It was quite a roller coaster this week for the Star Wars universe with a few ups and downs, but that can be said for any iconic universe I suppose. Here are the highlights.
First up, Grant McCune, Oscar winning special effects and master model builder, died this week at age of 69 with pancreatic cancer.
The visionary brought us not only such characters as R2D2 for the first Star Wars, but had built models for at least 100 films including Rambo, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Speed, and Ghostbusters 2 in a career that spanned over 30 years. You can even catch a glimpse of him in A New Hope as a Death Star Gunner, although he was uncreditted.
Star Wars: Force Unleashed II was released, but it hasn’t been going too well with players and critics alike. They seem to find the game a bit monotonous from level to level, despite having a strong story and Star Killer (Darth Vader’s apprentice) possessing some great powers, but that was all put to waste in what is very standard game. Even Robot Chicken, the irreverent Adult Swim comedy that uses action figures to make various jokes, had to step in and give their take in hilarious fashion which you can watch below.
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It wasn’t all bad for Lucas this week. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back has been put into the National Film Registry for future generations to enjoy. The registry is designed to preserve the historically significant works of the industry. It joins 24 other films that were inducted this year including the comedy Airplane!, Let There Be Light, All the President’s Men, not to mention George Lucas’ early work THX-1138.
If you are in the Lafeyette, LA area, you might want to take your kids to see Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination at the Lafeyette Science Museum. Here young and old alike can see original props from the films such as Luke’s original landspeeder, along with models of various starfighters of the rebellion. And C3PO and R2D2 host an area about robots and how they can see the world around them and navigate according to their sensors. And if that weren’t enough, there is a full scale mockup of the cockpit from the Millenium Falcon. The show is narrated by Anthony Daniels (C3PO) and features the exciting jump into hyperspace as well as visuals about our own quest to reach further into space.
And if you’d like to see a man perform Star Wars all by himself, Charlie Ross has just the show for you. He actually presents the entire trilogy with nothing but his own body language and talent for voices. He starts the US leg of his tour in Schenectady, NY on January 22nd. To get other performance dates, check out his website here.
Star Wars Trilogy - One Man Show
And in the hope for the future category, which we hope is more accurate than the flying cars, IBM released its 5 year predictions about technology. On the list was Star Wars like holographic phones. These would presumably work like when you see Darth Vader talking to the emperor. While the technology may soon exist, would anyone want these? They are still trying to get people to use video phones.
Well that’s the week in review. Hope you enjoyed it.|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL|attachment.php?attachmentid=49&cid=18|100|49| |on_nl2br|0|0|0
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