The final season of Spartacus: War of the Damned begins January 25^th on Starz.  That’s tonight! We left off last season with Spartacus and his merry band of rebels facing the full might of the Roman legion, which are not against pulling shenanigans.

I was more than happy to sit down with Manu Bennett, who plays the undefeated Gaul and Spartacus BFF, Crixus.  Manu was passionate, assured, and especially candid as he spoke about his former co-star Andy Whitfield and what awaits Crixus in the new season. Generous to a fault, he also shared some spoils of war. (Note: This interview contains spoilers.)

The Flickcast: “Be Here Now” is emblazoned on your shirt.  Can you talk about why the phrase “Be Here Now” is important to you?

Manu Bennett: “Be Here Now” was a tattoo Andy [Whitfield] had on his forearm when he was going through his cancer treatment.  There’s a documentary that’s going to be coming out soon.

Rather than not being in the know about what happened to Andy, this documentary is for people who are really interested in the show and really fell in love with Andy and I know there’s so many people out there who did. I’m sure Andy would have liked everyone to go and watch this documentary to see what cancer can destroy in this life.

Over the past two decades, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens has almost been made into a movie several times. Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam tried for years to put the comic fantasy on film, but the infamously unlucky auteur (see the wonderful doc Lost in La Mancha) could never make it happen.

There has been talk lately of a possible TV miniseries, but many of the book’s fans still hold out hope for a feature. But who could bring Good Omens‘s outrageous characters to life?

Take a look at our picks after the jump.

This is it. It’s the big one! Right before the New Year, we posted our awards for the best of gaming in 2011. But there was one all important award that we needed some extra time to deliberate on… The Game of the Year.

In this episode, JC and WallE forgo the usual format of the Bitcast and engage in a conversation where they, along with some input from Flickcasters Matt Raub and Cortney Zamm, decide on what game earns the coveted title of Game of the Year.

And The Nominees Are:

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One thing we’ve learned is there are too many games and too little time to play them all. This also means there isn’t even enough time to give all of them awards, but we try our best. Today we take a look at both the most time consuming efforts of the past year as well as give some awards for games that deserve some notable mentions as well.

Game Most Likely to Consume Your Life: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Two Hundred and Fifty Hours. By most estimates, this is how long it’ll take an average player to explore MOST of the content of Skyrim. To give some perspective, if the average person works a 40 hour a week job, Skyrim would take six and a quarter full work weeks to complete. Now, we realize that most gamers work jobs outside of the gaming industry and cannot devote a full forty hours a week to a single game.

Yesterday we took a look at Minecraft, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Capcom, Dark Souls and Portal 2. Today, we have a whole second set of awards to be given out for the best (and worst) of 2011.

Game That Shouldn’t Have Taken Nearly As Long to Come Out: Duke Nukem Forever

What happened in the time span since Duke Nukem Forever began development?

The entire Presidential run of George W. Bush.

This writer’s entire high school and college career.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and The Clone Wars were all released in theaters.

The XBox was released and ended its lifecycle.

Activision released 7 proper Call of Duty titles.

Lost.

A child born when development started would have grown to be a teenager.

The list goes on and on…

And the worst part is, after all that wait… Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t very good when it did finally come out. What was considered controversial when the game began production is pretty tame by comparison to what people are enjoying in gaming now and the humor comes off as sophomoric instead of clever.

While we can understand the desire to release a passion project to finally let it see the light of day, sometimes it is better to let it enjoy a quiet death with some dignity instead of coming out guns blazing as a failure.

2011 was one heck of a year for gaming. Once again, the Call of Duty franchise set records for the largest entertainment launch in history. A game that was only in Beta was able to sell millions of copies and spawn an ungodly large community to the point they had a convention before the game was officially released. There were tons of critical darlings encouraging developers to rethink how they create games.
Take a look this week at the awards The Flickcast (along with The Bitcast team) are proud to present for gaming in 2011

Think Outside the Box Game: Portal 2

While many may argue that Minecraft may be the most deserving of this award, they need to remember one thing. In Minecraft, there are no rules. The expanses of the box are too extreme to find the outer boundaries of. Within Portal 2, players are asked to explore new viewpoints of physics, matter and… well, portals. The puzzles in Portal 2 completely overtake the complexity and creativity of the original, which in itself was groundbreaking. With additional toys at their disposal and the introduction of a cooperative mode, the team at Valve came up with a game that redefined both the puzzle solving and FPS genres all at once.

With Footloose, the remake, now out in theaters, it seemed only appropriate to take a look at the top ten dance movies of all time. We all know and love them, regardless if we’ll admit it or not. And now, in the words of Kevin Bacon in the original Footloose, “Let’s dance!”

1. Dirty Dancing – In 1987, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey had young girls everywhere swooning and begging their parents for dance lessons. There’s drama, edgy dance moves, and of course, steamy love scenes. Pack all this together, and you have not only one of the best dance movies of all times, but also one of the great love stories. After all, “nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

2. Footloose – If you were a teenager in the ‘80s, then surely you know the lyrics to the Kenny Loggins song, “Footloose,” by heart. That’s because Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer, not to mention young Sarah Jessica Parker and Sean Penn, danced their way into teenage hearts in 1984’s Footloose. It’s the classic case of good versus evil (or young verses old) with the end dance scene being one that has gone done in history as one of the best of the best.

Welcome to another edition of On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage during the week. Let is know if we missed something interesting.

Let’s get started!

• One of our favorite video game fanfilms of recent history, Fallout: Nuka Break is now an even more awesome web series. Enjoy it!

• Want to know what the Futurama characters would look like if they were real and in 3D? Check out these haunting clay busts of Zoidberg, Nibbler, Farnsworth, and Leela.

• Looking for that awesome party beverage for the long weekend? Why not bring it back to the 80s with a home replication of Hi-C’s Ecto-Cooler!

• Fans of both The Muppets and Doctor Who will both be entertained for hours and may have an exploded brain after seeing this mashup of the two universes.

With Comic-Con in San Diego starting this Wednesday night with Preview Night and going through Sunday, it’s a great time to make sure you’re ready and able to find all the great coverage we’re going to be doing during the show. With that in mind, following are some links to where our content and coverage are going to be.

Of course, the main place you can find our coverage and content will be right here at The Flickcast website. See that link above that says San Diego Comic-Con 2011? Click that and it will take you directly to all our Comic-Con features, news, interviews, video and more.

We’ll also be posting items of interest to our Facebook Page and our Twitter feed. So, if you haven’t yet become our friend on Facebook or started following us on Twitter, now is a great time to do that! You can also find our video content directly at our video site.

This year’s Comic-Con promises to be better than ever so be sure to check back right here for all your Comic-Con news, interviews, photos, videos and more!

Going back to the early days of comics, heroes have been created to stand for something. Peace, justice and the American way has been a strong theme since this trend began and never seemed to falter.

As time as passed, the simple blind patriotism has faded and led to more complex characters that have evolved with the times. Today, on the anniversary of America’s independence, we take a look back at some heroes and even some villains who have proudly worn the red, white and blue.

While there are many we don’t have the chance to look at below such as the Flag, Liberty Bell, the Shield or even the Spirit of 76, we look at all those heroes and what they stood for, the men and women who helped give us the freedom to be able to live in a land where these characters actually exist.

Stop playing with your shillelagh and take a second to reflect on St. Patrick’s Day and what it means to you. Well, unless you are Irish or Irish American, it probably just becomes a day of drinking… followed by more drinking.

But if you work here, you are sure to have a connection with at least one or two Marvel heroes of Irish descent. In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, we take a look at some of the better known inhabitants of the Marvel U who will be getting their green on today.

Matt Murdock a.k.a. Daredevil

Probably one of the best known Irish Americans to grace a Marvel comic, Matt Murdock fits the Irish stereotype with his red locks and being raised by a tough as nails father who made his money as a boxer in Hell’s Kitchen.

Though his ethnic background hasn’t played a part in much of his current storylines as he faces off against hordes of Japanese ninjas, there is something about the Man Without Fear that can be found in every drunken bar brawl during St. Patrick’s Day.

This may be the biggest year for the Academy Awards, as some major Hollywood players are going up against some fresh newcomers. Eyeballs everywhere will be glued to ABC on Sunday, February 27th at 8PM E/5PM P when the awards show goes live. But before that, we decided to do some picking of our own with the staff’s predictions for each award.

For a full list of the nominees, check out our previous article on the subject. Now, on to the predictions.

Best Picture

Shannon Hood-The Social Network. It had early and consistent momentum all year, and the Academy appears to be trying to shake up their stodgy image. This would be the perfect film to put their money where their mouth is.

Matt Raub – True Grit. Not only are the Coens a regular in the “I Have an Oscar” club, but this testament to classic western films is definitely one for record books, between its all-star cast and gritty (no pun intended) visual style, this one definitely deserves the golden statue.

Chris Ullrich – True Grit. Even though this was a pretty great year for movies and there are many excellent choices in this category, True Grit stands on its own as my pick. As an example of pure movie storytelling, this Coen Brothers masterpiece excels on every level and delivers a pure entertainment experience you will want to revisit many more times in the future.

Cortney Zamm – The Social Network. There’s a lot of great films in this category, some of them from my favorite directors and starring my favorite people. But the one that combined all of the essential elements of filmmaking into a truly gorgeous, compelling, and memorable film was The Social Network.