From the Blogside

Six Deadly Justifications of the “Star Wars” Movie-Verse from Citizenjess and Patientalien. My god, have they been suffering through reading blogs.starwars.com too???

NerfHerdersAnonymous on a key Star Wars/Mozart connection. Friday was the composer’s 250th birthday.

Lavagrrrl on participating in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Music Of The Star Wars Saga.

Imadra_blue’s thoughts on Alternate Universe and Alternate Reality fics in Star Wars and Harry Potter fics.

Oninobara on Padme and her relegation to the ghetto of the “Loving Girlfriend.”

Jediwonderboy rants on how Han Solo has been written in the EU. Courtship of Princess Leia: Bring SW fans together in WTF moments since 1994.

Anton of Link Right 2 on the Ben Franklin commemorative coin’s freak resemblance to Palpatine. Spooky.

Slithytove on the difference between science fiction and fantasy.

As usual, big thanks to Jedi News. Find a post that you thinks deserves a place in the next edition of From the Blogside? Email Dunc at simpletricks@gmail.com with the URL.

From the blogside

Imadra_blue rants on fandom perceptions of Anakin and Mace.

Lazypadawan isn’t fond of the theory that the Sith created Anakin.

Jaded_skys defends Padme, and Cadesama posted notes on the Padme/Anakin pairing.

An essay by Abel G. Peña is being published as part of an e-book.

Also on blogs.starwars.com, Paul ponders who else was being held on the Death Star’s detention level, Pablo calls out Fox News for not doing their homework and Bonnie finds Indiana Jones mash-ups.

I am indebted to the fine folks at Jedi News from linking to some of the Livejournal posts.

From the Blogside

Inner Bitch watches the entire saga (in release order) and is more than a little surprised.

Halagard takes a look at what the Expanded Universe might look like if it started after the release of the prequels.

Meanwhile, Jeff Dillon of The Disembodied Brain picks up The Joiner King and The Unseen Queen. He’s not impressed.

Shoiryu slashes out for a bit, but calms down for a nice discussion of the Master and Padawan attachment.

A short thread on Padme as Anakin’s anima breeds an entire community devoted to the subject. Neat!

In the realm of blogs.starwars.com, there’s a new multiblog for Official Star Wars artists.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Life is too short to keep up with all of blogs.starwars.com, but here are few recent gems from the VIP section:

Tasty Taste’s (Leland Chee) Death Star timeline

Dan Wallace on whether Star Wars is science fiction or space fantasy and an unofficial list of Grand Admirals.

Halagard (Abel G. Pena) has a lengthy discourse on Mace Windu and the Jedi Order.

Ghent (Paul Ens) on how Leia remembers Padme.

And last but certainly not least, JessaJediB (Mary Franklin) on Leia and Bail in the Radio Drama.

And comments are now enabled! I’m not sure if you have to be a Hypespace member to comment as you do to have a blog, but a starwars.com account is required. You can check up on all the lastest VIP postings here.

Links to (get) chew(ie) on

Club Jade’s own Bad Methodist explores the personal, political, and spiritual fall of Anakin Skywalker.

In the press, USA Today goes to Lucasfilm for answers to some of the questions raised by Revenge of the Sith, while The Christian Science Monitor profiles Charles Ross and The One-Man Star Wars Trilogy.

There’s a new daily newsletter for the ever-expanding Star Wars fandom on Livejournal. Jedi News is a daily roundup of icons, fanfic, essays, and other links of interest in much the same vein as the Harry Potter fandom’s Daily Snitch.

SF Site reviews The Dharma of Star Wars, but says that the Star Wars content is slim. On a similar note, Star Wars And Philosophy gets a much better review over at Saga Journal.

I, Hollywood

John Scalzi has some good things to say about I, Robot and the nature of Hollywood adaptations:

Allow me to put on my pontificating hat here and tell you an obvious truth: Hollywood doesn’t care about source material. When a major movie studio buys a novel (or in this case, a collection of stories) to adapt into a film, it stops being material of a fixed nature; it becomes suddenly fluid, and you’ll find vast chunks of the book sliding out, getting rearranged or simply being ignored for the expediencies of the filmmakers and the studio. Let me make it even more clear: It is a rare book that makes it through the film adaptation process without great violence being done to it.

And this is not always a bad thing. I think some of the most successful literary-to-film transfers have been ones in which Hollywood does what Hollywood does — substantially guts and reworks the source material to adapt it to the needs of the filmmakers. The obvious example here is Blade Runner, which is of course a mightily reworked version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick. It’s entirely possible a filmed version that is more faithful to the original novel could have been made; on the other hand, Blade Runner is excellent. It’s a fair trade.