Tag: irvin kershner

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9-disc Star Wars Blu-Ray set revealed!

The rush of fans wanting Blu-Ray details initially crashed the May the 4th site. When it finally got up and running, it began revealing images on the number of social media shares… An act which strikes me as rather sleazy.

Thankfully, I was finally able to procure some decent art, and you’ll see it above. I’m not all that impressed with the art of the individual sets, but I was never a fan of that style to begin with. The art for the saga set, on the other hand, is straight-up awful: It looks less like Star Wars and more like Precious Moments: The Movie.

Hopefully some retailer somewhere will be providing a better-looking exclusive.

LFL will be revealing some additional tidbits on their brand-new Facebook.

The special features list audio commentary for each movie, all involving George Lucas and various notables including Rick McCallum, Irvin Kershner, Carrie Fisher and Ben Burtt, as well as archival audio.

Each trilogy has an entire archive disc… And the ninth includes documentaries including 1977’s The Making of Star Wars and three brand new ones: Star Warriors, on the 501st Legion; A Conversation with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years Later with George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan and John Williams; And Star Wars Spoofs, containing footage from Family Guy, The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother and Weird Al.

I’ve cut and paste the complete list under the cut. Please don’t hate me, LFL. Continue reading “9-disc Star Wars Blu-Ray set revealed!”

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Oscar, briefly: Inception takes VFX, Portman Best Actress

There were few surprises at tonight’s Oscars: Lone genre Best Picture nom Inception was awarded mostly in technical categories (including Visual Effects… Sorry, ILM.) And Natalie Portman did indeed win Best Actress for Black Swan.

For the rest, The King’s Speech cleaned up with 4 awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Colin Firth. Batman Jesus Christian Bale took home Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter. But perhaps most mind-blowing to this former teen of the 90’s: Trent Reznor now has an Oscar (for The Social Network score.)

As for the ceremony itself… It was pretty standard; All the real fun was (of course) partaking in all the snark on Twitter. I did greatly enjoy the auto-tune, though.

And yes, Irvin Kershner did make the In Memoriam reel, as did modelmaker Grant McCune.

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Irvin Kershner, director of ESB, has died

Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back, has died at the age of 87.

ESB is considered by many to be the finest entry in the Star Wars franchise.  And he’s probably most appreciated for arguing it out with Harrison Ford to put together the famous “I love you” “I know” exchange.

Those of us lucky enough to have heard him speak at Celebration know what an interesting and multi-faceted man he was.  He will be missed.

UPDATE: George remembers Kersh.

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Roundup: The Making of Empire takes off

The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back has now been out for a whole week and the coverage just keeps coming. The hightlight is almost certainly Vanity Fair’s interview with Irvin Kershner about reviews, George, the actors, and whether he would have directed a prequel.

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Empire Tales

Coming Soon continues their DVD preview with some great quotes from a Q&A session with ESB director Irvin Kershner:

I did not think of it as science fiction ever. To me it was a fable. It was a fairy tale. And all the research I did was for fairy tales. I read, of course, Campbell. I read Jung. I read Freud. I even read Einstein to try and understand a little bit of what he was saying because he was a great philosopher. And of course I’m very familiar with Zen Buddhist concept. To me it’s a hobby, not a religion. A hobby. I collect Buddhas, you see. Well, I stressed the fairy tale aspect. I stressed the characterization. I tried to put as much humor as possible in it.

In other SW/DVD news…
Reuters interview with Anthony Daniels / John Campea at Movie Blog pleads for sanity / TFN wants you to get a good deal (and then argue about it on their boards) / Jason Kottke has some interesting things to say about Hollywood and and the threat of piracy as told by George Lucas.