******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** I want to begin by saying this will not be a conventional review (the kind normally found on this site), but rather a look at how “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” impacted me after a recent anniversary rewatch. I first saw the film on opening weekend in 2005 on an…
Tag: Star Wars
Personal Log: My favorite Christmas gift of all time…
Inspired by the talented blogger from FireWatersite, who recently put together a great list of groovy Christmas toys he and others of our generation enjoyed as kids, I remembered my greatest Christmas gift of them all. These days, my wife and I are not all that into gift-giving for each other (to quote Elias Sandoval…
Disney+’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” blasts off from suburbia and gets lost in space….
******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** The first two episodes of Disney+’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” have debuted, and both were written by Christopher Ford and Jon Watts (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”). I knew going in that this Star Wars series was deliberately skewing towards a much younger demographic, since Disney seems hellbent on representing every age demographic separately these days…
A voice heard around the world and among the stars; James Earl Jones (1931-2024)…
That Voice One of the hardest parts of getting older, as I’ve written many times before, is seeing so many of one’s childhood heroes and icons pass away. Today was another such day, as the world lost James Earl Jones; an amazing actor who could go from playing a boxer to a king on a…
The Force goes FM: NPR’s Star Wars Radio Plays (1981-1996)…
*****STAR DESTROYER-SIZED SPOILERS!***** In early 1981, within the pages of Starlog magazine (the internet before the internet), my then-14 year old self read about an upcoming series on National Public Radio (NPR) that was going to adapt 1977’s “Star Wars” into a 13-part radio play (pre-“A New Hope,” which was added for the movie’s 1981…
Prequel to the prequels: “Star Wars: The Acolyte” is a middling mix of “Kung Fu” and “Harry Potter”…
******STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** A pupil leaves the monastic temple they grew up in, roaming to different lands, seeking new adventures, and getting into life-and-death scrapes as their unique skillset is often put to the test. That is the premise of both TV’s “Kung Fu” (1972-1975) and the new Disney+ Star Wars streaming spinoff, “The Acolyte.” And…
The Inland Empire Strikes Back! Animated Star Wars was a big draw at Comic Con Revolution 2024…
Return of the Jedi SoCal’s Comic Con Revolution, a sci-fi/fantasy/comic books convention based in the Inland Empire city of Ontario, California, first sprang into existence back in 2017 as a tiny convention with scant attendance. But over the past seven years, I’ve watched this little convention grow in size and stature, while still offering a…
The Force Awaits: The anticipation of seeing “Star Wars”…
*****POSSIBLE STAR DESTROYER-SIZE SPOILERS***** Anticipation Back in the late 1970s, I saw “Star Wars” multiple times theatrically. This was back in those dark, primitive days before we watched movies on our phones and tablets three months or less after their theatrical runs. In those days, we then-young, future-oldsters learned the often difficult art of… But,…
WonderCon 2024 in Anaheim was a weekend of fantasy and imagination spent ‘under the weather’…
Welcome Back to WonderCon! The title of this column is both literal and metaphoric. The usually sunny spring weather of Southern California gave way to two days of near-nonstop rain, which forced a few last-minute changes to this year’s WonderCon 2024 in Anaheim (right across the road from Disneyland). The metaphoric aspect refers to my…
A glimpse into Disney+’s new Star Wars series, “The Acolyte”…
******JEDI TEMPLE-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Recently, I wrote a column about what it was like to be a young “Star Wars” fan in the late 1970s. Just writing that column was a sentimental trip that awakened all kinds of childhood nostalgia. But part of growing old with a franchise like Star Wars is watching it evolve over…
What it was like to be a young “Star Wars” fan in the late 1970s…
“A long time ago…” As the name of this column alludes, these are the recollections and inspirations of a middle-aged geek (now in his 50s), who was a ten-year old kid in the summer of 1977 when a certain sci-fi space-fantasy blasted onto movie screens across the country and changed everything that came afterward. Literally….
How 1973’s “American Graffiti” created a ripple effect still felt over 50 years later…
*****TWIN BARREL-CARB SPOILERS!***** After the arguably unjust box office failure of his arthouse-dystopian sci-fi film “THX-1138” (1971), George Lucas was challenged by his mentor and American Zoetrope producing partner Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather” trilogy, “Apocalypse Now”) to do something challenging to his own avant-garde sensibilities, which, for young George Lucas, meant creating a warm,…