Brilliant.
David Gilbert:
Poland: The current regime is seeking to force through the presidential election next month, despite a ban on campaigning due to the health crisis — a move the opposition says highly favors the incumbent, President Andrzej Duda.
Drew Stewart, for Wired:
Nearly eight years ago, Disney gave George Lucas $4 billion for what is arguably the biggest film franchise in the world. Since then, Disney has released an additional five Star Wars films, raking in almost $6 billion worldwide at the box office. In those intervening years, the Mouse House also launched its own streaming service, Disney+, which now offers fans new 4K restorations of the original Star Wars trilogy and its prequels. Having those films all in one place, a place where the new films will also one day live, is a huge selling point for the streaming service—but it could be so much more massive […]
These aren’t the versions that were nominated for 17 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. These movies didn’t change the world. They’re not the phenomena that upended the way movies were made from that moment on. Moreover, these aren’t the movies that fans want to see. Look at the comments on any article about the aforementioned Skywalker box set. Half of them are people asking if they’re going to include the theatrical cuts, and the other half are people saying how they’re not going to buy the sets because they already downloaded a fan restoration of those original movies.
Amazing comparison of all the changed and added scenes in the Original Trilogy, including an explanation of how and why they came to be.
I recently rewatched all the Star Wars movies, including Harmy’s Despecialized Editions, and Episodes IV, V, and VI are just so much better without the subsequent changes. If you’re a fan of Star Wars, search the internets for them — they’re a must-see.
Travis Clark:
“The Witcher,“ based on the fantasy novel series by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, is the most in-demand TV series in the world across all platforms, according to the data company Parrot Analytics. The company’s ranking is based on “demand expressions,“ its globally standardized TV measurement unit to reflect the desire, engagement, and viewership of a series, weighted by importance.
If you think the TV show is good, you have to read the books — they’re actually much (much!) better. Please note that some of the stories and threads from the books have been altered for the TV show — the originals not only make more sense, but the characters (Yennefer and Ciri especially) are better developed.
Star Wars has been a part of my life for over 30 years and there are some characters I always loved more than others. Chewbacca was one of them. Tragically, Peter Mayhew passed away a few days ago…
The family of Peter Mayhew, with deep love and sadness, regrets to share the news that Peter has passed away. He left us the evening of April 30, 2019 with his family by his side in his North Texas home. pic.twitter.com/YZ5VLyuK0u
— Peter Mayhew (@TheWookieeRoars) May 2, 2019
Star Wars wouldn’t have been the same without him.
@gruber because we all agree pic.twitter.com/szdx2dHB7W
— Kev Hamm (@kevhamm) May 4, 2019
But he should have gotten that damned medal though.
Han Solo is Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford is Han Solo. He is the character of the original Star Wars trilogy. I watched and rewatched the movies because of him and for him. I might have shed a tear or ten when he died in The Force Awakens. I truly hope this newest Star Wars Story doesn’t ruin him for me and I’m half-tempted to not watch it at all.
My sister ordered this official (and priceless) Star Wars doormat for me over one and a half years ago. It finally arrived last week!
I love it!
Tatiana Siegel:
The James Bond sweepstakes has taken an unexpected turn. While Warner Bros. remains in the lead to land film distribution rights to the megafranchise — whose deal with Sony expired after 2015’s Spectre — a couple of unlikely suitors have emerged that also are in hot pursuit: Apple and Amazon.
The tech giants are willing to spend in the same ballpark as Warners, if not much more, for the rights, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. MGM has been looking for a deal for more than two years, and Sony, Universal and Fox also had been pursuing the property, with Warners and Sony the most aggressive.
But the emergence of Apple — which is considered such a viable competitor that Warners is now pressing MGM hard to close a deal — and Amazon shows that the digital giants consider Bond one of the last untapped brands (like a Marvel, Pixar or Lucasfilm) that could act as a game-changer in the content space. Apple’s and Amazon’s inclusion in the chase would indicate that more is on the table than film rights, including the future of the franchise if MGM will sell or license out for the right price.
The Star Wars franchise has shown that refreshing the format is a potentially viable strategy. I really loved The Force Awakens and Rogue One wasn’t far off — it’s not perfect, but it is a chance to spend more time in the Star Wars universe. The James Bond series of movies is my other favourite — I’ve been watching them all my life — and there is a potential here to expand upon it, perhaps even venturing into TV show territory. James has worked with other 00 agents in his movies before and I’d happily watch their adventures too.
Oh! Apple still hasn’t proven itself trustworthy in this sector (Tim Cook and Bono, Planet of the Apps), so I hope they don’t screw this up, if they get the rights.
Todd Vaziri:
Star Wars fans pride themselves on knowing each and every detail from the original trilogy. But there’s one little detail from “Star Wars” (1977) that might surprise a lot of fans, and the reality of this detail is different than our collective head canon.
I never thought about it this way and did not connect the two trenches together. At this point, I’m not even sure if I assumed it was the equatorial trench or not.
A very well done video showing the parallels between Episodes VII and IV. Some of the scene comparisons are a bit far-fetched and one could argue that they shouldn’t have made the cut, but it’s well worth watching all the same.
Peter Mayhew posted a few screenshots of the script from 1976, which should clear this matter up once and for all…
‘Sorry for the mess.’
Michael Heilemann:
The Millennium Falcon underwent a long and arduous number of conceptual iterations before its final iconic shape emerged; the one we now once again see blasting its way across the big screen. In fact it wasn’t even known by its famous name until well into production, having up until then gone under the much mundane moniker: Pirate Ship.
The Millennium Falcon was the single most amazing spaceship that made a huge impact on me ever since I saw it for the first time, 30 years or so ago.
When watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens, when I heard Rey yell ‘… that ship is garbage’ I immediately tensed, and when the camera panned and the Falcon was revealed, I actually welled up. A bit. Then I did the exact same thing, three more times as I saw that scene again.
This is how to use replace the default BBEdit icon with the BB-8 edition:
BB8dit@1x.png file with Preview.app./Applications/ or wherever you have BBEdit installed.If you ever want to revert back to the original icon just open up the info window in step 8, select the icon and press Delete on your keyboard.
Thanks @jimmyhartington!
The link in the title will lead you to my Star Wars playlist. It has all the original soundtracks from all the episodes (I through VII) in the proper order, for a total of 142 songs (11 hours and 14 minutes of music). You will need an Apple Music subscription to listen to this.
StarWars.com staff:
Disney and Lucasfilm announced that Star Wars: Episode VIII, originally scheduled for release in summer 2017, will now debut on December 15, 2017.
I hope this means a better movie. I am however shouting a very Darth Vader-y ‘Noooooooooo!’, on the inside.
Victoria McNally:
“You wouldn’t believe how long it took to actually perfect that one, that little tiny gag in the film,” Corbould said. “It started off with the mechanics of getting the bread to rise and the liquid to disappear, but then there was the ongoing problem of what color should the bread be? What consistency should it be? Should it have cracks in it? Should it not have cracks in it?”
“It took about three months,” he added. “The actual mechanics of it was fairly simple, but the actual cosmetic side took a lot longer.”
Mind. Blown.
‘A coffee house with a dark side’.
Love this.
Ben Ostrower:
I left the theater after my first (and even second) viewing entirely convinced that Rey is Luke Skywalker’s daughter. Duh. All signs point to this (the inheritance of the lightsaber, Maz Kanata’s cryptic insights, the final scene with Luke, etc). After all, the whole story is about the sins and redemptions of the Skywalker family, right?
While Ben’s theory is plausible, I don’t believe the writers were clever enough to come up with it. Oh, it’s full of spoilers, so don’t bother reading it until you’ve seen ‘The Force Awakens’.
Haven’t seen this before, and it seems very interesting. Putting it on my ‘to watch’ list.
Oh, and Mark Hamill is the narrator. Spoilers? Of course!
David Sparks:
In my post-Star Wars bliss, I spent some time in Logic today creating a set of BB8 Ringtones from various BB8 audio snippets I found on the web. These are formatted for iTunes and ready to go. Enjoy.
This is awesome! You can find the zip file on David’s site.
I first saw saw Star Wars when I was six or seven years old, which must have been around 1985 or 86. I watched it with a friend of mine, or so I remember. More than thirty years have passed since then, so some of what I recall might be heavily distorted. It probably is. What’s important however is that I still have specific scenes from the movie, and from that day, imprinted in my memory. Us sitting on the carpet in front of the TV. I was most probably completely oblivious to the world around me.
This is soooo good.
Maddie Stone:
Chris Jones wanted to see how the planets and moons featured in the original Star Wars trilogy stack up against real planets in this galaxy. Turns out, many of them are quite comparable in size to places in our solar system. Endor is Mercury after a massive global cooling campaign, Hoth is Mars before all the water evaporated, and Bespin is a gas giant not so different in size from our Saturn. Yavin Prime seems to be in a class of its own, though—who knows—maybe it’s similar to one of those fabled brown dwarfs lurking in the far reaches of our solar system.
Skip straight to the comments below the article — gold!
TIME:
“The moment you meet BB-8, you build up some form of weird human connection,” says Marco Grob, who photographed the new Star Wars character for this week’s TIME cover. “It has one eye that has this really cute way of looking at you. It’s just incredible.”
Watching both droids run around the studio is great — BB-8’s whimsical antics made me laugh.
MotionVFX:
mSaber is a cinematic plugin for creating the world-famous lightsaber effects in your productions. It is very easy to use, fully customizable and has an advanced built-in masking tool. With this plugin you can change an ordinary video into a movie-like epic duel with breathtaking futuristic laser effects. Control the effect easily with on-screen controls and find a look you are looking for with multiple published parameters. mSaber is a perfect mixture of easy and powerful, you can create a stunning outcome with minimal effort.
This is amazing! You can find the tutorial here.
via @indigi
But I love him!
If the answer is yes, then you’ll be pleased to know that Google prepared a beautiful Easter egg for the occasion. Go to google.com and search for:
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away
Don’t forget to turn your sound on!
This is perfect! Make sure to check out the details on each of the 29 photos.
You might want to not watch this one if you’re actively trying not to spoil the surprise.