george lucas

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It was about 6:30 a.m. local time in the desert of Tunisia, on March 22, 1976, that the first scenes for George Lucas’s film Star Wars were filmed.  Shot that day: the Jawas “droid auction” and the scene between Luke and Threepio as they are standing outside the homestead looking for Artoo.

Here is Mark Hamill in costume, in the first behind-the-scenes pic from the production of a Star Wars movie:

One has to wonder, what were the cast and crew thinking as that first torturous day unfolded (the Artoo-Detoo’s front leg refused to deploy, and Anthony Daniels’s Threepio costume didn’t fit).  Did they have any notion at all just how special their project would become to not only millions but arguably billions of people over the course of the next half-century?  How it would be endlessly discussed and debated, and so beloved even five full decades later?

It all ...

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It was on May 14th, 1944 that a little boy was born in Modesto, California.  Growing up he was a restless young man, with no clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life.  He finally settled on being a race car driver.  But a near-fatal car crash a few days before graduating high school put a damper on that idea.

Our hero eventually decided he wanted to go to college.  He enrolled in a junior college and studied everything from anthropology to sociology to literature.  While there he began experimenting with filmmaking.  He then ended up at University of Southern California, choosing to continue his studies in cinematography.  And he discovered that he enjoyed it, a lot.  A series of student films followed, and many of them gained notice for their groundbreaking and breathtaking visuals.

The young lad graduated from college and tried to enlist in ...

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George Lucas’s movie – the first for his own company Lucasfilm – American Graffiti was released fifty years ago tomorrow.  It premiered at a film festival and was followed with wide release soon after.  If you’ve never seen American Graffiti you really should do yourself a favor and watch it.  It’s a film spanning the course of a single night, in the lives of a group of friends who are spending the final hours of summer break in 1962.  I don’t know if “plot” is the right word to describe this movie as having.  But it’s a mighty monument to a way of youth that isn’t there anymore.  American Graffiti has a solid cast and a soundtrack that is just as much part of the film as those appearing in it.

Well, I thought that for the occasion we would go WAY back into The Knight Shift’s archives, to when ...

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I had no idea that Raiders of the Lost Ark had returned to theaters for its fortieth anniversary until my iPhone suggested it from a list of movies playing nearby.  Whatever other plans I’d made last Sunday got dropped like a hot Sankara Stone as I headed to the big cinema the next town over.  And that’s how, for only the second time in my life, I got to behold my all time favorite film on the big screen.

 
I was far from alone.  About forty-some others had shown up too.  Including the family of four that sat in front of me.  Two little girls, maybe seven and eight.  Just how old I was when I first saw Raiders.  I could tell this movie was giving them thrills and chills, just as it did me.
 
Maybe it made some of the same impact on them that watching
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It really does seem like just yesterday when we were slathering that fake blood all over Chad’s legs, and making a springtime drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway look like blizzard in the Colorado mountains.  And turning a cousin’s living room into Skywalker Ranch.  So much happened since then and yet, our cast and crew became a family that has endured.  More than endured even.  And for that, I’m thankful that this project got seen through to the end.

Yes, it has indeed been fifteen years since the release of Forcery: that Star Wars fanfilm parody of the Stephen King movie Misery.  I’d wanted it to be ready before Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith but it didn’t quite make it.  Still, it was late May of 2005 when it was first unloaded onto the Internet and about a year or so later it was “serialized” ...

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An independent-minded scribe of stories wants nothing more than to produce the works that mean most to him.  And then one of his minor creations becomes a raging monster that takes control over almost every aspect of his life.  The fans won’t leave him alone, they won’t let him be free to find his own happiness.  And it’s driving him insane…

Sound familiar?  Perhaps the tale of a certain plaid-flanneled filmmaker who made a small movie once upon a time but saw it instead become a franchise upon which fans pinned their hopes, their dreams, sometimes their entire meaning of life.  But alas!  It isn’t George Lucas we’re talking about here.  But it could be.

Way, waaaaay back in 1985 there was a new series on CBS called George Burns Comedy Week.  It didn’t last very long and George Burns himself had very little to do with it ...

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Seems like lately I’ve been feeling extra wacky and I’ve no idea why.  Maybe the twisted creature that is my id is retaliating against the general nastiness that seems pervasive too much.  So the best course of action is to go in the opposite direction and do what I can to make people laugh a little.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been playing around with GIF-making apps the past few days.  There’ve been a few that I’ve cranked out, so I figured I’d share them with y’all.

This first is a few seconds taken and edited from my first movie Forcery.  In hindsight this should have been done a WAY long time ago.  But in any case, here is Frannie telling her hostage George Lucas what she thinks about the “Han and Greedo shooting” thing:

Talk about toxic fandom!

Next up is a result of looking to see if this ...

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Look!  A wild George Lucas sighting!

“Nuclear Waste: Fission Products & Transuranics from Thorium & Uranium” is sincerely fascinating in its own right.  A short documentary about the valuable materials often left in used-up fuel rods from nuclear reactors and how they might be extracted.  Very interesting if you’re at all into nuclear engineering and chemistry in general.

But let’s face it: most people are going to want to see the creator of Star Wars stumbling into view on a Chicago street as research scientist Bruce Hoglund explains pyroprocessing (using molten salt and electrochemistry to pull out the desired substances).

You can choose to watch it all, OR you can fast-forward (I recommend moving it to 13:00 to get the full effect):


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Right now, somewhere as you read this, pre-production is well underway for Star Wars Episode VII.  The script is being written and re-written, conceptual artists are creating new visions of a galaxy far far away, and there is already a casting call for major roles in the next movie.  Barely eight months ago we could have never imagined a new Star Wars trilogy would be happening (in fact, I still find myself hardly believing it).  And now under Disney’s management, we are being promised not just a new trilogy (perhaps even two) but a Star Wars movie every year from 2015 until the end of time.

And therein rests a problem which hopefully is being discussed somewhere at the Mouse House and at Lucasfilm:

With all of these new Star Wars movies… how are they going to be titled?  And what does it mean for the Star Wars films ...

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