Celebration V: So much con left to cover

The con is over, but with so much going on there’s still a lot of coverage coming out from StarWars.com and the fans. (Like the video above.) Here are a few highlights

Your moment of zen: “I was sitting in the middle of the Force Unleashed 2 panel when I saw you from across the room.”

Ewan on new film, nudity, Star Wars

Ewan McGregor has a film coming out, and thus he was on NPR the other day. You can listen to the segment (Or not: NPR provides a transcript,) but here’s some of what he had to say about working on the prequels:

“When I got closer and closer to being cast as Obi-Wan Kenobi, I did question whether it was the right thing for me. Up until that point, I’d been involved in mainly low-budget independent films … and I felt like being part of the [indie British filmmaking] team was my identity as an actor … I didn’t think that ‘Star Wars’ was quite who I was or what I was about. However, the closer I got, the more I wanted to do it … I’m very happy with the work I did in ‘Star Wars’ … I’ve always been quite open with the fact that they were technically quite difficult to make. There’s a lot of green screen and blue screen, and for the actor, there’s very often not another actor to act with — so you were playing to a tennis ball on a stick or a piece of tape on a green curtain, and that’s just not easy. That becomes a very technical exercise.”

The fandom minute: Defending TPM, subtext, politics, cake, and other things you do under the cover of night

Rebuttal. Big-time prequel fan Bryan Young has begun his response to the 90-minute Phantom Menace review that was going around a while back.

Presented without comment. Karen Miller, whose Star Wars books have been enthusiastically received by certain areas of fandom, wants folks to know that she’s not writing homoerotic subtext into her Clone Wars books. Okay then. (It seems the rant was inspired by this thread. Sigh.)

If we ever see an Essential Guide again… Suggestions for a book on GFFA politics. Dan Wallace is game!

Cakes! Clone Wars’ fame continues to spread with an impressive Republic Gunship and an adorable Jabba with Rotta. (via/via)

Crass fansumerism. Chewbika or soap? A bank?

Prequel infinities comics? Not so fast

Redeemed Vader? Sure. This? DO NOT WANTSomewhere in Star Wars Insider #114 there’s a mention of a prequel Infinities (alternate universe) series in the works. However, Randy Stradley said on the Dark Horse message boards yesterday that there are “no plans” for any such thing.

I am both relieved (the OT Infinities were… Not good) and saddened that my dream of a Kevin Rubio-scripted ‘What if Jar Jar became Boba Fett’ storyline is not to be. (Seriously, if this ever comes close to reality? Please skip the awkward part and go straight to comedy.)

SDCC ’09: The morning Star Wars catchup

Use the Force Trainer by starwarsblog @ Flickr aka Pablo HidalgoGet with the now, man! Oh, USA Today. Why are you trying to fan the flames of Prequel vs. Original Trilogy rivalry? Protip: It is no longer 2002. We OT fans can (mostly) roll with it.

Party like it’s 2010. Hey, TFN came back! On the Celebration V note, the rumor mill seems to be favoring Chicago and this pleases me. Midwest represent! No Florida!

Bookstuffs. Check out the cover for The Making of The Empire Strikes Back. And perhaps today someone will enlighten us on this Star Wars: Visions thing. There’s also a panel report on what has to be the most ridiculous visual dictionary so far. And yes, Pablo you are shameless.

New Robot Chicken: Bonus segment from the DVD. Down nerds, down.

Phototacular. StarWars.com and Rebelscum don’t stop snapping.

But wait! It’s a comic con! Dark Horse is bringing select issues of Empire, Legacy and The Clone Wars to the iPhone and will be producing two Star Wars one-shots.

Nerd-spotting. Great White Snark has a Day 1 costume gallery.

Facepalm. Fans say Avatar will be as game-changing as Star Wars. Please stop feeding James Cameron’s ego. Don’t you remember what happened after Titanic?

The Star Wars prequels vs. The Matrix sequels

The Oregonian’s Shawn Levy ponders which highly anticipated set of -quels let viewers down the most. His conclusion is… Not really all that surprising, actually.

Well, with both trilogies complete and behind us, I’m not sure that those people would have been correct in the least. Lucas improved on quite a bit of “SWEP1” in the subsequent prequels, while the Wachowskis absolutely crash-landed “The Matrix” in their sequels to it. (Let’s leave off “Speed Racer,” shall we, so as not to be overly cruel….) Especially given a decade of reassessment, I’d call Lucas’ three-film enterprise by far the more successful.

(Via io9, where they are polling, and Star Wars is ‘winning.’ Frustrated childhood dreams rear their ugly heads again!)

And can I just say randomly that The Fifth Element beats them all in capturing the madcap cheesy fun aspect of Star Wars? Or will you stone me?

The fandom minute: TPM documentry, PT defense, AT-STs in the park, plus cake

gffa-docContinuing adventures in TPM nostalgia. Everyone’s talking about the documentary A Galaxy Far Far Away, which has a 10th anniversary edition out. (Hey, it was news to me!) The reviews are not all so good, though.

And on that note… Somewhere on the internet, someone is always defending the prequels.

Pro art: Colleen Doran shares the original sketch for her Anakin/Padme card from the Galaxy 4 set.

Gathering: A Geekdad spotted a Star Wars event in in London, Ontario a few weeks back.

There must be cake. Perhaps the most amazing AT-AT cake you’ve ever seen.

Fun fact: Darth Vader’s reveal to Luke is the most misquoted phrase in film.

What? I can’t believe GalacticBinder found even one, let alone ten Star Wars surfing crossovers.