Club Jade

Several reviewers have summed up their opinions after seeing a whole season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. IGN gives it a 7.7 out of 10, saying “it has a ton of great action and adventure, is increasingly great to look at, and has had some surprisingly effective character moments.”, calling out ‘Rookies’, ‘Cloak of Darkness’ and ‘Trespass’ among their favorite episodes. Ki-Aaaron-Mundi blogs about the impressive first season on his sw.com blog, pointing out the good, the bad, and the ugly. Lazypadawan highlights the sophistication of the writing, and the great new characters.

Reviews are also coming in for the Star Wars: The Clone Wars DVD – A Galaxy Divided (containing 4 episodes containing 4 episodes: the Yoda-centric ‘Ambush’ and the Malevolence three-parter). IGN also panned it for weak episodes and no extras – good for kids, but adults should wait for the full season 1 release. SWCloneWarsReviews sums it up: the reviewer bought the DVD so you don’t have to.

Meanwhile, SW.com takes a look at the latest issue of the UK’s The Clone Wars comic/magazine. EUCantina reported on briefly seeing “The Force Unleashed – Special Edition” on Gamefly, releasing at the end of September.

And the Washington Post’s Parenting blog looks at Star Wars and other kid obsessions, keying off of a Slate article by Emily Bazelon on why Star Wars resonates with little boys.

And so the first season of The Clone Wars ended on Friday with a ‘Hostage Crisis’. Dave Filoni talks about bounty hunters in the episode commentary, and Bonnie interviews Corey Burton, who voices Cad Bane, Count Dooku and Ziro the Hutt. And don’t forget about the S2 preview!

• DVDs: The show’s first four episodes are out today.

• Poll: Register your thoughts on the season in our latest poll. (More than a hundred have already weighed in!)

IGN has some details on the Robot Chicken Star Wars II DVD. It’s slated for a July 21 release with what looks like a nice chunk of extras. (via)

IGN has word that the Fanboys DVD will be coming to stores across the country in little over two months.

Looks like we might be getting a nice long break from The Clone Wars: A schedule snapped at Toy Fair shows that the second season of the show (and a box set of the S1 DVDs) are on track for the fourth quarter of 2009. That means we likely won’t see them until October at the earliest.

We can also expect another video game (??) in September.

Tomorrow’s new episode, ‘Storm Over Ryloth’ kicks off the Ryloth trilogy. Apparently it will be epic. Or something.

• Awards: TCW took home a Golden Reel award for Best Sound Editing on the episode ‘Lair of Grievous’.

• DVDs: EUC spotted a Netflix listing for the second set of TCW DVDs.
• Podcast: The ForceCast talks ‘Blue Shadow Virus’ and ‘Mystery of a Thousand Moons’ with Fanboys Kyle Newman and Ernest Cline. EUC’s We Talk Clones also addresses the two-parter.

Not a ton of breaking news here… The bulk of TFN’s report deals with some Clone Wars stuff, including some deleted scenes and a peek at the S1 finale. (Speaking of: Cartoon Network has picked up the second season, shocking absolutely no one.)

But we can expect a Celebration V announcement sometime this summer!

Well, looks like TFN’s rumor was on the money: There is a Clone Wars DVD coming out on March 24th – the first four episodes. I was poking around Borders last week, and it seems that this is a common format for kid’s TV, with a full collection released later. Sure enough, TOS does say that a full season boxed set is coming later in the year.

TFN has a source saying that there are tentative plans to release the first set of The Clone Wars DVDs – the first part of the season – on March 25th. (A Wednesday? One strike.)

Assuming Cartoon Network takes no more breaks, the season’s last episode will air on the 20th… And perhaps the second half on DVD in June, if any of this pans out.

UPDATE: And things just got a lot more solid… it’s in Previews! Click over to the TFN link for scans.

With the DVD release of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog coming up this Friday, the Amazon asked Joss Whedon to give it a review. A little odd, since he wrote it, so, well, he made his review a little odd in kind. It’s typical Joss goofiness, which is fun, and definitely worth a read. I give it forty eight billion stars.

I can’t wait to watch “Commentary!” the musical!