Yup, it’s back, and we’re still recovering from April Fools… More serious (okay, mostly snarky) tweets beneath the cut, including J. W. Rinzler on Making of Return of the Jedi, Paul S. Kemp on carbonite, and more on parenting, programing, and Luke’s love life. Continue reading “Han slaps first: Best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets for the past week”
Has Del Rey even done a prank before? I don’t even remember. But this year, they whipped up a doozy. Beginning with ‘An Apology,’ and then the reveal of the post-Fate of the Jedi series, The Clone Wars 2, by Timothy Zahn. “A series with no end, as long as clones are available there are stories to tell.” (And yes, Zahn actually wrote the excerpt!)
Another winner is Spielburgers, a theme restaurant based on the films of Steven Speilberg. Menu offerings include the The Bruce burger, Catch Me If You Cannelloni, Jurassic Pork Pulled Sandwich, and Raiders of the Lost Artichoke.
We’re only a few months out from Celebration VI, and, Friday’s announcement aside, news has been fairly thin on the ground so far. Luckily, Lucasfilm and Reed have give us at Club Jade a first look at some of the convention’s programming.
The night is dark and full of terrors. The second season of the hit series based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire debuts tomorrow! (I’m so excited, even though I can’t actually remember where A Clash of Kings ends and A Storm of Swords begins.) Among the must-reads is this interview with showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. There’s also been a lot of attention paid to the shows’ female characters. And is the mainstream finally paying attention to fantasy? Well, sort of.
If you want to gorge on more Thrones news, reviews, and interviews ahead of the premiere, head over to the dedicated fan blog Winter is Coming.
Authors behaving badly. Christoper Priest, author of The Prestige, is not very happy with the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist. Take it, Cleolinda.
The Hunger Games. Everyone loves it! Except the people who somehow missed that Rue was black in the book, and think that diminishes the character’s impact. (Um, spoilers.) Not enough facepalm in the world. Actress Amandla Stenberg said in a statement: “It was an amazing experience; I am proud of the film and my performance. I want to thank all of my fans and the entire Hunger Games community for their support and loyalty.”
Will The Hunger Games mark a sea change in Hollywood’s willingness to greenlight more female-lead action movies? The experts are skeptical.
The ‘Nerdist’ host will be joining us in Orlando as a “special guest host,” whatever that means. He’s known within the geek community for his podcast and being the host of G4’s Web Soup. (Hopefully he’ll be less obnoxious than the last Star Wars ‘hosting’ job G4’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn did at SDCC ’09.) He’s also the host of AMC’s Talking Dead.
He’ll also be hosting Course of the Force, a charity run, at San Diego Comic Con.
Now, if you’ve paid any attention around here, you’d no I have little to no use for anything having to do with Star Wars gaming. So, needless to say, I am not particularly impressed with this $6000 life-sized statue of Old Republic Vader wannabee Darth Malgus. This goes beyond wacky, right into Frames territory. Though, honestly, if I had that much money to waste on absurdly expensive Star Wars merchandise, I’d rather have a set of Frames. Or two.
Malgus, for what it’s worth, was the star of a novel, Paul Kemp’s The Old Republic: Deceived.
Top-notch reporting!TMZ harassed George Lucas in Los Angeles yesterday to learn what (almost) every Star Wars fan already knows: There will be no more Star Wars movies. “Never,” you can barely hear Lucas say over the ‘reporter.’ Just let the guy have a visit with his daughter, jeez.
Games. For those who roll their eyes at the very mention of Kyle Katarn, stop here: Gaming media are theorizing that LucasArts may revive a certain first-person shooter. Whatever.
Tours. ‘Where Science Meets Imagination’ is still out there, and its next stop will be the Indiana State Museum in our beloved Indianapolis.
A few days ago I threw a link to some Willow cartoon art in an an EUbits. Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo expressed some skepticism, and came back with the above tweet today. My working theory is that the ‘animation’ art was fan art, or – if io9’s theory of the art’s Nelvana origin is true – some speculative art from an Ewoks or Droids animator that never made it any further than that?
“Although to be fair, I didn’t ask EVERYONE,” Pablo told me later. “Just those who would know.”