'n 2009, Casey Pugh asked thousands of Internet users to remake "Star Wars: A New Hope" into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from Star Wars however they wanted.'

'Star Wars Uncut includes countless examples of live-action "drama" (scare quotes mine), some of it staged on elaborately decorated sets, the rest performed in kitchens, rec rooms, living rooms, basements, and backyards. Some of the actors are surprisingly good; others are merely spirited. This sort of work isn’t stealing anything from creators. It’s enhancing its value by showing just how much it means to people. I really don’t see how it’s possible to watch this viral video crazy-quilt and write it off as a merely derivative or exploitative work. If anything, it shows how art made from other art can become an independent creation with its own personality and worth. Star Wars Uncut is a collectively made work of postmodern folk art, as arresting and significant as Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can silkscreen or a Robert Rauschenberg collage painting built around photos filched from newspapers. The true subject of Star Wars Uncut is how pop culture touchstones live on inside people’s heads, becoming a shared language and an inspiration for personal creativity. Lucas’s work was a call; this is a response.'

'#Official levels of canon: The Holocron is an internal database maintained by Lucas Licensing for the express purpose of trying to maintain continuity within all licensed products. The Holocron is sorted into four levels of canon, reflecting LFL's canon and continuity policies: #G (George Lucas) canon is absolute canon. G canon outranks all other forms of canon, #C (continuity) canon and is considered authoritative as long as it isn't contradicted by G canon, #S (secondary) canon refers to older, less accurate, or less coherent EU works, which would not ordinarily fit in the main continuity of G and C canon, and #N continuity material is also known as "non-canon" or "non-continuity" material. What-if stories (such as those published under the Infinities label) and anything else that cannot at all fit into continuity is placed into this category. "N-continuity" is not considered canon.'

'A computer program written by Mr. Pugh automatically plays the highest-rated rendition of each scene, and it compiles those scenes on the fly, so the movie can change in real time depending on the ratings of users.'

'... every single one of us is as dependent on science and technology - and, by extension, on the geeks who make it work - as a patient in intensive care. Yet we much prefer to think otherwise. -- Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.'

Comment: sinalco: "I find your lack of hope and change disturbing."

'Bill Gates addressed a 400-person audience at the World Congress of Information 2008 in Kuala Lumpur, which is nothing unusual except for the way he did it: he appeared using a 15.1-foot holographic projection, probably starting his five-minute pre-recorded speech saying "I'M GOING TO EAT YOU ALL!!!" followed by a megalomaniacal laughter. Sadly, that didn't happen and he looked more like a giant-sized Yoda than an Oz-bound Palpatine.'

Uh huh.

MmmHmm.

Yup.

"If adult viewers can find a way back to some semblance of that youthful wonder, they'll have a fun half-hour of TV to watch on Friday nights for a while."

"The careful tending of the Star Wars continuity has yielded great wealth, but the key to a productive farm is to leave some fields fallow. A complete Holocron would leave little room for fantasy—for fans who, as Jenkins says, "love unmapped nooks and crannies, the dark shadows we can fill in with our imagination." That's something that GWL understands. For instance, the origins of the Jedi master Yoda, his species, and his home planet are off-limits. The backstory isn't even in the Holocron. "It doesn't exist, except maybe in George's mind," Chee says. "He feels like, 'You don't have to explain everything all the time. Let's keep some mystery.'""

"Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game is the centerpiece of a massive marketing blitz by Lucasfilm (novels, graphic novels, action figures, and a pen-and-paper role-playing game). It revolves around what happened in the interim between the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the good movies, leading up to the formation of the Rebel Alliance."

DO NOT WANT. DO NOT WANT!

Fun

Love how she says, "we blowed it up together". We! Gotta love kids and their porous sense of self.

Got one in red?

Wii Sabre (Spring 2008)

"Nintendo revealed that its Zapper peripheral - a plastic gun- designed to securely house the Wiimote and Nunchuk. Now we just need a glowing plastic rod to convert the Wiimote into a proper lightsabre for the release of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga"

"Using the Wii Remote as a lightsaber... Release Date: November 6, 2007"

"The head of the LucasArts, the game division for "Star Wars" series creator George Lucas, told AFP a Wii game that lets players wield virtual light sabers is on the horizon."