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Well that is disappointing... I want to see stats on the new one, even more so since I can't own it yet.

And to answer my other question, it was the Gamorrean guards with Luke. Here they talk about it, and how in a draft of A New Hope Kenobi was also going to use it on several people:

http://boards.theforce.net/thr...

Reminds me of the Endor Holocaust which would have pretty much ended life on Endor due to the billions of tons of material raining down on the planet.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html

Shut up, Wesley!

http://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/enemy_wheaton.shtml

Don't forget about the Endor Holocaust

To be honest I was surprised when Jedi came out that there wasn't something about the ecology added in just to be trendy.

So, you're unaware of the Endor Holocaust, the ecological disaster caused when the Rebellion blew Death Star II to smithereens?

What? We are talking about droid rights and now you go off topic by talking about killing ewoks. Serves them right with that fate. It leaves more room to all those poor droids.

To be honest I was surprised when Jedi came out that there wasn't something about the ecology added in just to be trendy.

So, you're unaware of the Endor Holocaust, the ecological disaster caused when the Rebellion blew Death Star II to smithereens?

very true. people can armchair quarterback real historical battles, let alone fictional ones in a setting where magic exists.

this is why i find the endor holocaust a little more interesting.

My big hope for the future of movies is that technology is making movies less expensive to produce.

The more expensive a movie is, the harder it is to make the movie; and the more the studios start to mess with the creators of the movie. "We don't want that quirky unknown actor you like; you need to put in Johnny Depp." "The test audiences didn't understand the ending; you need to change it to make it clear that the good guy won." That sort of thing.

I read an interview with John Cusack right after Grosse Pointe Blank came out. He said something like "I'd love to give you a great story about how we fought the suits to realize our vision, but the reality is we were spending so little money that nobody cared about us, and we were able to make the movie the way we wanted to."

So, I predict that within the near future, it will be possible for a director to make a movie completely pure to his/her vision, by keeping the costs really low. Shoot everything with digital cameras. Have the special effects done at some unknown small computer effects shop in Korea or somewhere... or possibly even done by American university students for free. Hire unknown actors who will work just for the experience and accept royalties instead of big up-front money. (Or hire actors that Hollywood has already chewed up and spit out. I can think of several actors I liked who never got much respect in Hollywood.)

As for actors, you never know: you might even get semi-famous or famous people, as long as the time commitment is low. http://5secondfilms.com/ has had Peter Sormare do a couple of shorts for them, I presume for free. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was able to film all of Angelina Jolie's scenes in three days. Once Upon a Time in Mexico got all of Johnny Depp's scenes filmed early, and they had time to just improvise a couple of new scenes with him before he had to leave.

If you visit TheForce.net you can see a whole bunch of "fan films" that were done on a really tiny budget. The special effects are, in many cases, not bad at all.

I've seen plenty of stuff on TheForce.net that is better than Batman & Robin or Aeon Flux. For me at least, the best special effect is a good story; if I like the story, I'm quite willing to overlook a lot of other stuff.

I predict that not only is what I imagine possible, it is pretty much inevitable. Modern consumers have so many choices, that it is now impossible to drive everyone to see the same movies (or listen to the same music). Markets are fragmenting based on consumer's tastes, so it will be harder for movies to become true blockbusters. Keeping costs down and appealing to a specific demographic is one strategy for dealing with this, and I expect to see a lot more of it.

steveha

Following their recent pictures of their J-10 fighter aircraft here are the pictures of their prototype space craft:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/given/rb/tyd-door.jpg

There are an amazingly large number of Star Wars fan films, and you can find them at TheForce.net. There are some really good ones. I recommend Duality and Bounty Trail.

http://www.theforce.net/

A few years back I saw a good Spiderman fan film. I Google searched it and stumbled upon a web site devoted to fan films:

http://www.fanfilms.net/index.php

By the way, this was the Spiderman fan film I was looking for: The Green Goblin's Last Stand. "The total production budget was $400, and it shows. However, it also shows what a small group of motivated individuals are capable of when they are focused on a single goal."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Goblin's_Last_Stand

Finally, you have only to look through YouTube to find *lots* of people who are making cool features. Pretty much anything by FreddieW, lots of stuff by jaymegutierrez (anyone on Slashdot really should watch "Clean the Fan"), Smosh ("Cat Soup").

http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew

http://www.youtube.com/user/jaymegutierrez

http://www.youtube.com/user/smosh

And you 5secondfilms is awesome. They make 5 movies a week; they aren't all gold, but some of them are absolutely classic.

http://5secondfilms.com/

steveha

Honestly, what else would you expect from Senator Palpatine?

Joe Lieberman has yet to see a policy to expand government power that he didn't like, usually in the name of fighting terrorism. He's more-or-less the civil liberties antithesis of Russ "No on PATRIOT Act" Feingold. If the Democrats had any cajones, they would have booted him from his committee posts a long time ago.

Now, what makes him different from Republicans is that he tends to support expanding government regulations on business as well as on individuals.

Natalie's appearance has gone downhill a bit, but here's photos from when she was still a fashion model -

http://www.theforce.net/episode1/oldPreq/pics/natalie_w.jpg
color - http://thebosh.com/upload/2007/10/29/Natalie-Portman-has-filmed.jpg
lingerie - http://scifisizzle.com/imagegallery/images/natalie_portman/natalie_portman_2.jpg
closeup - http://www.wallpaperbase.com/wallpapers/celebs/natalieportman/natalie_portman_2.jpg

There is an entire line of star wars books for young readers. Here is a link to a list of them.

I bet you have also calculated the thrust to weight ration of a TIE fighter.

Approximately 3000:1.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html#propulsion
http://www.stardestroyer.net/mrwong/wiki/index.php/Acceleration

Just FYI, this filing is a direct result of Lucasfilm suing Gen Con for a lot of deception regarding "Celebration IV" that occurred last year.

As taken from this story on TheForce.net, here is a summation of the charges:

1. Gen Con failed to uphold its legal obligations in terms of financial reporting, accounting and payments to Lucasfilm ($500,000 in damages)
2. Gen Con did not give auction proceeds to Make-A-Wish as they had agreed to do ($150,000 in damages)
3. Gen Con did not give Lucasfilm their share of the auction proceeds ($150,000 in damages)
4. Gen Con did this all unjustly ($150,000 in damages)"

Don't worry, even if all the Star Destroyers either gave up, or turned and ran, the Ewoks faced their demise.

From the director of "Troopers" (that star wars/ cops parody) "Like the end credits say: It is illegal to sell, purchase, or make any money off of this video whatsoever. It was made for our amusement and yours (and to showcase the under used talents of the participants) So don't even think about selling it! If you do I will hunt you down and kill you..."(emphasis mine) http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/troops/director_index.aspI don't know about you, but I'd rather have two more of those over the three "masterpieces" that Lucas just crapped out.

http://www.antonwebern.com/ Sure, it's not the complete works, but there's a few for free (and who's to say, maybe when those copyrights run out, someone will do it for fun).

They Might Be Giants are no Boulez, but they are well respected in their filed, and they practically give their entire catalog away for free. (I bring them up because my favorite shirt of theirs says "Music self played is happiness self made.")

Also, I never said that the guy who makes the crosswords does it for free, he gets paid by the newspaper and I pay for the paper. Before sudoku became popular, I used to make them for fun. I also sculpt for fun. I'm not hugely talented, but I don't utterly suck (at least I don't think so). The stuff on YouTube sucks because there's so much of it. It's just too hard to find the good stuff through all the crap and just copyright infringed works on there. And you only have to wait as long as it takes you to do it. Get out there and have fun, make it yourself!

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/troops/

Sad deluded fool. Endor wasn't destroyed immediately, but it was indeed destroyed. Its destruction was even mentioned in the Star Wars books.

Read on, if you dare: Endor Holocaust

Star Wars is a new Beowulf, but we as a culture cannot own it and make it ours. It is now eternal and unchanging, as will be our culture. Another word for eternal and unchanging is dead.

It is not dead which can forever lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die.

...linky below to pics of the R2D2 mailboxes:
http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/R2D2_Mail boxes_Confirm_Rumors_104142.asp

Vote for your favorite Jedi Stamp. (requires e-mail to confirm vote)

USPS Star Wars web site. (contains vote tally)

Pictures of said mailboxes.

It honestly doesn't matter. The Endor Holocaust: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html

All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise, they wouldn't be suspects, would they?

Already done.

How the Sith Stole Christmas

Actually, there seems to be a lot of evidence it WAS.

http://boards.theforce.net/classic_trilogy/b10002/ 14906065/p11

This certainly seems to have more potential than most, but just in case one or two people on the Internet don't already know this isn't entirely a new idea. People have actually been doing Star Wars fan films for quite some time.

Star Wars Technical Commentaries - teh roxxorz
http://theforce.net/swtc/

Babylon 5 Tech-Manual
http://www.b5tech.com/index.htm

Uplift Universe Galactic Library
http://www.geocities.com/allianceforprogress/encyc lopedia/frontmatter/entergl.html

You make an excellent point. However, everyone can read my post. You've clearly labled yours as an edit. No one reading your post will believe that those words, in that context, are my intended message.

Furthermore, you've made me out to look stupid in a comical way. It's a farce or spoof. Those very much are legal and there's nothing I can do about it. Ever see "Hardware Wars" or "Troops"? These are consitutionally protected free speech.

Finaly, though you actually copyed my text, the people who make these edits often use technology that requires no copying whatsoever. They're capable of doing on-the-fly-edits. How on earth can this be a violation of copyright law if there is no copying?

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. Yes, it destroys the vision of the artist, but, ya know what? If I own the copy, it's my right to destroy it in whatever way I see fit. Personally, I paint funny glasses and mustaches on pictures of our president every chance I get. Lets hope no one lobbies to make that illegal because it destroys the vision and intended message of his campaign manager.

TW

A few years back, someone re-edited "The Phantom Menace", and called it The Phantom Edit. Some people thought it was an improvement over the original. About 20 minutes of Jar-Jar was cut, which didn't hurt.

In the process of googling it...I came across this site that has WAAAY too much information on those sorts of vehicle specs. It is actually quite a fascinating read since they don't just give the height....they give about 10 in-depth bullet points of movie and merchandise analysis to scientifically try to determine the actual height.

And that's just the height....they try to figure out dimensions for the crew compartment, its weaponry, how big its feet are...etc.

And that's just the AT-AT section. And I thought that I had way too much time on my hands.

Bleeding edge gamer: "Hey, guys? I'm about to start Doom 3! Activate the Quad SLI!"
Gamer's best bud: "Commence primary ignition!"
Dude's buddy flips switches to crank up liquid nitrogen pump and nuclear power-plant tie-in.
Sound of neighboring houses' power being drained: Beeooooooooooo...!
Other buddy looks away from the see-thru case mod, and covers his eyes...

Yeah. Something like that.

The force? It's simply a sort of mash-up of the ideas of Chi energy and the code of bushido.

The Death Star? Granted, there's nothing in The Hidden Fortress that can destroy a planet. But the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant to the actual plot. The ramifications are never delt with (As they are to a somewhat greater degree in the Star Wars tech commentaries (I personally like the one about how the destruction of DS#2 all but guaranteed the devestation of Endor and the exterminatio of the Ewoks.). But at the end of the day, the Death Star is simply the fortress from which the princess must be rescued.

The Droids? No issues of robotics are delt with. There's no sence of human workers being displaced my mechanical. There's no discussion of the ethics of the treatment of man-made artificial sentience, as in Asimov's Robots series. R2D2's purpose could just easily be filled by a human hacker/engineer type; and C3P0's by a linguist like Daniel Jackson or Hoshi Sato. The fact that they're robots is irrelevant (especially to their primary role: comic relief).

The clones-troopers/storm-troopers? Generic and expendable foot soldiers. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger delved deeper into the social implications of cloning!

Star Wars may be many things. But by your own criteria, it's NOT SciFi... it's "samurais in space".

cya,
john

Try this site and type in your destination Zip Code and you may find the ride you were looking for. http://www.erideshare.com/

SW carpool scene: http://multimedia.theforce.net/museum/images/Image s/Classic_Trilogy/Locations/Tatooine/A_New_Hope/ro nto2a.jpg

"Although many of the images of the death ray depict Archimedes with a parabolic mirror, it seemed like a bunch of individual flat mirrors positioned by 'the troops' would be a fast, more practical implementation of the concept."

This reminds me of the Death Star's weapon in ROTJ, the configuration of the light beams firing upon a single ship.

See: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/cards/wide/rotj10 4.jpg

That said, I agree with the parent that the encounter at the cave portrayed by Zahn does not necessarily contradict these deleted scenes I have not seen. Heres part of an Interview where TZ goes into some detail

The two guidelines I was given at the beginning were: I was to start three to five years after ROTJ, and I could use any character who had not been killed off in the movies. It was very, very open. When I submitted the outline, we found a few other walls: I could not do detailed references to the Clone Wars era. I had a sort of history of the Clone Wars set up because at that time I didn't know he (George Lucas) was going to go back and do more movies, so I thought that was opened at length as well, but it turned out it wasn't. Various other things: Joruus C'baoth was originally an insane clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi and they wouldn't let me do that. And I would run into minor walls here and there . . ." from this interview (February 2000, by Chris Knight)

The earlier Tie Fighters were white and the later ones were grey:

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html

Darth Vader had a modified grey one with a lager central body.

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/imps/d irector.asp

From the director:
a more serious documentary in the style of a History Channel Program

This should be great, lol!

Here:

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/imps/i ndex.asp

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/imps/i ndex.asp

...we could get lucky. :)

...can already do this.

Wonder if the patents of a galaxy far, far away can be enforced here?

Don't skip the sociopolitical commentary of Dune. Let's see... valuable substance, used for damn near everything, only found in a desert place, guarded by fierce people with a suspiciously Arabic language... Nope, no idea what he was talking about there.

*************** Spoilers ***************

The only thing I liked about the episode 3 was the things that we managed to link with episode 4, such as ObiWan picking up the Anakin's Lightsaber.

The things I didn't like was how rushed the movie was, like Padme giving the names as if she knew she had twins and had everything planned or how easily seduced Anakin became to the dark side.

Anakin: I shouldn't kill him, it isn't the Jedi way
Palpatine: do it!
Anakin: okidoo! Omg what have I done! (he didn't say "ok" but that's what he implied)

I was very dissapointed not to see the debut of the Rebel Forces (with the meeting of Meeting with Organa, Mon Mothma and Padme) or Yoda going to Dagobah. Too many deleted scenes that should of made it in the movie, that would of been most appreciated by hardcore fans.

Was worth to watch one time. Let's look at the bright side. Jar Jar didn't say a damn thing

The Star Wars Technical Commentaries

This site has been around for a while; written by a PhD student with too much time on his hands, it contains painstakingly detailed scientific analysis of all things Star Wars.

WAnt to know about the Endor Holocaust? Curious about the exact size of the two Death Stars? Or perhaps you'd like to read about hyperspace ("Phenomenological study and physical rationalisation of superluminal travel"), or the injuries of Darth Vader, or (my favorite) military walkers of the Empire.

There's months of engrossing reading there. A fascinating site.

The Star Wars Technical Commentaries

This site has been around for a while; written by a PhD student with too much time on his hands, it contains painstakingly detailed scientific analysis of all things Star Wars.

WAnt to know about the Endor Holocaust? Curious about the exact size of the two Death Stars? Or perhaps you'd like to read about hyperspace ("Phenomenological study and physical rationalisation of superluminal travel"), or the injuries of Darth Vader, or (my favorite) military walkers of the Empire.

There's months of engrossing reading there. A fascinating site.

The Star Wars Technical Commentaries

This site has been around for a while; written by a PhD student with too much time on his hands, it contains painstakingly detailed scientific analysis of all things Star Wars.

WAnt to know about the Endor Holocaust? Curious about the exact size of the two Death Stars? Or perhaps you'd like to read about hyperspace ("Phenomenological study and physical rationalisation of superluminal travel"), or the injuries of Darth Vader, or (my favorite) military walkers of the Empire.

There's months of engrossing reading there. A fascinating site.

The Star Wars Technical Commentaries

This site has been around for a while; written by a PhD student with too much time on his hands, it contains painstakingly detailed scientific analysis of all things Star Wars.

WAnt to know about the Endor Holocaust? Curious about the exact size of the two Death Stars? Or perhaps you'd like to read about hyperspace ("Phenomenological study and physical rationalisation of superluminal travel"), or the injuries of Darth Vader, or (my favorite) military walkers of the Empire.

There's months of engrossing reading there. A fascinating site.

The Star Wars Technical Commentaries

This site has been around for a while; written by a PhD student with too much time on his hands, it contains painstakingly detailed scientific analysis of all things Star Wars.

WAnt to know about the Endor Holocaust? Curious about the exact size of the two Death Stars? Or perhaps you'd like to read about hyperspace ("Phenomenological study and physical rationalisation of superluminal travel"), or the injuries of Darth Vader, or (my favorite) military walkers of the Empire.

There's months of engrossing reading there. A fascinating site.