In today’s big budget movies, almost anything you see could be a visual effect. From buildings to cars to giant flying robots and more, the men and women who create today’s modern visual effects are masters of their craft and are able to take an ordinary scene of two people staring into the void and turn it into a piece of movie magic.

We’ve seen the “after” of all this work in hundreds blockbuster movies, but what about the “before”? Well, a new website wants to highlight just that. Over at Before VFX, they’ve collected a ton of photos from various blockbuster movies that show what the site calls “The Canvas” of the visual effects shot.

In other words, they show what the scene was actually like before any visual effects were added and before an audience ever saw one frame. It’s a fascinating look into just how much goes into the making of a modern movie blockbuster and how much we owe the VFX artists who do this work every day.

Plus, as Dustin Rowles at Pajiba put it, it shows us “how little credit we give A-list actors for their ability to interact and engage with green screens.” How little credit indeed. It can’t be that easy.

Check out several pics after the break and head over to Before VFX for a ton more.

As much as we love Disney and a lot of the things they do like Wreck-It Ralph, even we notice that they don’t always come up with all their own concepts. Usually it is something that has been successful in the past and they put a Disney twist on it to turn it into an even bigger success. Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and tons more are all examples of this. So, it’s no surprise that Disney and Avalanche Software would be following the success of the toys to video game combo of Skylanders with the announcement of Disney Infinity.

Using a special hardware base accessory, players will be able to unlock new in game content and characters for Disney Infinity. Sounds familiar right? Disney Infinity will be following a model similar to that of Activision’s Skylanders franchise. Players will be able to take purchased toys and put them on a base that will read the figure and unlock characters and items in the game.

In the trailer below, you’ll see characters from Pirates of the Caribbean, The Incredibles, Monsters University, Cars, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story and more that will most likely be on the list of playable characters and toys coming out for Disney Infinity.

Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that your Johnny Depp. You’ve made quite a few movies, are respected as an actor, recognized around the world as a big star and brought Disney a boatload of money for your work as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates franchise. With all that, what do you do?

If you’re Johnny Depp, it seems one of the things you do is get Disney to buy the rights to one of your favorite 70’s TV series with an eye to turning it into a feature film for you to star in. That series? Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

According to reports, Depp is a fan of the series and got Disney interested in a feature version with Depp to star as tabloid reporter Carl Kolchak, a role originally played by the awesome Darren McGavin in the TV movie and subsequent series. Could be interesting with Depp in the role.

In case you’re not familiar with the show, it centered on McGavin as Kolchak, a dogged investigative journalist with a nose for the macabre and supernatural. Even though his investigations often started out normal enough, in most cases they ended up leading him down a dark path into the world of vampires, zombies, werewolves and aliens.

The show was pretty cool, especially for its time, and is often cited by various insiders, including creator Chris Carter, as one of the main inspirations for TV’s The X-Files. I loved the show as a kid and look forward to seeing what Depp and company can do with it.

The project will soon go out to writers. More on this as is develops.

The Pirates of the Caribbean film series is a great many things. It has covered four long, epic films and has captured the imagination of a generation of movie fans excited to embrace adventure. One of the aspects of the franchise that has stayed consistently great up to this point is the musical scores.

Mostly the brain child of Hans Zimmer, with a great start by Klaus Badlet, the music of the first three films has been excellent. Now with the fourth thrilling tale of Captain Jack Sparrow in theaters we have the chance to re-visit the high seas with another Zimmer score.

Before I get knee deep into the new score I did want to spend a minute talking about the score for the third film. The last movie gets a lot of negativity, some of it deserved, some of it not-so-much. This has led the film’s score to become one of the most criminally under appreciated pieces of film music ever written. Everything that made the Pirates themes brilliant is enhanced and expanded upon here, and the new pieces are all uniformly excellent.

The album is capped by the single best arrangement of the classic ‘He’s a Pirate’ theme that flows seamlessly into a beautiful main theme of the third film which is probably best described as Will and Elizabeth’s love theme. Great stuff all around, and I encourage any score fan to seek it out, you will be pleased.

Now to the latest film’s music. On Stranger Tides is a stand alone adventure, but it leans heavily on the themes already established for the main pirate characters of Jack and Barbossa. The new elements in this soundtrack come from the characters of Angelica and Blackbeard, both getting new themes that are generally successful. The mot exciting new sound in the score originates from Angelica’s theme, she is a Spaniard and as such Zimmer crafts a wonderful Spanish sound with the help of Rodrigo y Gabriela.

The fourth installment of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise hits theaters in May, but today we’re bringing you the first official movie poster. Entitled On Stranger Tides, the flick will be the first of the series to be released in 3D and will be producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s second 3D film to-date, following his 2009 animated G-Force.

The Walk Disney Pictures release stars Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush, and Kevin McNalley, among others. Interestingly, the plot of the new Pirates is inspired by the novel On Stranger Tides, which is the same novel that inspired the LucasArts game, The Secret of Monkey Island; a game that has become a bit of a cult classic, even sporting a recent iPad port of the original game.

The plot focuses on Captain Jack Sparrow searching for the fountain of youth and along the way, confronting the infamous pirate, Blackbeard himself.

On Stranger Tides releases May 20th. Until then, hit the jump for the full movie poster in all its glory.

It’s that time of year again when we all gather together to see our loved ones… that’s right. The Con season has begun. Whether it’s SXSW, Toy Fair, C2E2 or Comic Con in San Diego, if you are a reader (or writer) of the Flickcast, it’s likely you are going to end up at least one, if not all, of the Cons this season. Our first one up on the east coast is Toy Fair. Now while Toy Fair isn’t open to the general public, we made sure to get in and get a peek at some of the hottest new toys of the season.

We got to take a peek at the new models for the Walking Dead action figures alongside our friends from MTV Splashpage as the legendary Todd McFarlane himself explained how the zombie bodies will literally explode in the customer’s hands. We can’t wait to see the final versions in action.

There was a plethora of Green Lantern merchandise that we were unfortunately unable to snag pictures of as well as the brand new Thundercats line which is coming out soon. We were able to sneak a few pictures though of some of the Mezco Green Lantern products though.

The video game world was represented strong with Sonic The Hedgehog, Halo, Deus Ex, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy and Little Big Planet. Activision also announced to the world Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure for the Wii where toys and video games come together in a very interesting new way. Check back later this week for a full post including video of the product in action.

Check out all of our pics from Toy Fair below and keep checking back this week for more from the show (including an appearance on this week’s podcast discussing it with Matt and Chris)!

The much anticipated Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides revealed its teaser trailer during the Disney panel held over the weekend. In the trailer we have the incomparable Captain Jack Sparrow drunkenly inviting the audience to join him in an adventure in search of the fountain of youth.

Sparrow goes on to entice the audience with various dangers he will be encountering, including cutthroats, zombies, mermaids and his co-star Penelope Cruz. In the film, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) crosses paths with a woman from his past (Penelope Cruz), and he’s not sure if it’s love or if she’s a ruthless con artist who’s using him to find the fabled Fountain of Youth.

When she forces him aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship of the formidable pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane), Jack finds himself on an unexpected adventure in which he doesn’t know who to fear more: Blackbeard or the woman from his past.

The movie will be directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago). It is set to hit theaters on May 20th, 2011 in both 2D and 3D formats.

Keep it here for all of your Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides news and check out the teaser after the jump.

Since it’s announcement, Rob Marshall’s upcoming sequel in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has gotten more and more interesting casting news. First Ian McShane joined the cast as Blackbeard, then Penelope Cruz was cast as his daughter and now the cast has grown by one more.

Actor Stephen Graham, possibly best known for his roles in Gangs of New York and Snatch, will be standing side by side with Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow in next summer’s epic sequel. From Variety:

He’ll portray Scrum, a Machiavellian pirate in Disney’s fourth installment of the franchise in which Sparrow seeks out the fountain of youth. Graham worked with Depp on “Public Enemies” and recently wrapped on murder drama “The Fields” opposite Sam Worthington.

He also will be seen as Al Capone on Martin Scorsese’s series “Boardwalk Empire” for HBO and in William Monahan’s “London Boulevard” opposite Keira Knightly and Colin Farrell.

Pirates 4 is geared to set sail on May 20th, 2011.

This week on The Flickcast, Matt is back home from his trip to sunny LA and he and Chris are back in action with a whole bunch of new topics. Some of what gets discussed in this episode includes Mark Strong as Sinestro in Green Lantern, Conan in 3D, Wal-Mart buying Vudu, Betty White on SNL, Call of Duty and its many incarnations, Ian McShane as Blackbeard, the sale of Action Comics #1 and a whole lot more.

They both also made some good picks again this week incuding Matt’s pick of the short film The Legacy and Chris’ pick of the classic 80’s TV series Tales of the Gold Monkey, featuring Stephen Collins and Roddy McDowall.

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 and MySpace or via email.

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While he may look to be beating a dead horse with the upcoming spy comedy Day & Knight, Tom Cruise has announced that he’s returning to the Mission Impossible franchise for a fourth film. From Variety:

Cruise and J.J. Abrams — who co-wrote the “Mission: Impossible III” screenplay — will produce from a screenplay by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, a writing duo hired last summer to pen the script from an idea hatched by Cruise and Abrams. Appelbaum and Nemec spent four seasons with Abrams as co-exec producers of “Alias.”

Paramount made the announcement yesterday, along with news that the film’s planed release date will be next Memorial Day. This will put the film out on the same weekend as the planned Hangover sequel, and on the second weekend of the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film.

The previous Mission Impossible films pulled in just over $1.3 billion, but Cruise’s cost was far too high for Paramount to continue any further films at the time. It seems, with this news, that the studio has decided Cruise is well worth the money spent.

With the film set to hit theaters in just 15 months, you can expect to see casting and script details to leak online by the droves in the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to keep you updated with any information as it comes our way.

Okay, let me get this out of the way first, with a name like Skarsgard how could you not be in Marvel‘s upcoming Thor movie? Apparently the answer is, you can’t. To that end, Stellan Skarsgard is joining the cast of Thor.

While Skarsgard could not comment on what role he would be playing he did speak of the hurdles committing to the project, “They wanted me to sign without reading the script. That I refused to do. Then they sent one to me that was so coded that I could only print one copy.” Considering the nature of Marvel properties it’s not surprising they would want to keep things hush hush.

If you don’t recognize Skarsgard’s name you would remember him in such films as Angels & Demons, Mamma Mia!, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End. Interestingly enough Skarsgard’s son, Alexander (True Blood), was rumored to be up for the leading role of Thor himself, but that ultimately went to Star Trek’s Chris Hemsworth.

Alongside Skarsgard, Thor stars Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Jaimie Alexander, Colm Feore and Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by Kenneth Branagh Thor is set to hit theaters May 20, 2011.

This week on The Flickcast your favorite trio celebrates a milestone episode 25 and discusses a whole bunch of new topics including the Emmy Awards, Neil Patrick Harris’ hosting performance and Dick Cook stepping down from Disney. They also take on topics such as Christopher Nolan’s plans for a Dark Knight sequel, Johnny Depp’s future as Jack Sparrow and the future of the Pirate’s franchise, the Kirby family lawsuit, the season premiere of Heroes and a whole lot more.

Also, the team makes another set of great picks this week including Christina’s favorite CW show Gossip Girl, Matt’s pick of the web series The Legend of Neil and Chris’ pick of The Big Bang Theory, his favorite show involving four geeky physicists, the hot girl across the hall, Star Trek, robot wars and Comic-Con.

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

Thanks for listening.

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