Celebration Chicago: Art Show pre-orders up; Ray Park, Matt Lanter, Tiya Sicar join guest list

The Celebration Art Show offerings are live and up for preorder! Above is Brian Miller’s “A Galaxy Far, Far Away,” which is both my favorite and a perfect fit for our header space, but there’s something for everyone.

The latest batch of guests are Ray Park (Darth Maul) and the voice of animated Anakin, Matt Lanter, and Rebels’ Tiya Sircar (Sabine Wren). As chance would have it, Lanter is the interview on this week’s Star Wars Show:

Looks like a bunch of game reveals are coming to the con. Y’all have fun with that.

Forces of Destiny is back on March 19

Disney has announced that we can expect the next set of Forces of Destiny shorts on Monday, March 19. All eight new episodes will debut at 10:00 a.m. PT (1:00 p.m. ET) on Disney’s Youtube and Disney.com. The special will air on the Disney Channel the following Monday (March 25) at 9:50 p.m. ET/PT.

Voices include Mark Hamill (Luke), Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), Tiya Sircar (Sabine), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka), Vanessa Marshall (Hera), Catherine Taber (Padmé) and Matt Lanter (Anakin).

Titles, descriptions, and images in a gallery under the cut. Continue reading “Forces of Destiny is back on March 19”

Video: Unboxing Star Wars: TFA Visual Dictionary, Rey’s Story & Rebels ‘Shroud of Darkness’

Unboxing Star Wars 3-13-16 title card

Time for another episode of Unboxing Star Wars with Baby Jawa, Yowie, and me! Yowie and I discuss the Star Wars Rebels episode ‘Shroud of Darkness’ and then review two recent books: The Force Awakens: Rey’s Story by Elizabeth Schaefer, from Disney-Lucasfilm Press, and Pablo Hidalgo’s The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary, from DK Publishing. Meanwhile, Baby Jawa does baby things.


Quick reviews
The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary – An enjoyable must-have guide for all Star Wars fans!
The Force Awakens: Rey’s Story – A great retelling of TFA from Rey’s point of view. Intended for young readers, but can be enjoyed by any fan. Love that artwork by Brian Rood!
‘Shroud of Darkness’ – Thumbs-up! Force visions reveal some interesting secrets for our characters, and provide for some cool scenes and the return of several legendary SW voices.

Get more info on Wear Star Wars Every Day or make a donation at GoFundMe. Check out my article on the best quotes from Hondo Ohnaka on StarWars.com, and Hondo’s take on this year’s ‘This is Madness’ brackets.

Note: Disney-Lucasfilm Press provided a copy of The Force Awakens: Rey’s Story for review.

Trailer park special edition: Fall’s new genre shows

The TV stations held their upfronts last week, giving advertisers (and viewers) their first look at fall’s new shows. So your first trailer park of the week is devoted to genre and genre-ajacent TV show trailers.

Up top, the biggest gun: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from Joss Whedon and the Disney/Marvel conglomerate, coming at you on ABC, Tuesdays at 8:00. And yes, there is already a push to abbreviate this as MAoS, so pass it on.

Note that yes, some of these are spoiling their show’s first episode, but love it or leave it, their main purpose is to sell ads.

Continue reading “Trailer park special edition: Fall’s new genre shows”

The Clone Wars S5 finale: Whose fault is Ahsoka’s fate?

TCW-520-TheWrongJedi-clouds

After seeing the The Clone Wars finale at Lucasfilm, and then watching ‘The Wrong Jedi’ again at home, there’s certainly a lot to talk about regarding what happened in that final episode of the season, especially with Ahsoka. This article will move into spoiler realms after the next picture, so go watch the episode if you haven’t done so already.

Also, Ashley Eckstein and Dave Filoni go behind the scenes with ‘The Wrong Jedi’ in the behind the scenes commentary. For more insight on the episode (and the whole finale arc), check out the Question and Answers segment from the Lucasfilm screening with Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, recorded by Bryan Young for the Full of Sith podcast, episode XII (If you just want to skip to the Q&A, it starts around 35:10).

Spoilers from here on out! (including the comments)

Continue reading “The Clone Wars S5 finale: Whose fault is Ahsoka’s fate?”

The Clone Wars: Ahsoka is ‘The Wrong Jedi’ – but is there a right one?

Ahsoka Tano goes on trial as the perpetrator of the Jedi Temple bombing in the final episode of Season Five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Saturday morning. ‘The Wrong Jedi’ is an amazing episode, with some big things happening so catch it as soon as possible to avoid spoilers!

In the preview above, Ahsoka faces questioning from the Jedi Council, while in the second preview (below), Anakin Skywalker tracks down Asajj Ventress in the Coruscant underworld for some answers. And there’s another tooka! Find out more what is in store for The Clone Wars with a twitter chat today with Ashley Eckstein, hosted by Christan Blauvelt at Hollywood.com. Continue reading “The Clone Wars: Ahsoka is ‘The Wrong Jedi’ – but is there a right one?”

The Clone Wars: Season Five finale screening at Lucasfilm

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On Friday night, Lucasfilm hosted a screening of the final season five arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars for fans and the crew of the show and their families at their main campus in San Francisco. Combining the last four episodes (including the premiere of ‘To Catch a Jedi’ and ‘The Wrong Jedi’), the audience was treated to a special presentation of the story, and was followed up with a question and answer session with Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, moderated by Pablo Hidalgo. Also in attendance were Sam Witwer, the voice of Darth Maul; and Charles Murray, who wrote the story arc.

R2-D2 at LFL screening with JawaAfter a quick intro from Dave Filoni and producer Cary Silver (with Filoni officially accepting Bonnie Burton into the 104th Wolf Pack), they got the show started. Similar to other screenings where they have shown an entire story arc, this version included some extra scenes that didn’t fit into the original episodes, and perhaps also helped to tie the whole story arc together. As a bonus treat, Dave announced that the opening had been made for the screening: which was having The Clone Wars logo enter with the Star Wars theme music as if it were a Star Wars movie. Also, classic Star Wars wipes were used between several scenes that I hadn’t noticed before.

My spoiler-free review of the episodes: Holy cow! This is some of the best this show has ever done – with story, with animation and sound, everything. There is really something to seeing this show on a big screen that makes it so much better than watching it on a TV. But even without the Lucasfilm theater experience, this story will blow you away. We’ve already seen a fantastic scene with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano at the end of ‘The Jedi Who Knew Too Much’, where their relationship changes with Ahsoka asking her master to trust her as she leaps into the maw of Coruscant. That’s just the start of some great character bits, with Matt Lanter and Ashley Eckstein (and several others) bringing the characters to life in a powerful way. And there’s some awesome action. And some stuff I didn’t expect at all. I’m sure there’s only so many ways I can say that this is amazing, but it truly is.

Before the Q&A started, Pablo answered two important questions that might have been on people’s minds: No, they weren’t going to take any questions on Episode VII or other non-TCW topics, and there is no official announcement yet on if/when/how Season Six (and later seasons) will be broadcast or otherwise enjoyed by the public.

The Q&A obviously covered a lot of the key stuff from the story arc, so I won’t talk about it until after all the episodes have aired. If you’re looking for hints for what happens, go back to see my write-ups from the USO screening for some of the questions and answers from that – part I and part II. If you want something not spoilery, Dave Filoni talked about the influence of his pets on the show, and when asked if he got a motion picture budget to make a Clone Wars movie, he’d spend most of it on hockey pants or crew jackets with rocket packs. This screening was Matt Lanter’s first time seeing the completed episodes, and he was pretty amazed by the final results on screen.

Thanks to Lucasfilm for hosting such a fantastic event. After seeing this screening and the USO screening, I really believe that The Clone Wars is best seen on the big screen, and LFL should keep that in mind for the fans, and fans should seek out any opportunity to watch it cinematically – like at the next Celebration they attend?