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Professor Witney Seibold bids Roger Moore goodbye and discovers that Timothy Dalton was the worst Bond ever.

I'm going to miss Roger Moore.

This week in The Series Project: James Bond, we'll be covering the final two films to feature Roger Moore in the iconic role, and the end of an era. Moore has, rather famously, played James Bond the greatest number of times (at least canonically – Connery's Never Say Never Again is not officially considered a part of the series). And while only one of the Roger Moore films qualifies as a legitimate action classic (that'd be For Your Eyes Only, if you recall from last week, his reign as Agent 007 was characterized by a high degree of fun and charm. Most fans I've spoken with talk about the Moore era (1973 – 1985) with a certain degree of ambivalence. Sure, the films were way over-the-top in terms of their silliness and their overpowering number of WTF moments, but they were also incredibly entertaining. Bond himself, of course, has a reputation for globe-trekking, bedding women, making snarky quips at inappropriate moments, and using fancy futuristic gadgets to bring down deranged billionaires, all of whom have some sort of plan to kill millions of people, or at least break the law in new and creative ways. It was Roger Moore who codified this reputation.

A lot of people point to Sean Connery as the best of the James Bonds. While Connery has his strengths, he didn't define the character we know as Bond. That'd be Roger Moore. Moore had the most fun, Moore was the most popular (his films made the most money), and Moore was certainly the most acerbic. Three of the seven films featuring Moore were directed by a man named John Glen, as were the only two films featuring Timothy Dalton. Perhaps Glen’s skill had something do with it.

Sadly, as we discuss the final two Roger Moore films, we have to start with the 1983 feature whose title you're not really allowed to say on television.

Octopussy (dir. John Glen, 1983)

Bond: Roger Moore

Gadgets: A little miniplane. A Seiko digital watch with a TV in it. A pen that squirts acid. A mini-submarine that looks like an alligator. A hot air balloon with a Union Jack on the side.

The Babe: Octopussy, played by Maud Adams.

The Bad Guy: In addition to Octopussy herself, General Orlov, played by Steven Berkoff

Location(s): India, Berlin

Theme Song: “All Time High,” sung by Rita Coolidge

Bond Directly Kills: An entire airplane hanger full of bad guys, torched with a rogue missile. Another guy that Bond flips through the air directly onto a fakir's nail bed. Two German soldiers.

WTF Moments: The title of the film is “Octopussy.” James Bond disguises himself using an MI-6-sanctioned plastic horse butt. When his plan runs out of gas, James merely stops at a gas station to fill up. The film opens with a guy in a clown suit getting gunned down in a sewer. When the clown was floating away, all I could think was “We all float down here!” from It. James Bond encounters a sexy fellow agent at one point – if you look closely, you'll see that she doesn't know how to kiss. Octopussy's henchwomen all wear Greatest American Hero-style red jumpsuits. A car loses its tires and drives on a train track. James Bond swings on a vine, and we hear an old-timey Tarzan yell on the soundtrack. There is a Fabergé egg in the film that gets tossed around like a football. A bad guy has a gigantic razor yo-yo! To meet a contact on the bank of the Ganges, a guy has to play Monty Norman's famous James Bond theme on his snake-charming pipe. The implications of this are staggering.

A brief history of the Fabergé egg: Most of the eggs were small, and could be worn around the neck, but the famous ones, produced by the famous Russian Jeweler The House of Fabergé, which started up in 1842, were large, jewel-encrusted artifacts, often used as Easter gifts amongst the Russian nobility. Some of the Imperial eggs are still on display in the Hermitage in St. Petersberg. I've seen them. They're amazing. They are elaborate, delicate, and worth millions upon millions of dollars. There are so many, and they look so awesome, that it's kind of a wonder that they're not used in action/heist movies more often. Heck, we had a movie a few years ago where Nicolas Cage stole The Declaration of Independence. That's a much more conspicuous theft than a Fabergé egg or two.  

Well, watching Octopussy, you sense why. James Bond and several others throw a Fabergé egg, put it in their pockets, run around with it, and shake it up. I was under the impression that these trinkets were fragile and dainty objects, and James Bond practically plays rugby with it. It's hard to show a treasured object getting shunted through the hands of several teams of bad guys when you have to treat it so daintily.

The story of this thing, like many James Bond films, is really hard to follow. The Bad Guy, General Orlov, seems to be a rogue Russian soldier who has been smuggling famous Russian jewelry out of the country. He's also been trying to get his hands on a nuclear bomb so he can blow up an American army base in Germany. He figures if a rogue bomb goes off in an American army base, the world will see how dangerous nuclear bombs are, and disarmament will be the only option. Hmm... Would you sacrifice an army base full of Americans if it meant the entire dismantling of all nuclear programs the world over? Yeah, I’m not sure if I would either, although disarmament is a noble cause. It’s weird, though, and it means he has to smuggle both weapons and jewelry. You'd think one or the other would be enough. This will be a theme throughout the next few Bond films: a bad guy who smuggles several things at once and has an entire rainbow of evil schemes.

General Orlov has been smuggling the jewelry and the bombs on board the trains of an international circus troupe run by Octopussy, played by Maud Adams. Adams, you may recall, played a gangster's moll in The Man with the Golden Gun. She does not play the same character in this movie, and I was a little upset about this. I was hoping for a strange explanation about how a gangster’s moll could, in a few short years, grow to be the head of an international circus troupe with her own mansion in India, moving in the same circles as Russian supercriminals. I am denied such a scene.

Investigating who could be smuggling Fabergé eggs, James Bond goes to auctions and follows the leads to India, where there's a spectacular chase through the streets of New Delhi. James Bond cheats a gambler out of his money. There's a counterfeit Fabergé egg around, and I lost track of which was which after a while. There was a scheme to counterfeit jewelry as well. Whenever someone found a fake, they would crush it with their foot. This seems like a dangerous practice to me. What if you made a mistake?

As a villain, Octopussy is actually the first woman in all of James Bond. True, she's teamed up with Orlov, and there's even a rich Indian prince (Louis Jourdan) helping them out, so she's not truly an independent villainess, but it's nice to finally see a woman getting in on the action. Of course, once she learns she's been double-crossed, she goes rogue. There's a kind of awesome scene near the end where Octopussy and her circus performers use their acrobatic skills to infiltrate the bad guy's mansion to kill him. That's pretty cool.

The film's finale is tense and fun, and works so well thanks to that entirely reliable old action movie saw: the ticking clock. Yes, there's a nuclear bomb set to go off in an hour, and it conveniently has a red digital readout to show us this. James has to chase down a circus cannon (under which the bomb has been hidden) and defuse it. He has to hide on a circus train to do this. As such, he has to dress in a gorilla suit to stay in disguise, and later dresses as a clown. If a bomb were going to explode in less than an hour, no matter how badly I needed a disguise, I don't think I'd spend the time to put on a clown suit, and also do all the elaborate clown makeup involved. Which is what happens. James paints his face like a clown to go unnoticed amongst the circus. It's been said that Roger Moore doesn't have the classy dignity of the previous Bonds. I have defended this claim, but my arguments tend to tatter in the face of James Bond in a clown suit.

Oh yeah. And there's a hired assassin whose weapon of choice is a razor yo-yo. Like in that old video game Rygar. A guy flings a giant round tethered blade at people, and then yanks it back into a metal cradle on his fist. This hardly seems like a practical weapon, but, well, it's actually really damn cool.

Octopussy is a fun romp, and I actually kind of liked how goofy it was, even though the story was classically hard to follow. In terms of Roger Moore-era Bond flicks, though, it's pretty standard. I just wish more treasures were involved. Nuclear bombs are so old hat. At least give us a MacGuffin like a Fabergé egg. But then, if it were rare treasures James Bond were after, he'd be Indiana Jones.

The final film in the Roger Moore era will be equally silly, but will tip into the modern era in an awkward way. The end of Octopussy promised us From a View to a Kill. The title was changed slightly.

A View to a Kill (dir. John Glen, 1985)

Bond: Roger Moore

Gadgets: A remote-control dog robot. A ring with a camera in it. X-ray glasses. A handwriting scanner.

The Babe: Stacy Sutton, played Tanya Roberts. May Day played by Grace Jones.

The Bad Guy: Mr. Zorin, played by Christopher Walken

Location(s): Paris, San Francisco.

Theme Song: Sung by Duran Duran.

Bond Directly Kills: A helicopter.

WTF Moments: This is the 4th film, I believe, to feature a chase on skis. When James Bond skis down the slope, “California Girls” plays on the soundtrack. Someone gets killed with a poisonous butterfly on the end of a fishing pole. James Bond drives a car through the streets of Paris, and parts of it are ripped off as he goes. He eventually drives just the front half of the car. To breathe underwater, James Bond sucks the air from a car tire. James Bond bakes a quiche at one point. There is a scene where Christopher Walken and Grace Jones (wearing a thong) spar as a form of sexual foreplay.

Roger Moore was 56 when this film was made, and some would say that was past his prime. I'll say this: His age does not show. While he does look like a 56-year-old, he doesn't ever look tired or aged. I understand most of the action and chase scenes were achieved with stunt doubles, but I never believed for a second that Moore was too frail to do any of this stuff. The fans loved Roger Moore, and he only retired from the role because of his age. Should we see a 60-65-year-old man still scaling famous monuments, bedding women, and drinking heavily? James Bond is strangely immortal. It's unfortunate that he actors who play him aren't. This will be the last foray by Roger Moore. This will also be the last appearance of Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. M is still played by Robert Brown.

This film is not as silly as Octopussy, but is still plenty strange. Mostly because of the unclear motives of the bad guy. Mr. Zorin (Walken) ultimately wants to use bombs and a series of subterranean oil pipes to cause an earthquake and flood Silicon Valley. When this happens, he will have a monopoly on the nascent microchip industry. Isn't that cute? James Bond movies are trying to be topical again. This plan makes sense, but we don't learn about it until 90 minutes into the movie. Until then, we have to follow Zorin's other scheme to fix horse races. This seems like small potatoes to me. Then it's revealed in dialogue that Zorin is actually the result of some shadowy Russian genetics experiment, and that he might be a genius supersoldier of some kind. Maybe that dialogue was included to explain how evil he was. Feh, I say. What's more, he's played by Christopher Walken, whose, shall I say, idiosyncratic line-readings are out in full force. The villain has unclear motives, and a maniacal demeanor. He's the first Bond villain who seems lucky not to be living in an institution.

So yeah, this Zorin fellow owns a microchip company, and also lives in a huge, huge castle in France where he drugs horses for fun. He has a head assassin-slash-girlfriend named May Day played by Grace Jones. Grace Jones is a force of nature. She could crush you in between her chin and chest if she wanted. She is strong and intimidating. And James Bond has sex with her. I imagine it was very lively sex, and there was a lot of punching involved. May Day, as Bond henchmen go, is pretty dang awesome. She's not as much fun as Jaws, but she can still kick impressive amounts of ass. Whenever she appeared on screen, the film immediately picked up.

There's another babe in the film as well, in the form of the squeaky valley girl type Tanya Roberts from Sheena: Queen of the Jungle and The Beastmaster. Like Jill St. John before her, she seems far too casual and colloquial to be seated next to a class act like James Bond. Sure, she's plenty gorgeous, but her character, Stacey, is not one of those capable Bond girls who fights alongside him. She's just a boilerplate damsel in distress. And, what's more, she's not introduced until 80 minutes into the movie. I consider her to be the secondary babe. Grace Jones is the primary babe. Making her the first black “Bond Girl” in the canon.

The climax of the film is awesome. John Glen really knows how to shoot an action scene. You see, after James has foiled the bad guy's plot, there's a fight on board a blimp, which leads to a shootout on top of the Golden Gate Bridge. He's holding a damsel with one hand, and shooting at Christopher Walken's blimp with the other. That's so damn cool. Here's a twist: James is not the one to kill Zorin.

I liked A View to a Kill just fine, although the plot is even more opaque than most. Once we know the bad guy's scheme, it all falls into place, but we don't know, for extended passages, why Zorin is doing what he's doing. Why did we spend an hour of film at his horse ranch learning about his horse steroids? Patrick MacNee appears in this film as James' MI-6 superior who must pose as his valet. The scene between the two are cute, and MacNee ends up getting killed after he uncovers... well, he doesn't uncover anything. It feels like such a waste. A View to a Kill is solid and entertaining, but still confusing. It's not a hugely auspicious way to leave Roger Moore, but it's still a slick and professional film. Indeed, if there were bold bow-outs and flashy new entrances, James Bond might run the risk of losing his immortality. Farewell, Mr, Moore.

Let's take a look at the new guy...

The Living Daylights (dir. John Glen, 1987)

Bond: Timothy Dalton

Gadgets: A supergun. A keychain that sprays gas, and contains plastique. James uses eyeglass binoculars. His car has a laser in the hubcap. Exploding milk bottles.

The Babe: Kara Milovy played by Miryam D'Abo.

The Bad Guy: Brad Whitaker played by Joe Don Baker

Location(s): Tangier, Vienna, Afghanistan

Theme Song: Sung by a-ha.

Bond Directly Kills: Whitaker.

WTF Moments: A busty German woman smothers a man nearly to death with her cleavage just to distract him. A lithe, Speedo-wearing assassin strangles people with his Walkman headphones wire. This is the 5th time there's been a ski chase. There is a hall of wax dictators. The bad guys have, for some reason, a real, still-beating human heart in a chest. A man is smuggled out of the country using an oil pipeline.

How does Timothy Dalton shape up? I'm sad to report that he doesn't do so well. I respect Timothy Dalton immensely as an actor, but, to me, well, he just doesn't easily inhabit the Bond role the way his predecessors did. He doesn't have the affability. He doesn't have the cool under pressure. He seems stern and efficient. When I see the other guys, I see James Bond. When I look at Dalton, I see some guy playing James Bond. It's just not the same.

That, of course, was probably a calculation on the filmmakers' parts. They clearly wanted to move the James Bond series away from the circus madness of the Roger Moore era, and turns the character into something more serious. Does this seem wrong to anyone else? True, we should take the character kind of seriously, but making Bond broody and bothered is not the way to do it. It seems counter-intuitive to the character. Bond should be light and breezy. He should be unflappable and casual. Even Connery, who would wince and try to get revenge and seem occasionally in over his head, seemed like he was perfectly capable of whatever crap was thrown his way. Dalton seems to get pissed off at everything. A dour Bond. Wrong approach.

What's more, by 1987, AIDS was in very much in the public consciousness and the feminist movement had been through a new cycle. Bond, over the years, had been repeatedly accused of being a misogynist, and perhaps had sex far too often and with too many random partners. Wild sexual promiscuity had been temporarily put on hold in the 1980s. I'm sure James was safe in bed, but that's never really addressed. As a response, The Living Daylights features a softer, more romantic side of James Bond not seen since On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Hence, he does not bed multiple women, and no longer seduces with a cock of his neck. No. Now James Bond takes pretty Russian cellists on proper dates, wins carnival prizes, and makes out on a Ferris wheels rather than just pushing her down and sexually ravishing her on the silk bedspread in some ritzy European hotel boudoir. I suppose this is a more realistic view of sexuality in the post-AIDS era, but it does rob considerably from the James Bond myth, and his notoriously magical penis that can change evil women to good.

The Living Daylights also features another quaintly topical plot. 1987 was also about the time when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and the U.S. gave the Afghanis guns in order to fight them off. Yes, kids, there was a time when Afghanistan was considered a U.S. ally. Even though the James Bond films are technically British, they are fueled with American money, so American concerns are typically more to the fore. So we have a film in which James Bond ends up aiding a cabal of Afghani freedom fighters against a trio of evil bad guys who are smuggling drugs. Also weapons. Also diamonds.

Oh yeah, we have another villain with unclear motives and a plot that goes every which way. Joe Don Baker of Mitchell infamy plays an ultra-rich, would-be army general who teams up with an evil Russian (The Fugitive’s Jeroen Krabbé) to smuggle weapons to the Afghani bad guys. Or something. They also seem to be smuggling diamonds, which are paying for something-or-other, and they are also helping to smuggle drugs. You know what? I don't think I ever really understood the plot of this one. John Rhys-Davies shows up at one point, and seems to be a bad guy, but ends up being good. Maryam D'Abo (sister of Olivia) is a pretty Russian cellist who moonlights as an assassin, and whom James Bond ends up falling for.

Lurking around the edges of the film is an awesomely crypto-homo German blonde man (Andreas Wisniewski) who strangles people to death with the cord of his Walkman headphones, and, at one point, uses bombs made out of milk bottles. When he's not killing, he's showing off his awesome abs by the pool, wearing a Speedo. At least one aspect of the film is reminiscent of classic James Bond.

There's also a ski chase, where James and Kara sit on an open cello case, and zip over the border into Austria. I doubt a cello case could slide faster than guys on skis, but whatever. This chase was, again, refreshingly funny in a film that is shockingly without levity. The film's finale is appropriately spectacular (John Glen is still directing), at least. At the end James Bond kills Whitaker in a weapon-lined rec room. When Whitaker dies, we suddenly realize that this is the only person James Bond has killed. Sure, James Bond didn't always go on murder sprees (often, he would only ever kill the main bad guy or his thug), but it always seemed okay when he did. I think The Living Daylights needed more gleeful killing. The material warranted it. Maybe this was another attempt to get away from the James Bond formula. Again, this is so wrong.

There is a scene at the end that was funny in 1987, but is no longer funny today. The Afghanis that James Bond helped show up to see Kara play in concert. They all enter the concert hall, wrapped in bullets, and, I think, carrying rocket launchers. The head Afghani turns to Kara and says, smiling, “Sorry we're late. We were held up at the airport.” I think, ever since 9/11, that counts as a WTF moment.

I said before that every few James Bond films, the filmmakers need to make an intentionally off-the-beaten-path film to intentionally alienate the audience a smidge. That way they can try something new, and then return to form in the next film, making the audience grateful for the familiar formulae once again. Well, I guess the filmmakers wanted two this time, as you don't go too much further from the beaten path in the next film...

Licence to Kill (dir. John Glen, 1989)

Bond: Timothy Dalton

Gadgets: Plastique in a toothpaste tube. A camera with a laser gun in it. A camera that's also a gun, which reads James Bond's fingerprints when he uses it. The camera is also an x-ray.

The Babe: Pam Bouvier, played by Cary Lowell

The Bad Guy: Franz Sanchez, played by Robert Davi

Location(s): Florida, “Isthmus City”

Theme Song: Performed by Gladys Knight.

Bond Directly Kills: A guy whom he knocks into an electric eel tank. A guy he drowns. A dirty cop he feeds to a shark. A guy he harpoons. He sets Sanchez on fire.

WTF Moments: The credits feature a warning about how smoking is bad for you. This is the fourth James Bond film to feature a shark tank. James hides from a boat by swimming under a manta ray. A guy gets killed when his head explodes in a pressurized submarine. There are some ninjas in only one scene. Wayne Newton is in the film. Yes, that Wayne Newton. The film ends with a statue of a fish winking at the camera (!). This is the first James Bond to feature a curse word: Carey Lowell says “bullsh*t.”

This ends so many eras. It's the last film to feature Timothy Dalton. It's the last film that Maurice Binder did the titles for. It's the last film to feature Robert Brown as M. Oh, Moneypenny, by the way, was replaced by the comely actress Caroline Bliss (a hot, glasses-wearing secretary type), but this will be her final film in the role as well.

Licence to Kill is so different from all the other Bond film in so many ways. Dalton is a little more acerbic in this film, but quickly turns back into the dour Bond we saw in The Living Daylights. The story is no longer about an evil bazillionaire with designs on world domination, but is actually a revenge plot, wherein James actually goes rogue from MI-6 in order to kill a bad guy personally. Q (still Desmond Llewellyn after all these years) finally gets in on the action. Bond does romance two different women, but the love-'em-and-leave-'em attitude is long gone. This feels like a particularly well-moneyed action film, and not like a James Bond film.

So Felix Leiter is getting married. Remember Felix? He's been played by a different actor each time he's shown up. He's been in seven of the James Bond films now, and is played by a returning David Hedison, who played him in Live and Let Die. Yeah, he's getting married, and James is in best man. On their wedding day, though, James and Felix run afoul of a particularly evil drug dealer named Sanchez (smooth-ass motherf*cker Robert Davi), and Sanchez kills Felix's new bride, and lands Felix in the hospital. Bond actually quits MI-6 to investigate and fulfill his vendetta. His search leads him to a place called Isthmus City, which is not a real city! Argh argh argh! I hate when movies do that. James Bond's stock in trade has been real-world exotic locations. We have to see some of the local color. “Isthmus City” has no local color, because it's not real. That's so stupid.

Anyway, despite the oddball nature of Licence to Kill, the plot is actually refreshingly focused. James has one task in mind, to kill a well-protected bad guy. We see who the bad guy is, and we know how to get to him, so it's just a matter of teaming up with another American agent (Lowell), following the bad guy, and getting close enough to him to cock up his operations, and then kill him. The film has fewer locations, and fewer plot contrivances. In most James Bond films, the first MacGuffin is tied up by the end of the first act, leading to confusing plotting and unclear rules. Licence to Kill has no evil schemes, no McGuffins, and few twists. This isn't necessarily James Bond, but it was finally nice to not be lost. Sure, there's a scene where Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa announces that he was only posing as a drug dealer, and that he's really with the Hong Kong secret service, but then he's killed, and that plot thread is tied up.

As we creep inexorably toward the present, it's nice to see familiar actors pop up. In addition to Davi and Tagawa, Benicio Del Toro shows up as a thug. Fun times. Oh yes, and Wayne Newton appears in the film as some sort of New Age televangelist who is the front for Sanchez's drug operations. The bad guy has been smuggling his drugs inside the actual fuel of tanker trucks. Wouldn't that make smoking them immensely dangerous? Like, more dangerous than smoking opium already is?

James' relationship with Bouvier is kind of romantic, in the mold of The Living Daylights. Bouvier is of the Bond girl type that is actually capable and can kick some ass, and not so much of the damsel in distress type. I prefer the former. The damsels are fine for plot function and usually look nice, function as living packing material. The capable gals, at least, can contribute to the action. Lowell looks awesome, by the way, in a pixie haircut and a loose gray swimsuit.

The finale features a scene where James manages to tilt a semi up on its side wheels to avoid a missile. This is implausible, but it was achieved with a real truck. It looks pretty awesome. John Glen, you are a great action director.

At the film's end, James, Bouvier, and an equally rogue Q are all chatting about how great it was to catch the bad guy. It's unclear as to whether or not James will be allowed back into MI-6, or what. The future of James Bond is in question. Indeed, the future of James Bond has seemed to be in flux for the last three films. Over the end credits of each James Bond movie, we've been promised the next film, and, with only one exception, they filmmakers have made good on their promises. “James Bond will return in Thunderball.” And, lo, we would have Thunderball. The last three have merely said “James Bond will Return.” Yikes. Not so sure about that this time.

Of course James Bond would return, albeit with a new actor, and not for another six years. But return he shall, in 1995's GoldenEye, which ushered in a new era of Bond. The four films to feature Pierce Brosnan as James Bond will be covered in next week's installment of The Series Project: James Bond. We'll be into week five, we will. I'm rather fond of Brosnan, so be sure to join me for that. The following week, I'll be covering to two Daniel Craig films to date, and some of the so-called non-canonical James Bond films for good measure.

Stay in the saddle, buckaroos. This path leads us onward. 

Archer pursues an ocelot on a speeding train while a terrorist tries to escape ISIS custody.

Episode Title: "The Limited"

Writer: Adam Reed

This week on "Archer," the ISIS crew boarded a speeding train towards Canada to turn in Bilco, a radical Nova Scotian separatist to the Royal Canadian Mounties. And what was Bilco's crime? Blowing up a donut shop, of course. Yeah... that'll show Canada!

Canada was actually the butt of several jokes in this episode, courtesy of Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin); who mocked the country's gun laws and its second rate terrorists. And yet Sterling was fairly tame compared to his mother, Mallory Archer (Jessica Walter); who harassed a train porter named George with her casual racism. George's quiet exasperation with Mallory was pretty amusing and he only showed his displeasure towards her when he revealed what she tipped him with and when he refused to serve her a meal.

Much like the classic "Skytanic" episode, most of the ISIS crew found their way on board the train for this adventure. Other than Mallory and Archer, only Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) and Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) were there officially. Pam Poovey (Amber Nash), Ray Gillette (Adam Reed) and Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer) had a more roundabout way in: Cheryl had her private cars attached because she co-owns the railroad. And to Archer's delight, Cheryl brought along her beast of an ocelot, Babou.

There's something inherently endearing about Archer's relationship with Babou. Sterling shows that creature more love and affection than he does for his "son," the wee baby Seamus or any of his ISIS co-workers. And judging from Archer's child-like delight over seeing a tiger in last week's episode, he's clearly a cat man. The funny part is that Babou barely tolerates Archer and quickly slips away from him.

Meanwhile, newly minted field agent, Cyril blows his assignment this week by leaving Bilco unguarded. Apparently "Archer" is going to keep Cyril in that new job this year. I assumed that his promotion would be a one-off after last week's episode. And even though Cyril seems to have learned his lesson about his physical abilities for the job, he still gets beaten up by Bilco.

But rather than waste his time trying to find an escaped terrorist, Archer searches for Babou and he winds up forcing George at gunpoint to increase the speed of the train to keep Babou (and by extension, Bilco) from jumping off. Bilco sees the exchange and the splattered blood from a steak and he assumes that Archer murdered George... and thus ISIS is made up of nothing but murderous racists.

True to Bilco's word, his fellow separatists arrive to extract him from the train. Before they get there, Archer successfully guesses that they would arrive dressed as the Mounties; which allows him to convince Lana to fire on the real Mounties when they board the train first. From this point on, Babou randomly appeared and began mauling both the separatists and the Mounties.

Eventually, it all came down to Archer and Bilco on the roof of the speeding train, just as Archer always dreamed about. But instead of allowing Sterling to kick some separatist ass, the rest of the scene hilariously illustrates why battling on top of a train is just a bad idea. By the time the revived Mounties, the disguised separatists and even Babou joined Archer and Bilco on the roof, Lana stopped the train and sent everyone flying. Impressively, Archer saved both himself and Babou, but the ocelot repaid the favor by mauling him as well.

However, nothing could diminish Archer's affection for the big cat... until he pees on Archer in the cop car. Babou actually looked surprised and taken aback when Archer finally condemned him as a "fox -eared a**hole!" There was also a moment in the episode where it seemed like Archer was going to kill both the separatists and the Mounties just because he couldn't tell them apart. Sterling played it off to Lana like it was a joke, but it seemed surprisingly cold-blooded, even for Archer. 

While "The Limited" wasn't the equal of "Skytanic," it still managed to find something for almost every member of the cast to do. Even poor crippled Ray got some awkwardly funny moments as Pam, Malory and Cheryl expected him to offer himself up as Bilco's hostage despite his wheelchair... and Bilco also rejected him as a hostage because he couldn't run! Leaving Ray as the only permanently injured character on the show was a little cruel, but it makes for some great comedy.

These were the top "Archer" moments of the week.

5:

Lana: "Is that why you blew up a donut shop?"

Bilco: "Allegedly! If you believe Canada's illegitimate so-called government."

Cyril: "Um... I'm pretty sure we do."
 
4:

Cheryl: "George said you stiffed him!"

Mallory: "What?! No, I didn't! I gave him a tip!"

George: "A stick of gum?"

3:

Archer: "Because pretty much my whole life I've wanted to fight some guys on the roof of a speeding train."

Bilco: "If I know my boys, you may just get your wish, big boy."

Archer: "Oooh... Thanks, Freddy Foreshadowing... Who is this?"

2:
 
Bilco: "My boys are badass."

Cyril: "Well so am... Lana. And I'm learning. Oh... and don't forget about Archer!"
 
1.

Lana: "Freeze! Hands up! I swear to God, if any of you Canadian fruitcakes moves I will shoot that stupid hat right off your head."

Mountie: "...That's... that's not okay.
 
Archer: "Get 'em up, Dudley Douchebag!"

Crave Online Rating: 8 out of 10.

Some quick-hit reviews for a bunch of books that came out recently, in case you haven't been keeping up.

There's only so much time in the day, and there are more comic books in coming out each week than time in that day.  On top of that, there are only so many comics that get in your head enough to do full reviews of them.  What about the others?  Well, here's a quick hit list of reviews for recent books to get those of us who have been traveling too much in the past few weeks to get caught up.

• UNCANNY X-FORCE #20 & #21:  Rick Remender has taken a huge detour into really in-depth old Captain Britain continuity, meaning he really, really likes Psylocke, and you better know your X-history and be really into interdimensional tomfoolery to get into it.  Greg Tocchini's art is off-putting, to boot, but we've learned that there are absolutely no alternate versions of Fantomex in any other reality.  One more reason that guy's fascinating.
• THE PUNISHER #8:  Greg Rucka's still kicking some ass and Frank Castle should always have a beard.  The cops from Se7en, though, are closing in on Rachel Cole-Alves, the sole survivor of her wedding day massacre who's taken up "punishing" as a hobby.  By the way, Exchange, Frank ain't havin' yer trap none.
• RED LANTERNS #6: So far, a fat lot of nothin's been happening in Peter Milligan's cherry-flavored Lantern Corps other than Atrocitus' inner monologue, and now it seems like his dynamic with Bleez is a full-on Megatron/Starscream thing.  Plus, now there's a human Red Lantern named John Moore (not to be confused with Henry Moore, aka Wonderman, Fighting Evil As It Comes) who kills kids in a crash landing in service of a dark joke.  Okay.
• LEGION OF MONSTERS #4: Dennis Hopeless's miniseries about Marvel's monster city, Michael Morbius' self-loathing and Elsa Bloodstone's general awesomeness wrapped up well, although while artist Juan Doe's insanely angular style certainly makes for dynamic monster drawings, it doesn't much allow natural human expression.  More monster city adventures, please.
• AVENGERS: X-SANCTION #3:  Jeph Loeb continues the virus-ravaged robo-Cable's assault against the Avengers up, and it's looking more and more misguided, especially when his dad and his daughter show up at the end - but it's Loeb, so there's no telling if this insane mission is actually supposed to SEEM insane or if he's just not doing his job very well.  Ed McGuinness, however, is great at drawing Hulks of any color.  But seriously, stop having Nate say he's doing everything for his daughter and tell us freakin' WHY already.  And is Loeb seriously pitching Glenn Talbot as ANOTHER Red Hulk in the future?
• THE DEFENDERS #3: The tiresome not-quite-humor of Matt Fraction thankfully takes a back seat to straightforward storytelling as Nul: Breaker of Worlds is finally defeated for good and the writing of Red She-Hulk continues to be wildly inconsistent between writers.  Always a danger with a newly hot commodity.  Still can't decide if the narrator who talks directly to the reader is a nice throwback or plain ol' cloying.  At least the Silver Surfer is pretty awesome in this one.
• GODZILLA: KINGDOM OF MONSTERS #11: The series that should have ended a few issues ago with an ending written by Eric Powell and Tracy Marsh bleeds on, but possibly to a new conclusion.  We can only hope the whiny bratling monster-fu twins have finally met their ends, but somehow, Victor Santos' art is inconclusive on this matter even though they get fire-blasted by Big G.  Skree-onk.
• ROBOCOP: ROAD TRIP #2: Robocop's losing his mind and talking to the ghost of Bob Morton while on the run from the corrupt OCP and their robo-animals.  The bleakly satirical tone of the movie is incorporated again by Rob Williams, but everything seems pretty well nuts here.  That's a road trip.
• THOR: THE DEVIANTS SAGA #3 & #4:  Rob Rodi (likely no relation to the late Rod Roddy) is spinning a Thor yarn with an old-school sensibility (meaning it makes dialog packed to the gills with exposition nonetheless entertaining), dealing with the Externals and a power struggle with the evolutionary dead-end of the Deviants, although there's a weird detour into Ka-Zar land to fight some guy named Maurice.  Okay.  Still, adventure awaits!
• GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #5: Kyle Rayner brings the term "Skittle Squad" into continuity, while the rest of wonder who allowed an awful word like "orrery" to exist in the English language.  Also, the Giant Space Baby Mobile of Doom has apparently absorbed the planets of Tamaran and Okaara, among others, and is run by a sun-god named Invictus who will kick everyone's ass forever.  Also, New 52 Larfleeze is less Gollum and more snarky, it seems, and his constructs have their own personalities, and Glomulus might as well be Slimer.
• GREEN LANTERN CORPS #5:  Apparently, there's an old, rough-and-tumble team of poker-playing hardass GLs who have a secret he-man club beneath Guy Gardner's bar Warriors on Oa, and they're called the Mean Machine.  Why Kilowog isn't one of them, I have no idea, but they join the fight against The Keepers, yet another planet full of people the Guardians have fucked over in their day.  Seriously, the Guardians have always been frustrating before, but they are straight-up bad guys now.  The fact that the Sinestro Corps has a duo called Fat Man and Little Boy is just as annoying as Larfleeze being referred to as Agent Orange.  THESE ARE SPACE PEOPLE, THEY DO NOT GET OBSCURE EARTH HISTORY REFERENCES AS NAMES.
• FEAR ITSELF: THE FEARLESS #7 & #8: I really wanted Wolverine to kill Crossbones.  It's been a while since I weant 'hell yeah, it's Wolverine, bitch!' but #6 made me do that (although it might have been because I was looking for anything to be excited about in the 6th round of yawn-worthy hammer tag).  I'm glad he snikt-gutted the big Nazi prick.  Too bad Daimon Hellstrom's pulling whatever he's pulling.  However, I'm starting to get invested in what appears to be Valkyrie's last ride, as her mentality seems to be circling the drain towards the 'let it all end' notion.  And now she's messing with the X-Men... and lawd, let's hope this ain't another AvX tie-in in the making.  Is it bad that I'm already sick of it?
• VILLAINS FOR HIRE #3:  I like Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning in general, and I really want to like this celebration of Z-list bad guys, but it just doesn't feel like it's coming together - much the same way that DnA's Annihilators: Earthfall felt shrug-worthy when it all shook out. No one was really buying Misty Knight's flip to the dark side, although why she's working with Puppet Master is certainly confusing.  It's all right.  Just doesn't feel like the heart is in it.
• INFESTATION 2:  Oh, boy.  IDW's last iteration of Infestation, their first big multiversal crossover to tie-in a bunch of their varied series with a zombie plague, was very hit and miss, with more sub-par stuff from DnA bookending it.  This time, Duane Swierczynski is writing the adventures of the C.V.O., and while it's thankfully less enamored with the term 'artillica,' this time we're rolling into H.P. Lovecraft Land, to the point where Lovecraft himself is actually a character in the story as a conduit for the Elder Gods.  If you like big worms with giant eyes all over their bodies being investigated by a good-guy team of vampires, go for it.  They're still going to fold in G.I. Joe and Transformers, but now they're factoring in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Danger Girl this time instead of Star Trek and Ghostbusters.  Don't get too excited about the TF tie-in, though - IDW's current crop of TF titles may be the best they've ever been, but this tie-in hearkens back to the Hearts of Steel AU series where the Transformers were hanging out in the late 1800s.  If you liked that, then check in for more shenanigans.

Kevin Smith's been doing a Jay and Silent Bob animated movie on the sly. We've got all details.

Kevin Smith turned the Television Critics Association into one of his usual Q&As when he did his panel for the AMC reality series Comic Book Men. I asked him a question about how he found the TV industry which led to a long anecdote which culminated in Smith mimicking splooging over his AMC development deal. I would reproduce that here, but then after the panel I found Smith in the hallway and got a full one on one with him. So this became more of a film interview, with some big news about a new Jay and Silent Bob movie, but props to AMC and Comic Book Men for bringing Smith to the TCA.

CraveOnline: Was the Red State experiment a success?

Kevin Smith: It really helped build what followed. We learned how to take a movie on the road and I learned what I would do differently next time. Next time, I don't know why we thought to go to big theaters. We should just have gone to mom and pop shops and to brew and views and sh*t like that and just doubled up. Instead of doing one city, one show, big room, just sell as many shows as possible. So the sh*t that we learned on the Red State tour, we did well with it but the sh*t I learned, it reminded me of I talked to Quentin once about Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 which I absolutely love, and he goes, “You know what, man? Now I feel like I gotta make one more chopsocky movie.” I said, “Why?” He goes, “Because I just learned how to do it. Like just as I was finished, now I’ve mastered it. I know how to do it so it would be nice to put that to use and try it.” That’s kind of what that whole Red State thing was. We learned something and then you feel like you want to put it to use. So I know there’s this tour that we want to do at the end of this year with another movie, not with Hit Somebody, with something else. F*** it. We’ve got this Jay and Silent Bob cartoon. It’s almost done. We’ve been quietly working on it.

You sure slipped that one under the radar.

We just never told anybody but it’s a cartoon movie that ends with live action, so we finally get back in the outfits. So we were like, “Oh, we can set it up somewhere.” And then we were like, “Why would we set it up anyplace? We know exactly who wants to see this movie. Let’s just go out to them ourselves and everything we learned on the Red State tour we can now perfect on this.” So the latter half of this year, man, after Hit Somebody, the idea is we’re going to take this Jay and Bob cartoon movie on tour like we did with Red State. I don't know, you’ve got to make it fun for yourself otherwise you can’t make it fun for anybody else and it’s just so f***in’ boring watching it happen one more time the same old way with spending money. Sometimes figuring out a more creative way at it energizes you, energizes the audience that’s going to go see it as well.

Is the cartoon what was going to be the Clerks cartoon movie?

No, we didn’t pursue that because for a while the Weinstein/Disney divorce, Disney kept the cartoon and they didn’t want to do any business with Harvey and Bob. Now that it’s been sold, the new Miramax was like, “Hey, do you want to do a Clerks cartoon again?” We were like, “Oh sh*t, yes.” So we’re trying to see if we can make that work, but in the meantime with our boy Stark, he does the Smodimations on our website. We started putting this movie together, wrote a script and started recording voices and it’s a pretty cool cast of characters, man. It’s like a bunch of podcaster voices, a bunch of famous f***in’ people. It’s fun. It’s been fun and we do it by ourselves, there’s no rush. It’s just like, “Hey, a new chunk’s done, let’s check it out.” I don't know, it’s way less corporate and way more organic and because of the tour that we did with Red State, it just suddenly became obvious that like oh sh*t, let’s just take what we learned there and do that with the Jay and Bob tour. Red State, all that money went to the investors and sh*t, to the pot to recoup. So I didn’t keep any of that money.

Is this a sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?

No. It’s a little more fanciful because it’s a cartoon so we get away [with it]. It’s a lot of superhero stuff and whatnot but it’s pretty f*ckin’ funny. The best sh*t lately is the sh*t that I’m not really involved with. Like this show, I let everyone else shape it, like Original [Media] and AMC and the boys and it’s wonderful. The cartoon movie was a side project that Mewes started. This is the crazy thing. Mewes was like, this is when we first started the Jay and Bob Get Old podcast. He’d just been clean for a couple months at this point and he’s just like, “I got somebody who wants to invest money. I want to do a project.” I said, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “They want to make a movie and I want to do something. Do you have anything?” I said, “Well, I’ve got this thing. Do you want to do this?” He goes, “Yeah, that’d be fun, can I do this?” I was like, “Yeah, do you think you could get this made?” He said, “Yeah,” and I was like, “Well, you and Jordan take it, kick it around, see what you can do, let me know how it goes, but I won’t charge you for it. You’ve got a free script.”

Six months later they f*ckin’ handed me a chunk of footage, dude, that literally made me laugh out loud. I’m not saying I’m the toughest critic on the planet but when you make funny for a living, it’s tough to find other sh*t funny. Like you’ve got to hit Ricky Gervais before you start f*ckin’ belly laughing yourself. But this f*ckin’ piece of film they put together, you know it’s animation, it was f*ckin’ funny. I was like, “This is quality, man. This will f*ckin’ work. This could play. You could put this on a movie theater screen.” And then we started talking about, “Wait a second, we learned everything we need to know with Red State, man. So treat it like we were a music act.” That’s the way we kind of go about it at Smodco is you look at the music business and you kind of ape that. If we were a music act, we would go out once a year with a f*ckin’ big old tour. So all that wasn’t the aim of Red State. Suddenly it was like oh sh*t, that opened up the door to do this. So suddenly it’s like let’s tour with this and instead of giving the money to investors this time, we get to keep it all. It’s all ours. It was insanely inexpensive to produce as well so we’ll be in profit after the first f*ckin’ screening/Q&A. And it’s always fun to go out there. I got so spoiled by the Red State tour there was a period where I was like, “I’ll never let this movie play somewhere that I’m not” because I liked being in the room with it.

You originally planned to go for a normal theatrical release after the road show. Did you change your mind on that?

Well, that was part of it. The other part of it was the theaters didn’t want to work with us after we did our VOD deal.

How does Magnet do it then? They have VOD before theatrical releases.

But on a very selected amount of theaters and screens. We could’ve done that as well in terms of like okay, here are a handful of screens that are not f*ckin’ AMC and Regal and Cinemark and sh*t like that and we could’ve pieced it together. I don't know, after the Red State tour, I honestly don’t care about it ever playing in a room that I’m not at. It just felt like part and parcel of the same thing but then we did the streaming thing. The streaming thing, I was involved in that too because we got Q&A afterwards. I don't know, that movie was special and it’ll always be special to me and led to all this. It led to even this, it’s crazy. It’s like all roads led to Red State.

Did you do Cop Out to learn the industry from the inside so you could bring it down?

No, but definitely I wanted to meet and hang out with Sue Cole because I thought she was a brilliant marketer. I thought her marketing on Dark Knight was intense so I was just like I want to see this chick, meet this chick. I thought she did a decent job on Cop Out but didn’t have much help. The one dude didn’t want to take no pictures.

You always talked about how you hated doing action scenes in movies. How did you get over that for Red State and I imagine Hit Somebody?

You know, you do something long enough, even if you suck at it, you just get better at it. Almost 20 years of doing this, some of it rubs off. It has to on some level. So you just kind of get more comfortable with it and you realize this is all part of the storytelling. I used to just think about this, this is how I always looked at it. I make this movie, it’s two dudes sitting around, black and white, talking behind a f*ckin’ counter. The whole world f*ckin’ celebrates it. I’m not exaggerating, the whole world celebrated that flick. Well, not everybody but world renowned. Like that movie traveled, Clerks. It just appealed to people on some weird level. All great reviews, anywhere you went with it people embraced it. So that’s what gets me in and that’s what creates my career. So in my mind, I’m just like okay, it should always be very snappy dialogue. I read everything about what they wrote about it. It’s all dialogue centric and performance centric. So I was like okay, just as long as I do this, the picture can look like sh*t. Who cares, because Clerks looks like it was shot through a glass of milk, but as long as the content is what it is, we’re good. So for years all I concentrated on was I don’t care what it looks like. Look at Mallrats, Dave [Klein] was so frustrated with that because it was very flat and a lot of two shots and sh*t. I’m like, “Dude, it doesn’t matter. We’re here to f*ckin’ have these guys talk to one another so as long as they’re in the frame and in focus, it’s f*ckin’ all good.” Then you mature as a filmmaker and I’m close to 20 years doing this, you get to a place where you’re like, “All right, that’s just being lazy. You’re telling stories with pictures. Use the medium. You can’t just rely on one muscle at all times. I’m going to walk on this leg because it’s my strongest.” That’s what I did for a long time. I’m gonna walk on one f*ckin’ leg because people like my dialogue. Then you get older and you realize well, I’ve got to f*ckin’ develop every muscle in order to be a fully functioning human being otherwise I’m hobbling around all the time. So you start to go, “Well, maybe I can move the camera like this or maybe this works.” You start to listen to other people more. Dave I used to shut down and be like, “No, Dave, we don’t need anything special.” On Red State I’d be like, “What do you want to do?” He was like, “Oh man, I have this rig that I want to try out.” I’d say, “Let’s see it, bring it.” We’d look at it, shape it together. I don't know, the moment I realized it’s more than just people talking, people are looking at these pictures as well, I kind of started amping it up a little bit.

Are you still wavering on doing Hit Somebody as one film or two?

Now we’re one. We’re one. It makes sense. I was saying on Twitter because it’s a movie about taking one great shot and honestly, that was a lazy thing too. I’m trying to be less lazy. Doing two scripts for Hit Somebody is me being lazy because it came out of I wrote a lot of stuff that I love and I didn’t want to lose anything. So I was like, “F*ck it. I’ll just make two scripts. It’ll be my last movie, I’ll do it the way I want. I’ll make two separate movies. That way I can put anything I want into them.” And that’s being lazy. That’s the opposite of being the editor that I am in my head and heart. I should know, as much as I hate to borrow the phrase that he rubbed into my head, cut the chuffa. Lose the chuff. Especially if you’re trying to make an elegant last film, I don’t need it to be more of the same. Everybody knows I can write dialogue. Do something different this time. Show ‘em stuff that you can’t do. So it’s about being less lazy and me going from two scripts to one script is about okay, knock the laziness on its ass and just be diligent. If it takes more time, if you’re putting up more hours to try to construct an entire screenplay in the framework that they usually look for, 120 pages or something like that, just be more diligent. So I’ve given myself 150 pages. I’m giving myself that much space because I feel like the movie should be about two and a half hours.

It’s not a straight up comedy. It’s more of a dramedy than anything else. Somebody asked me about Goon and I’ve seen the Goon trailer and I think it’s very funny but I was so relieved when I saw it, I said, “Great. They made the hockey movie most people would expect me to make. That’s a good thing because that means now I can’t make that.” So once again, shooting laziness. It would be very easy for me to do a Clerks type movie in a hockey rink and try to go for Slap Shot but I love Slap Shot and Slap Shot cannot be touched. I’m sure Goon does a good job. I’ve seen the trailers. It looks funny. I can’t wait to see it. I like Sean even though he f*ckin’ walked off, did that movie but still, I’m there. That being said, I got so happy when I saw that trailer because I was like, “All right, I can’t do that.” Meaning that option is closed to me. I didn’t want to do that but it’s good to know that I can’t fall back on the tropes of oh, it’s like one of my movies but it’s in hockey. I want to make something different. If I want to end, what I loved about Red State, the f*ckin’ drug of Red State was when people were like, “You didn’t make this movie. This doesn’t look like anything you ever do.” That f*ckin’ makes you go, “Yeah, I want more of that.” So I want that on Hit Somebody in a big bad way. I want people to go, “Holy sh*t, you had nothing to do with this.” 

Ninja’s, Mary Kate, and the newest Super Mario Villain!

Check out today’s load of viral videos pulled from the front pages of some of the world’s top funny sites. Get your face ready to be slapped with the full force of comedy the web has to offer, or just by a ninja. It’s Go time, and pepper time.

Dorkly – Luigi Meets Waluigi (link)

The sad truth too 8-bit villains, sometimes you can dress up a turd and sometimes the turd dresses you. Wait. Is that a saying? That’s a saying right? Cool. He guys, Wawaluigi!

Break  - Title (link)

Let’s take a break, with a slap, ninja style.

Wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… seriously the video starts playing at 32 seconds, for some suspend building reason.

College Humor – Very Mary-Kate: Trenta (link)

Kudos to this,  and to twitter in heaven. I could see a new one of these every day.

Which sadly leads me to something I don’t want to see everyday, but am forced to. At gun point, or pit bull point. I don’t know why I surf the internet from inside this pit. But damn the wifi is free!

UCB Comedy – Jim-A-Day Calendar: Feb 2, 2012 (link)

I have to say, I have never been more annoyed by a series of videos since the 1990 run of Saturday Night Live and all their “wacky” groundlings inspired characters.

Again, UCB if you’re going to do something like this every damn day, get some production value, a better camera, lights,  and bone up on those chromo key skills. Oh and writers might help.

Funny Or Die – Shit Emmy Award Winning Actors Say (link)

You may have seen these videos floating around the internet. But never before have I seen one that I thought so much “Oh My God, they do say that” to every single line. It’s meesed up, oh and one of my favorite actors from Breaking Bad shows up!

That’s the super poop of the web today!

That’s what’s funny on the world of the web today.

Now go forth and grab your jalapeño pepper parts.

Got a suggestion on a website I don’t hit? Leave a facebook comment below and I’ll check it out or send me a tweet to your video URL on twitter at @samproof  - tell me crave sent you.

Here’s some bonus fun:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we enjoyed those movies.

Time to make a great sci-fi movie, round out the trilogy with two more excellent sci-fi movies, create a set of three far inferior movies several years later, re-release the inferior movies in 3D, hire the worst voice over actor ever for the trailer and then check out these links!

Worst Star Wars Trailer Ever?

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/is-this-the-worst-star-wars-trailer-of-all-time-you-decide

“Hurry up, Qui-Gon! I’m gonna destroy this whole planet with my shitty narration.”

5 Best Reactions To The Komen Decision

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/177489/top-5-reactions-to-the-komen-decision/

The internet is not amused. Oh wait, a cat video…!

Harry Potter Is Into Bush – Not The Band or The Former Presidents

http://www.thesuperficial.com/daniel-radcliffe-harry-potter-pubic-hair-02-2012

Danielle Radcliffe’s wand goes stiff for hair.

27 Things You Never Noticed In Classic Video Games

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_312_27-things-you-never-noticed-in-famous-video-games/

Ho boy, talk about a kill screen. *Adjusts Tie*

If The 2012 Oscar Nominee Posters Were Honest…

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattcherette/masterful-cat-facts-texting-prank

Are there another 9 movies we can nominate?

That’s all for this edition of The Big List. Join us next week, as the list grows to an unthinkable new size!

Geoffrey Golden is the Editor in Chief of The Devastator: The Quarterly Comedy Magazine For Humans!

Rob Liefeld's new DC books get co-conspirators, while James Robinson checks into DCU Presents.

We told you before that Rob Liefeld was inexplicably put on three more DC titles after his first one, Hawk and Dove, tanked.  Now, we know who's joining him on those books. 

On Deathstroke, he'll be handling both the writing and illustrating himself, bringing in Lobo for mercenary-styled adventure time.  On The Savage Hawkman, Liefeld's "vision" will be scripted by his Avengelyne cohort Mark Poulton, with Joe Bennett on the art duties.  Then, on Grifter, Scott Clark handles the renderings while Frank Tieri will script his stories.  Good luck with those gigs.

On the bright side, however, James Robinson, writer of Starman, the delightful new series The Shade and the upcoming Justice Society reboot Earth 2, is going to be checking into DCU Presents with issue #9, after Dan DiDio's Challengers of the Unknown arc wraps up.  Robinson will be giving us the story of hotshot FBI profiler Kass Sage, who has to reach out to her nefarious father to crack a tough case... but her father is the notorious immortal Vandal Savage.  Will Ms. Sage have any connection to Vic Sage, aka The Question?  Well... that's a question. 

Here are the character sketches from artist Bernard Chang.

Oh, and here are Liefeld covers for his books.

Your look back at the week in film from ComingSoon.net, CraveOnline, SuperHeroHype and ShockTillYouDrop.com!

The New Trailer for The Hunger Games is Online!
Hitting regular and IMAX theaters on March 23rd

Exclusive: The First 7 Minutes of Drive
Watch the intense opening of the action-thriller

Interviews: Madonna and Andrea Riseborough on W.E.
On directing and starring in the new drama

Al Pacino to Voice the Villain of Despicable Me 2
Replacing the previously-attached Javier Bardem

John Hawkes to Star in Elmore Leonard Adaptation Switch
A prequel of sorts to Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown

12 Films to Watch in February 2012
A look at what this month has to offer on the big screen

Exclusive: Behind the Scenes of Drive
From this week's DVD release of the Nicolas Winding Refn film

Ben Wheatley and the Horror of 'Kill List'
The director of the critically acclaimed horror thriller

'Atlas Shrugged: Part Two' is Really Happening
They're going for the trilogy despite the critical panning of the first film

Five Great Movies: Harry Potter Alumni
Other great films from the wizardly cast



Video Interviews: The Cast & Director of Chronicle
A Skype-based junket for this weekend's super-powered thriller

Interview: Daniel Radcliffe Takes On The Woman in Black
The star of Hammer Film's novel adaptation

Movie Guide: The Best & Worst Found Footage Movies
A look at the triumphs and fails of the ever-growing genre

Teaser Trailer for Takashi Shimizu's 7500 Makes Its Debut
From The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu

Shock Waves: Episode 18
Ryan and Lawrence take a look at some of their favorite horror anthology films

DC Entertainment Officially Announces Before Watchmen
Arriving in comic book form this summer

Stephen Amell Lands Leading Role in Arrow
He'll play Oliver Queen in the Green Arrow TV show

The Full G.I. Joe: Retaliation Super Bowl Spot is Here!
Airing during the big game this Sunday

James Bond in Action on the Skyfall Set
Daniel Craig is spotted filming his third Bond project

A Sneak Peek at the Upcoming Marvel: Avengers Alliance Game
The turn-based RPG is coming soon to Facebook

Check out other stories that you might have missed this week with Weekly Cravings:

Nicole speaks about bringing the two Astrids together for a special story and teases an upcoming episode.

Jasika Nicole is one of the unsung heroes of "Fringe."

As FBI Agent Astrid Farnsworth, Nicole constantly has to play off of the insanity of Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) in a way that grounds his wild scientific theories and eccentric personality. To top it off, Nicole also plays a version of Astrid from the alternate universe, who has asperger's syndrome and a dramatically different way of interacting with the world around her.

Among the major characters of "Fringe," Astrid is the only one of the main cast who hasn't met her alternate world counterpart... until now. In tonight's episode of "Fringe," the two Astrids come face-to-face in "Making Angels," as the alternate Astrid journeys to our universe.

Earlier this week, Nicole took part in a press conference to discuss the alternate Astrid's motivations for crossing over, the difficulties of playing both characters against each other and what lies ahead for Astrid.

Q: In this week's episode the two Astrids finally meet. What was it like playing opposite yourself?

Jasika Nicole: It was actually pretty overwhelming to play against myself. Not only because it was the first huge episode that I had just as an actor. But I was kind of doing double-duty as both Astrids. She's got these really emotional scenes.

So what would normally take us maybe four or five hours to complete took us about eight or ten hours because we had to do it twice essentially. And there was actually one scene [which has] both Astrids and both Olivias and then Walter and Peter. So, it just took us all day long.  Anna Torv actually pulled me aside and gave me all these tips on how to do it because she's the one who, you know, plays her doppelganger in most of the show. So it was technically very difficult and emotionally difficult. But it was really, really exciting and totally worth it.

Q: Which of the two Astrids do you find is more challenging or fun to play?

Jasika Nicole: [Alternate] Astrid is much more challenging to play just because she's so physically different than I am. I didn't even realize, but after the first several months of playing her I would come home with a headache every single day. And it's because she's so stiff in her movements, and she's just got these mannerisms that I don't have and my body is not used to them. 

So it's really, really difficult to play her. Also, because she speaks so quickly that I have to know my lines like, backwards and forwards because she spits it out really, really, like spitfire quick. So she's the most fun and the most challenging actually.

Q: Is there a throw away line about why Astrid never sought out to meet her other self? 

Jasika Nicole: Yes. You know, I think in the world of "Fringe" because they're solving these cases and they're trying to save lives and they're trying to protect these universes from being destroyed. So I feel like any like ounces of selfishness totally get taken out of the equation. Like, who has time to go across to another universe and spy on their doppelganger when, you know, hundreds of people who are nearing death because there are some like crazy vigilante that's out on the loose killing them all.

So, I think, deep down inside this Astrid would have loved to go over there to see her. But it's just never come up and there's been so much other work to do. But interestingly enough, the reason that [alternate] Astrid does come to this universe is for selfish reasons; not in a negative way necessarily.  But it's something personal happens to her and it's really traumatic.

She doesn't have anybody else to turn to. So her only option is to come here, which I think is pretty incredible. I think it's very brave because I think there's a possibility that this Astrid is too afraid to maybe go over to the alternate universe and see if her alternate has a better haircut than her.

Q: And what does spending time with old Astrid do for our Astrid? Does it give her pause to reflect on choices she's made or her potential?

Jasika Nicole: It definitely does and that's the main reason that she comes here is to, I think, get a little bit of clarity. She knows that this Astrid is different than she is. I'm not sure exactly how she knows, you know, maybe she's heard other people talking or something, and that is a really key element in figuring out what her next steps are. So she wants to see this other Astrid who's different than her, who is emotionally available and who probably has different relationships with the people in her life, and that's why she comes here.

Q: What kind of challenges have you faced going through not only playing the alternate Astrid but our Astrid?

Jasika Nicole: I think that the biggest challenge that I went through was this season, actually, when we started this new timeline. Then, I realized that all of the relationships were different now that Peter had never been a part of our lives and we didn't know who he was. But, specifically, the relationship between Astrid and Walter was really different because Olivia was more his confidant, his caretaker. He would seek her out when he was in a bad place and needing help and he didn't really go to Astrid so much.

She was more his babysitter than his friend. That was really difficult for me at first because I wasn't sure why Astrid was a part of the team if it wasn't to be Walter's guide and, you know, his shoulder to cry on sort of thing. But then as the season went on I realized that because she didn't have such a close relationship with Walter I think that she was the only person in this world that was welcoming to Peter.

You know, Olivia didn't want to have anything to do with him. Walter didn't want to have anything to do with him.  Broyles was totally freaked out by him and Astrid was the one who was always saying, "You know it's okay. He's probably not a bad guy. We've got to help this person." 

So that was an interesting different choice to have made. I just wasn't expecting it. But now that we've had this huge Astrid episode I see that her relevance is way even beyond just helping Walter because you can see that she helps everybody.

Q: What kind of a journey would you say that Astrid is on this season?

Jasika Nicole: I know what journey alternate Astrid is on. I don't know what journey this Astrid is on. But alternate Astrid is looking for solace. She's had a rough life actually.  And this only comes, to let you know, in this episode that airs Friday [February 03].

But this Astrid has had such a charmed life compared to the other Astrid. I think that this Astrid has taken that for granted because you never know what other direction your life could have gone down. So seeing this alternate Astrid has probably given her a little bit more insight into how fortunate she has been and lucky that she is to have the people around her that she does.

Q: Even though Astrid doesn't get a lot of screen time in either incarnation up until this episode, she's become a lot of peoples’ favorite character on the show. Do you have any thoughts about why that might be?

Jasika Nicole: You know, I thought about it a lot actually and I think, ironically, that one of the reasons people like her so much is because they don't know that much about her. I think that apart from the observer she's kind of the most mysterious person that's involved in the show.  And to have this really young invested FBI agent who shows up to work every day with a smile on her face that tries to keep the energy up and is generally always in a good mood. 

I'm really fascinated by who that person is because you know you see Olivia, who is also a young, really talented, intelligent woman in the FBI, and you know that she's going through a lot of stuff. She's dealing with all kinds of personal stuff and work stuff and figuring out where her boundaries are and where personal life doesn't cross over into work life. You don't get to see Astrid going through those things.  So you wonder how is she handling this when she goes home. So I think maybe that's one of the reasons that people love her so much because they've, kind of, had to create a whole story for her since there hasn't been given to her.

Q: In this new timeline for the alternate universe, the alternate Astrid seems a lot more outgoing and excited and excitable than she was in the previous alt-universe where Peter inhabited it. Have you noticed that?

Jasika Nicole: No. You know, I actually have not noticed that. Not to say that that isn't true; it's very possible. But a part of me wonders if it's just because we've been able to see a little bit more of old Astrid in this season than we have before. And one of my big wishes, I guess, for old Astrid was to be able to see her outside of work because I felt that she was really one note when all you've got to see was her interacting with her coworkers and at her computer screen relaying important information.

But you didn't get to see, you know, what she was like outside of her work area, which is really cool about this Friday's episode. You definitely get to see that. But I never intended for her to not be emotional.  It's just that she never had an opportunity to be emotional when she was at work. 

But a really important episode for her even though these were tiny, tiny scenes; it was the episode when Peter is in the alternate universe and they're trying to figure out, you know, what David Robert Jones is up to. There's this moment that was really special, it's because Peter knows who Astrid is in both universes. She didn't know who he was at all. But he had this familiarity with her. I feel like he saw her and, you know, felt like he knew her and interacted with her as such. 

There's probably never been a stranger to come up to her and be so friendly and kind and put their hand on her shoulder and let her know that it's okay. So he had a reaction to that and I don't think that that had ever happened before in any episode that we've done. So that was like tiny little glimpse into the Astrid outside of her work zone.

Q: Is there anything that you can tease about what you're currently filming on the show?

Jasika Nicole: Yes. We are currently filming an episode that is going to take place mostly in the alternate universe and there's a lot of Lincoln on Lincoln happening on this episode, like a lot, a lot, lot. So I know the fans will be really excited about that because I personally love the Lincoln so much.

Make a grave for the Winter Soldier. Nestled in your hollow shoulder.  The Winter Soldier...

It’s all over, for the Winter Soldier.

Two points to anybody who knows the reference. Moving on, let’s talk Winter Soldier #1, the first issue in the new life of Bucky Barnes. Much has happened to the prince of all sidekicks since he took the mantle of Captain America. He fought the Red Skull, saved the world, saw Steve Rogers return, found out about his awful past as the Winter Solider, was put on trial, died (well not really) and is now deep into a world of counter espionage. To make matters worse, our intrepid hero is riddled with guilt about all the deaths he caused while under Russian mind control. Phew, and this is only issue 1!

Bucky and Natasha (Black Widow) are on the track of some very bad sleeper agents. Winter Soldier opens with the two lovers/spies breaking into a hidden fortress where a stasis tube containing a sleeper solider is being held. After a bit of furious action they realize they’ve hit the target to late. After some necessary spy tech conversations the Widow and The Winter Soldier track their new sleeper to Wisconsin. What happens next? Well, I won’t give it away but it involves an armed gorilla with a Russian accent and Doctor Doom. Interested? I just bet you are.

Who out there could make such a book? What writer would dare step into the world of global action, espionage, spies and personal turmoil? Who amongst us has the nuggets to even dare try to pull it off? Ed Brubaker, that’s who. The man among men, the tower of power, the zip in your hip and the cut in your strut!! Brubaker, as always, knocks this issue right out of the park. Naturally, the dialog is first rate, this is Ed Brubaker we’re dealing with. What stands out about Winter Soldier #1 is two-fold. First, it’s the fact that Brubaker can initiate us into a series with a layered and difficult plot without missing a beat. At no point was I confused nor did any of it seem extraneous. Brubaker is a master of cutting the fat from his plot lines without making them trite or boring.

Secondly, there's the running emotional state of Bucky Barnes. Brubaker set this up beautifully from day one of Barnes becoming Captain America. We watched him take such pride in being the hero and love saving people that his reaction to the fall from grace is very powerful. Brubaker also weaves it into the story beautifully. Bucky’s emotional ups and downs never seem forced or eye rolling or as if they’re being used as some plot device. Instead, they serve a real purpose - they motivate Bucky to become so emotionally charged that he makes mistakes in a game where mistakes get you killed. That humanity raises Winter Soldier above just another comic. It’s the same use of humanity that has allowed Brubaker to raise Bucky Barnes to new levels of depth and interest.

My only trepidation is the art from Butch Guice.  Don’t get me wrong, the man is a master artist and kicks ass at what he does, but it feels off in this issue. Too busy at times, a little too melodramatic at others but mostly way too dark. I understand the noir aspect of the story and the dark themes, but the abuse of shading and blue undertones detracts from the tale. I’m sure in a few issues I’ll get used to it but for this first jaunt into the world of Winter Soldier it didn’t work for me. My nitpicking aside, Winter Soldier is another gem from Ed Brubaker and another step in making Bucky Barnes just as interesting and iconic as his red, white and blue partner.

CRAVE ONLINE RATING 8/10 (5 Story, 3 Art)