Indy 4 Coming to DVD and Blu-ray October 14

Official word was unleashed today. IGN reports on the content we'll see on both formats, and it looks promising. Bonus material galore!

Jeanne Cavelos Talks About the Science of Star Wars

With technology and science advancing at what seems to be an exponential rate, a lot has happened since Jeanne Cavelos first published The Science of Star Wars back in 2000. Scientific American magazine caught up with the author and updated on some of the more recent breakthroughs. Read the interview here, and check out excerpts from the book here. Don't get any funny ideas about DNA though.

Move over 'Clone Wars'. The live-action series is coming!

I know - The animated Clone Wars movies hasn't even hit regular theaters yet, although it has premiered at the historic LA Egyptian theater already. If you put in a quick Google search, you'll find tons of reviews from the event (or check out the previous entry here). But what a lot of us are really excited for (at least *I* am) is the live-action series. Let the kids have The Clone Wars. However, with all the Clone Wars publicity going on lately, it seems some of the media have finally squeezed a little more live-action info from Lucas. I like this from The Herald UK (and not just because of the tie-in to my other fandom, the new Battlestar Galactica. But since it was mentioned, I'll just throw in that part too):

"After that comes a live action TV series, akin to the recent Battlestar Galactica series - which is ironic given that the original Battlestar TV series from the 1970s was regarded as something of a Star Wars rip-off.

"The live action programme is completely separate from the Star Wars film," he says. "The animated Clone Wars film and show, however, has all of the characters that everybody knows - everybody from Yoda to Anakin to Mace Windu to Obi-Wan - everybody's there. But the live-action series has nobody there, because it's after Episode III, so everybody's dead, basically, or hiding somewhere."

'The Clone Wars' world premier at LA's Egyptian Theater 8/10/08

There are just too many reviews out there, so I'll just post the following video of the event courtesy of The Associated Press, and this LA Times article. From what I've heard, there was swag a-plenty to go around, then... nothing.



The Clone Wars opens in theater nation-wide on Friday August 15, 2008. In case anyone was wondering.

Just How Cute is the Chewbacca Mouse?

This handmade miniature Chewbacca Mouse by Etsy (spotted by i09) is so cute, that it was tested against Ewoks. The Chewbacca Mouse trumped the Ewok's in cuteness so much, it actually made the Ewoks look like ogres. Just see the test results for yourself:

Even in a standalone trial, the Chewbacca Mouse is undeniably cute



= CUTE







But when put side by side with an Ewok, the results are quite clear. Ewoks start looking like slobbering ogres, and the Chewbacca Mouse actually becomes even cuter!





= OGRES









= CUTER






The trial was even performed with baby Ewoks after the beta stage, just to be sure. I think you can guess what the outcome was.





= HIDEOUS










= CUTEST EVAR





No Chewbacca Mice or Ewoks were harmed during this trial (Well, not a lot of Ewoks anyway)

Fangirl moment with Ewan

Yeah, I *wish* it were a live fangirl moment. I was looking at something on youtube, of which whatever it was I've completely forgotten at this point... one thing led to another, and next thing I knew I had about 20 tabs open, all with video of various Ewan McGregor interviews and clips. Some highlights:

Ewan on Craig Ferguson (his show you dirty monkeys!) from April, parts 1 and 2





Awesome brawl with Leno



NSFW! :O



Talking about Long Way Round



Same show a year (or two?) later, but this time talking Othello and Long Way Down (and more), parts 1 and 2





OMG??



?



???





Warning: This post may be continued at any time ;)

From the Ranch...

George apparently talked to the press yesterday. Not much we haven't heard before, but knowing Indy 5 is a possibility for now, and that there's an intentional girl-centric focus going on in Clone Wars... well, they're just nice reminders. Both from SciFi Wire:

"

12:00 AM, 05-AUGUST-08
	Lucas: Indy V Research In Works George Lucas told SCI FI Wire that preliminary research has begun on a story for a possible fifth Indiana Jones movie, but added that such a film is one of dozens of potential projects currently crowding his schedule. "It sits on the shelf there as one of 50 projects that I have to deal with," Lucas said in an interview on Aug. 4 at his Big Rock Ranch in San Rafael, Calif., where he was promoting the upcoming computer-animated feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. "And if I can come up with a story ..." But, Lucas added, "it's very hard to come up with stories for that thing. You know, It's really impossible. Because it has to be real. It has to be something that actually happened. It has to be something people know about. It has to be supernatural. It's a really difficult research project. Which they're researching now. You know, and last time it took 14 years. So ... " Lucas was referring to this summer's fourth Indiana Jones film, subtitled The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was in development for more than a decade before the pieces finally came together. In recent press interviews, Lucas has said that the three principals--himself, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford--all have to agree on the idea for a fifth film in order to move forward. He has also said that Spielberg is more amenable to the idea of a further installment than he was last time around. Star Wars: The Clone Wars opens Aug. 15. --Patrick Lee, News Editor

12:00 AM, 05-AUGUST-08
	Clone Wars' New Girls In Town George Lucas, executive producer of the upcoming animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, told reporters that the film features two female characters new to the movie franchise: Ahsoka Tano, the new padawan learner of Anakin Skywalker, and Asajj Ventress, a dark sorceress and apprentice to the nefarious Count Dooku. "I wanted to develop a character that would help Anakin settle down," Lucas said about Ahsoka in a news conference at his Big Rock Ranch in San Rafael, Calif., on Aug. 4. Lucas added: "At the end of Episode II, [Anakin's] kind of a wild child, and he and Obi-Wan don't get along. So the idea was to see how they become friends, how they become partners, how they become a team. And ... one of the ways to do that ... Because when you become a parent, when you become a teacher, you have to sort of become more responsible. You know, it forces you into this adulthood thing. So what I wanted to do was take Anakin and force him into this kind of, 'now I have to teach somebody. Now I have to be slightly more responsible.'" Ahsoka is a teenage orange-skinned Togruta girl who is assigned by Yoda to serve under Anakin as the Clone Wars worsen. The story is set between the events of Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones and Episode III--Revenge of the Sith. Lucas said he looked to his own experience as a father in coming up with Ahsoka's storyline. "I happen to have a couple daughters, so I have a lot of experience with that particular situation," Lucas said. "And I said, 'Rather than making it another guy, why don't we make her a girl? Because that's fun, and I have a lot of girls, and they're just as hard to deal with when they're teenagers as boys are.'" Dave Filoni, director of The Clone Wars, added that Ventress was a character originally conceived for Episode II who has existed for a while in the Star Wars expanded universe. "There was the idea that maybe the Sith apprenticed a new one after Darth Maul, [and that she] would be a girl," Filoni said in the same news conference. "That got abandoned eventually in favor of Count Dooku and Christopher Lee's character. But the concept art existed. And the comic books and novels on the Clone Wars before had utilized that character, that concept art, and created this new character, Asajj Ventress. So when it came time to develop the idea of The Clone Wars as a series, we thought, 'Well, that's a big fan favorite character. Let's draw her out.'" Filoni added that the two characters balance each other out in the new movie. "It just so happens that we introduced Ahsoka at the same time," he said. "So here you had these two new girls coming into this story at the same time, which was actually, there's kind of an advantage to it, because you had one that's the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker trying to be trained in the traditional ways of a Jedi, and you had one that's the hidden apprentice of Count Dooku, who was the evil opposite end, so that actually works really nicely for the stories we're trying to tell." Star Wars: The Clone Wars opens Aug. 15. --Patrick Lee, News Editor

"

____________________________

Also on starwars.com

and BBC (with video)

Clone Wars Widget

This doesn't fit on my sidebar, so here it is in a post!

Star Wars Photoshop!

A few posts below I posted the recent article about McCain challenging Obama to a lightsaber duel, and it reminded me to post a link to Worth1000.com's recent Star Wars Photoshop results, which has a Renaissance/fine art theme this year. Entries closed on 7/21, so here you go!

In the meantime, I'm busting out Photoshop concerning this most recent lightsaber duel challenge, and hopefully you are too!

Here's one of my faves from Worth1000 this year (even though all the entries are really quite stunning)

Emperor Palpa-Chin's Food Obsession

This is an oldie, but the voice impersonation is incredible (and rather hilarious)

McCain V Obama... with lightsabers!

Okay John McCain. You really did it this time. Do you really think you can challenge Barak Obama to a lightsaber duel and *not* have yourself personified as the evil Emperor? I mean, c'mon.... you're a Republican, so of course your lightsaber will be red. You're what... twice the age of Obama, if not three or four times? Okay, maybe Yoda, but you're as pasty as the driven snow, and have a severely scarred face. Fans around the world are churning away with Photoshop right now. Speaking of...

CBS.com

IGN's Soul Calibur IV video review