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EUbits: Go inside the Blueprints mega-book, Zahn in NPR’s SF/F poll, plus Vader and Mara

Upcoming. Get a look inside October’s Star Wars: The Blueprints at SFGate. And you can see a few stills on io9.

Or check out some shots our own Jawajames took at Comic-Con: Ewok Village – Jedi Starfighter (ROTS) – Jabba’s Sail Barge – X-Wing Fighter with fold-out page – Mos Eisley Cantina – Cantina exterior/Ubrikkian speeder

Vote! Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy is one of the options in an NPR poll that’s being used to create a top 100 list of the best science fiction and fantasy. It appears to be the only Star Wars offering, though I do spy Stover’s Acts of Caine series at the very top. (It’s alphabetical.) Everyone gets ten votes from among the many, many options, so no doubt you’ll spy some other favorites as well.

Short stories. A new story by Ryder Windham, ‘Vader Adrift,’ will be in a November issue of the Insider, to tie in with the release of The Complete Vader.

Namesake corner. Frank-Joseph Frelier’s Mara Jade collection includes convention sketches from Adam Hughes and Jan Duursema. (Frelier ran the now-defunct Mara fansite Jade Crusades.)

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Fantasy Flight Games to produce Star Wars card, roleplaying, and miniatures games

Fantasy Flight Games has picked up the dormant license to produce Star Wars roleplaying, card, and miniature games.

The license was previously held by by Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast, which let it go in 2010. Star Wars roleplaying and card games originated under West End Games and Decipher, respectively, but from what I’ve heard over the years, WOTC’s versions suffered when compared to the much-beloved originals.

Fantasy Flight is launching their Star Wars line with a miniature game, X-Wing, and Star Wars: The Card Game.

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Out this week: A new Dark Times storyline begins

Comic fans can look forward to the start of a new arc on Wednesday with Dark Times: Out of the Wilderness #1.

You may even get the new issue of Insider! Technically it came out last week, but I only received mine in the mail yesterday. But I probably deserved that, given that I still haven’t taken the plastic off the previous two issues yet.

The cupboard won’t be so bare next week: August 9th will bring the the eighth Fate of the Jedi book, Christie Golden’s Ascension.

Or, looking even furthur into the future, Amazon is currently offering preorder savings on both Blu-Ray trilogy sets for $39.99 each – that’s 43% off retail. (The full saga is only 36% off – perhaps they’re saving that sale for closer to the release?) In any case, savings.

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Giveaway: Win a bottle of Carbonite nail polish

So I have another obsession: Nail polish. I’ve kept it off the blog because, well, it’s not usually relevant. Until now… Sort of. See, Revlon has a new shade called Carbonite.

Yes, seriously.

A bit of background: For the past few seasons, Revlon has been releasing ‘dupes’ – shades that are near matches – of the very expensive Chanel polishes. Carbonite resembles Graphite, which retails for $25. I found the Revlon for $3.99. Is it any wonder the dupes fly off the shelves?

But anyway… Since I found the polish for so cheap, I picked up a couple of extras, and I’m going to give them away to you. All you need to do is comment and tell me which Star Wars character you would like to see frozen in carbonite. (Nicely.) Two winners will be picked via a random number draw, and I’ll mail each a bottle of Revlon Carbonite — and maybe another polish or two.

If playing the numbers isn’t your game, or you have deep-grounded moral objections to freezing fictional people in liquid metal, Revlon Carbonite may be on your store shelves now.

Comments will be closed Sunday, August 7, and the winners will be notified on Monday.

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Review: LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace

LEGO Star Wars -The Padawan Menace: Visiting Mos Eisley

Turning to Star Wars for comedy value is nothing new – in the past few years, three Family Guy parodies and three Robot Chicken specials have mined the saga for laughs. But LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace breaks some new ground for Star Wars entertainment: not only is it funny and full of jokes, it also tells a new adventure that builds on both the classic and prequel trilogies. It breaks from the style of the LEGO Star Wars video games by having the characters talk rather than just use gestures and non-word vocalizations, but it would be slow to tell a story if all the dialogue had to be pantomimed. The Padawan Menace in two words, stolen from one of the younglings: Totally Awesome! Continue reading “Review: LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace“

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Red Tails to take flight in January 2012

StarWars.com announced today the release date for Red Tails: January 20, 2012. The film, being produced by George Lucas and directed by Anthony Hemingway, focuses on the story of the Tuskegee airmen in World War II, and stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Bryan Cranston, and Ne-Yo.

January seems a telling time for Fox to release the film – it seems that it is neither going for Oscar contention nor summer blockbuster status, and it comes out less than a month before The Phantom Menace 3-D.

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Lunch with Timothy Zahn and other revelations

Two of the three winners of Suvudu’s SDCC lunch with Tim Zahn and Shelly Shapiro contest just happened to be a pair of familiar bloggers: Amy Ratcliffe of Geek with Curves and Peter Morrison of Lightsaber Rattling. They were sworn to secrecy on some points, but wrote up what they could on their respective blogs, including that Tim is interested in writing a Clone Wars episode.

Zahn was busy at SDCC, and sat down with the folks of the podcast Star Wars Action News. That interview is up now, though Nanci at EUC has summarized a few pertinent points about a possible future project.

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Comic-Con: Her Universe panel examines what women want in their sci-fi

Her Universe hosted its second annual panel at Comic-Con last Thursday, with Ashley Eckstein moderating a panel entitled “What Women Want in their Female Sci-Fi Heroes.” The six announced panelists were Dave Filoni of The Clone Wars, Betsy Mitchell (Editor in Chief of Del Rey), Gail Simone (comics writer, including Birds of Prey, Secret Six, and the upcoming Batgirl), Chris Sanagustin (Senior VP Development & Current Programming for Universal Cable Productions), Bryan Q. Miller (Exec. Story Editor for Smallville, comic writer Batgirl), and Melinda Hsu Taylor (writer/producer- Lost & Medium and Supervising Producer on Touch) . They were joined by unannounced panelist Alison Scagliotti (Claudia on Warehouse 13).

Eckstein started the panel by giving each panelist a question regarding developing female roles in their particular media, especially with the female audience in mind. Watch portions of the panel:

  • Introduction of Panelists by Ashley Eckstein
  • Chris Sanagustin on making characters accessible to the audience, including a bit about Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome
  • Bryan Q. Miller on character vulnerabilities and breaking down the notion that a butt-kicking heroine has to be either a robot or a sexbot
  • Betsy Mitchell comparing now to 30 years ago for women sci-fi readers and women writers and editors, and the rise of female-oriented urban paranormal fiction.
  • Gail Simone on progress in the portrayal of women in comics, moving past the Women in Refrigerators trope, and the industry’s gradual awareness of growing female readership, and developing female characters.
  • Ashley Eckstein commenting on the progress in recognizing that there is a female fan base in science fiction.
  • Finishing up with Gail Simone and then Melinda Hsu Taylor on being inspired by sci-fi growing up in Maine, and some of her favorite female characters from science fiction and fantasy.
  • Dave Filoni on the process of developing a female Jedi character like Ahsoka Tano and also reading Éowyn as a child.
  • Allison Scagliotti on playing her character Claudia Donovan, the women characters of Warehouse 13 and the issues of being a female actor – and being a role model of the cool smart girl.

In the Q&A, Simone, Filoni, and Scagliotti fielded most of the questions, with Filoni and Simone clarifying how their approaches to writing female characters were similar. Even though the panel went over time, the audience remained and the panelists stayed on stage to answer questions about incorporating female biology into developing and portraying female characters, the differences in creating female villains from male villains, predicting the future of the importance (or nonimportance) of being critical of gender for characters (and for creators), and finally ended with a young fan thanking the panelists for making it cool to be a young female fan.