The Avengers has just taken the spot of the third-highest grossing movie 
of all time.
The only movies ahead of it are Titanic and Avatar. Down with you, Cameron!
Author Archives: Emily
Star Wars Party Ideas
I was going to say that I want to have a Star Wars party like this someday for my kids. Then I thought, forget the kids! We should have this party NOW! I mean, it features a homemade R2-D2, and a Wampa Cave Cake. In fact, I think this woman needs to write the next edition of the Star Wars Cookbook.
Make sure you check out her links to the previous year’s party as well and check out the garbage masher cake too.
Iron Man 3 pics!
I won’t go into detail or post any of the pictures in the interest of those of you who want to remain spoiler free, but the first two pictures from this Yahoo! Stars on Set gallery come from the set of Iron Man 3 and give us the first look at the film’s villain.
I think I’m already excited!
Dear Nanci-
Please go to the Droid Factory the next time you go to Hollywood Studios and then mail one to me. One with Mickey Mouse ears.
Seriously, though, how did I not know about this? I just have this vision of a shelf full of little astromech droids going up against my friend’s shelf full of Daleks. Hmm. Dalek versus R2-D2. Who wins?
Personally, I’m thinking R2. He’s sneaky.
Star Wars…and Wales?
The BBC has put together an interesting little slideshow discussing the Welsh background of Star Wars, which includes a couple of really interesting pictures of the construction of the Millennium Falcon from The Empire Strikes Back–interestingly, the only point at which there was a full-scale model of Han Solo’s ship during the entire trilogy. Compared with this picture of the Falcon in the Hoth hangar bay, it’s pretty interesting to get a sense of the ship:
Hunting down a picture of the Falcon in the hangar bay, I found a particularly interesting project afoot to build a full-scale Falcon by some fans. This, in turn, led me to a book I’d not heard about that’s been out for about a year that puts together sketches from the planning stages of the movies: Star Wars: The Blueprints. It’s a limited edition run–only 5000 copies, and the cheap version runs $500 a copy, so it’ll remain a book we all lust over for now. They still seem to have plenty of copies left, though, so if you have a spare chunk of change, I can only imagine that this would be an really interesting visual experience.
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
In other words, where have Emily and Shane been the last week? We took the week off to visit family in Iowa, but fear not, intrepid readers, because we got our geeky quota in by boldly going…to Riverside, Iowa.
Oh, the name doesn’t ring a bell? How about this: it’s the future birthplace of one James Tiberius Kirk.
Some day, either Chris Pine or William Shatner will be born here. I'm hoping for Chris Pine.
We also managed to have a geeky event where we drove straight west during last weekend’s solar eclipse–as we came out of a thunderstorm, and experienced a confluence of cosmic events, watching lightning pale in comparison to the eclipse, and the eclipse itself resulting in the most massive, colorful rainbow I’ve ever seen. I wish we’d gotten a good picture of them! In any case, now back to your original programming.
Happy Mother’s Day (and some news)
It being Mother’s Day in the U.S., our intrepid bloggers have been spending some quality time with some very patient women who raised some really geeky kids with great grace. (I count myself doubly lucky because I not only get my mom, but I get to enjoy Shane’s mom too!)
As for today’s news, here’s what we’ve come up with.
Lucas gets revenge on Marin County residents. When those who live in Marin County finally stopped the project to build the movie studio on George Lucas’ land, George Lucas decided to get back at them by using the land for something else: low-income housing. From the article at Movies.com:
He’s working with the Marin Community Foundation to instead construct affordable housing for either low-income families or seniors living on small, fixed incomes. In order to smooth along the development, he’s already given them all of the pricey technical studies and land surveys Lucasfilm spent years conducting. And we thing that’s just great. Because if there’s one thing rich people will hate more than having movie magic made in their backyard, it’s poor people moving in.
I’m not sure that The Great One’s motives are the purest here, but if it’s going to do something good for the community, I can’t knock it.
In other geek news, my brother sent me this link today: Buildtheenterprise.org.
Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a site outlining the plan to build a working spaceship, based on the greatest ship ever conceived, the U.S.S. Enterprise, and is trying to show the feasibility of doing so. Do be patient–six days into the site, they’ve had to purchase a new server because they’ve gone from 100 visitors a day to lover 60,ooo, so the site is moving a bit slow right now, but it’s worth it.
Edited to add: Also, the box office receipts are in for the weekend, and The Avengers just pulled in over 100 million for its second weekend. That’s what most movies hope to make in their entire run. This now brings the total for The Avengers to over 360 million dollars in two weeks.
Best Tumblr Ever?
Yes, Shane and I think so.
Rogue Leader: The Wedge Antilles Tumblr.
A sample:
(Shane would like to point out that he found it and that I am stealing his post. My reply was unprintable.)
Why Star Wars Needs Women – Now More Than Ever
The majority of my teen years sucked. I was one of those kids who was a permanent outcast—I was geeky and nerdy, and for a teenage girl, that can be the kiss of death. I had two friends in middle school, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for Star Wars.
But I wanted to be part of the cliques. I wanted boys to notice me, not because I was weird, but because they noticed me. Every time I was skipped over for an invitation to a party, left out of a social activity, or out and out ignored, I felt like I was being stabbed in the heart. We take these things more seriously when we’re 13.
TPM had just come out. My best friend and I soaked up every piece of information The Star Wars Insider had to offer. And most importantly, for Christmas in 1999, my aunt bought me Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s Young Jedi Knights: Shards of Alderaan.
I immediately fell in love with the character of Tenel Ka. She was strong, she chose who she wanted to be, and she got past being different to find acceptance. I wanted to be Tenel Ka.
As I got older, I moved on to the adult novels, and I wanted to be Mara Jade. She was even better than Tenel Ka, because Mara had emotions and wasn’t afraid to show them. She was who she wanted to be, with no apologies.
It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that there were other people like me, but by the time I got there, I’d finally come to grips with the idea that I could be whoever I wanted to be, thanks primarily to the characters of Tenel Ka and Mara Jade.
The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Pull out your wildest hats and crush up some mint for that julep, because this weekend is the first weekend in May and that means only one thing: The 138th Kentucky Derby.
So who should a Star Wars fan root for? After all, none of this year’s horses have anything to do with Star Wars. Unless, that is, like with all things thoroughbred, you take a look at the pedigrees. I knew there was a horse named Star Wars (son of horse Star Trek). Looking through his pedigree, I saw a name I knew: Northern Dancer.
For those of you not inclined to go running through the pedigrees of all the horses racing in the Kentucky Derby, Star Wars is related to these four horses slated to run in the Kentucky Derby through Northern Dancer: Union Rags (9-2 odds), Alpha, (15-1), Gemologist (6-1), and Done Talking (50-1).
As for Shane and I, I hate to say it, but we’ll be rooting either for Dullahan or Optimizer, since they’re Kentucky-bred and so are we.
The 138th Kentucky Derby airs May 5th on NBC from 5-7 pm EDT. Post time is 6:24 pm EDT.