Simple Tricks and Nonsense

Well, SamuraiFrog and Jaquandor have already done this Star Wars meme, so I guess it's my turn... can't resist the opportunity to babble about Star Wars now, can I?

Continue reading "Twenty Questions about Star Wars" »

Posted by at 8:32 PM | Permalink

I know this is supposed to be funny, and it is, but there's a poignant little kernel of truth at the core of it, too. I can easily see myself grappling with these exact issues should I ever father a child...

Yes, the exact same issues. Times are different now, more complicated than when we were kids. Oh, how I can relate to this statement:

"We do not watch the Special Editions of the original trilogy in this house."

Posted by at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I don't recall exactly how I stumbled across this earlier today, but I thought it was really creative and different:

The description at the source reads:

My friend dressed up as the scroll from Star Wars. Her headband reads “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Hey, anybody can go to a party dressed as an Ewok...

Posted by at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The InterWebs have been buzzing this week with the confirmation of those year-old rumors that Uncle George is planning theatrical re-releases of all six Star Wars films, newly converted into trendy 3D, beginning with The Phantom Menace in 2012 and proceeding with one episode per year through Return of the Jedi in 2018. Assuming, that is, that the earlier releases do well enough at the box office to warrant going through the entire series. Personally, I think it may be a mistake to start with the prequels rather than the Original Trilogy. I know George views them all as one big happy saga and would like for them to be seen in sequence, but the sad truth that he seems unable to accept is that the prequels just aren't as well-liked as the OT. They have their supporters, true, and I myself am not as hard on them as many of my friends, but I have a bad feeling that the OT is going to get shafted when the prequels fail to perform to whatever expectations the Great Flanneled One has for this event.

Continue reading "Star Wars in 3-D? Meh." »

Posted by at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Okay, I know nothing is more tedious than somebody talking about their dreams, but I had one last night that I still haven't managed to shake off, even after being up for several hours, so I'm afraid I'm about to become one of those boring people who blather on about their dreams as if they actually matter to anyone but the person doing the blathering. Sorry, everyone, but I've just got to get this out of my head.

I dreamed I was at some kind of townhall meeting where President Obama was appearing in person. It was a small and intimate gathering where everyone was guaranteed up-close-and-personal contact with him, and we'd all been told he would answer any question we wanted to ask him. Any question about any topic at all. So I was wracking my brains trying to come up with something good, something original, something hard-hitting and penetrating and relevant, a question that would stand out from all the mundane bullshit everyone else was asking. I wanted to give the president a chance to satisfy his critics on both the Left and the Right, to defuse the rising hysteria and ignorance and anger that is sweeping this nation and make everything all right again, for everyone. I knew he could do it if only he heard the right question, the magic query that would send his thought processes cascading down just the right pathway. And it was going to be my question that would do it. It was all on me.

So what, you may be wondering, was my question? My brilliant inquiry that would restore the glory of the Republic? Well, when my turn finally came, and the president stood before me and shook my hand and looked me in the face, I asked him... man, I hate to admit this, even though I'm the one who brought it up...

I asked him which of the Star Wars movies was his favorite.

I've been haunted by this all morning...

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Direct from the Star Wars Celebration V fan convention, here is a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi, which Uncle George, in person at the con, confirmed will be included as an extra on next year's Blu-Ray release of the original trilogy. This has never been seen by the public before today, not even in bootleg form as far as I'm aware. It was recorded from the con's projection screen on a handheld cam, so the quality is somewhat dodgy and the hollering fanboy is an unfortunate distraction, but you can certainly see what's happening. Watch it quick, before the copyright troops from Lucasfilm yank it down:

Continue reading "Legendary Star Wars Artifact" »

Posted by at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is quite possibly the coolest thing I've found on the Internet in at least a year:

I recently delved a bit into the blaxploitation genre by watching four of the acknowledged classics -- Shaft, Superfly, Coffy, and Foxy Brown -- and while I can't really say they were good movies, they did display a sort of sleazy charm and cocky attitude that I found supremely entertaining. And I've always liked Lando Calrissian, even if Uncle George had no idea what to do with him in Return of the Jedi. A pre-Rebellion buddy-story about him and Han Solo would be a lot of fun. If only this trailer was for real!

Posted by at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In yet another bit of inspired silliness, Improv Everywhere, that group of merry pranksters who inspired an annual tradition of pantsless public transit rides in New York and other cities around the world (including, surprisingly enough, my own Salt Lake City), strikes again -- or should I say "strikes back?" -- with a Star Wars-themed subway stunt:

I dig the dude who tries to figure out what the princess is reading, then has a hearty chuckle over it. And of course all the tiny handheld cameras that suddenly appear when the stormtroopers and Vader arrive. Funny how I didn't see that coming when I used to imagine as a kid what the 21st century would be like...

This video has popped up in a lot of places recently; I got it from Sullivan's Daily Dish.

Posted by at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

In addition to Pac-Man, today is also the 30th anniversary of another major signpost in the pop-cultural landscape: the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. But perhaps you've not heard of it? It was, after all, just a little-known sequel to a cultish fantasy movie about a farm boy who befriends a trashcan and a walking carpet...

Okay, so that was a really lame attempt at humor. Sorry about that.

I don't have much to say about the movie itself. We've all seen it. We all know the shocking twist at the end. Popular consensus long ago determined it was the best of the six Star Wars films, and I don't disagree with that assessment. (I do, however, hold about the same level of esteem for both it and the original Star Wars. They're quite different in many respects, but I love them equally.) It remains, even after decades, the textbook example of everything a good sequel ought to do: its plot was original and compelling, not simply a redo of the original; it expanded upon the established setting without rewriting any rules; it deepened the familiar characters, added new ones that were equally as interesting and/or lovable, and offered more sophisticated themes. Like the Harry Potter novels would do years later, the Star Wars saga was growing up, keeping pace with the maturation of its primary fanbase. It's a shame that Return of the Jedi was in so many ways a step backwards... but that's a blog entry for another time.

I have several strong memories associated with the release of Empire, most notably the fiendish way in which I found out about Vader's big revelation to Luke, but quite honestly, I don't have the time right now to do that story justice. So what I'd like to do is share with you the little-seen teaser trailer that was released a year before the movie itself:

Continue reading "Opening Everywhere, Thirty Years Ago Today..." »

Posted by at 1:09 PM | Permalink

see more Lol Celebs

Yeah, I know, but it's Friday, and I'm punchy after a very busy week and several nights of lousy sleep. Hopefully I'll make it back later with a couple things...

Posted by at 11:30 AM | Permalink

Would any of my Loyal Readers be surprised in the least to learn that I just scored 100% on the Boing Boing Star Wars Sound Effects Quiz?

Curiously, I had no problem identifying even those effects that come from the prequels. The only one I dithered over was something from the revised edition of the original film. Make of that what you will...

Posted by at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Is it just me, or do Tuesday afternoons always seem rather elongated? They have none of the settling-back-into-the-routine bustle of a Monday. They lack the over-the-hump frisson of a Wednesday, or the gathering steam of Thursday, or Friday's downhill sprint (or leisurely stroll, depending on the pace of your particular workplace) toward the weekend. No, Tuesdays just sort of sit there, like that bad food-court burger you ate last night and can still feel, lodged somewhere in the vicinity of your duodenum and seeming like it's in no hurry to go either up or down.

At least that's how this Tuesday afternoon is feeling to me, just sitting there all cold and gristly and utterly lacking in nutritional value. Seems like a good time for some Star Wars-flavored netcrap, and SamuraiFrog has a most excellent serving for us:

Yeah, that's probably exactly what Han was thinking. Not that he could criticize much, of course, not after some of the unspeakable mischief he and the Wook probably got up to back in their old spice-smuggling days. No, not Han and the Wook, you perverts. I just meant that there were probably lots of occasions when they served as each other's wingman in whatever passed for singles' bars out there on the Outer Rim... no, really... stop looking at me like that!

Continue reading "A Steaming Pile of Netcrap" »

Posted by at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I have no idea what the heck this image is all about, or why I find it so weirdly appealing. And yet... I cannot look away. And it brings a mystified smile to my face. And I think I'm suddenly craving a corn dog.

You gotta wonder how Carrie Fisher feels about being the focal point for a whole mess of bizarro nerd fetishes. Do you suppose if she had the chance to do it all again, she'd tell Uncle George she didn't want to be in his movies after all, because she just couldn't face the long decades ahead knowing that one day there would be a photoshopped pin-up of her in a Hot Dog on a Stick uniform?

(Via.)

Posted by at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This either speaks to the utter banality and base immaturity of the average conversation on social-networking sites, or it serves to craft an endearingly human side to beloved but admittedly two-dimensional characters. Or something. Whatever is going on here, it makes me laugh:

There are a few more here

Via.

Posted by at 2:18 PM | Permalink

Yes, I am aware of that 70-minute video review of The Phantom Menace that's currently making the rounds of the InterWebs. (io9 has helpfully aggregated the various YouTube chapters into a single, convenient location, if you didn't know.)

No, I don't have much to say about it.

The truth is -- and I hope I don't sound like too much of a dick here, because I know you guys are just trying to do me a friendly favor, and I really do appreciate the thought -- I'm not interested in yet another snarky takedown of the Star Wars prequels, especially one that requires over an hour of my busy life to watch. Honestly, it's been ten years since The Phantom Menace came out, and five years since I realized I was tired of talking about the prequels. I simply can't imagine there's anything left to be said about them in general, or The Phantom Menace in particular.

Look, I get it; the movie failed on any number of levels and that made a lot of people feel foolish for getting so excited about it in the first place. And a not-inconsiderable subset of fanboys have allowed their frustrated expectations to fester into white-hot anger and a deep conviction that George Lucas is and always was a no-talent hack who somehow hypnotized us all into loving his creations for decades and buying all the tie-in products we could get our hands on, but now the scales have fallen from some people's eyes and they want their childhoods -- not to mention all the money they've spent on collectibles -- back. Fine. Whatever you say. Bored now.

Personally, I'm far more offended by Lucas' stubborn disdain for the original trilogy than anything he did in the prequels. Or in Indy IV, for that matter. (I'm equally sick of hearing about CG monkeys and how Shia LaBeouf isn't manly enough to satisfy the fanboys.) I guess I just have better things to bitch about these days...

Posted by at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

With any luck, I'll get around to writing an actual blog entry later today, but for now, let me share something that amused me this morning, from the always reliable Lileks:

It’s MEA weekend, which is when the schools close down for two days to have a convention, or a caucus, or go the Caribbean and talk smack about this year’s crop of brats, I don’t know. Don’t recall these when I was a kid, but things were so different in my day that the teaches not only smoked, but smoked indoors. They had a lounge off the cafeteria, and a blue fog rolled from it all day long. Any kid who went in there came out like a doughboy after the mustard gas rolled over the lip of the trench. That’s if you dared to go in there. I remember doing so once, and everyone stiffened. You would not have been surprised if the English teacher rose, held out his hands palm-first, and used repelling beams to drive you back.

Harold! You revealed your power!

I know, Rhoda, but he had violated our lair. It had to be so.

I always admire James' skill at finding the perfectly evocative phrase, and the mental picture of my bald, bearded, bespectacled, and imperious AP English teacher Mr. Bridge firing repulsor beams from his hands at an interloping student... well, that's something that's going to stick with me for a while.

In other corners of the InterWeb today, I also enjoyed Scalzi's appreciation of one of the coolest characters ever to grace the silver screen, the mighty Chewbacca. I knew from an early age that Chewie was nothing more than a tall, very thin man in a fur-covered suit, but unlike a lot of other cinematic aliens, I've always accepted him -- even to this day -- as exactly what he appears to be. I believe in Chewbacca in a way I don't quite believe in, say, E.T., if that makes sense. For my money, Chewie and the monster from Alien are the two best-realized, most authentic non-human creatures ever put on film.

Finally, take a look at these amazing pictures taken just offshore from Sunset Beach in LA; I had no idea sharks leapt out of the water like dolphins...

Posted by at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

And yet, somehow, so very right... it's Molly Ringwald in that inescapable slave-Leia outift:

Actually, I can imagine Molly playing Leia if the original trilogy had been made just a couple years later. But then I've got a weird imagination that way. I've always thought Humphrey Bogart would've rocked as Han Solo, too...

(Via.)

Posted by at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I had an email waiting this morning from my buddy Mike -- who, incidentally, was up way too late last night -- containing a pretty entertaining link that I thought I'd share with my Loyal Readers. It's a cache of behind-the-scenes photos from the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

You may have seen some of these before; that infamous shot of Chewie getting fresh is here, as is one of the "glamour-girl" publicity stills of Carrie Fisher from the first movie. Some of the other photos on the linked page appear to be simply alternates of better-known images, or outtakes from the same sessions. (Compare this one, for example, to the more-familiar picture that appears on trading cards, posters, and the magnet I've got on my fridge door.) However, there are several photos in this collection that are new to me, as unlikely as that sounds. After all these years of being a stark-raving fanboy and collector of crap, I thought I'd seen pretty much every frame of film that was ever shot in connection with these movies. Being proven wrong is curiously satisfying.

I'm especially fond of the pics where people are just horsing around on the set, like the one above in which Mark Hamill appears to be about two seconds from getting an elbow in the ribs. I like seeing just how damn young our heroes really were, as well as the suggestion that making the original trilogy was a fun experience for them. I think it's both telling and sad that you don't see images like this from the making of the prequel trilogy. At least, I haven't seen any...

Posted by at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My friend Karen points us today to a strange little website based on the following premise: "If we started a movie on the day you were born, and stretched it over your lifespan, this is where you'd be in that movie."

You enter your birthdate and how long you expect to live, select your favorite movie from a list of well-known options, and the site will show you which scene in the film corresponds to the current moment of your life. My three loyal readers can, of course, guess which film I chose... it seems I'm right at the point where Han Solo is ushering his nervous passengers toward their ticket off Tatooine.

On the positive side, the really fun part of the movie is still ahead. Hopefully that says something about my life...

Posted by at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Okay, so, you know those Axe body-spray commercials where some young guy with a bad haircut spritzes himself with cheap cologne-in-a-can and suddenly finds himself surrounded by horny females who seem to have lost all their higher reasoning functions? Yeah, I don't get 'em either.*

I think this makes much more sense:

Ah, lightsabers. Is there nothing they can't make cooler? Extra credit to the makers of this clip for throwing in a Wilhelm.

* Oh, come on, is there anyone over the age of 19 who doesn't think that shit makes you smell like you just rubbed yourself down with one those tree-shaped air fresheners for your car?

Posted by at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ever wonder what it might've been like if, instead of a hugely successful feature film, Star Wars had been a late-70s television series with a disco-flavored theme song? Sure you have:

For you younglings in the audience, the music and visual stylings of this piece are derived from the opening of Dallas, a primetime soap opera about rich, conniving, nasty people with better sex lives than you. Dallas led to the pinnacle (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) of '80s television, Dynasty, which in turn begat Falcon Crest and god only knows how many lesser rip-offs.

I'm impressed at how well the Dallas theme and style works with Star Wars footage, and also amused that the creator of this mash-up included "the men in the masks" in the credits. Of course, in my world, the Death Star explosion doesn't result in one of those lame "Praxis-effect" plasma rings, but that's my grumpy-old-fanboy side speaking up again and we won't indulge him today.

More fun stuff below the fold...

Continue reading "Saturday Morning Star Wars Net Crap" »

Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The way the economy's been lately, I wouldn't be surprised if these end up being worth more than good old-fashioned dollars:

Starbuck by `diablo2003 on deviantART

They're certainly cooler looking than U.S. greenbacks. The design was apparently created for a Star Wars convention that was held a couple years ago, according to the artist's notes. I don't know if it was ever actually printed in faux-currency form or not; if it was, I wouldn't mind having a couple for my collection, so if anyone knows where I can get some, give a shout, okay?

Via Boing Boing, of course...

Posted by at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Vimeo Tribute: Star Wars from Casey D on Vimeo.

Seriously, would you feel comfortable geeking around in the office with toy machine guns and a video camera these days? As fun as this looks, I'd be terrified of ending up on the lay-off list. These guys obviously don't have enough work to do...

Incidentally, may I just mention that I hate all the gleepity sounds that were laid over the insert shots of the Falcon's targeting computers in the Not-So-Special Editions? I've read that F-4 Phantom pilots in Vietnam started turning off the alarms and various audio systems in their cockpits because they got to be too distracting; I can't help but think that'd be Han Solo's philosophy as well. A former fighter pilot and motorhead like him would be listening to every little murmur in the engines, every creak and groan of the ship's skeleton, and you can't do that with electronic felgercarb going gleepity-gloop all the time.

Posted by at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For many years, it's been something of a parlor game among the nerdy classes to speculate on what would happen if one of the starships Enterprise from the Star Trek franchise faced off in battle against an Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars. In fact, this particular hypothetical has been such a common topic of discussion in sci-fi fan circles that it's become a tremendous cliche: Much like those 2 a.m. college dorm-room discussions in which someone suggests that maybe, just maybe, our lives are only dreams and none of the other people in the room are real and how damn trippy would that be?, it's the topic that everybody has encountered at some time or another.

The outcome of this debate is both inevitable and inconclusive: it ultimately comes down to simple partisanship, i.e., which franchise the debaters happen to be a bigger fan of. The Trekkies usually cite Star Trek's defensive shielding technology (which seems to be lacking or at least far less impressive in George Lucas' universe) and the seemingly infinite flexibility of phaser weapons as the decisive reason why the Enterprise would kick butt. Meanwhile, the arguments of Star Wars fans (Warsies?) usually depend on the sheer scale of Imperial machinery and the brute force commanded by those British-sounding guys in gray.*

This video (one of the better-made ones I've seen in this particular sub-genre) introduces a hitherto ignored factor into the equation:

Picard and those guys on the Enterprise sure are smug bastards, aren't they? You think whoever made this clip was making a comment about the Trekkies he'd encountered? (Seriously, there's a subset of Trekkies that can be downright insufferable... Star Wars fans generally seem to be a lot more relaxed about their pet obsession, as long as you don't mention Jar Jar Binks.)

* For what it's worth (and at the risk of sounding even geekier than I did when I analyzed the provenance of the USS Kelvin the other day), I tend to side with the Warsies on this one. It's been established time and time again that the Enterprise's deflectors can only take so much abuse, so I think the Empire could win simply by dropping a hundred or so TIE fighters to pound away at the Big E while the Destroyer hangs back out of phaser range. The TIEs would be too small and fast for the E to efficiently take down with its artillery-scale phaser banks; meanwhile, the fighters' weapons might be puny against the E's shields but they would take their toll. It might take all day, but eventually the shields would collapse; then a couple of well-placed turbolaser blasts and it's back to Coruscant for a round of cold ones with Palpatine... but that's just my theory.

Posted by at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Hey, everyone... if you're actually reading this on Thanksgiving (which I like to refer to as Mass Consumption Day), I can only assume it's after you've all finished dinner, right? If not, shouldn't you be off, um, consuming?

Anyhow, I just wanted to drop a quick little note here: In his column this week at amctv.com, the ubiquitous John Scalzi lists all the things for which he's thankful in the realm of sci-fi movies. I agree with him on pretty much all of these items, except for the one about special effects (sorry, I'm a big fan of actual, tangible miniatures, although I concede the CG stuff is getting better all the time). I found one of Scalzi's items especially resonant:

I'm thankful I'm almost 40 years old and still want a lightsaber and a speeder bike.

My geeky ego has taken quite a beating over the past ten years. From the Great Fanboy Prequel Wars that trashed the reputation of my favorite movie series and revealed one of my boyhood heroes to have feet of clay, to the remakes of damn near every movie or TV show I've ever loved, I've had to endure the diminishing, eclipsing, or outright dismissal of things that I used to think would never go away. Things that loom so large in my personal history and psyche that I've always assumed they must mean as much to everyone else as they mean to me. I know... naive, even childish. There have been times, especially lately with all the talk about the new Star Trek, when I've felt like a damn fool for clinging to my increasingly obsolete obsessions, when I've wondered what's wrong with me that I apparently don't see this stuff the same way everybody else does, i.e., as quaint old relics that were cool in their day but are now just silly and needing to be replaced. Not to put too melodramatic a spin on it, but these times of self-doubt have been genuinely painful.

But then something comes along like that video of the dueling sailors, and I feel that old familiar rush of endorphins and I realize that, yeah, I still love this stuff, in spite of what the rest of the world may think about it. Moreover, I'm glad that I still love this stuff, that the critics and cynics haven't managed to entirely wipe out my enjoyment of it. I'm thankful indeed that somewhere deep down inside my wounded, stressed-out, overburdened, and all-too-often-exhausted grown-up mind, there is still a happy, carefree ten-year-old walking through his small, boring, rural town with a comic book rolled up in his back pocket, dreaming of slicing down trees with a real lightsaber or whipping through the fields in a vehicle that's magically floating three feet above the ground. Sometimes, that kid still finds a way to speak to me, and sometimes I still find a way to be him. And surely that's a good and even necessary thing...

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

Posted by at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ever wonder what the brave young men of the United States Navy do to kill the time during those interminable ocean crossings? They make a movie of themselves having a lightsaber duel, of course!

There are thousands of Star Wars fan films out there on the 'webs, of course, but this is perhaps the only one that was shot on board an active-duty naval warship, the USS Shiloh (serial number CG67, hence the title of the movie and of this blog entry). The film is a little too long and unevenly paced, and the audio is a bit dodgy, but it looks like the guys involved had a blast making it, and it definitely has its charms. Be warned, though, that there is some NSFW sailor-type language in this clip (in other words, they swear, including the dread F-word):

For some reason, I was highly amused to see they have Nutter Butter cookies for sale on board the ship. I don't know why; guess it just never occurred to me that sailors would have access to the same junk food that I do. I also like how nobody in the mess hall reacts to two lightsaber-wielding engineers clashing their way through the room. Could this be a common occurrence on board the Shiloh?

Anyhow, the source of the video is here; I came to it via Boing Boing, naturally.

Posted by at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a nice little palate cleanser to follow all that heavy stuff, a video that's been making the rounds this week (I'm ashamed to admit that Samurai Frog and Jaquandor beat me to the punch on this one). It's a creative lip-synch of a cute little song that's all about my favorite movie, set to several of the more memorable themes by movie-music maestro John Williams. If you don't know your John Williams themes, the titles are helpfully provided in pop-ups (although if you don't know what these particular themes are, you're not much of a movie fan, or you didn't grow up in the '80s):

As it happens, I've actually heard this song before. It's a by a Utah-based a capella group called moosebutter. Utahns in general seem to really groove on this sort of stuff; there are a number of similar groups, all composed of clean-cut young men of LDS background, and all of which seem to have at least one song or comedy routine that somehow relates to Star Wars. (Voice Male is another example; they do the Wookiee call and have a "I am your father" gag in their stageshow.) Many of them seem to have a connection to Utah County and/or BYU as well. Go figure.

One small quibble with this (hey, it wouldn't be me if I weren't griping about something, right?): I object to the pop-up that reads "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark." That's the revisionist title that appears on the sleeve for the DVD, but the actual movie is and always has been simply Raiders of the Lost Ark. I know, it's something the Comic Book Guy would get up in arms about, but I have my principles, you know?

Posted by at 5:01 PM | Permalink

Feeling keyed up about long lines at your polling place and the fate of the entire universe hanging in the balance? Here's a little something to break the tension:

Billy Dee still looks pretty good, doesn't he? Ah, if only the Lando-Chewie ticket had been available in my galaxy...

Posted by at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Okay, accepting a major entertainment-industry award in a Colonial Warrior outfit is one thing, but this is just... kinky. And also kind of... well, no, I can't let myself go there.

Sometimes it's hard to admit that I'm part of this community...

Via.

Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink

Enough of the political unpleasantness for now... let us consider something far more soothing to the mind... like this delightful piece of 'net crap:

Oh, if only this video really existed... I'd know what I'd be doing this weekend for sure!

(Incidentally, there's an entire thread of similar stuff over at Fark. The idea was to photoshop Star Wars characters into other movies. Most are pretty lame, but a few generate a chuckle; this one is downright creepy...)

Posted by at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's been a while since I last addressed the matter of Star Wars on DVD -- specifically, George Lucas' stubborn and frustrating determination that the general public will never again see the pre-1997, unrevised (which, by the way, is quite a different animal from unrestored) editions of the classic original trilogy in any kind of high-quality video format.

For those of you who may have only recently joined us, let me state for the record that I am not one of these "George Lucas raped my childhood" types. I didn't think the prequels were all that bad, Jar-Jar Binks is not the end of western civilization, and I don't even begrudge George becoming very, very wealthy by exploiting the devotion of his fans. After all, nobody held a blaster to our heads and forced us to buy yet another box set of the same damn movies we already own five copies of, and it's not like Lucasfilm is the only company guilty of practicing the "double-dip" marketing strategy. Hell, I don't even particularly mind that he chose to use our beloved franchise as a test platform for his ideas about digital filmmaking -- which I suspect was his true (and probably only) interest in revisiting Star Wars all along -- and I also forgive him the sin of not being the man he was 35 years ago. People age, and their thinking about a lot of things changes along the way, and sometimes their skills decline, too. That's life.

But the one thing I can't forgive is The Great Flanneled One's zeal to suppress the earlier, more significant editions of three of the most important movies of the last 50 years.* It wasn't the Special Editions that changed everything for Hollywood, and I don't understand George's lack of respect for film history, if not for his own fans (I'm the first to admit that hard-core fans can sometimes be pretty damn annoying). Even so, his position on Star Wars is downright hypocritical given his support for film preservation in general; he's been quoted as saying that he's concerned about saving the films he watched when he was young. Just not the films people of my generation watched when we were young, apparently.

But don't take my rant for it. Consider this lengthy but well-reasoned op-ed that outlines the history of the situation and makes a passionate argument on behalf of both old-school fanboys and general cinephiles (I count myself as both, incidentally). The following point, in particular, is the thing I wish we could somehow get through George's thick skull:

Continue reading "I'm Not the Only One..." »

Posted by at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Okay, since it's becoming obvious I'm not going to manage to do any actual entries today...

Yeah, it's a commercial, and it kinda sucks that the dread gargoyle that haunted our collective childhood has become both a spokes-Sith and a punchline... but this still made me laugh. So there.

Posted by at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sunday afternoon driving around, weather pleasantly warm. A sign in front of Arctic Circle, a local burger chain, advertises "SW Salad with Jalapeno Dressing."

Says I: "Look, hon, Star Wars Salad."

Says The Girlfriend: "What do you suppose would come on a Star Wars Salad?"

I: "Ewoks."

She: "You didn't even miss a beat with that."

Continues I, again without missing a beat: "Charcoal-grilled Ewoks. They're quite tasty with that Jalapeno Dressing."

She: "You scare me..."

Posted by at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Continuing on with the fun and games, it's not often that a silly Internet quiz generates exactly the answer you were hoping for:

how jedi are you? :: by lawrie malen

But then, the questions on this quiz are pretty leading...

Via the SamuraiFrog.

Posted by at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I don't watch Grey's Anatomy and I have no idea what's really going on in this scene -- how the hell does a guy get encased in concrete anyhow? -- but I thought this speech was awesome, for reasons that will become obvious:

That would definitely boost my ego if I'd somehow done such a lame-o thing as getting myself encased in concrete. Nice shout-out to the Expanded Universe, too, with the mention of the Solo twins. There's either a major fan in the writer's room of Grey's or they've got some good research assistants...

Via.

Posted by at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Cranky Robert sent me this earlier tonight:

Brilliant... and weirdly catchy. Go on, try not to sing along...

Posted by at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just learned from the blog of Irene Gallo, the art director for Tor Books, that the illustrative artist John Berkey has died. Irene mentions something about him being in poor health in recent years, but so far, I haven't been able to find any further details about his age or cause of death.

Berkey is probably best known for painting some of the very earliest pieces of promotional art associated with Star Wars -- the image above was a poster concept for the movie, which ended up instead becoming the iconic cover of the film's novelization -- but his work was pretty commonly seen on all kinds of books and posters in the late '70s and early '80s, and it was a big influence on my developing sense of aesthetics. Several of his paintings still live in my memory; when I read of his death, I instantly recalled an image of his that appeared on Navy recruitment posters throughout my high school and early college years, and also this painting,which was the cover of a National Geographic coffee-table book called Our Universe. A friend of mine owned a copy of that book; as I recall, I borrowed it several times, but about all I remember about it now was that awesome cover painting.

Berkey's work was more impressionistic than realistic, but one of the things it always conveyed was a true sense of mass. His starships and ocean-going craft and floating cities always felt huge and immensely powerful. It was a perfect style for the time of its greatest popularity, when Star Wars, with its mile-long Star Destroyers and moon-sized Death Star, set the tone for so much science fiction.

I don't recall seeing any new work from Berkey in years, and I don't know if that's because he's been ill or otherwise not working, or if his stuff just fell out of fashion. I rediscovered him a few years ago when I ran across a used art book at Sammy's, and I spent several days marveling at how many of his paintings were familiar, and how much I still like them. That Star Wars piece above, for the record, is one of my favorites out of the hundreds of Original Trilogy-related paintings produced over the years; this companion piece is, too, even if it inaccurately depicts several Corellian YT-1300 light freighters at the Battle of Yavin, rather than just the one we all know actually was there...

Posted by at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Oh, boy... what a conundrum...

You see, I loathe the "competitive reality show" phenomenon that has overtaken primetime television in recent years. Survivor and its highly contrived ilk long ago wore out their welcome for me and the American Idol-style talent shows alternately bore and irritate me. However, I reserve a particularly strong flame of hatred for the mind-numbingly stupid modern-day variants of the traditional quiz-show format. I think it's the way they all try to generate artificial suspense by having the contestants deliberate for ridiculously long periods of time (usually not very believably -- I mean, come on, how hard is it to answer the lowest difficulty level of these softball questions? Is the sky is blue or green? You honestly don't know that one? Well, then just pick one!) while ominous "the clock is ticking and which wire is Jack Bauer going to clip" music plays in the background. This technique was developed for Regis Philbin's thankfully deceased Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, but it endures in the even-more-annoying Deal or No Deal, in which contestants essentially play three-card monte by choosing from a range of metal attache cases in hopes that one of them will contain a cool million bucks. (The difference, of course, is that the contestants aren't betting their own money and so have nothing, really, to lose by just picking one, a scenario that makes the delayed-response thing even more obnoxious. It's not like Howie Mandel is pulling cash out of their wallets for every wrong choice they make!)

Needless to say, I don't watch Deal if I can possibly avoid it -- which is sometimes tricky, because my parents love the damn thing, so I have to be careful about when I choose to visit them -- but now an item on the Official Star Wars blog has piqued my curiosity... not to mention my prurient interests.

If you've never seen the show, part of Deal's schtick is that the attache cases that may or may not contain the million-dollar winnings (well, the cases actually contain cards with a dollar amount written on them) are held by 26 lovely female models, all wearing identical dresses (I believe they're usually red). But according to the Star Wars blog, an upcoming episode will have the Deal models dressed in the classic Princess Leia slave-girl outfit from Return of the Jedi, a.k.a., the "metal bikini." Can any loyal fanboy whose puberty was haunted by sail-barge fantasies resist that diabolical kind of lure? Especially when Vader, Chewie, R2-D2, and Carrie Fisher herself are also supposed to be on hand? I guess we'll find out...

(As an aside, I will admit that the idea of a Star Wars-themed episode did make me smile, even if I dislike the show, because it brings back a lot of fond memories of How Things Used to Be. Back in the late '70s, every variety show on the air, from The Muppet Show to Donny and Marie did an SW episode. It seems like strange timing to do one now, though; I've been thinking lately that SW in general, and the original trilogy in particular, is fading from the pop-cultural radar now that the prequels are complete. Perhaps Deal or No Deal skews heavily among people in my demographic?)

Posted by at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Several people have sent me links to the following video, including most recently our Simple Tricks East Coast correspondent, Brian Greenberg, so I suppose I'd better stop procrastinating and get it posted up, as it appears to be the current happening thing here on the InterWebs. It's somebody's three-year-old daughter recounting the plot of Star Wars and doing a pretty fine job of it, too. I'm not somebody who finds the antics of three-year-olds particularly cute, so trust me when I say it's worth your click.

I'm amazed by how articulate she is, even if the video has been obviously edited to condense some of the standard little-kid rambling. She also seems to have a surprisingly cogent grasp of the movie, which her dad (who shot the video) swears in comments over on YouTube is entirely real and uncoached. (I'm especially amused by her comment that "the 'siney' one always worries," which is as concise a summary of Threepio's character as I've ever encountered). Amazingly, she's seen the movie only once, spread out over several days. Smart kid.

(On a side note -- and admitting up front that, as a non-parent, I have no authority to be saying a damn thing about how other people raise their kids -- isn't three a little young for a movie like Star Wars? I was seven when I first saw it, and, as enthralled as I was, I was pretty badly traumatized by the smoking skeletons of Owen and Beru. I wasn't too sure about that beastie in the garbage masher, either. Maybe I was just a wussy kid.)

Anyway, as long as I'm talking about Star Wars, here are a couple other items of interest:

Continue reading "Don't Talk Back to Darth Vader, He'll Get Ya" »

Posted by at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay, sure, my birthday is still six months or so away, but that just gives one of my terribly generous friends out there time to save up the money to get me something really, really cool. Like, oh, I don't know... maybe a Han-Solo-in-carbonite desk! (Although for my purposes, a coffee table would probably be better... I already have a nice roll-top desk.)

Seriously, though, this thing is really cool. It was custom-made by a company called Tom Spina Designs; if you like movie stuff at all, I recommend you go over there and have a look around. They've done a lot of other custom display pieces (some Star Wars-related, much that is not), and there's a fascinating page showcasing some the restoration work they've done on original movie props and masks. Latex is not the most durable material and most movie companies make little effort to preserve costumes and props after shooting wraps, so the actual physical artifacts behind our favorite cinematic fantasies tend to degrade pretty quickly. This company has done some very impressive work on, among other things, puppets from The Dark Crystal and Gremlins, and a whole slew of Ughnaught masks from The Empire Strikes Back. Nice to know that somebody cares about saving this stuff... it's all precious in my book. As Indy would say, "it belongs in a museum!"

Oh, and for the professional courtesy bit, this item was via Boing Boing. Of course.

Posted by at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A couple weeks ago, The Girlfriend and I, along with several of our friends from the subgroup I like to think of as "The Usual Suspects,"^* attended something rather unusual: a one-time-only theatrical screening of "The Menagerie," an episode of the original Star Trek television series. The screening was essentially a promotional gimmick for the release of the series on the HD-DVD format, so naturally what we were seeing was the "remastered" version of the episode -- that is, the one with all the new digital "enhancements." Not that anyone except me seemed to mind. We shared a sold-out house with several hundred enthusiastic members of the uniform-wearing faithful (there was even a guy there in full-blown Andorian make-up, complete with antennae!), and there was much ooh-ing and aah-ing over the digital recreations of scenes we've all seen a thousand times. Even I have to grudgingly admit that whoever is behind the CG tinkering is doing a very nice job of it. The new footage is very faithful to the look of the original series -- the Enterprise isn't suddenly an unnaturally manuverable cartoon -- and there has been no "Greedo shoots first" revisionism to any of the stories that I have seen. I will even concede that some of what's been done is an improvement. (Click here for a gallery of screencaps and judge for yourselves; my thanks to Mike G for sending me the link.) Nevertheless, as my Three Loyal Readers can probably predict, I remain opposed to the updates on basic principle.

My stubbornness on this point led to a pretty interesting conversation following the screening, which in turn led me to a whole new understanding of my own thoughts on this matter of updating old movies and TV properties, and which types of changes bother me and which types don't.

Continue reading ""The Mangerie," and My Manifesto on Digital Tinkering" »

Posted by at 1:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Courtesy of Cranky Robert, here's a clip I can't begin to do justice with mere words. Just watch it:

That's some brilliant editing, IMHO. Perfect casting, too...

Posted by at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Elvis has long held the monopoly on tacky, plushy living room art, but I'm thinking this just might give The King a run for his money:

Groovy, baby, yeah!

(Via.)

Posted by at 10:48 AM | Permalink

How many Star Wars t-shirts can a grown man own before it starts to become sad and lame? I've been doing a little online window shopping this afternoon and, well, I'm just asking...

Posted by at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

My first day back at work went pretty much exactly as I anticipated: right back into the grind. No time to write a proper entry about the vacation, or even to catch up on all my blog-reading from last week. (I won't tell you how many unread posts I had waiting in my aggregator. It's too frightening. If I was wise, I'd just mark them all as read and start fresh in the morning. I never made any claims to wisdom, though.)

I did, however, stumble across this, which I will share with you now:

It's our old friend Danny Choo, the Tokyo stormtrooper I've blogged about before, showing us some of his slick moves. I don't know why I'm so amused by the sight of Imperial stormtroopers in everyday, terrestrial settings, unless it's because the costumes -- the good ones, anyway -- look so real, literally like these guys just walked off a movie screen into our world. Star Trek-themed costumes, by contrast, very rarely look like the real thing -- homemade Starfleet uniforms are usually just a little too obviously amateur jobs, latex Klingon foreheads don't match the wearer's skin tone, etc. But a guy (or gal) in one of these armor suits, well, they look the way they're supposed to look. And it's all the better when they're dancing...

(Incidentally, I love the guy on the subway who is trying his darnedest not to look at the two-stepping lunatic in the white polystyrene Halloween outfit...)

Posted by at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So, it seems that X-Wing wasn't the only craft from a galaxy far, far away clawing its way toward the sky over the weekend. A model Y-Wing also went up at the same model-rocketry event, with much the same results. Hey, nobody ever said those ships could really fly, only that they're cool-looking. There's a video clip of the flight -- including some footage from an onboard camera -- at Gizmodo. (I couldn't figure out how to embed the clip, and none of the clips I found on YouTube were as good as the Gizmodo one.) Go check it out! And have a look at the construction gallery, too!

Posted by at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Following up on that item from last week about the half-size X-Wing built by some model-rocket enthusiasts, here's some video of its spectacular (if short) flight:

Looks a lot like what happened to poor old Porkins...

(Porkins: "I've got a problem here."

Biggs: "Eject!"

Porkins: "I can hold it."

Biggs: "Pull up!"

Porkins: "No, I'm alrigh---yeaaaaaargggg!")

Update: Here's another clip from a different angle. Looks like it launched with the S-foils in attack position (i.e., the wings open in the X-shape), something I wasn't clear on from earlier information. Wonder if that made any difference with the tumble?

Posted by at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My dad isn't a particularly well-educated man, but I think he is, in his own way, something of a genius. Over the years, I've seen him modify ordinary tools to fit difficult jobs, rather than spending the money on a specialized gadget; improvise repairs to things that everyone else would say are impossible to fix; and, most impressively, build wild flights of fancy for no other reason than he thinks they will be cool and make people smile. There was, for example, the year he transformed my '63 Galaxie into a reasonably good replica of the RMS Titanic, complete with Ken-and-Barbie versions of Jack and Rose out on the bow, for a Halloween party.

Then there are the ideas he's had but for one reason or another never brought to fruition. He was always going to cobble together a Headless Horseman outfit and ride Thunder, our old gray nag, through the subdivisions just to see what the trick-or-treaters would do. And when I was a young fanboy, he often thought about making a float with a life-size X-Wing on it for our small-town Fourth-of-July parade. (The idea was that I'd be dressed as Luke Skywalker, riding the float alongside my "ship.")

I was reminded of Dad's unfulfilled X-Wing scheme this afternoon when I ran across this:

That's a 21-foot-long (half-scale?) X-Wing built by a group of model-rocket enthusiasts; they intend to launch it next week, with four solid-fuel rocket motors mounted right where the engine pods would go on a "real" Incom T-65. And here's the wild thing: the wings are motorized. If all goes well, the ship will "lock its S-foils in attack position" as it ascends. Or maybe the ship will start off with the wings in X-configuration and fold them closed during the flight -- the two websites I've seen contradict each other on that. Either way, there's a good chance the whole thing will come apart, but I hope it doesn't. And I also hope the video of its flight makes it to the web; my three loyal readers know I'll be posting it if it does!

Read an overview and see lots more pictures here, or go here for an obsessively detailed construction log.

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Spotted this morning on the train ride to work, a college kid in a black T that read:

Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies.
--V

Understated geekery. Nice...

Posted by at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Courtesy of Eric D. Snider, a former Utahn who now snarks at movies for a living in Portland, Oregon, comes a manifesto written by this guy, a radio DJ from the Pacific Northwest. With only a few minor tweaks, it could've just as easily been written by myself:

What a geek believes
According to Rick Emerson

I believe that Han shot first. I believe that Ally Sheedy was hotter before Molly Ringwald cleaned her up. I believe in miniatures, models, claymation, and not revealing the shark until you absolutely have to. I believe that George Lucas, for better or for worse, change[d] the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves. And I believe that we will someday reach those stars that he himself made visible. I believe that George Lucas is also a narrow-minded, money-grubbing, pig-headed slave to the now, who ought to be locked away from his own creations, lest he do them further harm. I believe that Jean-Luc Picard is the better Starship Captain, but I also believe that James Tiberius Kirk is infinitely cooler. I believe that a child standing in line to buy a book at midnight is fantastic; I believe that reading makes you smart — it’s schools that make you dumb. I believe that any episode of Futurama is better than any program featuring a precocious teenager who’s wise beyond their years. I also believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer to be the sole exception that proves this rule. I believe that comic books are an art form, and will someday be recognized as such. I believe that good shows die too young; and crap shows last too long. I believe that Eddie Izzard is the funniest man alive, and I don’t care whether you’ve ever heard of him or not — it’s still true. I believe that a girl who likes movies about zombies is hotter than whoever is on the cover of Maxim this month. I believe that Belloch ate that fly, I swear to God that I heard Luke call Leia “Carrie,” and I believe that Samwise Gamgee never quite got the credit he really deserved. I believe in magic, I believe in dreams, I believe in the power of music, movies, and the untold worlds inside an everyday library card. And I do not believe that geeks will inherit the earth; I believe that we already have.

So, did you catch all the references? If you're wondering about those tweaks I mentioned, they're after the fold:

Continue reading "What a Geek Believes" »

Posted by at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Proving that tourism boosters will find a way to appeal to just about any niche or hobby group, here's a poster promoting Tunisia, the North African desert country that, as any good fanboy or 'girl should know, was the real-world stand-in for the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars films (not to mention several key scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark):

According to this, these posters were being distributed at the Star Wars Celebration Europe convention last week. I'd love to have one for the Archives, and I wouldn't mind watching a sunset from the Hotel Sidi Driss, either. Guess those boosters know what they're doing after all...

[Update: Actually, a little bit of googling has turned up some trivia I didn't know, as shocking as that seems. The "double-sunset scene" in which Luke stands on the rim of the pit he and the Larses called home was actually shot at a place called Chott el Jerid, some distance away from the hotel that served as the interior locations of the Lars homestead.]

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So, all my blather a month ago about the early days of the Star Wars phenomenon put me in the mood to revisit a novel I've not read in probably, oh, 25 years or so: Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster.

Continue reading "Book Review: Splinter of the Mind's Eye" »

Posted by at 5:25 PM | Permalink

Remember that photo of the International Space Station looking like a TIE fighter? Somebody's been playing...

Posted by at 3:28 PM | Permalink

The crew of the space shuttle Atlantis had better angle the deflector shields and charge up the main guns! Oh, wait... that's just the International Space Station, looking rather TIE fighter-ish with its newly symmetical shape following Atlantis's successful construction mission. Just another one of those photos that amuse me...

(For a comparison of how the ISS has changed during this mission, click here for a 2006 photo, then here for a current one.)

Posted by at 3:33 PM | Permalink

The blog Indexed features curious little cartoons and musings sketched on index cards. Usually they illustrate the convergence of several apparently unrelated concepts that add up to some kind of common knowledge or meme. I have to admit that I find many of them utterly indecipherable -- or at least not terribly funny -- but today's entry (titled "Fantasy vs. Frustration") struck a chord:

Posted by at 2:46 PM | Permalink

Oh, and if you can stand one more item on the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, I liked Javier's remarks:

at this point "star wars" is a living thing - a highly complex and still-developing universe that goes well beyond a series of films. it's also the guiding light for a great number of media professionals of my generation: while studying at usc film school, george lucas's alma mater, i used to say that there were two kinds of film school students in my age category, those who freely admitted that they were there because of george lucas's example, and damned liars.

...

if you're like me, and your feelings about uncle george are deeply mixed because of the quality of the prequels, or because of how many damned times you have had to buy the movies in multiple formats, or because of lucasfilm's extremely poor management of the original movies in their original forms, or the excessive merchandising, or because the "dark nest" trilogy of post NJO novels was kinda weak, or what have you...

...well, get over it and raise a glass [of] corellian noale - wherever you are.

some of the prequel trilogy haters have been heard to say "george lucas raped my childhood" but, i'll tell you what, george lucas gave me my childhood. my life changed the day i saw "star wars" and for that - for the moment when i saw what was possible on the screen and said "i want to do that" - i can only be eternally grateful.

happy star wars day!

Posted by at 5:50 PM | Permalink

From Lileks' only somewhat-snarky tribute to the recently passed 30th anniversary:

We grew up on "Star Wars." We could outgrow it if we wanted to. But what's the fun in that?

My sentiments exactly, James...

Posted by at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Just in case there's anyone out there who still has any sort of appetite for Star Wars-related crap, a couple of quickie links:

Continue reading "Next Stop: 1977... Again!" »

Posted by at 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

According to the digital clock-sign at the train station this morning, it was 4.21 AM, January 1, 1999. Oh, goodie, now I can relive all the madness that led up to the premiere of The Phantom Menace...

(Seriously, that would be fun, don't you think? The final few moments of unadulterated excitement before Star Wars fandom broke down into testy pro and con factions...)

Posted by at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

All right, all right, the people have spoken (well, three of you have, anyway), so here you go: more Star Wars crap!

Continue reading "By Request: More Crap!" »

Posted by at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In honor of the 30th anniversary of my all-time favorite film -- and if you don't know what that is by now, then you haven't been paying attention -- allow me to present a whole mess of related links. You folks out there in InternetLand enjoy looking at this stuff tonight; me, I'll be off watching the movie itself. My bootlegged copy of the original, unrevised version, of course...

Continue reading "Drive-By Blogging 3: Revenge of the Blog" »

Posted by at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The blogosphere is, not surprisingly, sagging under the weight of personal 30th anniversary remembrances today, so I thought I'd offer a few links to some "official" coverage:

Continue reading "A Sampling From Around the Galaxy" »

Posted by at 4:11 PM | Permalink

So, it occurs to me that the Big Anniversary Entry I posted earlier this morning is somewhat vague about my own personal experiences with Star Wars in the late '70s and early '80s, and some folks who are just joining us may wonder why. Well, it's because I've written about that subject before, of course:

I was seven years old in the summer of 1977, the prime age of susceptibility to a story featuring young, swashbuckling heroes, strange-looking creatures, and scary -- but not too scary -- villains. (See also Potter, Harry, Modern kids and.) I'm sure I must've seen a few movies on the big screen before then -- I vaguely recall a couple of early-70s live-action Disney films about people in really bad polyester knits -- but the first truly memorable film I saw in a theater...

Wait. Stop.

I'm not going to continue with that thought. My experience of seeing Star Wars for the first time couldn't have been much different than a lot of other people's. We were all kids, we'd never seen anything like it, we stood in lines that went around the block (literally, in my case -- I saw the film at the long-lost Centre Theatre in Salt Lake; there was no lobby to speak of, and the only place to queue up was outside, on the street), big spectacle, big excitement, tiny little brains melting, lifelong obsessions forming, blah blah blah.

We were all there, weren't we? And those of you who weren't have probably heard about it from someone who was. It was the defining communal experience of our generation, at least until the towers fell.

But here's the thing that was unique about my personal experience: I didn't actually want to see Star Wars. I had no interest in it whatsoever, and, in fact, I remember being frightened of it. I don't recall why, but something in the TV ads gave me a major case of the willies.

Read the rest here.

Posted by at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Didn't believe me when I said that the suits at Fox had no idea how to market the original Star Wars? Then check out this vintage trailer:

I dig the ominous music. Sounds like it came from some disaster flick like The Poseidon Adventure or something. Not to mention the random alarm wail that's never actually heard in the film. The art of the movie trailer has come a long way in 30 years...

Posted by at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thirty years ago today, a modestly budgeted little space adventure movie opened on a grand total of 32 screens nationwide.

That number seems hard to believe now, considering what that movie ultimately became; by contrast, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End debuted last night on some 4,000 screens (according to this). There are technical reasons why the initial release was so small, but the simplest explanation is that things were done differently in 1977, and also that expectations for this particular film weren't very high. Science fiction had historically not done very well at the box office -- Planet of the Apes and its sequels being one notable exception -- and even when the opening weekend started looking like a record-breaker for the handful of theaters that were running it, the film's writer and director remained pessimistic about it succeeding over the long run. The studio heads he was working for largely agreed; they didn't even know how to market this oddball project, which was essentially a mash-up of Westerns, old Flash Gordon serials, and samurai pictures.

They needn't have worried, though. The public embraced the movie like nothing before or since. Word of mouth did their marketing work for them, and by the time the film "opened wide," audiences were clamoring to see it. It became a global phenomenon that would infiltrate every aspect of our culture and, for those who were lucky enough to be children in the late '70s and early '80s, it rose to the level of our shared mythology, a lingua franca that even non-geeks easily understand. I've met many people from other states, even other countries, and so long as they're roughly about my age, it seems like it doesn't matter whether we truly have anything in common. We always have this movie to discuss.

The movie in question, in case you haven't guessed way before now, is Star Wars. And yes, kids, that is what it was originally called back in '77 -- not "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope." Just Star Wars.

It is not just fanboy enthusiasm on my part that makes this day worth noting, because this one movie, whose creator, George Lucas, has reportedly never been satisfied with it, changed everything about movies. The way they're made, the way they're marketed, and the way they're received.

Continue reading "A Long Time Ago..." »

Posted by at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

And I thought the multiple cover "collector's edition" TV Guide tributes to Star Trek a few years ago were a bit much: A British film magazine called (appropriately enough) Empire is issuing no less than 30 different covers this month to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. They're unveiling one a day here.

Makes me glad I no longer feel the frenzied collecting urge as strongly as I once did; ten years ago, I would've needed each and every one of these as a tulip needs the sun. Nowadays... well, they'd be nice to have, but I'll live if I don't get around to picking them up. At least, I think I'll live... I suddenly seem to have spots in front of my eyes...

Posted by at 2:44 PM | Permalink

I'm not a big fan of Conan O'Brien -- as I believe I've mentioned before, I much prefer his cross-channel rival Craig Ferguson -- but I did enjoy his little tour of George Lucas' special-effects shop last night:

Continue reading "Conan O'Brien Visits ILM and Uncle George" »

Posted by at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over the past ten years or so, George Lucas has seemed to go out of his way to alienate his own fan base. There were, of course, the Special Edition re-edits of the classic Star Wars trilogy, the myriad disappointments that accompanied the prequel trilogy, and the milking of our wallets with multiple home-video releases of the original films that still, somehow, never quite deliver what we actually want. But he's also said a lot of offensive things, like his recent comment that he considers The Empire Strikes Back -- generally seen by the fans as the best of the six Star Wars movies -- to be the worst of the series. (I personally think this was probably not worth the uproar it provoked. I suspect it was a failed attempt at a joke, or something taken way out of context. Or maybe he just wanted to screw with our heads and he knew exactly which button to push.) The impression he often gives is that he'd be a lot happier if the whole Star Wars thing had never happened and he didn't have any fans.

That's why it was so surprising to read that he has offered official Lucasfilm support for the upcoming indie movie Fanboys, which follows the adventures of a group of Star Wars fans driving cross-country to steal a print of The Phantom Menace from Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. George has also lent his approval and Lucasfilm's assistance to a 30-minute Star Wars spoof for the animated cable series Robot Chicken (don't feel bad, I've never heard of it either), going so far as to lend his voice to his own stop-motion likeness.

Could it be that Uncle George is finally gaining a sense of humor about this whole crazy thing? And that maybe, just maybe, now that the pressure of making the prequels is off, he's even learning to appreciate his fans again? Anything's possible... although I'll be more inclined to believe it when I'm holding a DVD of the unrevised Star Wars in my clammy little fanboy hands...

(Incidentally, the trailer for Fanboys is online here. It looks pretty damn funny... and, in a show of cross-franchise solidarity, it even includes The Shat!)

Posted by at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Cranky Robert just sent me this:

Oh, if only I'd kept up on my Sith lessons. I could totally use that Force-choke thing just about everytime I'm out in public...

Posted by at 10:47 AM | Permalink

Boy, does this ever sound like a recipe for total fanboy embarassment: take an ex-boy-bander who's gone a bit beefy with maturity, put him on a dippy reality-show dance-off with a bunch of other has-beens and B-listers, and let him do a routine set to that old disco-ized version of the main title from Star Wars, complete with a lightsaber prop. When I heard about this, I was prepared to hang my head in shame for ever liking a movie that could lead to this... and yet it turned out to be surprisingly entertaining, if not exactly cool:

No doubt it was the girl's Leia-style metal bikini that salvaged the whole thing...

Posted by at 11:45 AM | Permalink

I don't have much to say about the following, except that I thought it was funny and it never fails to amaze and amuse me how thoroughly my favorite movie has infiltrated the general public's consciousness:

Original source here.

Posted by at 12:38 PM | Permalink

The Digital Bits is reporting that the rumored 30th Anniversary Ultimate Star Wars Saga box set that was supposed to come out this year may get pushed back because the suits at Lucasfilm were disappointed by the poor sales of last year's original trilogy release. You know, the one whose only real selling point was the inclusion of the unaltered theatrical cuts, which, to no one's surprise, turned out to be of less-than-stellar quality. Hey, Uncle George, here's a tip: those who are interested in owning your revisionist CGI'd Special Edition versions already do, probably two or three times over. You want to make a few more bucks off your fan base? Then reconsider your attitude about those theatrical cuts and give us what we really want: the unf***ed-with editions in clean, anamorphic transfers that will look good on our new-fangled HDTVs. It really is that easy. Just give us these movies the way they were when we fell in love with them. Don't worry about impressing today's FX-jaded kids; don't worry about trying to make them match up with the prequel trilogy. Just give a little gift to those of us who've been there for you since the beginning. We'll be happy to open our wallets again for a product we actually want.

Posted by at 4:01 PM | Permalink

Someday, somebody is going to do a master's thesis about Internet content in the early 21st century and attempt to explain how and why so much of it was regurgitated nuggets of 1970s and '80s pop culture. Not that that's a bad thing, of course:

Posted by at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Via the indomitable Brian Greenberg, here's a bizarre YouTube clip of the Death Star battle from the original Star Wars, re-enacted entirely by hands:

Continue reading "More Star Wars Videos" »

Posted by at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just when I think I've seen every Star Wars-inspired bit of lunacy there is out there in the vast, vast Internet, I run across a barbershop quartet singing the Ewok celebration song from Return of the Jedi...

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

You know, when I was a kid and my friends and I would debate over which side would win in a cross-universe match-up of apocalyptic proportions -- the most common of which was, of course, the Starship Enterprise against an Imperial Star Destroyer -- we had to imagine what it would look like. Maybe we were lucky enough to know a kid with some drawing skills who would doodle something in the margins of his Mead spiral-bound that he felt worthy of sharing with us, but mostly it all happened in our heads.

Not these days. Now the wonders of CGI and YouTube enable us to actually see all the action. Curiously, I don't find it nearly as satisfying as seeing it all in my mind's eye, but then I'm old fashioned that way. Your mileage may vary, of course. And on that note, here's the latest example of the genre, in which a fleet of Colonial battlestars goes up against a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers:

Continue reading "Geek Wars: The Twelve Colonies vs. The Empire Edition" »

Posted by at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On a somewhat less curmudgeonly note (and just in case I needed a reminder that not everything from the years of my youth was all that cool), check out this list of really lame vintage Star Wars doo-dads. You gotta wonder what some of these designers were thinking. Did they really think they had a hit on their hands? Or did they just want five o'clock to hurry the hell up so they could get down to the local dive?

For the record, I own only one of these items, a copy of the infamous Wookiee Christmas tune. It's never been played, at least not by me...

Posted by at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Without preamble, the items that have distracted me from work this afternoon:

• Darth Vader's advanced-design TIE Fighter from the original Star Wars film, rendered in gingerbread.

• Scrolling images of Earth's surface as photographed by the Landsat satellites. (Nod to Phil at Bad Astronomy for bringing this to my attention.)

• Good news: the Jones Soda Company (previously mentioned on this blog here, here, and here) has announced that it will discontinue using high-fructose corn syrup in its products in favor of cane sugar. I personally believe that the food industry's switch to cheap HFCS back in the '80s is a major component of why Americans are getting so damned fat -- if you read the nutritional labels, the crap is in frakkin' everything these days -- and real sugar tastes better anyway. Don't believe me? Then do a taste-test of this stuff versus the "mainstream" Dr. Pepper made with corn syrup.

  Now, if only we could get the original-formula, made-with-sugar Coke that I remember drinking as a kid. Preferably in a glass bottle. It always tasted better in the glass bottle...

  Posted by at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

'Tis the season when neighbors "drop by" unexpectedly and out-of-town friends plan to visit for the weekend. You'd better be prepared for their arrival. Make sure your speakers are on before you click the link...

(Props to Brian Greenberg, who e-mailed this amusing little tidbit and provided me with a good laugh following a really lousy morning commute.)

Posted by at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Another Turkey Day is past, the trytophan slept off with nary a trace of hangover, and I've just had a slice of apple pie for breakfast. Yummy. I'm now ready to set off on our next blogging adventure, a journey that will take us deep, deep into the very heart of blackest geekdom. Don't be afraid, though. I've got a flashlight, and a good blaster at my side. And it's definitely not set for stun.

(Hm. Here's a random thought: do all blaster-type weapons in the Star Wars universe have a stun setting? Or do Imperial troops have some kind of special crowd-control blasters? Inquiring minds want to know, Uncle George!)

Anyway, I saw earlier this week that a web site called FilmCritic.com had posted a list of the Top 10 Movie Spaceships as determined by the site's editorial staff. The criteria used to determine "topness" were vague, consisting mostly of which examples struck the editors as "awesome." However, awesomeness is in the eye of the beholder, so naturally I have a few quibbles with their selections. To begin, here is their list:

Continue reading "The Top 10 Movie Spaceships" »

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I'm sure everybody out there is glued to the TV waiting for election returns, but just in case you need a break from the grim spectacle of our political process, check out this precious artifact from a simpler time:

It's a wonderful reminder that Star Wars used to be a movie instead of a franchise, that the droids were once considered the central characters of the story, and that people simply loved it instead of wanting to analyze and debate it to death. It amuses me to no end that Gene Shalit compares it to Rocky and predicts that it will be "one of the biggest money-making movies of our time." If only he knew.

Oh, yeah, that little princess girl was really cute back then, too.

Posted by at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Carrie Fisher was on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson last night. For my money, Ferguson is the best late-night talk-show host we've got -- Letterman and Leno are both way past their sell-bys, and I have never really warmed to Kimmel or Conan. Craig, though, is a hoot with his self-deprecating streak and naughty attitude, and Carrie is much the same; put the two of them together, and it's guaranteed entertainment. Most of last night's segment consisted of Craig giving her a bad time for having played Princess Leia in Star Wars and how, 30 years later, that's still what she's best known for. Carrie gave as good as she got, though; her funniest line, and the one I want to share with you now, was this:

George [Lucas] owns my likeness, you know. That means everytime I look in the mirror I have to send him a couple of bucks.

Ah, good times, although I imagine Carrie's delivery is better than mine. If I can find a video clip, I'll post it up...

Posted by at 10:02 PM | Permalink

My good friend Cranky Robert, having read of the general suckiness of my life last week, has resorted to heroic measures to try and lift my spirits (in other words, he e-mailed me a joke):

Darth Vader: Luke, I know what you're getting for Christmas.
Luke: Oh yeah? How?
Darth Vader: I felt your presents.

Yeah, I know, it's a groaner, but it had exaxctly the effect Robert was going for: I laughed and smiled for what seems like the first time in days. Hope everyone else enjoys it, too.

Posted by at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Any Star Wars fan worth his shipment of spice will, of course, recognize the tall, white object in the photo above: it's a moisture vaporator, a marvelous machine that pulls fresh water out of the very air and enables human life to survive on the desert planet Tatooine. Nifty idea, but it's just science fiction, right?

Apparently not... Wired.com is reporting that a company called Aqua Sciences has developed a machine that does exactly what Uncle Owen's condensor units supposedly did, and cheaply to boot (about 25 cents to the gallon, according to the company's website). Naturally, the first customer is the Pentagon, which has long sought a way to keep U.S. troops easily supplied with a sustainable water source while operating in arid places like Iraq.

The company spokesman quoted in the article is coy about how the thing works -- it's apparently got something to do with salt -- but the gadget is described as a "20-foot machine [that] can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts." In addition, the machine is not dependent on humidity, like other types of condensation-type technology. Very cool... the only thing I find disappointing is that the actual units look more like ordinary reefer trailers than anything Luke Skywalker ever tinkered with. Ah, well... that's the curse of being a science-fiction fan, I guess: nothing ever looks as cool when it's finally invented for real as it did when it was imagined in the movies.

Posted by at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

FYI, I had some weird Internet problems all weekend, so I was unable to post several political entries that I had in mind as follow-ups to the previous one, or to respond to the comments left on "Disgusted" until this morning. I'm thinking that's just as well; I really don't want to continue mulling such an incredibly depressing and dangerous development when there's so damn little I can do about it personally. At least until election day, when I'll make my usual futile gesture in the name of good conscience (i.e., voting blue in the most overwhemingly red state in the union; it's like spitting into the wind, but I'll do it anyhow).

In the meantime, let us think of more amusing things. Things like a list of the Top 176 Star Wars Lines Improved By Replacing A Word With "Pants". As you can imagine, many of these have naughty overtones, and a few cross the line into outright tastelessness, but hey, there's nothing wrong with that, right? Here are a few of my favorite examples:

• "Chewie and me got into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this."

  (Hmm... talk about taking your friends everywhere with you.)
  

• "I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants."

  (I can see how that might be a distraction.)
  

• "I sense the conflict within you. Let go of your pants!"

  (What every teenage boy says to his girlfriend at least once in the course of their relationship. Most often heard at drive-in movie theaters midway through the second feature.)
  

• "I think you just can't bear to let a gorgeous guy like me out of your pants."

  (Aww, how endearing.)
  

• "Alderaan is peaceful, we have no pants!"

  (Ah, yes, Alderaan was a happy place back in the day.)
  

The number-one item on the list is, predictably, "I find your lack of pants disturbing."

Indeed we do. Indeed. We do.

Posted by at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For anyone out there who is thinking of purchasing the new "Limited Edition" Star Wars trilogy set in order to get the original, unaltered theatrical versions of those classic films on DVD -- and really, what other reason would you have for buying, yet again, these three films that we all have 20 copies of already -- consider the following:

Continue reading "The Digital Bits on the New Star Wars DVDs" »

Posted by at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

A couple of items that caught my eye last week and that I'm only now finding the time to blog about:

Continue reading "Munch Trek" »

Posted by at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Man, I really don't know what to make of this one:

Continue reading "The Last Supper, Jedi-Style" »

Posted by at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Ever wonder what happened between the end of the Jedi Purge (Episode III) and the beginning of the Galactic Rebellion (Episode IV)? Let's just say that times were tough for out-of-work Sith Lords:

Continue reading "Vader: The Lean Years" »

Posted by at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don't know that this next video clip qualifies as a fan film, since it's composed of clips from an actual Star Wars movie rather than footage that someone shot in their back yard, but it's a clever and funny editing job. The title is "Darth Vader being a smartass," and that sums it up better than anything I can say:

Continue reading "The Worst Boss in the Universe" »

Posted by at 2:15 PM | Permalink

I'd dare say that there are hundreds of Star Wars fan films out there on the 'net. I'd further dare say that most of them are pretty lame, amateurish attempts at parody that fall flatter than Wile E. Coyote's face after he gets mooshed between a flying boulder and a cliff wall. But once in a while, you encounter one that is so inspired and genuinely funny that it becomes legend among the fan community. Kevin Rubio's Troops, the first major Star Wars fan film, is one of those. So is Pink Five, the story of one of the lesser-known X-wing pilots who flew in the attack in against the first Death Star. And now I've found the latest "instant classic": Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager. It's the tale of Darth's younger, less successful brother, who struggles to maintain order in the grocery store for his master, Randy, in spite of insubordinate checkers and his rival on the night shift. Two episodes appear after the break:

Continue reading "The Other Vader" »

Posted by at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When I was a kid, I often mashed together elements of various fictional universes in my imagination. Thus, it wasn't uncommon for me to imagine an adventure in which Mr. Spock was hanging out on the Millenium Falcon with Han and Chewie while they were on their way to pick up Aquaman. Apparently, one grown-up fanboy still likes to combine his various interests:

Continue reading "Mixing Universes" »

Posted by at 3:36 PM | Permalink

The bad news came down a couple weeks ago, but I was too disheartened -- and too distracted by other topics -- to comment at the time. It seems that my buddy Cheno's hunch was correct: the upcoming Star Wars DVDs will present the original theatrical versions of those landmark films in non-anamorphic letterboxed transfers based on 13-year-old masters that were originally prepared for the old analog-laserdisc releases. What that means, for those of you who aren't home-theater savvy, is that the video quality on the unf***ed-with editions will be better than your old VHS tapes, and it will probably be better than the bootleg DVDs that are floating around the 'net (which are all copies of the laserdiscs made with home-brew equipment), but it won't be up to the standards of even an average DVD release. You see, nearly all the DVDs sold these days are "anamorphically enhanced," which basically means they've been processed to look good on high-definition TVs. Without anamorphic enhancement, the theatrical versions will look pretty good but not outstandingly good on a regular TV, and lord only knows what my fancy new HDTV will make of them. Anamorphic enhancement isn't anything new or special; every major-studio DVD movie release of the last few years has got it. As many disgruntled SW fans have pointed out, the upcoming release of George Lucas' mid-90s flop Radioland Murders will have it. But not the 1977 movie that literally changed how Hollywood does business.

Continue reading "How It Ought to Be Done" »

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hmm. Only hours after hearing the news about the original, unaltered Star Wars movies being released, my buzz is crumbling because of all the rumors flying around the 'net about them. Basically, folks are suggesting that my long-awaited grail is going to turn out to be a half-hearted effort at best. According to a USA Today article, "the original films' video quality will not match up to that of the restored versions." The article quotes a Lucasfilm employee as saying, "It is state of the art, as of 1993, and that's not as good as state of the art 2006."

Continue reading "Un-F**ked With Edition Getting Dissed Again?" »

Posted by at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Stupendously big news has come down from the Holy Sepulchre of The Great Flanneled One:

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983. [Emphasis mine.]

Uncle George is taking a page from The Disney Book of Dirty Tricks and General Corporate Evil and will be offering these discs for a limited time only -- September 12 to December 31 -- but I can live with that. Yes, it's manipulative and no doubt designed to maximize sales by threatening us with an artificial scarcity, but who really cares if it means that Han shoots first, as he should? I know what I'll be wanting for my birthday. Hell, I'll probably buy two copies in addition to asking for the birthday gifts, just to have the spares on hand.

The complete press release is here. I don't know about you, but my day has suddenly gotten drastically brighter. My morning cup of coffee even tastes better. How odd...

Posted by at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It has been the subject of countless geeky dorm-room debates: which would win in an all-out slug-fest for supremacy, an Imperial Star Destroyer or the Starship Enterprise?

The partisans for each of the two pre-eminent science-fiction franchises have been relentless in battles almost as fierce as the most famous space-combat scene never filmed; their fights have spanned Internet message boards and video arcades and parents' basements. At stake: nothing less than the honor and glory of their preferred fictional universes.

But now, some brave soul with some video-editing software and a lot of free time has decided to settle the fight once and for all. Well, sort of, since this version ends in an inconclusive draw:

Continue reading "Let the Hostilities Commence" »

Posted by at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Are you suffering from a vague sense of aimlessness? A feeling that you ought to be gearing up for something big and exciting, but you can't think of what it might be? Wondering why it seems like there's something different about this spring than other recent years? Maybe these cartoons will help you figure out the problem:

Ah, the memories...

[Ed. note: FYI and for the sake of doing it all semi-properly, those strips are from Mark Tatulli's Heart of the City.]

Posted by at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you haven't already, read Part 1 of this three-part entry. And now without further delay, here are my personal faves:

Continue reading "Bennion's All-Time Favorite Movies, Part 2: The First 25" »

Posted by at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Ah, man, it just keeps getting worse. I was following some links related to Phil Brown's death and stumbled across a little blurb that mentioned that William Hootkins -- a.k.a. Red Six, a.k.a. Porkins, a.k.a., "the fat X-wing pilot" in the original Star Wars -- died way back in October of last year. Another cancer victim, he was 58. At this point, I'm wondering how many cast members from the original trilogy are gone. I know Shelagh Fraser (Aunt Beru) passed on awhile ago, and of course Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin) and Sir Alec Guiness (the original Obi-Wan, a.k.a. "Old Ben," Kenobi) have both been gone for several years. I may have to do some research on this subject...

Continue reading "William Hootkins, Too?" »

Posted by at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Oh, man, the news about Andreas Katsulas was sad, but this is downright depressing: Phil Brown, the actor who played Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen, has also died. He was 89.

Continue reading "Phil Brown" »

Posted by at 4:17 PM | Permalink

In honor of Valentine's Day, here's a sampling of homemade (i.e., Photoshopped) Valentines with a Star Wars theme. I must admit, most of them are pretty lame (although these aren't any lamer than the professionally made SW Valentines you can buy at your favorite Mart-type store), but there are some genuinely funny ones to be found. For instance, you've got Luke pledging to give his right hand for you, followed by the return of FrankenVader (Robert, that one's for you). You've got a funny but disturbingly kinky one involving Leia and Jabba. And then there's my favorite, for those who have a very high sense of devotion to the cause...

Happy V-Day, everyone.

Posted by at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

My employer has generously given me the week off, so between now and New Year's, I hope to clear the decks around here by blogging about a whole mess of topics and links that I've been gathering over the past few weeks.

First up is another of those list-style memes I occasionally run across, this one based around the number four. For your post-Christmas, Monday-morning amusement, I present the following bits of trivial information about yours truly:

Continue reading "Meme of Fours" »

Posted by at 12:01 AM | Permalink

If you'll recall, I wrote a week or so back that I'd like to add several Star Wars prop replicas to my collections. Just for kicks, I've put together a wish list of these items, complete with linked photos so you can see what I'm talking about as well as some commentary for those new to this corner of SW fandom. These replicas are all fairly expensive, limited-edition items, most of which long ago sold out from their respective manufacturers, so it's doubtful that I'll ever get around to buying them for myself. But who knows? One of my Three Loyal Readers may get an inheritance and kindly decide to reward me for all the entertainment this blog has provided them.

(To be honest, I probably could buy at least some of these for myself, but it's hard to justify the expense for something that doesn't do anything except sit on a shelf and warm the hearts of any fanboy friends who may drop by the house. Still, it's fun to dream...)

Continue reading "Ooh, I Want One!" »

Posted by at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Oh, boy, is this geeky... so terribly, terribly geeky that even I am frightened by it (but it seems to making the rounds of the 'net today, so I'm honor-bound to link to it):

Changes in George Lucas's Lord of the Rings: Special Edition.

For your convenience, I'll reproduce the list below the fold so you don't have to follow the link, but I caution you. Read on only if you are stout of heart...

Continue reading "A Disastrous Merging of Universes" »

Posted by at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Media critic Jaime J. Weinman maintains a pretty interesting blog called Something Old, Nothing New, on which he writes about the films, TV shows, theater, and music that interest him personally. As the title of the blog suggests, the focus is primarily on properties that are best described as "vintage." (That means most of what this guy likes was made before you were born, kids.)

Today Jaime is discussing Alfred Hitchcock's artistic decline following Psycho, the film for which he's probably best known today, at least among the general, non-cinemaholic public. Jaime draws an interesting parallel between "Hitch" and The Great Flanneled One, George Lucas, pointing out that both men, upon achieving great power and autonomy in the wake of monstrous success, started making really bad creative decisions.

It's a point I agree with. I've long maintained that there's nothing wrong with the Star Wars prequels that couldn't have been solved with an simple rewrite, or if someone had been willing to tell Uncle George, "That's not such a good idea...", or even to ask the simple question, "Why?" But no one dared do that because he is... George Lucas. And who is George Lucas? Contrary to the hysterical griping of disappointed ex-fanboys, he is not a talentless hack nor is he an evil money-grubber who's more interested in the merchandising than the story. What he is, is a guy who thinks he doesn't have to answer to anyone anymore. He thinks he did his part for king and country and now he doesn't need to explain himself. I don't blame him; if I was in his position, I wouldn't want to be questioned either. The man reshaped the way movies are made, for God's sake. But then so did Hitchcock in his day. And the same thing happened to his films that have happened to George's. Go read Jaime to learn more...

[UPDATE: Interesting. Jaime has added an afterthought to his own post since I wrote this, downplaying the independence angle that caught my interest in the first place. Maybe Hitch was just getting old and suffering from a lack of confidence, he suggests. Maybe so... and maybe that applies to GL as well. Hard to say, I guess, without knowing the man. In any event, it's still an interesting post and worth your time if you can spare it.]

Posted by at 6:00 PM | Permalink

If you enjoyed yesterday's lighthearted peek into the personal lives of your favorite Star Wars heroes, then you're going to love today's head-first dive into the dank underbelly of vaguely creepy foreign marketing materials:

I mean, come on... do you really think the Dark Lord of the Sith is all that interested in text messaging?

Posted by at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I thought I'd seen pretty much every photo there is relating to the original Star Wars trilogy. However, it appears that the Lucasfilm Archive may contain mysteries than even I, in my fanboy arrogance, have never imagined. Behold this image, brought to my attention by the wonderful folks at Boing Boing:

Is it real or is it Photoshopped? I have no idea, but to my eye it looks like it could be real. I have seen other Empire-era publicity stills taken in front of this same backdrop. Besides, I've always suspected there was something going on between Leia and the Wook. That whole "walking carpet" thing? Tell me you didn't detect the sexual tension boiling underneath that remark...

Posted by at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Responding to a sudden whim this afternoon, I walked over to Night Flight Comics on my lunch hour. It's been a while since I've hung out at a comic shop, longer, perhaps, than I'd realized. Browsing the new issues, knowing that I'd be coming into the middle of all those stories with no idea of what was happening, seeing new titles I didn't recognize at all -- not to mention how damn young the store's employees seemed relative to myself -- it all made me feel something like a college student who has returned to his old high school for one last, sentimental look around. It hasn't been that long ago that this place was home, but it's been just long enough. Things are different now.

I ultimately selected a book I've had my eye on for a couple of years, a nifty trade paperback collection of the '70s-vintage Star Wars comics that I loved as a child. When I laid it on the counter along with my debit card, the shaggy-haired clerk in the Green Lantern shirt noticed the familiar logo and asked a sadly predictable question: "What did you think of Episode III?"

I had to hold my breath to keep from sighing. I wasn't in the mood to have this debate, not today, not again.

Continue reading "Weary of the Fight" »

Posted by at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Given the two subjects that have gotten the bulk of my attention lately, I was greatly amused by a line in the new issue of Newsweek:

Now that we've learned how Anakin became Darth Vader and who Deep Throat really was, can we finally close the book on the '70s?

I didn't think that book was still open, myself, but it does seem like a lot of loose ends are getting tied up lately, doesn't it? Star Trek, Star Wars, the final mystery of Watergate... what's next, for someone to dig up Jimmy Hoffa's body? How about finding Jim Morrison alive and well on Fiji? Is a Sasquatch about to wander into downtown Portland, or will a Scottish fisherman finally manage to land Nessie? Keep watching the skies, kids, because you never know...

Posted by at 11:05 PM | Permalink

Lileks has finally seen Sith, and, in my humble estimation, his review is well worth your reading time. It's frequently on the snarky side, as Lileks is wont to be, but he's a very effective writer and his affection for the Star Wars movies is clear, even as he's blasting some aspect or other of them:

2:45 PM, Southdale AMC theater #4, center row, unobstructed view. Star Wars.

If you�re my age, you probably saw the first one in theater. If you share my infantile interests, you probably saw it five times. (Saw it 12 times myself.) So the blue words, the invocation if you will, bring many strange and fleeting emotion[s]. You can�t help thinking who you were then, where you were, what it was like, how little has changed, how much. It wipes the slate clean, those words. Then the CRASH of the brass - that famous chord you could play for a hundred people and they�d never remember the top note that really makes it work - and you�re back where you have been five times before: listening to the stirring theme, reading bad prose. WAR! The crawl begins, helpfully noting that �Evil is everywhere.� Yes, well, that�ll happen.

Continue reading "Lileks on Sith" »

Posted by at 11:32 AM | Permalink

For the record, my favorite scene in all six Star Wars films is also perhaps the most iconic one, the moment in the very first movie when Luke Skywalker watches two suns sink toward the barren horizon of Tatooine. It's a beautiful scene no matter how you examine it: visually, thematically, musically, emotionally. It's a powerful evocation of youthful restlessness, both melancholy and hopeful. And it's magical because it takes something that is mundane, if beautiful -- a simple sunset -- and transforms it into a novelty, the double sunset of another world. We identify with the image because we see something similar all the time, but we thrill at its strangeness. It is simultaneously familiar and unearthly.

How'd you like to see something like that scene, only for real? Something as close to standing in Luke Skywalker's boots as we're likely to get any time soon? My friends, please click "Continue Reading" to experience the unspeakably cool...

Continue reading "Alien Sunset" »

Posted by at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Ed. note: Sorry it's taken me so long to post my thoughts on ROTS, but like I said in a comment for an earlier entry, this movie is a big deal for me and it's taken a while to absorb and process it. Given that it's been out for a week and the box office returns for last weekend were flat-out astounding, I'm going to assume that half the planet's population has already seen it. If, however, you are one of the handful of folks who didn't come down with "Jedi flu" last week, be warned that this entry contains more spoilers than my usual movie reviews. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it can't be helped in this particular case.]

I finally got to see my long-imagined lava-pit duel as well as the planet of the Wookiees (although the latter amounted to little more than a teasing glimpse). By themselves, these bits of fanboy wish fulfilment would probably be enough to earn Revenge of the Sith my personal thumbs-up. But as it turns out, the sixth and final Star Wars movie gave me a lot of other reasons to like it, too. It was, in fact, everything I was hoping for, a redemptive finish to the generally lackluster prequel trilogy and a successful, plausible bridge into the "next generation story" told in the original trilogy.

That's not to say that Sith was a perfect movie, or even a perfect Star Wars movie. But I thought it was a surprisingly good movie, and, for me at least, a completely satisfying one.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" »

Posted by at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I just got home from the theater. It's late, and I've got a heavy day of work tomorrow, so any kind of detailed review will have to wait. But I will say this much:

Twenty-two years ago, I cried at the death of Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi.

Tonight, I cried at his birth in Revenge of the Sith.

This movie is everything I hoped for, and probably not at all what most of the people going to see it are expecting. It's not heroic summertime derring-do, as all the other Star Wars films have been. This one is nothing short of a Greek tragedy.

As far as I'm concerned, Uncle George has redeemed himself, at least as far as the prequel trilogy goes. As for the Not-So-Special Editions of the original trilogy, well, that's another case entirely...

Posted by at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Just a quick note to let you all know I'm heading off the theater to line up for my 8 PM screening... because advance tickets may guarantee a seat, but they don't guarantee a good one!

See you all on the other side of the galaxy!

Posted by at 4:50 PM | Permalink

A little under one hour from now, the long wait will be over and the die-hard fans will walk into the first 12:01 AM screenings of the last Star Wars movie ever. And then I'll do the same eighteen hours after that.

I have to admit that my feelings at this moment are bittersweet. In a way, it's like the last day of high school. I'm eagerly looking forward to signing yearbooks, accepting my diploma, and having the time of my life at the all-night graduation party, but I'm also sad because I've realized that a really big chapter of my life is coming to an end. As the Emperor once said to Luke Skywalker -- or will say, depending on how you look at it -- "Only now, at the end, do you understand."

Continue reading "Almost There... Almost There..." »

Posted by at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It was the springtime of 1980, and the future was bearing down on me like a runaway bantha.

I was ten, the school year was winding down, and very soon the fifth grade would be behind me. So would elementary school. Come fall, I'd be spending my days in that great, fog-shrouded unknown called middle school. I'd been hearing rumors about what I could expect when I got there, and frankly I wasn't looking forward to it. No one could tell me the point of changing classrooms and teachers multiple times during the day. There were stories about massive amounts of homework. Some said they held activities where they made you dance with girls. (I was never one of those stereotypical boys who disliked girls on principle, but the thought of dancing filled me with terror.) Then there was the transportation issue. My elementary school was within a stone's-throw of my house, and I'd always walked to and from home; now I'd have to take the bus, one of those big, rattling, smelly yellow things that you always had to worry about missing. And what was this nonsense about having to take a shower... with other boys... at school? Revolting!

Thankfully, though, I had things to distract me from my middle-school anxieties. There was a whole three months of summer vacation coming up, and with them was the promise of all the bike-riding, Slurpee-swilling, and treehouse comic-book reading I could stand. My parents were planning to take me and my cousin Stacey on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon as soon as school was over. And, oh yeah, there was a new Star Wars movie about to premiere.

I could hardly wait.

Continue reading "My First Experience with "Spoilers"" »

Posted by at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Up until a couple days ago, I was thinking that the hype machine had been curiously subdued on the matter of Revenge of the Sith. I just wasn't seeing the kind of overheated, artificial hysteria that preceded The Phantom Menace back in '99 -- all the fast-food tie-ins, the TV commercials, the billboards, the collectible Pepsi cans, the flood of new toys. That was overkill, even for someone like me, a compulsive collector who loves a good graphic design that incorporates beloved characters and logos.

I thought maybe we were getting a different approach with Sith, something more organic and natural, based on word-of-mouth like the buzz that fueled the success of the original Star Wars in 1977. I thought perhaps the bean-counters had realized that they really didn't need to advertise this one much, aside from the usual movie trailers, because everyone already knew it was coming.

Apparently I just wasn't paying attention.

Continue reading "The Dark Side of Marketing Clouds Everything" »

Posted by at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was seven years old in the summer of 1977, the prime age of susceptibility to a story featuring young, swashbuckling heroes, strange-looking creatures, and scary -- but not too scary -- villains. (See also Potter, Harry, modern kids and.) I'm sure I must've seen a few movies on the big screen before then -- I vaguely recall a couple of early-70s live-action Disney films about people in really bad polyester knits -- but the first truly memorable film I saw in a theater...

Wait. Stop.

I'm not going to continue with that thought. My experience of seeing Star Wars for the first time couldn't have been much different than a lot of other people's. We were all kids, we'd never seen anything like it, we stood in lines that went around the block (literally, in my case -- I saw the film at the long-lost Centre Theatre in Salt Lake; there was no lobby to speak of, and the only place to queue up was outside, on the street), big spectacle, big excitement, tiny little brains melting, lifelong obsessions forming, blah blah blah.

We were all there, weren't we? And those of you who weren't have probably heard about it from someone who was. It was the defining communal experience of our generation, at least until the towers fell.

But here's the thing that was unique about my personal experience: I didn't actually want to see Star Wars. I had no interest in it whatsoever, and, in fact, I remember being frightened of it. I don't recall why, but something in the TV ads gave me a major case of the willies.

Continue reading "A Wallet Full of Bread Cards" »

Posted by at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The Sith reviews, both professional and otherwise, are starting to trickle in, and, so far, they're generally positive. Just about every one I've read takes the obligatory potshot at Uncle George's less-than-stellar dialogue-writing abilities, but the emerging consensus is that ROTS is the best of the prequel trilogy -- a dubious distinction, I'll concede, but hey, you take what you can get. A few reviewers are even enthusiastic enough to rank it alongside the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back as the best of the entire saga.

That's good to hear. Because of those reviews, I am finally beginning to relax a little. There's never been any question that I would see this movie regardless of the reviews, nor have I worried about whether everyone else in the theater hates it except me. I figure I've been in the position of defending the indefensible plenty of times before, so what's one more battle? But I have worried that maybe I wouldn't like Revenge of the Sith. And I really, really want to like this one.

Continue reading "Yeah, But Will I Like It?" »

Posted by at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

With only thirteen days to go until Revenge of the Sith opens, I'm still considering exactly what I want to say here on Simple Tricks about the whole Star Wars phenomenon. It's a big subject, at least it is for me, because I've quite literally been thinking about it my entire life. I've got a lot of Star Wars-related ideas that I could share -- anecdotes, theories, memories, speculations, and, of course, my own highly subjective opinions. Enough material, probably, to keep me blogging non-stop for the next couple of months.

But part of me wonders if I should bother writing on this subject at all. My love for these movies is crystal clear to anyone who either knows me or has been hanging around this blog for very long, and just about everybody in their thirties can tell similar stories of what it was like to grow up with The Trilogy during the '70s and '80s. How many people reading this post stood in lines that stretched around the block to see the original film at a grand old theater that probably doesn't exist anymore? Weren't we all equally blown away as children by our first glimpse of an Imperial Star Destroyer? Or of all the monsters in the Mos Eisley cantina? Do I have anything to say about Star Wars that my loyal readers haven't already heard, or thought, or experienced themselves? I honestly don't know.

While I wrestle with that question, I figure you might appreciate a couple of links to follow -- it is Friday, after all, and everyone needs some good 'net-surfing material to help you kill time on those long, tedious, springtime afternoons.

Continue reading "Questioning Myself, and Recommended Readings About (What Else?) Star Wars" »

Posted by at 2:58 PM | Permalink

Only 19 days until Episode III.

I suppose it goes without saying that I'll be doing some nostalgic musing on the whole Star Wars phenomenon over the next two and a half weeks. For the sake of my three loyal readers, I'll do my best not to become tediously one-track-minded.

I may not succeed, but I will try.

And please don't throw the "do or do not, there is no try" thing at me. That's my schtick...

Posted by at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The Line is still there, in case you were wondering, and last I heard the Chinese Theatre still won't be playing Revenge of the Sith. But that didn't stop the on-line movie rental service Netflix from recognizing a good promotional opportunity.

Yesterday, they sent actress Bai Ling -- who plays a Galactic Senator in Ep III -- in a Netflix-branded Hummer to visit the line-sitters. Judging from the photos I've seen, Ling didn't interact with the fans so much as mug for the cameras. But I guess that was her job, after all, and she did look awfully cute next to the stormtroopers...

Posted by at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It seems the uber-nerds I wrote about a week or so back continue to camp out in front of Grauman's Chinese. They're apparently making some kind of gesture of defiance, or holding out a slim hope that some corporate suit somewhere will bend to their whims. Or maybe they truly don't have anything better to do than hang out under an awning on a hot sidewalk in the middle of Hollywood despite the fact that their friggin' movie is not going to be playing at that theater.

Continue reading "And The Saga Continues..." »

Posted by at 1:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the Department of Stuff That's Really Kinda Lame But Nevertheless Amuses Me Terribly (DSTRKLBNAMT) comes news that hardcore Star Wars fans are already lining up outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre for the May 19th premiere of Revenge of the Sith. They have a website (naturally), a charity connection to help make it worthwhile, and, according to a report on Boing Boing, they are answering the pay phone on the corner. So if you want to talk to a geek with a lot of time on his hands, dial (323) 462-9609.

Continue reading "Lining Up" »

Posted by at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

[UPDATE: I wrote this entry in the wee hours last night and, upon reflection in the clear light of morning, decided it wasn't quite right. What can I say? Sometimes it really is best to let something cool a bit before you publish it. I have therefore streamlined the whole thing to intensify the one point I think I was really trying to make. Sorry for the confusion... ]

Funny thing about James Lileks. I can wonder for months why I continue to read his self-important, reactionary and often paranoid post-9/11 drivel, and then one day he'll just spew out something that makes all the grumpy-old-man-ishness worthwhile. Case in point: his comments today about the upcoming Revenge of the Sith...

The new SW movie trailer looks incredible � if they�d showed this to fans in 1979, I think most of them would have spontaneously dissolved. I have no doubt the dialogue will be horrible... I don�t care. If it looks like the trailer, I know I will sit in a movie theater on a Friday afternoon and quite possibly feel 18 again. This is no great accomplishment; art, you could say, should raise you up, not lull you back to the sloshing amniotic sea of the womb. But it�s a movie with rockets and robots and ray guns, and I�m a guy who grew up loving rockets and robots and ray guns. Hence I like to see the same once in a while, done well, without Bruce Dern moping around in a Jesus robe weeping about pine trees.

James just managed to eloquently sum up, in a sentence and a half, what I've so often spent hours trying to explain to my disillusioned friends who mock me for my continued loyalty to the Great Flanneled One: "it�s a movie with rockets and robots and ray guns, and I�m a guy who grew up loving rockets and robots and ray guns. Hence I like to see the same once in a while..."

Amen, man. I often think Lileks is totally up in the night with his opinions, but on that point, we are in absolute agreement. I'm looking forward to May because I'm hoping to feel, if only for a short time, like a wide-eyed boy of seven instead of a tired and wounded old man of 35...

[Ed. note: the crack about Bruce Dern in a Jesus robe refers to the 1972 film Silent Running, just in case you're not up on your classics of dystopic science fiction. Lileks has a big problem with the cynicism common to all films of this era, science fictional and otherwise. Personally, I quite like the dark movies of the early '70s. But then I don't politicize every damn thing the way he does.]

Posted by at 2:10 AM | Permalink

How big a fanboy am I?

Big enough that I sat through an entire hour of The O.C. just so I wouldn't miss the premiere of the new full-length Revenge of the Sith trailer.

Big enough that the hair rose up on my arms during said trailer and didn't settle back down for a good three minutes after it was over.

Big enough that May 19th suddenly seems like an eternity away.

I've been fooled by trailers before. The Phantom Menace had a kick-ass trailer ("Every saga has a beginning..."); Attack of the Clones had a kick-ass trailer ("I will raise a Grand Army of the Republic..."). Both films ultimately let me down. This time... well, like I said, I've been fooled before. I so want the sixth and final Star Wars film to be the prequel I always dreamed of, the one that my eight-year-old imagination conjured up from the vaguest handful of ideas gleaned from a brief and fluffy magazine interview with The Great Flannelled One. I am trying to prepare myself for yet another disappointment. I am reminding myself that George Lucas isn't the man he used to be and I am not the child I once was. I am struggling not to get carried away with enthusiasm like I did during the Dark Year, 1999. But it's tough. I watched that trailer tonight and I found myself buying into it completely. I didn't think one single element of it looked potentially cringe-inducing. I'm even daring to think that maybe, just maybe, Uncle George is going to redeem himself with this one.

The sight of Anakin Skywalker leading an army of clonetroopers, of Emperor Palpatine drawing a lightsaber against Jedi Master Windu, of giant starships exchanging broadsides like sea-going galleons and interior shots of explosions tearing through their gun-decks, made me pump my fist with testerone-laden glee. The glimpse of the Tantive IV's familiar engine-cluster arcing toward a beautiful green world and of R2 in a fighter socket and 3PO in his polished glory made me smile with fond nostalgia. And the sound of Padme's sobs and Obi-Wan's anguished cry, "You were the chosen one!" as his student and friend attacks him broke my heart.

(If you caught the reference to the Tantive IV, congratulations. You're as big a fanboy as me. If you don't know, it's the rebel ship seen at the beginning of the original Star Wars, the one Princess Leia is "racing home" aboard. Technically, it's the official transport of the Royal House of Alderaan.)

Going purely off this three-minute advertisement, it looks to me like this is the film George has been waiting to make all along, the true back-story that he started putting down on legal pads around 1975. Maybe Episodes I and II were weak because he had the fewest notes for them. Maybe Revenge of the Sith is the only prequel he really needed to make, the only one he really wanted to make.

Maybe I'm just a big sucker setting myself up to knocked down again, a compulsive gambler who doesn't know better than to keep going back to the three-card-monte dealer on the corner. Maybe. We'll see in just about two months. But I'll tell you this much: after tonight, I'm feeling happier to call myself a Star Wars fan than I have in years.

Posted by at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Let's take a break from politics for a moment, shall we?

Does anyone remember Dynamite magazine? This was a fluffy little publication aimed at school kids back in the '70s. It contained articles about celebrities and the fads of the day, comic strips, humor columns, and "fun stuff" like mazes and crossword puzzles. If I remember correctly, it always came in conjunction with those Scholastic Book Club newsletters from which you could order cheap paperbacks, if you could talk your mom into giving you the money (mine was always a pushover when it came to buying me books). I recall that each classroom received one copy of the mag, which would get passed around until the pages were grease-stained and as soft as an old t-shirt from the constant handling.

Continue reading "Interlude: Something to Raise the Spirits" »

Posted by at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

While surfing the 'net a week ago, I ran across the Star Wars Episode III advertising banner that you'll soon begin seeing in movie theaters. I've now found the design for the film's teaser poster. It's a little on the bizarre side, somewhat reminiscent of the truly weird Original Trilogy posters from Eastern Europe, but I like it:

Continue reading "More Advertising Art for Revenge of the Sith" »

Posted by at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Given the ambivalence I feel toward the first two Star Wars prequels -- not to mention the sour taste left in my mouth by the Great "Original Versions on DVD" Debacle -- one would think that I wouldn't be too interested in the upcoming third prequel, Revenge of the Sith.

One would be wrong.

Continue reading "The Anticipation Begins..." »

Posted by at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I've had a couple of people ask me when I intend to pick up the new Star Wars Trilogy DVDs that came out last week. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm going to, for a number of reasons. That surprises a lot of people, especially those who have known me for a long time and know that my basement is full of all kinds of fascinating junk that bears the SW logo. It surprises me, too, actually. I never thought there'd come a day when I wouldn't be the first in line for any new Star Wars product. But then a lot has happened in the SW scene during the last seven years, and I now find, to my great surprise, that I'm more excited about buying the new collector's edition of Footloose than I am the Trilogy box set. (I'll discuss my reasons for loving that silly little '80s relic some other time.)

Basically my hesitation boils down to three issues:

Continue reading "Star Wars on DVD" »

Posted by at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sorry the fresh content has been so sparse around here lately, but there's been a lot going on in the Real World. I hope to have a few pieces up within the next couple of days, so keep checking back.

In the meantime, I'd like to share a bittersweet article about Anthony Daniels, the man who occupied the C-3PO costume and provided the lovable robot's voice in all six Star Wars films. Daniels recently completed his final scene as the character for Episode III and, presumably, will never again don the gold-plated fiberglass torture armor that he's so associated with.

The article quotes some of his very sweet remarks about everyone's favorite fussbudget 'droid as well as his surprisingly honest appraisal of the prequels:

"George's devotion to digital effects over-balanced the films. Too many digital funky characters become a little bit wearing. The storytelling always gets subsumed."

Right on, Tony.

Incidentally, I met Tony Daniels a few years ago and found him to be a charming, friendly, funny, and very thin man who has managed to remain open to fans despite having to put up with a lot of silliness. One of these days I'll get around to scanning the photo I have of myself with him for the site.

Oh, in case you're wondering about this post's title, the name "C-3PO" is usually spelled out in the Star Wars novels as "See Threepio." Given all the years I spent reading and re-reading the novelizations of the original films, it's become second-nature for me to think of the character's name in that form. And in case you're still wondering about such trivialities, R2-D2 is "Artoo Detoo" in the novels...

Posted by at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

My friend Cheno has relayed to me an interesting bit of gossip: it seems that employees of George Lucas' special-effects house, Industrial Light and Magic, were recently asked to sign non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from speaking publicly about Star Wars episodes seven, eight and nine. What does that mean? Well, it could mean that The Great Flanneled One is planning to make more Star Wars movies following next spring's Revenge of the Sith.

No doubt this possibility has a lot of Internet fanboy-types wetting their pants with glee, but I myself am having a far more subdued reaction. My first thought is that I'll believe in the legendary "final trilogy" about the time I start seeing trailers for a fourth Indiana Jones film, another long-rumored fanboy wet dream. My second thought is that I hope these films never get made.

Continue reading "Episodes VII, VIII and IX? No, Thanks..." »

Posted by at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

CNN is reporting this morning that the official title of the next (and presumably final) Star Wars movie will be Revenge of the Sith. Representatives of Lucasfilm made the announcement at this weekend's massive gathering of comic book and science fiction fans in San Diego, Comic-Con International, where the crowd's response was reported to be generally positive. My own response? I'm not sure yet. I sorta like it and I sorta hate it, which I guess is fitting because that's been my reaction to the Star Wars prequels in general.

Continue reading "Episode III Has a Title" »

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)