I have no idea what the heck this image is all about, or why I find it so weirdly appealing. And yet… I cannot look away. And it brings a mystified smile to my face. And I think I’m suddenly craving a corn dog.

You gotta wonder how Carrie Fisher feels about being the focal point for a whole mess of bizarro nerd fetishes. Do you suppose if she had the chance to do it all again, she’d tell Uncle George she didn’t want to be in his movies after all, because she just couldn’t face the long decades ahead knowing that one day there would be a photoshopped pin-up of her in a Hot Dog on a Stick uniform?
(Via.)

This either speaks to the utter banality and base immaturity of the average conversation on social-networking sites, or it serves to craft an endearingly human side to beloved but admittedly two-dimensional characters. Or something. Whatever is going on here, it makes me laugh:

There are a few more here
Via.

Yes, I am aware of that 70-minute video review of The Phantom Menace that’s currently making the rounds of the InterWebs. (io9 has helpfully aggregated the various YouTube chapters into a single, convenient location, if you didn’t know.)

No, I don’t have much to say about it.

The truth is — and I hope I don’t sound like too much of a dick here, because I know you guys are just trying to do me a friendly favor, and I really do appreciate the thought — I’m not interested in yet another snarky takedown of the Star Wars prequels, especially one that requires over an hour of my busy life to watch. Honestly, it’s been ten years since The Phantom Menace came out, and five years since I realized I was tired of talking about the prequels. I simply can’t imagine there’s anything left to be said about them in general, or The Phantom Menace in particular.

Look, I get it; the movie failed on any number of levels and that made a lot of people feel foolish for getting so excited about it in the first place. And a not-inconsiderable subset of fanboys have allowed their frustrated expectations to fester into white-hot anger and a deep conviction that George Lucas is and always was a no-talent hack who somehow hypnotized us all into loving his creations for decades and buying all the tie-in products we could get our hands on, but now the scales have fallen from some people’s eyes and they want their childhoods — not to mention all the money they’ve spent on collectibles — back. Fine. Whatever you say. Bored now.

Personally, I’m far more offended by Lucas’ stubborn disdain for the original trilogy than anything he did in the prequels. Or in Indy IV, for that matter. (I’m equally sick of hearing about CG monkeys and how Shia LaBeouf isn’t manly enough to satisfy the fanboys.) I guess I just have better things to bitch about these days…

I had an email waiting this morning from my buddy Mike — who, incidentally, was up way too late last night — containing a pretty entertaining link that I thought I’d share with my Loyal Readers. It’s a cache of behind-the-scenes photos from the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

You may have seen some of these before; that infamous shot of Chewie getting fresh is here, as is one of the “glamour-girl” publicity stills of Carrie Fisher from the first movie. Some of the other photos on the linked page appear to be simply alternates of better-known images, or outtakes from the same sessions. (Compare this one, for example, to the more-familiar picture that appears on trading cards, posters, and the magnet I’ve got on my fridge door.) However, there are several photos in this collection that are new to me, as unlikely as that sounds. After all these years of being a stark-raving fanboy and collector of crap, I thought I’d seen pretty much every frame of film that was ever shot in connection with these movies. Being proven wrong is curiously satisfying.

I’m especially fond of the pics where people are just horsing around on the set, like the one above in which Mark Hamill appears to be about two seconds from getting an elbow in the ribs. I like seeing just how damn young our heroes really were, as well as the suggestion that making the original trilogy was a fun experience for them. I think it’s both telling and sad that you don’t see images like this from the making of the prequel trilogy. At least, I haven’t seen any…

Okay, so, you know those Axe body-spray commercials where some young guy with a bad haircut spritzes himself with cheap cologne-in-a-can and suddenly finds himself surrounded by horny females who seem to have lost all their higher reasoning functions? Yeah, I don’t get ’em either.*

I think this makes much more sense:

Ah, lightsabers. Is there nothing they can’t make cooler? Extra credit to the makers of this clip for throwing in a Wilhelm.
* Oh, come on, is there anyone over the age of 19 who doesn’t think that shit makes you smell like you just rubbed yourself down with one those tree-shaped air fresheners for your car?

Ever wonder what it might’ve been like if, instead of a hugely successful feature film, Star Wars had been a late-70s television series with a disco-flavored theme song? Sure you have:

For you younglings in the audience, the music and visual stylings of this piece are derived from the opening of Dallas, a primetime soap opera about rich, conniving, nasty people with better sex lives than you. Dallas led to the pinnacle (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) of ’80s television, Dynasty, which in turn begat Falcon Crest and god only knows how many lesser rip-offs.

I’m impressed at how well the Dallas theme and style works with Star Wars footage, and also amused that the creator of this mash-up included “the men in the masks” in the credits. Of course, in my world, the Death Star explosion doesn’t result in one of those lame “Praxis-effect” plasma rings, but that’s my grumpy-old-fanboy side speaking up again and we won’t indulge him today.

More fun stuff below the fold…

Continue Reading…

The way the economy’s been lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if these end up being worth more than good old-fashioned dollars:

Starbuck by `diablo2003 on deviantART

They’re certainly cooler looking than U.S. greenbacks. The design was apparently created for a Star Wars convention that was held a couple years ago, according to the artist’s notes. I don’t know if it was ever actually printed in faux-currency form or not; if it was, I wouldn’t mind having a couple for my collection, so if anyone knows where I can get some, give a shout, okay?

Via Boing Boing, of course…