It’s a sad day in fandom: The man who gave Star Wars its first images passed away yesterday. Originally commissioned by George Lucas to illustrate scenes from the Star Wars script in 1975, Ralph McQuarrie was the first – and certainly the most well-known – concept artist for the saga. On StarWars.com, Lucas said: “When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘Do it like this.'”
In addition to the original trilogy, McQuarrie also worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Cocoon, for which he won an Academy Award.
Per usual, the Academy Award had little accolades for genre, though Industrial Light & Magic Rango took advantage of the Pixar-free spread to take the Oscar for Animated Feature.
Martin Scorsese’s Hugo – one of the few lead nominees that had any (tentative) connection to genre – swept the technical awards, with Oscars for Cinematography, Art Direction (beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 2,) Sound editing (over Potter and Transformers 3,) Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects (over Potter, Transformers, Real Steel and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.)
Harry Potter also lost out in Makeup, to The Iron Lady. One bright spot: The Muppets took Original Song.
As for the show itself…. It seemed like they just gave up on the younger demographic entirely. The whole show had a tone of ‘Remember how great movies used to be? Before blockbusters and computers? When we, the voting members of the Academy, were young?’ (Nothing, perhaps, says this better than The Artist wins: Old stuff and Hollywood self-absorption.) Billy Crystal may be ‘classic’ but about halfway through his painful song melody I was checked out of his performance and wishing for someone new. (Tom Hanks? Everyone loves Tom Hanks. And he doesn’t sing!) Or just bring back Jon Stewart, who made the montages actually fun. (Also, blackface? How far we’ve come, America.) Hell, let the Muppets host the whole damn thing. Last year may have been a disaster but is the answer really to pretend that anyone who’s clocked less than half a century cares? The Oscars have never been known for being populist, but this year the gap was especially glaring.
I’m glad the Oscars haven’t gone the Grammy route of rewarding their industry’s biggest moneymakers (no offense to Adele, but that path would lead to Oscar nominations for Twilight) but just… Mix it up a little, will ya?
Disney seems stuck on how to market John Carter, so even fandom is stepping up. The above trailer is fanmade from released footage (though I still say the first trailer is pretty good.) Moviefone’s Mike Ryan has a few tips.
Lane at Roqoo Depot isn’t having any of this romance crap: Instead, he’s looking at bromances in Star Wars. However, I’m pretty sure there’s slash out there about all those dudes. Sorry, Lane.
With The Phantom Menace 3D out this weekend, Entertainment Weekly checked in with the man behind Jar Jar Binks, Ahmed Best, who gave his thoughts on the Gungan’s diminished role in Episode III. Best also mentioned a scene cut filmed but cut from the finished version of Revenge of the Sith where Supreme Chancellor Palpatine takes a walk with Representative Binks:
“And Palpatine kind of thanks Jar Jar for putting him in power. It’s a really interesting scene, and it shows the evolution of Jar Jar from this fun-loving kid’s character into this manipulated politician. And it was an interesting arc for the character that I thought could have been explored, because the scene is really dark. But it just didn’t fit in the movie, which I understand. But yeah, George’s take on it is Jar Jar is now just a politician.”
Compiling lots of making-of information with original interviews with several cast and crew members (and even an interview with Blade Runner‘s Sean Young, who had auditioned for the role of Marion Ravenwood,) it’s essentially an super vocal commentary of the first Indiana Jones film. Benning guest-blogged on Empire Online about the making of Raiding the Lost Ark, while PBS dives into Benning’s history of filmumentaries, and GeekDad has a Raiding image gallery
Today is one of those days that the collective internet loses its shit over a comic book movie trailer… On the other hand, I wasn’t a big fan of the whiny Raimi versions, so this already looks like an improvement? (The power of Emma Stone compels you!) And does Andrew Garfield look a lot like Hayden Christensen or am I hallucinating? (The Celebrity Genome Project lives!)
There was no love – or at least, no awards – for The Clone Wars at Saturday’s Annie Awards. However, ILM’s Rango did take home several prizes, including best animated feature, while composer John Williams won for his Tintin score. ILM’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon took best animated effects.
The Clone Wars had 5 total nominations, including Best General Audience Animated TV Production (The Simpsons won) and editing. The individual achievement categories singled out Joel Aron for animated effects and voice actors Dee Bradley Baker and Nika Futterman.
With The Phantom Menace 3D out this weekend, Entertainment Weekly 