One of our illustrious staff has the good fortune to live in FL and is currently enjoying the fun of Star Wars Weekends in Orlando at the happiest place on Earth, Disney World. Since the rest of us are far flung from Orlando, we’ll have to get by on just videos of some of the attractions. Like this year’s Hyperspace Hooplah!
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And then there was that one time that NASA caught a nova on film.
Watch for that one slowly growing and then gradually fading light in the box.
Ewoks are the Devil
So, I’m working my way back through some of the books that I remember being either some of the worst books I read or those I was warned off of in the EU when I was younger. Right now, I’m working my way back through a book that I already know I can really rant on it for pages and pages, and I will. On the other hand, I’m learning some stuff about it. In comparison to Children of the Jedi, it reads like a masterpiece, it’s just some of the other bits that are just grating.
In the mean time, I owe you all something to take a look at. You get Ewoks.
At the end of the day, what are the things you remember about RotJ? The battle around the Death Star, the Sarlaac, the last lightsaber fight? Yeah, all of those are the good parts of it that I remember. Ewoks make my blood run cold.
More after the jump.
Lazy Sunday Afternoon
Looking for something to fill your time while there doesn’t seem to be anything to do with SW floating about? Well, how about this? Have you heard about Star Wars Uncut? It’s a project that was started in 2009 as a crowdsourced attempt to recreate the entirety of of SW:ANH as a fanmade piece. Well, a few months back, the project was completed and the ‘Director’s Cut’ was released, containing the handpicked best shots stitched together to recreate the entire film in 15 second clips. The project was actually nominated for an Emmy (Scratch that, the project won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media in 2010). So, follow this link and give it a watch.
Sorry, no embed, the site wasn’t cooperating. Here’s the trailer, though.
Francis Lawrence Offered Director Role for ‘Catching Fire’
With Gary Ross no longer in the picture for Catching Fire, Lionsgate Studios has offered I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence the gig according to The Hollywood Reporter.
It must be noted that it isn’t guaranteed that Lawrence will direct the sequel to this year’s biggest blockbuster hit. Lawrence has not accepted the offer yet and should he turn it down, Lionsgate will need to ramp up their search again to find a suitable replacement. Given their target of having the film hit theaters in November 2013, the studio will be hoping to have a definitive answer soon.
Other directors that were considered include Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Duncan Jones (Source Code), and Bennett Miller (Moneyball). Lawrence came out on top primarily due to scheduling availability.
If nothing else, hopefully this means less shaky-cam moving forward.
Slow News Day….?
In an effort to preserve our readership from Brian’s iTunes list, Shane and I were discussing what we could do to possibly indicate a slow news day. One of the blogs he reads uses the Slow News Day Gorn–appropriately, since there is nothing slower than the Gorn.
But this being a primarily Star Wars blog, news today has been slower than:
a) Greedo’s gun hand (because Han shot first)
b) Jabba the Hutt
c) Bossk (this was Shane’s favorite)
d) the Sarlacc’s Digestion
e) a season on the moisture farm
f) Brian updating his taste in music
Got a better suggestion? Let us know in the comments.
Apparently this is a thing I do now
Is post Star Wars related parodies of pop music. Or in this case, 3d animation of Stormtroopers dancing to pop music. For those curious and somehow unaware, the song is by LMFAO (God I wish I was making that up) and the animation is a piece of student work from the University of Lethbridge (Canada), New Media Department.
Slow News Week: Brian Liveblogs his iTunes Library on Shuffle
Update #15 2:09 PM
There’s no getting around it. This has been an extremely slow news week and bloggers are getting desperate for content. So desperate that many of us are resorting to some non-traditional posts to keep our front pages alive*.
*Someone that’s actually doing something cool is Dunc over at ClubJade who is currently running an Ask Dunc Anything open thread.
So yes. Desperation. I threatened this on Twitter but alas, no one listened. Strap in, I’m about to blog about music. Tune in for a continually updating thread on my bad taste in music. Make fun of me in the comments, or suggest good things for me to listen to.
To the jump!
What Scoundrels Could Mean for the EU at Large.
I’m going to pitch an idea here that goes against my fundamental theory of Star Wars. In my head, Star Wars is about the asymmetric struggle between two powers for control of the galaxy and good and evil and all that jazz. Now, I may tend to come down on the side of what most people might consider ‘evil’ most of the time, but I will someday tell you why Palpatine may have been evil and how it might have been a good thing for the galaxy. Suffice to say that evil sucks but it is efficient.
But like I said, my favorite SWEU stories are reflections of the movies and how they worked. The original Thrawn trilogy is still my favorite EU narrative ever, and it perfectly mirrors the Original Trilogy, one relatively small group of people fighting for what they believe is right against a larger, more powerful group. It just so happens that the small group is Thrawn’s fleet and the larger group is the Republic.
But that doesn’t mean that these kinds of stories always work, I have some serious problems with stories like Jedi Academy, where it’s still there, but it’s a rehash. And some books that are really different from the formula I’ve enjoyed, like Allegiance or Choices of One. So, obviously I’m willing to make some exceptions for good books. Another one that I’m sure will win that exception is Scoundrels. I can rest assured it’s going to be good because it’s Timothy Zahn and he’s never done anything to upset me in the EU.
But Scoundrels got me thinking about this whole idea. It’s a particular kind of story, isn’t it? It’s the heist story. The most common thing it’s being compared to is Ocean’s Eleven but at the same time it’s really similar to The Italian Job or Gone in Sixty Seconds. It’s a genre. What does this kind of book mean for the continuing narrative of the EU?
Moves like… You know what, just watch this video.
So, one of the bigger hits of the past nebulous period of time has been a kind of dico-ey rock song by Maroon 5 called ‘Moves Like Jagger.’ The song has a catchy enough hook, but fails in that it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the Rolling Stones.
And now this thing has happened. The inevitable parody. Moves like Jabba. The video is potentially NSFW, so watch it yourself before you show it to the kids. Embedded video after the jump.