fears have just been given an unfortunate boost. Rumors are flying that Warner Brothers is about to toss out their current Justice League script because it apparently sucks. Badass Digest is reporting that new writers are on order as the current script is as good as trash:

I’ve now heard from multiple sources that the Will Beall script for Justice League has been scrapped. The story from each source is the same: it’s terrible. Some sources seem to think the whole movie is going to fall apart and never happen, while some believe that Warner Bros will keep moving forward, unwilling to lose the superhero arms race.

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.