Wrybread's Cavalcade of Whimsy

...to the preview screening of Star Wars: Clone Wars tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 10am at Silvercity Metrotown. Yes, I know it's short notice considering that we'll need to get there by 9am, i_chaos_bringer just dumped an extra ticket in my lap tonight. Oh well, I'd hate to see it go to waste and this should be a good occasion (hey, it's a Star Wars Opening if nothing else, should be a lot of cool fans around), so let me know if any of you want the ticket ASAP.

Current Location: Wrybread HQ
Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: The Imperial March

Just in over the Geek-Trolla: http://collectspace.com/news/news-082707a.html

There's not a whole lot that I can add to that awesome, save to say that as a way to drum up publicity for the real-life space program it works. It's the first time since I was seven or so that I've been at all interested in it. I think I lost all interest in real life space exploration when I found out that in order to be an astronaut you had to be really good at math, and that we weren't going to the moon anymore, and that there are no actual Martians (or Santa Claus to conquer them for that matter!). Oh man, that was disillusioning. Erm, anyways, I hope to hell someone gets video footage of that ceremony (Chewie and Boba Fett!) up on Youtube, that'll be priceless.

Current Location: Wrybread HQ
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: WrestleCrap Radio Podcast

As noted in this here LJ's previous entry, May 25th. was the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, and as anyone reading that entry could probably figure out, I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan. That being said, I'm not one of the hardest of the hardcore fans who'll read, play, or watch most anything with the Star Wars label attached. I'm mostly thinking about the "Expanded Universe" (EU for short, frankly at this point I think "Bloated Universe" might be a better term) of novels here. I haven't actually read that many (just Kathy Tyers' Truce at Bakura and Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, both of which were actually excellent), but I've dipped into the New Jedi Order a couple of times and am generally familiar with the plots and events of that series and subsequent books.  It's based on those-and especially based on a summary of the latest series that I just read over at SomethingAwful-that I don't want to read any further.

Current Location: Wrybread HQ
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Sting w/ The Chieftains-Sisters of Mercy

In honour of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars hitting theatres and changing movies and fandom forever comes this survey from spacepug, originally designed for this week's Star Wars party at BIFF (group of sci-fi/fantasy-type fans I hang out with most Friday nights), I'm really curious to see what my flist (and my flist's flist, go ahead and spread it around) has to say about it, here it is with my typically hypergraphical answers:

How old were you when you first saw Star Wars (Episode IV A New Hope)? 9, I think. Although I actually saw the Original Trilogy out of order, the first one I saw was Empire, followed by Jedi, followed by A New Hope.

How many times did you see Star Wars in the theatre? *chuckles* Born six years too late, damn it!

How many copies of the movie do you own? Two of A New Hope, One of Empire, One of Jedi, None of the prequels.

What was the first Star Wars toy, game or "collector's item" you got? This old Star Wars board game and a couple of comics, got them from a neighbour of mine whose kids were too old for them. Don't know if I still have them anywhere.

How many Star Wars toys do you still have? Just two actually, I wasn't really into the toys. A Luke figure from A New Hope that I found at a yard sale and Lego Star Wars II for the DS.

How many of the books have you read? All three of the OT novelizations, some comics, and a couple of the other novels, most recently Truce at Bakura. Haven't brought myself to read the New Jedi Order yet *sob*, but I know the basic story.

Who is your favourite Star Wars character? So many to choose from when you're a pretty hardcore fan and thereforfe know the names/bios of all the minor characters. Tossup between Darth Vader, Lando, and Wedge Antilles. I'm also fond of some of the minor Jedi characters from the prequels, among them Kit Fisto (the smiling squid-type guy), Plo Koon, and Ayala Secura (the female twilek).

What is your favourite Star Wars toy or "collector's item"? Hmm...probably this old storybook of A New Hope that I found at a flea market when I was 8 or 9, I read that thing to death. Notable in that it included the scenes with Luke meeting Biggs on Tatooine at the beginning that were cut from the final version, including photographs. Years later I read that a lot of fans who had read the storybook misremembered the Biggs scene as having been something they saw in a movie, leading to an urban legend among Star Wars fans that the original release included the Biggs scenes. I no longer have it, but as a kid I also had this little Return of the Jedi book on tape, of the kind Disney used to put out where you had a little picture book version of the movie and then said book on tape, complete with sound effects and quotes from the movie. Anyways, my brother and I wore that thing out during a family trip to Greece, we'd just listen to it over and over again. It's still the main thing my mother remembers from that trip, and even though he's never seen the movie my dad can still quote dialogue based on that tape.

What is your favourite memory of Star Wars? Man, so many to choose from, but I'll go back to where it really all began for me: watching Return of the Jedi on TV at my grandparent's house, Christmas (or maybe Easter, I'm not sure which, this is England where they roll out all of the big movies on TV for the holidays), 1992. And taping it so I could watch it again and again and again. It wasn't my first exposure to Star Wars, as a cousin of mine had shown me Empire a little while before, but as a kid Empire's downer ending and less action-based plot didn't really appeal to me. Jedi, on the other hand, was like nothing I had seen before, especially that final space battle. These days, I can recognize Jedi's flaws and agree with the fandom's concensus that Empire is the best movie, but at the time Jedi embodied for me that feeling of overwhelming freedom and excitement that you can really only have as a kid and that, perhaps, you're always trying and failing to recapture as an adult (prequels, anyone?). From there on in, I was hooked.

There we go, looking forward to seeing some responses to this one, and...May the Force be With You.

Current Location: Wrybread HQ
Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: John Williams-The Imperial March

Ignore the fact that it's from FOXNews.com (Fox News: We make CNN look unbiased and reliable!) and the excess of celebrity ass-kissing and focus on the Lucas interview:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270874,00.html

Okay, so it sounds like an informal conversation and not a formal announcement, but interesting news about Indiana Jones 4 (here's hoping Spielberg keeps a tight rein on Lucas, especially script-writing-wise), and the future of Star Wars on TV, even though what the reporter calls "movies" sound more like a pair of TV specials. More Clone Wars will definitely be a good thing as that series was a lot of fun, but given Lucas' recent track record-and with the memory of the Star Wars Holiday Special still fresh in my mind-I'm not so sure about more Star Wars TV specials. The fact that Lucas comes across as a babbling megalomaniacal twat in his discussion of Spider-Man 3 doesn't help. I know Spidey 3's gotten mixed reviews thus far, and I haven't actually seen it yet (Imax this weekend!), but...he dismisses someone else's movie as "silly" and lacking in story (Reminds me of this Pot I knew, who was talking to a Kettle...) and then bluntly declares that such criticisms of his own work aren't valid...just 'cause. And he used the word "milieu" for no good reason other than to confirm that yes, he has fully given in to the pretentious side of the Force. Here's hoping someone convinces him not to do everything on these new specials (direct, produce, write the script...especially write the script), since what made the Original Trilogy great was Lucas letting other people (writers, directors, actors) run with his great ideas and fill in the blanks, but considering how much his supposed genius seems to have gone to his head and ego, that seems unlikely.

Current Location: A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Season of the Witch-Richard Thompson

*shudders* Ya know, as a Star Wars fanboy you hear all of the horror stories.  You even meet some of the battle-scarred veterans of '78, brave souls who had this visited upon them as children but survived and had to go on as best they could to build somewhat normal lives.  But my god, you just don't know the horror of it until until you've seen the Star Wars Holiday Special for yourself.  

Starts here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRkE7cA5mA&NR=1 and pretty much the whole thing's on Youtube.  Doped up Carrie Fisher, tarted up Mark Hamill, the wacky antics of Chewie's family, some bizarre Julia Child alien thing, and the least threatening Imperials ever.  If nothing else it'll take your mind off the Canucks game tonight, this is even more painful.  *groans* *bad Marlon Brando impression*  The horror, the horror...

   

Current Location: Wrybread HQ
Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Everybody Knows-Leonard Cohen

Oh, man. I'd heard of how hilarious Robot Chicken was, but this is the first I've actually seen of it. Man, this is the kind of spin on all of the pop culture figures of my childhood that I wish I could come up with.

Supervillain carpool, features Skeletor, who I think falls under the same category as ninjas and pirates in that he makes anything awesome. And I have that Mumm-ra figure somewhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wptJ2fYm3A

Conversation between Darth Vader and Palpatine after the 1st Death Star was destroyed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAL7w2ybTfQ

Captain Planet's true identity (why do people like the Robot Chicken guys and the Family Guy guys make fun of Ted Turner so much? Oh, right, he's Ted Turner): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYFu__Q9ASU

A giraffe teaches us the five stages of grieving:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGvw6WpHSF4

Brilliant is all I can say. I gotta find these on DVD.

Current Location: Wrybread HQ
Current Music: Hamlet in Four Minutes-Brobdingnagian Bards

After a multi-year absence. Picked up a Nintendo DS Lite this week to ease my way back into video games, if all goes well I'll be looking at getting a Wii at some point down the road. For now, though, I'm having a blast with Lego Star Wars: Original Trilogy for the DS, a game which although it has its' graphical glitches is a lot of fun (speaking of fun & glitches; just why the hell do the characters in my party that I'm not controlling randomly shoot me in the back every once in a while? Not that it isn't whacky fun to shoot/kill your own characters when they get in your way, it's great to have Obi-Wan just haul off and start hacking up Luke with a lightsabre. But I digress).

Okay, so anyone that knows me well enough to be reading this knows that I'm a huge Star Wars fanboy, so my love for this game would seem inevitable, and yes, I leap at the chance to shoot it out with (Lego) stormtroopers on the Tantive IV or trip up (Lego) Imperial Walkers with my snowspeeder's harpoon cable. But what's really great about this game is the sense of fun the Lego element gives it, it makes sure that it doesn't take itself too seriously and gives it a great tongue-in-cheek feel. It's not just a video game that blandly follows the SW trilogy, but a goofy video game set in the SW universe, with the world of SW getting blended with Lego (you can "build" structures both to advance your quest and just to get extra credits) and also with the logic of platform games, which works especially well on the Death Star (swinging and jumping from platform to platform with your grappling hook) and in the Hoth levels, which play like one of those slippery Mario "ice worlds" (you haven't lived until you've seen a Lego Luke Skywalker sliding around Hoth on his bum, and no I'm not proud that I just wrote those words). All in all, a lot of fun so far, and it looks like the DS has a great swack of games for it (Yoshi's Island?).

Current Location: Vancouver, BC
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Jeff Buckley-Hallelujah