Category: Star Wars

Darth Vader, Chewbacca star on new US stamps
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service turned to the characters of “Star Wars” for inspiration on
Wednesday as it unveiled 15 new first-class stamps featuring the whole gang from Chewbacca to Darth Vader.
The stamps were unveiled at Grauman’s Chinese theater in Hollywood where the original “Star Wars” movie opened 30 years ago. The stamps will go on sale on May 25, after a contest to choose the most popular of the stamps.
Among the “Star Wars” characters depicted on the stamps are Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Darth Vader, R2-D2, C-3PO, Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett.
The images are from all six “Star Wars” films and David Failor, executive director of stamp services for the U.S. Postal Service, said, “Because of the movies’ popularity, we believe these stamps have the popularity of reaching the blockbuster status of the Elvis stamp.”
Earlier in the month to publicize the new stamps, about 400 mailboxes around the country were designed to look like R2-D2.

R2-D2 mailboxes to stand guard at U.S. post offices
Three decades ago in a galaxy not so far away, filmmaker George Lucas launched Hollywood’s Star Wars phenomenon, and now the U.S. Postal Service is celebrating the film’s 30th birthday this year by decorating mailboxes to look like famed droid R2-D2.
Approximately 400 mail collection boxes have been wrapped to look like Lucas’s iconic beeping robot and will be distributed across 200 U.S. cities, postal officials announced Thursday.
R2-D2 is among the most prominent characters of the Star Wars universe, beloved by legions of film fans for his heroism, ingenuity and as comic relief in his scenes with his android companion, C-3PO.
News about the mailbox project had been floating online among Star Wars buffs in the past few weeks. Officials also confirmed another web rumour: that the R2 mailboxes are part of a promotion for a new, Star Wars-themed stamp.
“It’s a little teaser for the upcoming announcement and we decided to have a little fun with it,” said Anita T. Bizzotto, the post office’s chief marketing officer.
A further announcement is scheduled for March 28.
While postal officials are encouraging fans to seek out the new R2 mailboxes, they also reminded people not to tamper with them or try to steal the boxes ó which is a U.S federal offence.
Fans of the space-fantasy series hailing from all corners of the world are expected to descend on the Los Angeles Convention Center beginning May 24 to celebrate the 30th anniversary at the five-day Star Wars party entitled Celebration.

Latest On “Star Wars” & Indy 4
Lucasfilm’s Steve Sansweet appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con and confirmed that the “Star Wars” animated series is now scheduled to premiere in 2008 whilst the live action series will begin sometime before 2010.
“We’ve been spending the last couple of years building from scratch two new state-of-the-art digital animation companies, one at Skywalker Ranch and one in Singapore. The scripts for the first batch of shows have been completed, and Animation is hard at work on the first episodes” says Sansweet.
The animated series is set late during the Clone Wars after Anakin Skywalker has achieved the rank of Jedi Knight. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Count Dooku, Palpatine and General Grievous are expected to appear in the animated show.
He finally added David Koepp’s script for Indiana Jones 4 is a couple of months away from finishing with hopes pre-production can begin before early 2007.

Jar Jar Binks Returns for ‘Fanboys’
Sam Huntington talks about his upcoming ‘Star Wars’-based comedy
Jar Jar Binks, cinema’s most maligned Gungan, makes a triumphant return in “Fanboys,” warns Sam Huntington, who stars in the upcoming Weinstein Co. comedy.
“Jar Jar appears in the movie in a very very funny way that I can’t reveal to you, because it’s absolutely hysterical,” Huntington warns. “It’s one of my favorite moments in the whole movie.”
Huntington, talking to reporters about his role as eager-beaver photographer Jimmy Olsen in the upcoming “Superman Returns,” is part of a “Fanboys” ensemble that includes Dan Fogler, Kristen Bell, Jay Baruchel and Chris Marquette. Directed by Kyle Newman, “Fanboys” focuses on a group of lifelong friends who embark on a roadtrip from Ohio to the Skywalker Ranch in Northern California. Their goal in the not-so-distant period piece? To steal a copy of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” so that a dying friend can see it before its worldwide release.
“It’s really, really funny and it’s very very emotionally powerful, believe it or not, because they’re fulfilling the wish of their dying friend,” Huntington explains. “And I know that sounds very cliched, but it’s actually very tastefully done.”
Huntington is probably best known from roles in “Detroit Rock City” and several TV appearances, but by the time “Fanboys” hits theaters (some time early next year, likely), he’ll be wildly recognized for his turn as Superman’s favorite shutterbug in Bryan Singer’s big budget Warner Bros. film. While he plays support to the likes of newcomer-in-tights Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey (whose Trigger Street shingle is producing “Fanboys”) in “Superman,” the upcoming comedy will give him more of a lead role.
“I play a guy who basically has been segregated from his fanboy friends,” says Huntington. “They’ve all continued on after college to be remain fanboys and I’ve kind of gone the corporate road and work for my day at a car dealership and inherit it at the beginning of the movie and then it just kind of goes on after that.”
He adds, “Yeah. That’s right. I rediscover my inner fanboy.”
So Huntington can tell us that Jar Jar — last seen in the background of two shots in “Revenge of the Sith” – is back in all his floppy-eared glory, but will there be any other cameos from within the “Star Wars” universe? And, equally importantly, will the Dark Lord of the Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas, make an appearance?
“Needless to say, we kiss his ass for an hour-and-a-half, he kind of had to sign off it on it, you know,” Huntington laughs. “The extent of his… I should keep that kind of a mystery, the extent of his involvement. It’s very cool. It’s going to be a fun, fun movie.”
Before “Fanboys” opens, real life fanboys (and girls) can see “Superman Returns” when it opens wide on Wednesday, June 28

‘Star Wars’ goes back to basics
Die-hard Star Wars fans soon can see the original theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars films on DVD.
Even though George Lucas adamantly declared 2004’s digitally restored Star Wars Trilogy DVDs the definitive versions of his movies, fans have held out hope for DVDs of the originals.
Their wishes will be granted Sept. 12 when Fox releases new two-disc DVDs ($30 each) of Star Wars (since retitled as Episode IV: A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that include the films as they first appeared in theaters, along with the new, restored versions (now available in the four-disc $70 Star Wars Trilogy).
The individual DVDs will be taken off the market on Dec. 31, a strategy that Disney uses on many of its classic releases.
Lucas re-released his original three Star Wars films in theaters in 1997 with inserted scenes and improved special effects. Those “special editions” were further enhanced for the four-disc DVD set. With the original versions coming to DVD, here’s what you’ll see again:
ï In Star Wars, Han Solo shoots a bounty hunter named Greedo. Lucas changed the scene later so it seemed that Greedo draws first, and changed it again for the DVD so that they appear to shoot simultaneously.
ï In Empire Strikes Back, the ice creature that captures Luke Skywalker gets less screen time.
ï In Jedi, Sebastian Shaw returns as Anakin in the movie’s final scene. Lucas substituted Hayden Christiansen, who plays Anakin in the more recent films, for the 2004 DVD.
Back in 2004, Lucas told the New York Post, “The special edition is the one I wanted out there.”
This new set of DVDs does not constitute “George changing his mind,” says Lucasfilm’s Jim Ward. “What we’ve always said is George viewed the revised versions of the films as the definitive versions.”
Fan attachment to the originals is strong. The movies topped entertainment website IGN.com’s recent chart of Top 25 Most Wanted DVDs.
“People want the option of having the movies that they remember and people are opposed to George Lucas’ revisionist tendencies,” says the site’s Chris Carle.
The original films’ video quality will not match up to that of the restored versions. “It is state of the art, as of 1993, and that’s not as good as state of the art 2006,” Ward says.

Uncle Owen, R.I.P.
To Phil Brown, it seemed “a very unimportant role.” But in Star Wars lore, it was anything but.
Brown, who died last week at age 89, was being remembered by Jedi faithful as Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen from the original Star Wars movie.
In George Lucas’ 1977 space saga, farmer Owen Lars and his dying-for-adventure nephew, played by Mark Hamill, come into possession of two junked droids: R2-D2 and C-3PO, setting in motion the ragtag Rebellion’s overthrow of the evil Empire, not to mention a six-picture, mega-billion-dollar franchise.
The find also led to the eventual off-screen slaughter of Owen and wife Beru at the gloved hands of droid-seeking Imperial Stormtroopers, but nothing’s perfect.
Shelagh Fraser, who played Aunt Beru to Brown’s Uncle Owen, died in 2000.
Brown was plagued by various heart ailments in recent years. In an undated post on his official Website, the actor noted his retirement from the convention scene.
“Meeting my fans personally has been endlessly rewarding for my wife Ginny and me,” Brown wrote. “I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all for your support of my career, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind thoughts and warm wishes.”
Brown succumbed to pneumonia last Thursday at the motion picture retirement home in Woodland Hills, California, the Associated Press reported.
Born April 30, 1916, in Massachusetts, Brown’s pre-Star Wars career was far removed from the blighted lands of Tatooine. Per his official biography, he danced on Broadway in the 1930s, courted (but never won) the likes of Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr in Hollywood movies of the 1940s, and directed Dorothy Dandridge in a 1951 feature about the Harlem Globetrotters, simply titled The Harlem Globetrotters.
The Communist witch hunt of the 1950s ensnared Brown, who himself denied ever being a member of the party. For 40 years, from 1952-92, the once-blacklisted Brown lived and worked out of London.
By the time Lucas was in London casting Star Wars, Brown wasn’t looking at Uncle Owen as a life-changing opportunity. “This [part], what seemed to be a very unimportant role, occurred at the end of my acting career,” Brown once told TheForce.Net.
In the interview, Brown said he suspected Lucas selected him for Owen “because of my resemblance to Alec Guinness, a contemporary and an old friend of mine.” In Star Wars, Guinness played Luke’s Force-full mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
In the Star Wars prequels, the role of the younger Obi-Wan went to Ewan McGregor. Similarly, Uncle Owen got a new look in the newer movies, with Australian actor Joel Edgerton inheriting the role.
Brown told TheForce.Net that he wished Edgerton luck “in having as many devoted followers as I have had.”
Brown’s post-Star Wars credits included a bit in the 1980 TV miniseries, The Martian Chronicles.

“Revenge” Is Sweet on DVD
As Yoda might say, sales are strong with this one.
After just one week on sale, the DVD for Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith and LucasArts’ latest videogame, Star Wars Battlefront II, generated a Hutt-sized $210 million in combined worldwide sales, according to figures released Tuesday by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Fox and Lucasfilm did not release the exact units sold for the DVD and videogame or how much money each made separately. But Jim Ward, senior vice president of Lucasfilm and president of LucasArts, said the numbers were mind-boggling.
“The phenomenal sales underscore the enduring strength of the series,” said Ward. “In many territories, DVD and game sales were nearly double what we initially expected.”
The long-heralded prequel, the last installment of George Lucas’ epic six-part space saga, has been the biggest moneymaker of 2005, setting box-office records on its way to grossing $848 million in worldwide ticket sales. It was released on DVD in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, Australia and Latin America on Nov. 1.
And, in a strategy choreographed with the precision of a 501st Legion maneuver, the Lucas Empire decided to debut the latest Star Wars videogame on the same day as the two-disc Sith set. Battlefront II, in which players can reenact the greatest battles in the movies, is poised to surpass last year’s original to claim the title of best-selling Star Wars videogame of all time, with copies selling at a 40 percent higher clip than its predecessor.
In September 2004, LucasFilm and Fox released the DVD box set of the original Star Wars trilogy (with some minor, if controversial alterations) at the same time it put out the first Battlefront game, generating $115 million in first-day sales between them.
“Amid all this humdrum about disappointing box office and underwhelming CD and DVD sales, no one seems to mention the billions…of dollars Obi-Wan and company took to the bank in 2005,” says Mike Destaino, columnist and reviewer for DVDfile.com. “Then again, Star Wars is just about the surest sale in the world: Even if the movie was called Star Wars: Episode III:–Jar Jar Binks Goes to Candyland, Lucasfilm would sell 3 trillion copies.”
But some industry analysts took issue with Fox’s boastings.
“There’s no way to know based on that release how it stacks up against anything, which is I’m sure why they put it out the way they did and refuse to break out any numbers for DVD versus videogame, or U.S. Sales versus selected international territories,” grouses Scott Hettrick, editor of the trade paper Video Exclusive. “That leaves no possible way to create an apples-to-apples comparison.”
Hettrick did say that initial U.S. figures show Sith sold at least 5 million copies, besting Warner Bros.’ Batman Begins DVD.
“Star Wars DVDs are never the biggest sellers of the year and never break any records,” Hettrick says. “The same will be true this year with Sith. [But] because there is such a weak slate of competing titles and no Spider-Man or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, it will almost certainly be the top-selling live-action DVD title of the year and may wind up as the second biggest DVD seller well behind The Incredibles.
Nonetheless, the Star Wars marketing machine is still a powerful force to be reckoned with.
Not only were characters from the space opera the most popular Halloween costume line this year, with Darth Vader leading the way, but Star Wars toys are outselling its closest rivals two-to-one, claiming 9.1 percent of the U.S. toy market. And the brand is expanding rapidly.
This Thursday, Donald Trump will host a special Star Wars-themed version of Apprentice. Promotional spots airing on TV and the Web show the Donald saying “you’re fired” to a briefcase-toting Chewbacca and reprimanding Darth Vader for shoddy construction work on the Death Star. The Apprentice teams will compete to see who can put up the best Battlefront II display at Best Buy stores.

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
On Lucasfilm√≠s release of ‘Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith’ the studio has also added some hidden features, as expected. Trust the Force and you shall find them, or alternatively just read one for our instructions.
As previous Star Wars releases, the DVD features three different menu themes that are selected at random when you insert the first disc of the set in your player.
If you wish to directly select one of these themes you can do so too, of course.
Simply insert the first disc of the DVD set in your player and wait for the FBI screen to show up. Here, press either the ‘1’, ‘2’ or ‘3’ key on your remote control to directly select each of the menu themes.
Now, go to the disc√≠s Main Menu and highlight the THX logo on the screen using your remote control. Now press the numbers ‘1’,’1′, ‘3’ and ‘8’ on your remote control and you will have access to a very cool clip of Yoda rapping – courtesy of ILM√≠s Rob Coleman – followed by the DVD√≠s production credits.
Alternatively you can simply access title #3 directly on the DVD to see the clip as well. Since accessing titles is handled differently by each player, please consult your user manual to see how to do it on your particular model.

‘Star Wars’: Entirely on DVD
Star Wars fans with a spare 13-plus hours (not counting extras) can now watch the groundbreaking saga from start to finish.
With Tuesday’s release of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, all six films are on DVD.
“People will be able to watch it as one linear story, which was George’s original intention,” says Hayden Christensen. He played Anakin Skywalker in this year’s Sith and 2002’s Attack of the Clones.
Sith grossed $380.3 million as it lured back some of the audience lost by 2002’s Clones, which earned only $310.7 million, a big drop from $431.1 million for 1999’s Phantom Menace.Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) was the saga’s biggest at the box office with $461 million.
In this week’s battle of the heavyweight DVD releases, Lucas’ Sith is likely to beat Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and be among the year’s top sellers, says Scott Hettrick, home entertainment editor for DVD Exclusive magazine. Sith, he says, “is the final chapter in the saga that anyone who has ever been a fan of Star Wars will want to own.”
As with Menace and Clones, the DVD for Sith offers lavish extras:
√ØWithin a Minute: The Making of Episode III, a 78-minute segment, chronicles the 70,441 hours it took to create 60 seconds of Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber duel. “It’s rather extraordinary, the separate departments and number of people whose skills are involved to make this one minute,” says Ian McDiarmid, who plays Supreme Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious.
√Ø Among the six deleted scenes is Yoda’s arrival on Dagobah, where Luke Skywalker finds him in The Empire Strikes Back.
ï There are two levels of the Xbox version of the Star Wars Battlefront II video game and an Easter egg that shows Yoda dancing to a hip-hop beat.

REJECTS OF THE ‘SITH’
It’s everything you ever wanted to know about “Sith” but were afraid to ask.
Here’s a peek at two scenes added to the DVD of the sixth and final chapter of the “Star Wars” series, in stores next week. The two-disc “Revenge of the Sith” set, available in full-screen or widescreen, features a handful of deleted scenes, making-of featurettes, game demos, photo galleries and even a preview of “Hyperspace, the ultimate online Star Wars experience.”
Though director George Lucas has said much of his deleted material focuses on the Senate, at least one scene features some good, old-fashioned lightsaber fighting.
In “General Grievous Slaughters a Jedi,” which adds to a rescue sequence early in the film, Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) battle a throng of droids – led by cyborg General Grievous himself – and then cut through the floor to escape.
The scene also connects to the animated “Clone Wars” series, as Grievous kills a Jedi prisoner he took in the Cartoon Network prequel.
In another deleted scene, Chancellor Palpatine plants further tension between Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) and Anakin.
Also included is the lone scene featuring actress Bai Ling, who ended up on the cutting-room floor – reportedly because she posed topless in Playboy before the film’s release.
In “The Seeds of Rebellion,” Ling plays a senator working with Amidala to thwart the plans of the chancellor. Her one line? “That would be dangerous.”
(Too bad someone didn’t tell her that before the Playboy shoot.)