Lucas Agrees to Write ‘Star Wars’ TV Series
Star Wars creator George Lucas has agreed to write a 100-episode TV series of the classic sci-fi epic.
The series will focus on the missing years between Revenge of the Sith and the original Star Wars movie, released in 1977.
Producer Rick McCullum said at Monday night’s Empire Awards, “We’re very excited–we just got confirmation George Lucas has committed to writing the Star Wars TV series.
“I guess this is the news all fans have been waiting to hear.”
Yeah, because if there’s one thing the last three (well, four) movies got right, it was the writing …
- In related news: Indy 4 script completed. Well, Harrison Ford says it’s ready, because George Lucas turned in a final script. The good news is that Steven Spielberg is doing a rewrite before the cameras start rolling. Me, I’m hoping for the McCarthy era, Soviet thugs and Rachel McAdams as a university colleague of Dr. Jones.
One for now, one for posterity:
- I may have been influenced early on by Peter Parker and Clark Kent (who says comics don’t warp young minds?), but it was Edward R. Murrow, when I first heard about him in AP Government class my senior year in high school, who really showed me that journalists not only could change the world, but at times, have the obligation to try.
Whatever you think of the easily drawn parallels to today’s political situation, see Good Night and Good Luck ASAP. A great film, a great reminder of the mission of journalism and a great — and accurate — glimpse into the often-times nail-biting world of journalists doing the right thing, as they see it, consequences be damned.
“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” – Edward R. Murrow
Murrow is still The Man when it comes to journalists.
- Jenn says she sees the return of my creepy sarcoidosis internal bleeding blotches on my shins. And we’ll have fun, fun, fun until her daddy takes the T-Bird away.
Listening to this week’s episode of the always-awesome radio show/podcast, The Business, I listened with amusement to the stories of reporters talking about what a nightmare it is to report on Hollywood.
 I had no idea about any of this back in 1997, when I was working at the Potomac News and the second team for the $75 million disaster flick Deep Impact came to Prince William County, Virginia. They were there to film an evacuation scene on Interstate 66, heading out of Washington, DC as the comet approaches Earth.
My editor was told that we would be given a chance to participate in the scene — i.e., sit in my car on the blacktop for eight hours and write about the experience — which sounded like a fun little feature story.
I also got word that they’d be casting for said scene at middle school in Manassas in the gym. The news hole is always hungry, so I called for days and days, trying to touch base with someone — anyone — involved in the production to talk about what the process was like. Because movies don’t do a lot of casting in suburban northern Virginia, it was a story we all agreed would be of interest to our readership.
But I got nowhere with the telephone calls. The day approached and I said to myself, “Self, they’re meeting in a public venue” (this is obviously before the Columbine killings turned public schools across America into closed campuses) “and there’s no controls over who is coming and going, so it’s a public gathering. Just go and cover it.”
So I did.
The story came out in the paper, and a nice little slice of cinematic life it was.
And then a publicist for the production called up and screamed at my editor, saying I was banned from the set (Interstate 66) and that they didn’t want to see me anywhere near their production. My editor, Barb, eventually calmed her down enough to agree that another reporter could have the coveted sit-on-the-road-for-eight-hours gig. A non-features reporter got the story, and pretty much phoned it in.
This all seemed (and seems) highly irrational to me, but it’s apparently the way it goes in entertainment journalism, where information can be tightly controlled by the entertainment companies and the journalists are forced to dance to irrational whims. It was a shock to me, and I spitefully chose to not see the film, even if it does feature President Morgan Freeman.
In the end, Deep Impact commercially came in second to the other disaster-from-space flick to come out in 1998, Armageddon. I like to think it was my boycott that made the difference.
Although some critics and vampire movie fans like to poo-poo the Blade franchise, the blood shower scene in the original Blade film is easily one of the most iconic moments in vampire fiction, a great, shocking and jarring visual that easily stands up to the best in any other vampire films.
Unfortunately, that sort of story-telling is absent in Blade: Trinity, which mostly feels tired, despite the gung-ho willingness of Ryan Reynolds and the terribly earnest Jessica Biel. Snipes’ one-note attitude gets cartoonish in this chapter and, honestly, any movie that makes fun of a vampire’s haircut but lets Blade’s pass without comment has some serious blindspots.
The film also relies on viewers having seen the second Blade movie, otherwise the tri-part vampire mouths on several vamps in this movie will just be baffling. This probably isn’t a big issue, since most viewers will have seen the other two movies in the series, but it seems careless not to address this in at least a single throwaway line.
Sloppiest of all, though, is the finale, where Blade’s “final gift” is never explained and is mostly a “huh?” moment.
The film retains the visual pizzazz of the original, but doesn’t have the sense of humor that made the grim elements work.
Still, worth seeing for fans of the first two films.
Here’s a bill sure to give journalists and pesky free speech types the night sweats until a court hopefully slaps it down with the constitutional sledgehammer:
WASHINGTON — Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration’s eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law.
The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who “intentionally discloses information identifying or describing” the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law.
Under the boosted penalties, those found guilty could face fines of up to $1 million, 15 years in jail or both.
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the measure is broader than any existing laws. She said, for example, the language does not specify that the information has to be harmful to national security or classified.
“The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact,” said Martin, a civil liberties advocate.
DeWine is co-sponsoring the bill with Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. The White House and Republican Senate leaders have indicated general support, but the bill could face changes as it works its way through Congress.
David Tomlin, the AP’s assistant general counsel, said government officials with security clearances would be potential targets under DeWine’s bill.
“But so would anyone else who received an illegal disclosure under the proposed act, knew what it was and deliberately disclosed it to others. That’s what some reporters do, often to great public benefit,” he said.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the language would allow anyone _ “if you read a story in the paper and pass it along to your brother-in-law” _ to be prosecuted.
“As a practical matter, would they use this to try to punish any newspaper or any broadcast? It essentially makes coverage of any of these surveillance programs illegal,” she said. “I’m sorry, that’s just not constitutional.”
The British have similar restrictions on journalists to a much more sweeping extent. Coverage of someone being in trouble for disclosing information the follow-up articles can’t even allude to is as bizarre as you might imagine.
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