It’s May 4th, aka May the Fourth be With You, aka National Star Wars Day, apparently. (Thanks Bonnie!)
Who’s bringing the chips?
Star Lords: Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, together at last. With disco!
Cue the fanboy implosion
Lucasfilm is releasing the unaltered Original Trilogy on DVD this September. They’ll only be available for a limited time, but they will be available. StarWarsShop even has Han shot first t-shirts for the occasion.
I’m in shock. How about you?
Media coverage: USAToday / MTV / Zap2it / E!Online / Mercury News / MSNBC.
ROTS gets two Saturn Awards
Revenge of the Sith did well at the Saturn Awards – Best Science Fiction Film and Best Music. Battlefront II won the Best Science Fiction Video Game Release.
Batman Begins won Best Fantasy Film, and Lost and Battlestar Galactica both won for Best TV series in their respective catagories. Christian Bale, Matthew Fox, James Callis, Katee Sackhoff and Serenity’s Summer Glau all took home actor awards.
Thank you, Rick!
Rick McCallum speaks about the upcoming Star Wars television shows at the Saturn Awards, and busts open my least favorite rumor:
McCallum also denied rumors that the new series would focus on members of the Skywalker family, but repeated that the show will take place in the timeframe between Episode III and IV. “All-new characters,” he added. “That missing 20-year period when Luke is growing up. … Think bounty hunter. That’s all I can tell you. There’s nobody else that you’ll know [in it]. At the moment. You know, it’s still [in] really really early stages. He hasn’t really sat down to think about which direction [he’s going].”
He also said that the live-action show is about 18 months off, and the animated shorts maybe a year.
Who said fandom never got you anywhere?
Remember Ryan vs. Dorkman? Well, Ryan has a site with a bunch of great tutorials for fan videomakers. He’s also worked for Lucasarts and is now with a L.A. visual effects company. Pretty impressive!
At least we have our priorities straight
Pablo does some impromtu Wikipedia research and comes up with some interesting facts: A He-Man villian has a longer entry than King Constantine I of Greece.
I did some word count checking of my own, and found that the entry for Emperor Palpatine outwords that of Julius Caesar by more than 10,000 words. Meanwhile, Palpatine’s Wookieepedia entry is almost three times the size as the one on Wikipedia.
Freaky.
Lori Jareo: The Roundup
The blogosphere has been fairly quiet on the Lori Jareo front lately, but via Lee Goldberg we have another sighting – Publisher’s Weekly.
Entries on Jareo and Another Hope have also shown up on Wookieepedia and Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, here’s a timeline of CJ’s coverage:
Thursday, April 20th: A user asks about the Amazon listing for Another Hope on the starwars.com VIP thread. Lucasfilm Licensing editor Sue Rostoni (‘Eeusu Estornii’) says it’s “Not one of ours” and passes the word onto Lucasfilm’s legal department. Word spreads and writer Lee Goldberg blogs about the incident.
Friday, April 21st: Writer John Scalzi blogs about Jareo; his post will become one of the most-linked items regarding Another Hope. The news also makes Fandom Wank, spreading rapidly across the general fandom community. Publishing blog Galleycat also posts about Jareo.
On Friday afternoon Jareo and Wordtech take down the book site thenaberriegirls.com, leaving a brief message that the book has been removed from Books in Print and “will be removed from book distribution channels effective Tuesday, April 24, 2006.”
Saturday, April 22: Teresa Nielsen Hayden posts about Jareo on Making Light; Star Wars author Karen Traviss immortalizes Jareo in Mando’a; items on several fannish Livejournal communities.
Sunday, April 23rd: Amazon removes reviews that don’t address the actual work. Thenaberriegirls.com ceases to direct to anything. Calm analysis of the situation begins to appear.
Monday, April 24th: Several sporkings of the books text appear on Livejournal; more analysis. Amazon page remains up.
Tuesday, April 25th: First mainstream news coverage from Sci-Fi Wire. Another Hope finally becomes unavailable for order on Amazon.com.
Wednesday, April 26th: Book pulled from Amazon; Column on Jareo and fan fiction appears in the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Thursday, April 27th: Time magazine writer Lev Grossman discusses Lori Jareo and fan fiction on NPR.
From the Blogside
MetroDad’s Modern Jedi’s Guide to Parenting.
The Infinite Force considers Palpatine’s manipulation of information.
Jkthunder explores Buddhist parallels in Star War
And over in Lori Jareo corner, takes on the controversy and what it means for fanfic in general from Imadra-blue and Lazypadawan.
Fanfic writers: Literature’s unsung heros?
Time magazine writer Lev Grossman discusses Lori Jareo and fan fiction on NPR’s All Things Considered.