Several people have sent me links to the following video, including most recently our Simple Tricks East Coast correspondent, Brian Greenberg, so I suppose I’d better stop procrastinating and get it posted up, as it appears to be the current happening thing here on the InterWebs. It’s somebody’s three-year-old daughter recounting the plot of Star Wars and doing a pretty fine job of it, too. I’m not somebody who finds the antics of three-year-olds particularly cute, so trust me when I say it’s worth your click.

I’m amazed by how articulate she is, even if the video has been obviously edited to condense some of the standard little-kid rambling. She also seems to have a surprisingly cogent grasp of the movie, which her dad (who shot the video) swears in comments over on YouTube is entirely real and uncoached. (I’m especially amused by her comment that “the ‘siney’ one always worries,” which is as concise a summary of Threepio’s character as I’ve ever encountered). Amazingly, she’s seen the movie only once, spread out over several days. Smart kid.

(On a side note — and admitting up front that, as a non-parent, I have no authority to be saying a damn thing about how other people raise their kids — isn’t three a little young for a movie like Star Wars? I was seven when I first saw it, and, as enthralled as I was, I was pretty badly traumatized by the smoking skeletons of Owen and Beru. I wasn’t too sure about that beastie in the garbage masher, either. Maybe I was just a wussy kid.)

Anyway, as long as I’m talking about Star Wars, here are a couple other items of interest:

• First up, another tip from Brian that you may have already heard about (considering how long I procrastinated putting this up): there’s going to be an animated Star Wars movie in theaters this summer. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, set in the time period between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, is essentially the first episode for a TV series of the same name, which will debut on cable this fall. There’s a trailer for the movie/series over at the official Star Wars website, if you’re curious. I’m not wild about the look of the piece, personally — it’s a little too video-gamey for my tastes — but I’m willing to give it a try. One of my frustrations with the prequels was that they completely glossed over the actual war part of the Clone Wars, when Anakin and Obi-Wan supposedly became such great heroes and friends, so maybe this series will help fill in that gap.
  Of course, my cynical little inner voice, upon first reading this article, immediately quipped that G. Lucas has finally gotten what he’s obviously wanted for so long: even his actors have now been replaced by CGI.
• Speaking of G. Lucas, there’s a pretty good interview with him here, done within the past couple of days following his appearance at last week’s ShoWest industry convention in Vegas. He talks mostly about the Clone Wars animated project — interestingly, he says it’s “an old-fashioned episodic show”, i.e., each episode is a self-contained story unlike the current trend toward serialization in most television drama; I like the sound of that, as I find the serial format frustrating at times — but he also mentions his long-promised film about the Tuskegee Airmen, Red Tails, which he says may start shooting this year. (Of course, my cynical inner voice reminds me, he’s been saying that he’s about to begin shooting that flick for years, just like he’s always saying he’s finally going to return to those experimental art films that he really wants to make instead of all this mainstream commercial stuff. At least he doesn’t say anything offensive to my fellow old-school fanboys in this particular interview…)
• And finally, check out this blog entry and the accompanying illustrations of ideas for Star Wars tie-in merchandise that never got made. These items were all actual concepts that were created and pitched to PepsiCo and Lucasfilm during the run-up to the release of The Phantom Menace. Some of them are pretty lame — a Jedi mood ring? — but many seem like sound, marketable products that I’m frankly amazed were rejected. The cockpit sunshields, for example, look like naturals to me, and I personally would buy a Cloud City desk lamp — assuming that it was made of actual metal and had some nice detailing on the skyline, and wasn’t just a misshapen lump of molded crap — in a heartbeat. I’m also amused by the thought of Bantha slippers and, perversely I know, the galactic game trophies. Honestly, who wouldn’t want a mounted tauntaun head over their mantelpiece?
  Ah, well… it’s not like I haven’t found plenty of officially licensed and branded crap on which to spend my hard-earned Imperial currency over the years… (For the record, I saw this particular item some time ago but never got around to posting it — I seem to have a theme going today — until Jaquandor reminded me of it over the weekend.)

And now back to your regularly scheduled surfing…