SW In 3D shown to Spaniards!

TFN posted a report on an award ceremony in Zaragoza, Spain for Rick McCallum at the TEA07 conference. The most interesting part was this:

The biggest event of the weekend was today, sunday the 1st, when the audience had the opportunity of watching footage of the 3D version of Star Wars!!! They showed the first few minutes of Episode IV: A New Hope, including the initial text crawl and most of the assault on the tantive. It was followed by a few scenes of the Millenium Falcon and part of the Coruscant speeder chase sequence of Episode II. It was just amazing. It was like being in the corridors of the tantive, with laser beams flying around you, like watching the movie for the first time
again.

The audience went just crazy, everyone was screaming of joy and clapping constantly with every sequence. If just a few minutes is like this, watching a whole movie can be absolutely awesome. After the projection, Rick McCallum offered a Q&A session where he talked about the process of "dimensioning" a 2D movie, and revealed some very interesting facts. They are trying to refine the process to make it faster and cheaper, so they can convert to 3D all the 6 Star Wars Movies by 2009. He also said that Peter Jackson wants to convert the Lord of the Rings trilogy and James Cameron wants to do the same with the Terminator trilogy and Titanic. They are doing this to promote the introduction of Digital and 3D technologies to the cinema theatre owners, so they upgrade their systems and make possible the creation of new 3D movies designed as such rather than converting existing 2D flicks."

Dude, if they show this to fans at Celebration Europe I WILL BE SO P.O.'D! *Kicks stuff.* But 3D SW provides yet another excuse for a Celebration V, no?

I know Cameron will unleash his 3D fest "Avatar" in a couple of years but while I think the boat sinking scene in "Titanic" would look great in 3D, I imagine the gents are more eagerly awaiting Kate Winslet's nekkid scene, heh heh.

By the way, Lightsabre.co.uk has two parts of a three-part interview with the Ricker up on its site.

Magazines, flying pigs, collectibles, and SagaJournal

My Anakin/Vader Chubbies set arrived today. It's really cute, even the little scowling ROTS Anakin.

My held over mail from vacation included the Anakin cover from Empire magazine's 30 covers celebrating 30 years o' SW. The article ranking the characters was completely ridiculous, though I figure Han Solo's fans would disagree ;). I like Han as much as the next SW fan but the best character of the saga? I don't know about that. Even Artoo would've been a better choice. After all, he pretty much is the one who saves the day every time, isn't he?

Forbes magazine named Papa George as one of the 15 people who have changed the world. Scoff all you want but I think it's a fair assessment...the world of entertainment and the widespread acceptance of technology was definitely affected to a great degree by SW.

And now for a Flying Pig (Flying Gamorrean?) moment...Entertainment Weakly.com ranked the greatest movie robots of all time. Artoo and Threepio came in first. Even more amazingly...not a single snarky word or qualification about the movies.

I know...I checked outside for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse too.

The July edition of SagaJournal features a new paper by moi about the theme of hospitality in the SW saga. Go read it at http://www.sagajournal.com!

Ecko to make SW clothes

Marc Ecko of Ecko fame (a line of clothes popular with the hip-hop crowd) has been licensed to make SW wear. Too bad it's too warm in SoCal for the repro of Han's Hoth parka, because they're making one. The line also includes hoodies, t-shirts, and other jackets:

http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/misc/news20070702.html

I love the hooded jacket with all of the characters on it! The Boba Fett hoodie is cool too.

Look for these at the end of the year.

Updated: There's an interview with Marc Ecko on starwars.com posted 7/3. Despite looking forward to the line, the stuff about "graffiti rights" grated on me. Having helped prosecute a lot of graffiti cases, I have no sympathy for the "rights" of knuckleheads to deface anyone's property. For every kid who thinks he's "gangsta" and living out some fantasy by spray painting or tagging an apartment building or fence, there's a property owner who's got to spend the money and time cleaning it off. If some kid tags public property, guess who pays to get it taken care of (whenever they get to it)? You do, Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer. Graffiti is still associated with gang behavior and let's be honest, it makes neighborhoods look trashy.

Of course, there are no uncool people like me who judge such things at Lucasfilm. Think they'll mind if I spray paint "Respect the PT?" all over those beautiful buildings at the Presidio since they're all for "street art?"