Hello everyone, welcome back. You look terrific. After getting over the bummer of Season of the Witch, we can finally kick back and be excited about Drive Angry 3D. A new image and totally NSFW clip was released this week – enough to wet our appetites for the film’s February 25 release date.

We’ve also got an exclusive clip from the rarely seen Time to Kill. Seriously there was no clips on YouTube from this Cage gem until I put one on last night. In the mix as well is an awesome homage to Cage’s diverse hair styles, a thought-provoking interview with the Times of India, some painful news from the Ghost Rider 2 set, a Netflix recommendation, and whimsical music video. So much stuff! Let’s do this.

Cage Is a Bad Influence on Iguanas

Time to Kill (Tempo di uccidere) is a 1989 film written and directed by Giuliano Montaldo. Cage plays a soldier in the Italian Army as they invade Ethiopia in 1936. He leaves camp because he has a toothache and this choice sets off a string of cosmic incidents. One of these incidents is coming across an iguana (Bad Lieutenant foreshadowing???) and putting a cigarette in its mouth. Iguanas must be Cage’s spirit animal.

The movie is OOP and not that great. It’s actually really dull and the scene above (that I so selflessly put on YouTube last night) is the best part. BUT every Cage film is important. You know this is true. So if you get a chance, see it. Used VHS copies are dirt cheap on Amazon.

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(This review first appeared at the Mishka Bloglin, where I write under the moniker Oh Mars. For some reason.)

No one was sure what to expect when, years ago, Seth Rogen and Pineapple Express scribe Evan Goldberg wrote a script for a Green Hornet movie. It would be an action/comedy, that was the only guarantee. Then when Michel Gondry was set to direct, the blogosphere became collectively baffled. He’s a super creative, visionary director with a love of playful special effects. That’s unarguable. He delivered one of the best sci-fi movies of the decade with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the other hand, The Science of Sleep was way too cutesy for my taste and Be Kind Rewind sucked big time. So how did this petite Frenchman tackle a $120 million action comedy? Very, very well.

The vigilante superhero first appeared on radio serializations during the Depression and then as a short-lived TV show that ran from ’66 to ’67, featuring Bruce Lee as Kato. Since then the character has existed in a pulp niche outside of popular culture for decades – besides two comic book runs – Gondry, Rogan, and Goldberg could had creative freedom because the fanbase was relatively small. The final product is a fast-paced, hilarious, and surprisingly violent two hour movie. It definitely has its flaws but they’re seriously outweighed by everything the film does right.

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These are the casting confirmations that you’re looking for. Warner Bros. has confirmed that Tom Hardy will be playing Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, will Anne Hathaway will be playing Catwoman. No Dr. Hugo Strange, and I’m still holding out hope for Talia al Ghul.

Hit the jump for the official press release.

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Enlarge. | Super-High Res [142 Mb]. | Via.

Behold!, the Orion Nebula. If you haven’t clicked for the larger version, go, do it! The definition is ridiculous, no? This picture is staggering. As usual, Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy breaks down exactly what we’re looking at:

The nebula is a vast cloud of gas, both atomic and molecular, and dust located about 1350 light years away. It’s one of the largest star forming factories in the Milky Way, and what you see here is well over 20 light years across.

For years I figured it was just a diffuse glowing thing in space, but it turns out to be more complicated than that.  In reality, a lot of the nebula is actually a dark, dense molecular cloud – literally, composed of molecules like H₂ (molecular hydrogen) and CO (carbon monoxide). This cloud is actually far, far larger than what you see in this image, perhaps 20 times the width! But it’s dark, so we don’t see it in visible light… and what we’re seeing in this picture is not really a free-floating gas cloud, but a cavity in the wall of the denser dark cloud.

Stars are being born inside that cloud. Some of them are very massive, hot, and bright. They blast out a fierce stellar wind, like the solar wind but far more powerful. They also emit a fierce flood of ultraviolet photons. Together, these two forces erode away at the material of the cloud, breaking apart the molecules into their constituent atoms, ionizing them, and causing them to glow. It so happens that some of these stars were born near the side of this cloud, so when they ate away the insides of the cloud it caused a blister in the side which burst open.

You can actually see that in this image! The bulk of the colorful nebula, from the upper left on down, is actually gas inside this cavity set aglow. The far wall is opaque and dark, so you don’t see it here. But you can get a sense of the bubble-like nature of the nebula.

Outstanding. There’s your existential nausea for the day.

Electronic Arts is going with a pretty amusing “Your Mom Hates This!” ad campaign for Dead Space 2. They show the game to the average Mom. Then they catch the Moms on camera as they shit their pants, and run back to their lives of fupas and super-processed hair. I dig it.

What do I dig more? Dino Ignacio’s Mom. Ignacio is the user interface designer for Dead Space 2, and he decided to show his Mom clips of the game. Is she  appalled? Hardly. She chuckles as she watches poor Isaac Clarke get dismembered and die a zillion horrible deaths. Outstanding.

Reminds me of my Mom, after spending twenty years in a house with my brother and myself.

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Welcome to the fucking future. When the Kinect came out, I blathered on and on about how its most amazing features would be found outside of traditional use. Once the drivers for the Kinect were out in the open, talented people began finding genius ways to implement the device. Beyond, you know, air kicking a virtual soccer ball. However, call me short-sighted cause I didn’t forsee this: the Kinect could be used to aid in the performing of surgery.

Fucking awesome.

Surgical robots are super-precise, but Mike Fahey at Kotaku points out that the “problem with surgical robots is that while they allow for extreme precision, there is no tactile sensation for the doctor operating the tiny robotic arms. If a scalpel brushes against an exposed vein, for instance, the robot operator does not feel the subtle bump.”

That’s not the best thing in the world. Knick an artery, have no clue, and Steve McHaplessvictim slowly bleeds out.

What’s the answer to this? Force feedback. This is where the Kinect comes in:

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Righteous Dutch info-wizards Spijkermat came up with this infographic for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Some of the stats that occur in this virtual game daily are absolutely ludicrous. Thar be a lot of killing going on. Every 24 hours, more than 300,000,000 lives are taken. That’s more than the population of the United States.

Hit the jump for the entire graphic.

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Enlarge. | Via.

Here’s a shitty quality image giving us a first glimpse at the cast of X-Men: First Class. Russ Fischer at Slashfilm provides a breakdown of the people within the cast photo:

Here’s the first small image of the assembled cast for Matthew Vaughn‘s X-Men: First Class. Left to right, we see: Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havoc, Zoe Kravitz as Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and James McAvoy as Charles Xavier.

It’s a poor quality picture of a cast photo, but what the fuck, let’s play the game: I think they all look god-awful and goofy as fuck. Here’s hoping they look better in context.

Impressions? Thoughts?

Welcome to Variant Covers. I like comic books. Sometimes I really like them. And every week, I write in this column about the comic books that are dropping this week that I’m interested in. If you’re so inclined, hit up the comments section with what you’re throwing down some ducets on. My ears. They’re open.

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Northlanders #36.
Those who follow this column know that I have an unapologetic butt-crush on Brian Wood. His work hits me on a variety of levels, from fucking awesome! to fucking inspirational. The second and final issue of “The Girl in The Issue” drops this week, and I’m expecting the latter. The storyline follows a weathered old man trying to solve the murder of a girl he found frozen in time. The first issue garnered serious love here, and I’m expecting the same from the finale. Its a quiet, almost Hemingway-esque march through the final tolling of a man’s life, cognizant of his small and dwindling station in the world.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Becky Cloonan’s artwork is stunning, and issue #35 provided three of the most gorgeous panels (its three panels, right?) I can recall in recent time.

Outstanding.

Also Dropping: Wood’s DMZ #61. I’m waiting on the sixth trade to arrive in my mail, for I desperately need to catch up before it ends.

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Scarlet #4.
Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s post-modern metatextual affair continues this week. Still featuring a sexy redhead with guns. Still featuring her directly engaging the reader every issue. Still getting me very, very excited every time it drops. The last issue ended (if I recall, the long breaks between issues is killing me) with her capping a cop, and I imagine the title is only going to get more violent. I mean, fuck, she’s trying to encourage the reader to join her in a cultural uprising.

Not exactly for the faint of heart.

I don’t think the title gets as much love from others as I give but, I can understand why. The tropes themselves aren’t new: V for Vendetta with a vixen, mix in some teenage uproar, et cetera. But it’s done well, and Maleev’s artwork is stunning. Some of the stuff he’s doing with paneling is fresh to a guy like me. Bearing in mind that I mean a guy who doesn’t have much in the way of technical knowledge when it comes to art. I’m a lit dork, leave me alone.

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Oh my gosh! Would you believe this shit? There’s a blurry picture from the Spider-Man set. It’s someone (no clue if its Garfield or a stuntman) bombing around what is supposed to be the streets of New York City. Do I get any sort of meta-cred for admitting I’m posting this, but knowing I’m a douchebag for posting such an absurd thing?

No? Fuck.

Hit the jump for the full picture, and some other set-photos bullshit.

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