Welcome to the first Cage Match of 2011, dear readers. Last week we posted two days late due to the holidays and stomach flu, but the tides of Nicolas are now calm and we’re back on schedule. If I look like I’m glowing this week, it’s because Season of the Witch comes out this Friday! I haven’t experienced Cage on the big screen since his turn as Big Daddy in Kick Ass, so I’m stoked. January releases almost certainly suck, but I love Cage and the Black Death so look for my review on Friday!

The majority of the news this week concerns Season of the Witch, but being a Cage bloodhound I managed to find some other nuggets, including the streaming of a forgotten Cage gem on Netflix. Let’s do this damn thing.

AP Talks Season of the Witch With Cage; His Horse’s Name Was Dali

Cage recently sat down with AP and talked about some of his horse training for Season of the Witch. Just like his during his interviews for Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Cage says that he’s been waiting to play this role since he was a boy. First he dreamed of shooting plasma out of his hands now he says he dreamed of being a knight. I kid, I bet he did.

Cage makes it point to say that his horse on Season of the Witch was named Dali, like Salvador. Because when he first said it I thought “Dolly” which is the name of his right testicle. Only hardcore fans know that.

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French magazine L’Ecran Fantastique features an interview with Captain America production designer Rick Heinrichs. It must have been the allure of France’s elegance, philosophy (what up, Sartre, Descartes, Camus, and others!) and gorgeous women, ’cause Heinrichs spilled a considerable amount of details pertaining to the upcoming flick. There’s some spoilers afoot, though I wouldn’t call any of them cataclysmic or shocking. Here’s what the production designer had to say, if you’re interested. But I warned you.

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[DEFEAT. is Rendar Frankenstein’s truest attempt at fiction.   Presented in weekly episodes, the novella tells the tale of Daryl Millar – a hero who dies at the intersection of pop culture, science-fiction, war epic, and fantasy]

The day had been going especially well for 8-Bit. He had aced his physics exam. Daryl had returned his copy of The Dark Knight Falls without a single crease or blemish to be found. And the evening held the prospect of a trip to the circus. So, it was with an understandable enthusiasm that the teen entered the bathroom to wash his hands before lunch. The pre-lunch routine was adhered to daily, if only for a comforting sense of continuity.

Unfortunately, Brady Moore also knew of this routine. Hiding in a stall, Brady waited for 8-Bit to be about halfway through his hand-scrubbing before making a move. Although not really a consideration anyways, the fully lathered hands would prevent any attempted resistance; yes, he was a prick of an inexcusable magnitude, but Captain Moore’s strategy was commendable in its own way.

Kicking open the stall door, Brady terrified his prey. With a bewildered eye turned over his shoulder, 8-Bit knew that nothing good was on the horizon. Brady spun the gamer around. Grabbed him by the collar. lLifted him off the ground. Shoved him against the wall.

“Listen here, you fucking dork — I don’t like you.”

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Let’s play the game! The first set photos have leaked of Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker! Now, it’s up to us to complete the second part of the game. We stare at these pictures long and hard. With our fanboy nerd goggles on. Then we get hyper-analytic and needlessly extrapolate!

Hit the jump for the pictures, and don’t forget to either laud or praise the film based on these pictures alone!

It’s your nerd civic duty.

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Good afternoon, internet populace! This is Variant Covers, the column that throws an unedited and poorly written eye at the comic books I’m checking out this week. Per usual, hit me up with your pull-list for the week, and let’s ring in this new year with some fucking funny books!

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Choker #5
The fifth issue of McCool and Templesmith’s jaunt through a futuristic mindfuck noir drops this week. The series has come out sporadically, but every time that it arrives I greet it with a smile. I’m a total slut for profanity, and dystopian futures, so McCool and Templesmith are really just lobbing fastballs down the lane towards me. I’ll eat it up!

This second to last issue sees protagonist Johnny Jackson throwing down with the psychopathic drug-dealing ex-con who has a dickcrush for Jackson’s death. It promises all the violence and profanity I’ve come to love. Oh! And there’s vampires. Buy it for your fourteen year old cousin and show her what sort of shit the real dudes start.

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Who Is Jake Ellis #1
This miniseries starting tomorrow by Nathan Edmonson and Tonci Zonjic is the raging hotness. Want to be the cool kid in your comic shop tomorrow? Either pick this shit up, or act beyond indignant when they say they didn’t order it or sold out. You’re going to gain some credit, duders. I promise. You can’t stop there though. Wear your Lantern Corp ring of choice. You know, the one you got from Free Comic Day. Tie that shit together with your t-shirt of choice (I’m thinking the Alex Ross Obama shirt that’s super unique!) and you’re the pimp now, fanboy!

Seriously though.

The good news is that the comic itself sounds bizarre. Which is, as always, plus-forty points in my book. The premise? It’s centered around Jon Moore who “is the most sought after spy-for-hire in Europe’s criminal world. This is because of Jake Ellis, a psychic man who is invisible to everyone except Moore. When a deal goes bad, the only one who can protect Moore from Europe’s most dangerous criminals is Jake Ellis. No one but Moore can see Jake Ellis. But Jake Ellis can see everything.”

Odd, odd shit. Intrigued? Edmonson spoke with Tim O’Shea over at Robot 6, and its an interesting read.

Color me stoked.

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[Enlarge.]

Today, Bad Astronomy linked to this picture by Thierry Legault. Not only is it gorgeous, but it’s a bit special. Why? It’s a friggin’ double eclipse! Wait, wut you ask? Phil Plait over at the aforementioned site breaks it down in ways that I can only fathom.

Can you see why he traveled so far to get this shot? The silhouette of the Moon taking a dark bite out of the Sun is obvious enough, as are some interesting sunspots on the Sun’s face… but wait a sec… that one spot isn’t a spot at all, it’s the International Space Station! This was a  double eclipse!

That’s why Thierry sojourned to Oman; due to the geometry of the ISS orbit, it was from there that he had the best chance of getting a picture of the station as it passed in front of the Sun during the relatively brief duration of the actual solar eclipse. But talk about brief; the ISS was in front of the Sun for less than second, so not only did he have one chance at getting this spectacular once-in-a-lifetime shot, but he had only a fraction of a second to snap it!

To give you an overall idea of what you’re seeing here: the Sun is 147 million kilometers away (less than usual because this eclipse happened, coincidentally,  very close to perihelion, when Earth was closest to the Sun). The Moon is 390,000 kilometers away. The Sun is about 400 times bigger than the Moon, but also about 400 times farther away, making them look about the same size in the sky. If you’re still having a hard time picturing the scale, take a look at the dark sunspot in the lower right of the big picture:  it’s about twice the size of the Earth!

Like I said, Plait is amazing. This image is already incredible, but then he goes and gives it even more scope. The dark sunspot is twice the size of Earth? Incredible. In the truest sense of the word.

From 1971 until about 1979, Blaxploitation was enormous. At one time there was something like 3,000 movie theaters in the U.S. that played exclusively Blaxploitation films. Film movements like that just don’t exist anymore. Blaxploitation played off of white stereotypes of blacks, sometimes, unfortunately, reinforcing them. Film critic Ryan Diduck once explained Blaxploitation really well when he called it “empowerment through an overturned representation of long-established agency limitations for black men.”

I thought of revisiting Boss Nigger yesterday when Rendar mentioned how he was in the mood for westerns after seeing True Grit. I’m not a huge fan of the genre by any means – far too many of the “classics” are racist toward Native Americans and I don’t play that –   but Blaxploitation I do know so this popped into my mind. Hit the jump to read more about a unique film that packs more than a controversial title!

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Check it out! Most righteous. A good twenty Street Fighter characters have been recreated in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. I know that Street Fighter is a fighting game, but seeing some sick ass turnbuckle action featuring Zangief, T. Hawk and others is fucking awesome.

It also reminds me of a better time back in the day, when life was good, all wrestlers were over the top assholes with schticks. Superpowers! Communist bastards! Shamen! They were all included. But with the rise of MMA, the wrestling powers that be have decided that they needed to make shit more “realistic”. And wrestling now? It sort of blows. It’s all the homoerotic overtones, with none of the sweet personalities and absurd personas. Just dudes in spandex undies hugging one another. Without the money shots! I call shenanigans.

Hit the jump for the video.

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There’s been rumors of Call of Duty adding its own fee for online multiplayer for a good amount of time. So while those fears weren’t completely confirmed in a recent report, there is certainly something to be anxious about. Even if base online Call of Duty will remain free forever, it is looking more and more like there will be a tiered service implemented soon. Kotaku mentions in a new article that analysts at Wedbush Securities feel a new premium level of online gaming will hit in the next three months, and quotes them as saying:

Activision remains a top pick, primarily due to the company’s potential to create and monetize a second tier of multiplayer online gaming for its Call of Duty franchise.

[cont]

We expect this to occur during the first quarter of 2011.

Well, balls. There’s two important pieces of information missing from this speculation. What would it cost, and what would it give you? It is reinforced in the Kotaku article that Bobby Kotick and Activision state you’ll never have to pay for out of the box CoD multiplayer. But if they nerf that to sweet shit and all the decent action lays in the premium service? Well fuck. I already pay for WoW and Xbox Live (yearly). Having to add in a third payment isn’t feasible for me at this point, and I don’t play enough to justify it anyways.

Here’s hoping the rumor isn’t true (but I bet it is), and if it is, that the cost would be negligible (why would it be?).

Thoughts? Hit the comments box.

I am a big hockey fan. I am. Which is why I can say with  assuredness that almost every idea the NHL has is fucking awful. Okay, I’ll acknowledge that the Winter Classic is choice, and this year’s documentary leading up to it was also stellar. But as an organization, it is routinely obvious why they lag behind everything else here in the United States.

File this under: yet another amazing disaster in the making. The NHL and Stan  Lee have teamed up to create 30 unique superheroes under the title the Guardian Project. Comics Alliance quotes NHL.com which explains it as a “creative concept that organically and authentically incorporates various NHL elements but is not set in the world of hockey.” Oh, now I gotcha. A creative concept that organically incorporates the NHL and superheroes. How didn’t someone already think of this shit? Yup, this is going to breakdown the boundaries and get this sport back into the spotlight. Or, more than likely, it’s going to get two douchebags on Sportscenter talking shit as they fade out in some “Not Top Ten” list at the end of a segment.

Today, the first two superheroes were dropped. And good lord are they as awful/amazing as you could hope for.

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