Joss Wheodon's Avengers inspired S.H.I.E.L.D. series is gearing up to start production in 2013. The cast is coming together, the scripts are being written, and according to ABC president Paul Lee, "it's very Joss Whedon." I should hope so! If it wasn't I would think there was a problem. He went on to say,

We’re optimistic, because Joss is a genius and we love the idea and we love what we’ve seen, but it’s early days, and it’s a long way to go between now and a successful series. But we are very excited about it.

I've enjoyed all of the TV series that Whedon has worked on over the years, and I have no doubt this will be just as good as what he's done in the past -- probably even better. There's also a better chance it won't get cancelled after its first season. That's something to look forward to! 

So far the cast of the series includes Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, Ming-Na as Agent Melinda May, Brett Dalton as Agent Grant, Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Gemma Simmons and Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz. 

The story will revolve around the activities of the top-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. espionage organization featured in The Avengers. Whedon is tentatively set to direct the pilot for the series that he will write along side his brother Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen.

Here's a wonderfully unique and beautifully animated short film directed by Paulin Cointot called Le Taxidermiste. This was a very entertaining short and I thought the story was fantastic. I appreciated the dark humor of it.

This is the story of an old woman who wants to pay her last respects to her husband. She welcomes a team of Funeral directors at her home, a strange apartment full of dead animals. It’s time to get the body and perform the ceremony. It’s time to say goodbye to what is left behind.

There's a lot of great little details in this film, like how all of the dead animals in the film show some kind of personality. I also really like the sketchiness of the CG animated style, the setting and mood. I hope you like this one!

Le Taxidermiste from Le Taxidermiste Team on Vimeo.

I'm surprised we haven't seen a Family Guy movie yet, but creator Seth MacFarlane is working on making it happen! One day we will see a Family Guy movie, and MacFarlane says "it’s just a matter of when." He recently visited UCLA and talked about the potential film, telling a group of college kids (via /Film) that he's come up with a plan for the film saying,

We do know what the Family Guy movie will be. The Simpsons movie, I thought, was hilarious, but the one criticism I would have is that it’s a story they probably could’ve done on TV. There could’ve been an episode that had that plotline. That’s the challenge with animation. You pretty much can do any story you want, so what is the reason for the movie? We finally hit on the answer to that question, and it will be something that would be impossible to do on TV.

As much as I enjoyed The Simpsons movie, he makes a great point! The Simpsons movie stuck with the TV formula, but they could have taken it to a whole new level, and it sounds like MacFarlane is going to do just that when he brings Family Guy to the big screen. 

He didn't offer any information on what the story would be, but I imagine he wants to take it to epic levels. I loved what he did with Star Wars and in the Family Guy specials, and I can't wait to see what he has in store for this movie he wants to do. As for when and how it will happen he says,

It’s hard to do that while you have the series going on at the same time. I think that’s why it took The Simpsons 20 seasons to figure out how to do it.

MacFarlane is at a prime position in his career right now, especially after his live-action comedy Ted brought in over $500 million. He could really do anything he wants, but the guy has got so much going on right now that I'm sure he just doesn't have the time. When he does end up making the movie, I'll be there to watch it.

Earlier this year AMC met with Netflix to talk about bringing back their murder thiller series The Killing. The network cancelled the series this last summer, which bummed a lot of people like myself out. I thought this was one of the best shows on TV, so I'm happy to tell you that The Killing is coming back to AMC! 

According to Variety, showrunner Veena Sud and executive producers Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin Started work on writing the third season this week! There's no official confirmation from the studio yet though. The report goes on to say that the new season will most likely launch in May of next year, with production set to begin in a few months. As for the deal that AMC was working out with Netflix... it's hasn't been finalized yet. The fact that other people are interested in bringing it back obviously helped AMC in making their decision to bring back the show.

Series stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman are under contract for a third season, so you can expect them to reprise their roles.The show is based on the Danish series Forbrydelsen (The Crime), The Killing followed Linden and Holder as they investigated the murder of teenager Rosie and all those connected to it. Each episode of the series covered the span of roughly one day. The Rosie Larsen murder was wrapped up at the end of the season two finale. 

I'm excited that the show is coming back, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the third season has in store for us! 

Here's an extremely cool series of propaganda style Star Wars illustrations created by Patty McPancakes. I've always wondered what side I would fall on if I lived in the Star Wars universe. Would I be part of the Rebel Alliance or part of the Empire? If I had a choice it would be Rebels, but what if I was born and raised in the Empire? If so what kind of job would I have? Would I have a choice in what it was? Could I quit without being killed? Deep thoughts.

A foul-mouthed, hard-partying teddy bear and his 35-year-old best friend come together in the #1 comedy of the year, Ted, available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and On Demand on December 11, 2012, from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. GeekTyrant has your chance to win a sweet prize pack. Keep reading for the details and to enter!

Directed by Seth MacFarlane, creator of television¹s uproarious and irreverent hits Family Guy and American Dad, Ted stars Mark Wahlberg (Contraband, The Other Guys), Mila Kunis (Friends with Benefits, Black Swan), Joel McHale (Community), Giovanni Ribisi (Contraband, Avatar) and Seth MacFarlane as the voice of Ted.

The Ted Blu-ray Combo Pack also includes a Digital Copy of the film, compatible with iPhone®, iTunes®, iPad®, iPod®, iPod® touch, Android or online retail partners, as well as UltraViolet. UltraViolet is the revolutionary new way for consumers to collect movies and TV shows in the cloud to instantly stream and download to tablets, smartphones, computers, and TVs. Consumers can now truly enjoy Ted anytime, anywhere on the device of their choice.

Here is what you win:

• 1 Blu-ray copy of the film
• 1 TED luggage tag
• 1 TED scarf
• 1 mini-poster
• 2 Thunder Buddy Sticks

Enter below for your chance to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Warner Bros. has hired Peter O’Brien (Halo: Reach) to write Todd Phillips' thriller Trust Your Eyes. The movie is based on the book written by Linwood Barclay. The story is a conspiracy thriller that's a cross between Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Barry Levinson's Rain Man. It centers on "a schizophrenic, map-obsessed savant who witnesses a murder online on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He insists that his older brother investigate, and it's not long before the siblings cross paths with a politically-connected ex-cop and his ice pick-wielding henchwoman, who are themselves scrambling to clean up after a high-stakes screwup."

This could end up being a great film. Phillips is mostly known for making comedies like The Hangover, but I can see him branching out into different genres. He seems like the kind of filmmaker that has a wide range of talent. O'Brien is best known for writing the video game Halo: Reach, but has since worked on several screenplays for movies that have yet to be made.   

Here's a description of the book:

A schizophrenic man spends his days and nights on a website called Whirl360, believing he’s employed by the CIA to store the details of every town and city in the world in his head. Then one day, he sees something that shouldn’t be there: a woman being murdered behind a window on a New York street. Suddenly Thomas has more to deal with than just his delusions, as he gets drawn into a deadly conspiracy.

Here's a great new clip from Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty featuring Seal Team Six loading up in a helicopter and taking off to kill Osama Bin Laden. It's going to be so cool to see that part of the movie play out! Hopefully this clip doesn't get taken down like the last one. 

The movie follows the decade-long CIA manhunt, along with SEAL Team Six, a group of Navy SEALs who brought down the Al Qaeda leader back in 2011.

You can expect to see Jessica Chastain get an Oscar nomination for this film, it looks like she just gives a hell of a performance. The movie also stars Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Edgar Ramirez and more. The movie will be released in theaters on December 19th.

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained has a new TV spot you can watch called "Bounty". The movie has a wonderful cast of actors that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Gerald McRaney, Dennis Christopher, Laura Cayouette, M.C. Gainey, Don Johnson, Kerry Washington, Anthony LaPaglia, RZA, Tom Wopat, James Remar, James Russo, Todd Allen and Jonah Hill. It will be interesting to see who from this cast ends up getting an Oscar nomination. 

Set in the South two years before the Civil War, DJANGO UNCHAINED stars Academy Award(R)-winner Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Academy Award(R)-winner Christoph Waltz). Schultz is on the trail of the murderous Brittle brothers, and only Django can lead him to his bounty. The unorthodox Schultz acquires Django with a promise to free him upon the capture of the Brittles--dead or alive.

The movie is set to be released on December 25th, and it looks like it will end up being another Tarantino classic.

I hate long movie titles, but here's the trailer for a wacky looking new comedy called A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. It was directed by Roman Coppola and has an awesome cast of actors that includes Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Aubrey Plaza, Patricia Arquette, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Katheryn Winnick. I enjoy crazy offbeat movies like this, so I think this looks like it's going to be a great weird flick, and I'll definitely be checking it out!

Synopsis:

Set in a stylized Los Angeles, A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN III is a playful comedy of lost love, friendship, revenge fantasies, and Brandy Alexanders. Charles (Charlie Sheen) is a successful graphic designer whose fame, money and charm have provided him with a seemingly perfect life. When his true love, a perplexing beauty named Ivana, suddenly breaks off their relationship, Charles' life falls apart, and he swirls into a downward spiral of doubt, confusion and reflection. With the support of his loyal intimates -- Kirby (Jason Schwartzman), Saul (Bill Murray), and his sister, Izzy (Patricia Arquette) -- he begins the hard road of self-evaluation to come to terms with a life without Ivana. The film begs the question: Is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time?

The movie will be released on February 8th, 2013. Check out the trailer and let us know if it looks like your kind of film! 

Here's a cute piece of Disney and Star Wars fan art from Deviant Artist stinawo called, "Princess Lilo and Stitch Solo". The artist has given Lilo a Princess Leia makeover and Stitch got the the classic Han Solo look. 

Heath Ledger delivered one of the most iconic performances of the decade as The Joker in 2008's The Dark Knight before he passed away, but did you know that Christopher Nolan first offered him the role of Bruce Wayne?

HitFix was present at a discussion with Nolan about his experience working on the Batman trilogy that made him a household name and one of the most famous directors on the planet. Nolan offered up some interesting insights on making the films, and one of the highlights was when the discussion turned to Heath Ledger. The actor and director reportedly met before filming began on Batman Begins, and Ledger "politely explained to the director why he would never be involved in a comic book film", but after seeing the world he created with the first film in the series, he was "hungry" to be a part of the sequel.

Here's a selection from HitFix's recap of the event:

"Like a lot of artists, he would sneak up on something," Nolan said. "So you couldn't really sit and go, 'Okay, you're going to do the Joker. You're going to show me what it's going to be.' You had to sort of say, 'Let's read this scene. Don't act it, just read.' And he'd sit with Christian and there would be a line or two where his voice was a little different, throw in a little bit of a laugh. And then we would film hair and makeup tests and try different looks, and in that, he'd start to move, and we'd have these rubber knives and he'd choose what weapon and explore the movement of the character. We weren't recording sound, so he felt quite able to start talking and showing some of what he was going to do. And in that way he sort of sneaked up on the character."

The voice, though, worried the director at first, he said, because of its odd shift in pitch. "He had figured out this whole thing that was all based on the Alexander Technique, where if you hit a high note, you're then able to hit sort of two octaves below afterwards," Nolan said. "It's a way of lowering your voice. So you had this character who you'd never quite know which way the pitch was going to go of his voice. Just as in his physical movements -- you don't know how he's going to move; it's always a surprise -- the actual tone of his voice was always a surprise, too. Sometimes it would go incredibly low and threatening and other times it was light, in a way."

We wanted to highlight some of these quotes because it's cool to hear Nolan speak about Ledger's process while he was creating this titanic performance. It's kind of crazy to think that if things had gone just a bit differently, we wouldn't have seen that performance at all because Ledger would have been wearing the Batsuit the whole time. Could Bale have been an effective Joker, perhaps? The world will never know. Be sure to read the full article for much more on Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises.

Universal Pictures has released five great new clips for Tom Hooper's Les Miserables featuring over six minutes of footage and musical numbers from the film! The songs included here are "A Heart Full of Love", "At the End of the Day", "Who Am I", "Javert Releases Prisoner 24601 On Parole" and "On my Own". Most of the music is really well done, and everyone seems to do a solid job, but I'm still not sure if I buy into Russell Crowe's singing abilities. It's a little awkward. My favorite clip is Samantha Barks as Éponine singing "On My Own", she's really freakin' good. Of course she played the part on Broadway, and it shows. She's a much better singer than everyone else.

The epic musical also stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tveit, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen.

Set against the backdrop of 19th-century France, Les Miserables tells an enthralling story of broken dreams and unrequited love, passion, sacrifice and redemption–a timeless testament to the survival of the human spirit. Jackman plays ex-prisoner Jean Valjean, hunted for decades by the ruthless policeman Javert (Crowe) after he breaks parole. When Valjean agrees to care for factory worker Fantine’s (Hathaway) young daughter, Cosette, their lives change forever.

Watch and listen to the clips, and let us know what you think of the music and the actors singing abilities. The movie comes out on December 25th!

I love William Shatner, but cah you say sour grapes. Not only did Shatner star as Captain James T. Kirk in TV and Films, but he also directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. During a recent interview with The PIttsburgh Post Gazzette, he had some interesting remarks about J.J. Abrams' reboot of the franchise.

I think it's wonderful. It's a great ride, a great opening up of Star Trek to modern audiences. It doesn't have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had, but it's a glorious motion picture.

I am going to say this, I love the Star Trek reboot and am super excited for the sequel. Shatner deserves some respect, but I am going to have to vehemently disagree with his statement. The Trek TV and film versions are great, but without Abrams' reboot the franchise would not have as many fans as it currently does. 

There are many man Trekkies, but I feel that these reboots have peaked the interest of the franchise to a newer and younger audience, adding to the overall base. Many of you may disagree with me, but I don't agree with Shatner's statement.

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I've been hoping that A Good Day to Die Hard would end up being another great John McClane action film, and so far I really like what I've seen! Here's a fun behind the scenes featurette for the John Moore directed film. It features a ton of action sequences from the movie and Jai Courtney talks about his father and son relationship with Bruce Willis' McClane. The movie comes out on February 14th, 2013, and I'm excited to see McClane take on Russia! 

Since the first "Die Hard" in 1988, John McClane has found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the skills and attitude to always be the last man standing, making him enemy #1 for terrorists the world over. Now, McClane faces his greatest challenge ever, this time on an international stage, when his estranged son Jack is caught up in the daring prison escape of a rogue Russian leader, and father and son McClane must work together to keep each other alive and keep the world safe for democracy.

Prometheus is one of my favorite science fiction films this year, and I love all types of fan art. The piece is by Dejan Jovanovic and features some cool Giger-esque imagery mixed in with Michelangelo's famous "Creation of Adam".Check out more of Jovanovic's work on his DeviantART page. 

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Elijah Wood stars in this trippy music video for Flying Lotus called "Tiny Tortures", from the album "Until The Quiet Comes." The video was directed by David Lewandowski, and it turned out pretty cool. There's a fun fantasy element to it that I really thought was cool.

Flying Lotus - Tiny Tortures from dlew on Vimeo.

If you love Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as much as I do, then you may want to pick up this cool winter hat inspired by the film. The Weir Overlook Special Edition Beanie has the same pattern as the floor of the iconic hotel and is available this December from Connoisseur.

Here is a description of the product:

Whilst it should never be about blowing your own trumpet, we are dead proud of this one. If we hadn't designed it ourselves we'd say it was genius. Our brand is all about immersing itself in the things we love and are passionate about, this is no finer example of that.

This is one of a kind, if you don't know what this is or represents then, well, you shouldn't have to ask. But if you must; it's that horrendous, garish carpet from the Overlook Hotel, from the chilling cult Stanley Kubrick movie The Shining. Come and play with us, forever and ever and ever...

We're proud to present the Overlook hat.

One size fits all. Limited numbers produced, strictly one per customer.

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Source: i09 (http://io9.com/5964915/hat-inspired-by-the-shinings-overlook-hotel-is-the-perfect-way-to-show-everyone-youve-gone-a-little-bit-crazy)

Teenage Mutant Turtles' Casey Jones is a pretty badass character. I think the character deserves his own movie or TV series. Artist Brett Parson created this awesomely fun illustration for Planet Pulp's The Righteous TMNT Shell Show. It gives us a look at just how bloody hardcore the character can be.

This last summer it was announced that Warner Bros. was finally going to move forward with a live-action Justice League movie after The Avengers did so freakin' well at the box office. Gangster Squad screenwriter Will Beall was hired to write the script for the film, and other than the involvement of the main superhero characters there hasn't been a lot of information on the film. But! Thanks to our friends at Latino Review we've got some pretty awesome info to share with you! They've been able to uncover who the villain of the film will be!

The Avengers will be facing off against the Mad Titan, Thanos, in the sequel in 2015, but the Justice League will be taking on a God. The site reveals that the main villain of the story will be Darkseid! 

How badass is that?! It makes complete sense that they would bring in an epic villain like this to take on the Justice League team. To make the story interesting it would have to be Gods fighting Gods. If they ended up fighting against some mere mortal like Lex Luthor, I'd think it'd be over pretty quick. There needs to be a real threat, and Darkseid is it.

Darkseid was created by Jack Kirby in 1970 and first appeared Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #134. Here's a little information on the character for those of you not really familiar.

Darkseid is the ruler of Apokolips and Darkseid's Elite and was a major player in the cosmic war that was the Final Crisis. Unto the hell that is Apokolips came Darkseid, malice personified, a merciless tyrant who demanded unwavering devotion and abject fear from all his subjects. A being of unparalleled strength, Darkseid nevertheless preferred not to sully his gloves with combat unless provoked to action. His eyes emitted the formidable Omega Sanction, ray beams that could disintegrate, teleport, or resurrect depending on the dread lord's wishes. His sole mission in life was to find and gain control over the Anti-Life Equation which would give him the means to usurp all free will in the sentient universe.

He should give the Justice League a run for their money, but of course in the end, they will win. Marvel Studios seems to be doing almost everything right. All Warner Bros. has right now is The Dark Knight, and it has yet to be seen how good Man of Steel will be. Both Green Lantern and Superman Returns were pretty disappointing for me. I don't think Justice League will end up being as good as what Marvel has and will accomplish, but I'm sure it will be entertaining! At least I hope it is! I really do want them to give the fans something incredible, I want them to succeed at this! It won't be easy though. The studio still has yet to find a director to bring the film to life. 

Latino-Review is always spot on with their news scoops, and I trust that this is some good solid intel. What do you think about Darkseid being the main villain in the WB's Justice League movie?