R2 Revenge of the Droids

A Star Wars Reboot People Would Actually Watch -- powered by Cracked.com

Star Wars Uncut

This has renewed my love for Star Wars. Star Wars Uncut is the entire film (Episode IV - A New Hope), made by fans who each had 15 seconds to shoot a section. Its amazing! Each 15 seconds is unique but all the different looking segments flow incredibly well together and there are some really imaginative interpretations of some truly well known scenes.


I urge any Star Wars fan to reserve 2 hours to watch this in its entirety.

Star Wars trilogy as a paper animation

Check this out.

And whilst I'm on the subject of Star Wars, check out this superb Blaxploitation spoof trailer for a Lando themed movie called BlackStar Warrior. Hopefully with the recent sucess of Black Dynamite (WATCH IT NOW!!!) this could get made into a full feature.



Fingers crossed!

Star Wars on Blu Ray!

It had to happen eventually, now in its 30th (yes - 30th!!!) year, Star Wars and its many sequels will finally get a Blu Ray HD release. This time Lucas is packing in even more deleted and missing scenes, it's amazing there is still so much unseen footage is still kicking around.

Release date is sometime next year unfortunately which seems badly organised, on the 31st anniversary - come on! Maybe that will tie in with the theatrical release of all the films, revisioned in 3D? And eventually the 3D versions will get a released on disc (or whatever format has taken over) and I'll probably buy the whole series again!

Lucas is one clever bastard.

Anyway, enjoy the above montage of all six films against the excellent John Williams score. I don't think I've ever seen the films put together like this, it makes me want to dust off the DVD's and rewatch them all again.

Hmm...!

Public Service Announcements

Check these out...





I haven't got a clue what the one below is about, maybe the soldiers a paedo!

Drunk Ewoks

Ah... bless those crazy drunk critters of Endor!

Aaaah yeah!

Every Star Wars fans fantasy! If you liked that, check out this Pirates of the Caribbean alternate version.

Marc Ecko Star Wars Collection

Check out these awesome Marc Ecko 'Star Wars' hoodies.



Unfortunately they're limited editions and incredibly hard to find at a decent price. Most, if not all have been bought only to be resold on eBay for (at least) three times its value. I really hate the bastards that do that!

If anyone has a spare £100 or more and want to get me something unique for Christmas these two hoodies will do nicely!

Darth Vader being a smartass

Follow the links below for more funny Darth clips.

Vader Sessions - This was made using lots of James Earl Jones voice clips, its quite funny especially the radio bits at the end.

Vader Plays The Blues - Darth on the harmonica, classic!

Film Update 23/08/2008

I haven't written anything for ages although I've been watching loads of stuff. I've been distracted by playing the excellent Bionic Commando Rearmed and of course my most favourite game ever Rock Band on the Xbox 360.

Anyway, at the cinema I've seen the following films;




WANTED
A totally retarded action film (based on a graphic novel) where James McAvoy is an unknowing descendant of a super hit man and has the ability to curve bullets! After being initiated into Angelina Jolie's gang he gets assigned missions to take out randomly generated "bad" guys for the greater good. Its really really stupid and far fetched but also quite fun if you ignore physics and other broken laws. Morgan Freeman also stars.

HANCOCK
Quite a nice idea to have a flawed superhero but ultimately the story wasn't strong enough and it ended up getting far too unnecessarily complicated. It would have been loads better if there was an actual point to the story and for it to end on a cliffhanger. Also superhero films need both the 'superhero' and an equally balanced 'supervillain', there wasn't any strong bad guy characters. Overall it felt a bit flat.




KUNG FU PANDA
This was a really nice CGI movie. Jack Black and the other voice actors (including Jackie Chan as the monkey) were great. However the best bit about the whole movie was the brilliant dream sequence at the start which was portrayed as a traditional cartoon. It reminded me so much of Samurai Jack, my most favourite cartoon of all time - thats certainly not a bad thing in my opinion!

WALL.E
This together with Speed Racer is one of my most favourite films of the year. I wasn't expecting too much from it, well - I was expecting it to be good since it was made by Pixar but if far exceeded my expectations. It has a truly lovely story and a underlying point about the environment today. All the characters are brilliant and lovingly created in glorious CGI. The visuals were so strong that there wasn't much need for dialogue which is just as well as most of the robots just bleeped.




THE DARK KNIGHT (see review on 28/07/2008)

HELLBOY II - THE GOLDEN ARMY
Guillermo del Toro proves to cinema goers he has what it takes to become one of the future great directors in my opinion. OK, Hellboy 2 wasn't brilliant although it was thoroughly entertaining but the vision of the director and the new scale/budget seemed to compliment each other. I cannot wait to see what del Toro makes of the Hobbit in 2011.

MUMMY - TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
More of the same shenanigans, nothing really new here. Jet Li was wasted as a bad guy, Brendan Fraiser was alright however since Rachel Weisz has left the project American actress Maria Bello was cast in her role. Her English accent was on par with Dick Van Dyke's in Mary Poppins. It was entertaining but probably would have been better if it was released a few years ago and had all the original cast.




YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN
Yeah OK, I had a few hours free and this was new at the cinema. The advert looked kinda funny. It was alright overall, maybe could have done with more jokes but I think as long as you're not Israeli or Palestinian and don't know too much about the conflict you could probably enjoy this. I definitely think Hacky-Sack should be a recognised sport in the 2012 Olympic Games now after watching this.

STAR WARS - CLONE WARS
Originally meant for the small screen, George Lucas apparently saw how good it looked and decided to release it as a feature film. Its entertaining but doesn't quite have that Star Wars feel to it. The baby 'Hutt' will make you laugh/cringe.




GET SMART
Its been a while since I saw the original sixties TV show (created by the brilliant Mel Brooks) so I can't really comment on the similarities. This big screen adaptation is however totally crap. If you've already seen the trailer you've already seen most of the jokes, well... situations. Its incredibly dull, Steve Carell should be doing better films really. On the plus, Anne Hathaway was really hot! Oh yeah, look out for Bill Murray's pointless cameo. I'm sure there are lots of cameo's from the original cast in this too like the old man who crashes his car, he's got to be someone from the sixties show.

Star Tours Disneyland

Oh wow! I was just clicking on some of the related links to the Star Wars: Clone War trailer (found in one of the previous posts) and came across this. Its the entire ride and everything else for Star Tours at Disneyland, California.

This takes me back many many years. I absolutely loved this ride but can't believe it was just 4 minutes long! I'm sure we (me and my family) queued up for at least an hour just to go on it. It was worth it for the experience!

For its age I'm amazed the original ride is still around. According to Wikipedia, a sequel/prequel ride is on the cards, utilising funky CGI graphics and 3D technology.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

W'oh! Where did 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' come from? Its a full length animated movie and judging from the trailer looks pretty cool, definitely worth a watch.

The only thing that made me cringe was the idea of a story surrounding Jabba's son, that sounds a bit crappy to me.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE

Star Wars - The TV Series!

Star Wars creator George Lucas has said he has started work on a live-action TV series based on his sci-fi saga.

Fans, however, should not expect Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader or any other established characters to appear.

"It's about minor characters," he told the Los Angeles Times. "It's completely different. But it's a good idea, and it's going to be a lot of fun to do."

LucasFilm is also working on an animated TV series, expanded from its earlier Clone Wars shorts.


The half-hour cartoon series takes place between the events depicted in the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith films.

The live-action TV series will take place in the Star Wars universe but will not feature the Skywalker family, as had previously been suggested.

Lucas, who joked the series would analyse "the life of robots", said the US TV networks were "having a hard time" comprehending his vision.

"They're saying, 'This doesn't fit into our little square boxes.' And I say, 'Well, yeah, but it's Star Wars."

The saga began in 1977 with the original Star Wars, which went on to spawn two sequels, three prequels and a number of other projects.

Last year producer Rick McCallum said the proposed TV spin-off could run to at least 100 episodes.

*pinched from BBC Entertainment News 17/10/2007

Hopefully it'll be as good, if not better than the awesome re-imagined Battlestar Gallactica series (in regards to budget and special effects).

The Star Wars TV series is due to start in 2009. More information can be found here.