Author: jawajames

San Diego-based Jawa.
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Rancho Obi-Wan announces eBay charity auction and more fundraisers

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Rancho Obi-Wan released their 2014 schedule of fundraising events, including a seven-day charity auction on eBay called “Rancho Obi-Thon.” Starting on March 2, several lots of collectibles will go up for auction to raise funds for the not-for-profit Star Wars memorabilia museum, including a trove of artwork, rare posters (including an immunization poster donated by our own Paula), and autographed merchandise.

Also, there’s a chance to own loot that comes from the world’s largest Star Wars collection with their Dupe Deals auctions, where they will be selling off duplicate merchandise in the collection, also starting March 2 via eBay. Each duplicate will come with a certificate of authencity that it came from Rancho Obi-Wan.

Finally, Rancho Obi-Wan wants you to save the date: September 20, 2014 will be the Annual Fundraiser Gala. Like last year’s World Record Night, this will be a day long remembered!

All of the funds raised for Rancho Obi-Wan are used for such things as maintenance, security, professional services, providing tours for other charities to raise money, and community outreach. None are used for buying collectibles.

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Star Wars Weekends gets super-sized for 2014, but the Hyperspace Hoopla is no more

WDW-StarWarsWeekends-2014-posterTime to start planning your summer vacation around Star Wars! Walt Disney World has announced the 2014 schedule of Star Wars Weekends, including the expansion to a fifth weekend and the addition of nightly fireworks.

Held at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Star Wars Weekends (each Fri-Sun from mid-May to mid-June) will be hosted by fan favorite voice actor James Arnold Taylor. This year’s theme, “Join the Rebellion,” looks to loosely tie into the launch of Rebels.

Sadly, Dunc’s favorite part of Star Wars Weekends will not be returning – the Hyperspace Hoopla show has been retired. The Star Wars dance-off stage show has done its last boogie and will be replaced with new shows and the Symphony in the Stars fireworks show. No word yet on whether Disney World will be doing a May the 4th event.

Planning out the rest of your travel itinerary?

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Interview: Joe Schreiber on Maul: Lockdown

Joe Schreiber.jpgWith Maul: Lockdown on sale this week, I had a chance to have author Joe Schreiber answer a few questions about his new novel. Joe was gracious enough to discuss the character of Maul and other aspects of Lockdown, including his collaboration with Jim Luceno to have it connect with Darth Plagueis. Having previously brought the living dead to Star Wars in Death Troopers and its prequel, Red Harvest, Schreiber is no stranger to the darker side of the galaxy far, far away.

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Review: Maul: Lockdown is no letdown

Maul: LockdownMaul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber is out today, and fans of the Dark Side should rejoice. Lockdown delivers a can’t-put-this-down tale of scum and villainy.

Set before The Phantom Menace, Lockdown has Darth Maul sent undercover to infiltrate a space station prison to find an elusive arms dealer operating out of inescapable penitentiary. Maul quickly becomes a contender in the warden’s profitable prison fight circuit, but there’s more to finding someone who doesn’t want to be found in a prison than just cracking heads all the way to the top. Plus, more than just prisoners and guards lurk in the dark confines of this station. And throw in Jabba the Hutt, dangerous cultists, and Darth Sidious scheming under his own master’s nose.

Darth Maul has gone through a renaissance in the past few years – he has gone from being the weapon of rage back in 1999 in The Phantom Menace and the related EU (Michael Reaves’ Shadow Hunter & Ron Marz’ comic), to his resurrection on The Clone Wars (along with Tom Taylor’s Darth Maul: Death Sentence and James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis) as some one able to scheme his way into power as he seeks vengeance on both Obi-wan Kenobi and his old master, while taking on his brother Savage as his own apprentice. And now this year, we get more of Darth Maul, with Lockdown and the upcoming Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir comic. Maul: Lockdown adds to this modern character and builds some of Maul’s roots as a plotter as this mission tests his abilities to not only survive but achieve his objective before time runs out.

Minor spoilers beyond this point.

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Sorting out Marvel, Dark Horse and Star Wars

DarkHorse-MarvelIt’s been a week since the news went out that the Star Wars comics license will go to Marvel Comics for 2015, leaving Dark Horse Comics after a twenty-two year run. With the news on Tuesday that Dark Horse will be releasing a new series, adapting the unproduced The Clone Wars scripts for the finale of the Darth Maul storyline, we know that 2014 will still be a big Star Wars year for Dark Horse. Over the course of the past week, questions about the switch have started to get some answers, at least from Dark Horse:

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Dark Horse to wrap up Darth Maul’s arc on The Clone Wars

Clone-Wars-Darth-Maul-Son-of-DathomirWhile we’ve known that the “bonus content” being worked on for The Clone Wars wasn’t necessarily going to bring closure to the series, Lucasfilm told Newsarama that at least one of the show’s loose ends will be told in comic form this spring, giving a big finale both for Darth Maul and for Dark Horse Comics.

Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir will be a four-part comic starting in May, based on unproduced screenplays. Newsarama interviews the writer, Jeremy Barlow, on what’s in store for this tale. With a title of Son of Dathomir, one might expect a return to the planet, and revenge against Darth Sidious, but Barlow also teases some more locales and characters as well, including a new one named Brother Viscus.

Newsarama points out that while this unproduced story arc is being told first in comic form, it doesn’t mean that it will only be told in this form. I wouldn’t take this as anything more than Lucasfilm simply leaving the door open, and not as a sign that it will be actually realized in animated form.

Although Newsarama is calling this storyline the series finale, the show’s “final arc,” there’s been some clarification from Lucasfilm folks:

The Maul comic is very cool, but it *wasn’t* the series finale. It was a 4-part arc that fell beyond what was already in production.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@infinata) January 8, 2014

Long story short: It wraps up the Darth Maul arc, but isn’t the show’s intended finale. Pablo also says it wasn’t intended for S6.

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Rebels hints in LEGO 2014 lineup?

The LEGO Summer 2014 catalog has slipped out, and its Star Wars lineup offers a few hints for Rebels – and possibly more of The Yoda Chronicles? When the list of toy sets first started slipping out, Peter at Lightsaber Rattling explained what some of the set names might mean, while more recently Tomás at Groove Bricks got the list set descriptions, which puts most of the speculation to rest, and introduces some characters from Rebels.

The Ghost set, which is spotted in some online pictures of the catalog, is pretty clearly The Ghost, the new ship of Star Wars Rebels, revealed last year, and has a minifigure of a character named Zeb. The Phantom comes with a minifigure with a second character name: Ezra Bridger.

Join the Rebel resistance against the evil Empire in The Phantom attack shuttle, as seen in the exciting Star Wars: Rebels animated TV series! Place young Rebel hero Ezra Bridger in the detachable cockpit and store his cadet helmet and blaster in the carg
Fly The Phantom into battle against the evil Empire!

Jason Ward over at Making Star Wars pieces all the names (and ships) together.]

The other hard-to-decipher set name is what most sites are calling Jedi Hunter (or Jedi Hunter Frontier) while Groove Bricks also found a source calling it Jedi Scout Fighter. While Lightsaber Rattling originally speculated that it’s a Rebels-themed set, the minifigure list connects it to The Yoda Chronicles, with a new version of JEK-14. Unless JEK-14 (the Force-powered clone from The Yoda Chronicles) jumps from the LEGO Star Wars specials to Rebels, it seems that this set is a follow-up to 2013′s set based on The Yoda Chronicles. Does that mean that more adventures of JEK-14 are coming to the screen next year, since his fellow figures aren’t ones that I recognize from the three episodes of The Yoda Chronicles?

Also coming out this summer from LEGO: a new snowspeeder, AT-AT, Star Destroyer, B-Wing and Mos Eisley Cantina! Lots of love for original trilogy this summer.

So, we have a few more merchandise-related leaks for Rebels, and a sign that there might be more follow-up to The Yoda Chronicles?

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Mythbusters takes on Star Wars tonight

Mythbusters-StarWars-titleThe circle is now complete! Mythbusters, the Discovery Channel show that attempts to confirm or bust urban legends and Hollywood magic by recreating the circumstances and using science to explain, is leading off their 2014 season with a special devoted to Star Wars.

The January 4 episode (Discovery at 8pm ET/PT) features hosts and former ILM special-effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, along with team members Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci, and Kari Byron as they verify the plausibility of several epic Star Wars stunts. Joined by R2-D2, Chewbacca, members of the 501st Legion and actress Sophia Bush, the two build teams will take on some of the favorite scenes, hoping to find out answers to questions posed by Star Wars fans for years:

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Review: JAT 365 by James Arnold Taylor

JAT365Cover-D6-forBleedJames Arnold Taylor is more than just the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi and other characters on The Clone Wars! If you’ve followed the veteran voice actor on social media, you’ve seen his tidbits of inspiration for everyday life. Now Taylor has compiled a book of his daily doses of positive attitude to help provide that extra boost of good vibes for each day of a year. In JAT 365: 365 Daily Inspirations for the Pursuit of Your Dreams, Taylor delivers a tool for daily progress in working towards one’s dreams. I take a look inside and see what JAT 365 is all about. Continue reading “Review: JAT 365 by James Arnold Taylor”

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Filoni talks Clone Wars bonus episodes and more

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In the final part of an interview with StarWars.com on The Clone Wars, Dave Filoni shared details about wrapping up the series, giving some hints about the bonus material, and having George Lucas as a mentor in creating Star Wars. He discusses concluding season five with Ahsoka’s storyline, and his sense of guardianship over characters from the series. When asked about the bonus material (which were episodes in production for a sixth season), he mentions:

When you look at level of importance to wrap things up for fans, I think that two story arcs that fans will get to see are really, really important for the overall Clone Wars story. So I’m very glad that fans will get to see them in their completed form.

It’s not like all of the bonus material that comes out was planned on really answering things for fans. It’s more, “This is where we were headed,” and the Yoda story arc [announced on Twitter] definitely gives a sense of closure. One of the story arcs, which is very short, is not essential to the overall story but it is a nice final showcase for one of the prequel characters.

Building on Filoni’s comments about the two story arcs, Pablo Hidalgo clarified via Twitter the bonus content is more than just these two arcs.

In the interview, Filoni also discussed moving onto Rebels and being the public face of Star Wars storytelling, reiterating about the new show: “I know some fans just see Rebels as an extension of Clone Wars, but it’s not. It’s an entirely different thing with a different feeling and a different vibe.”