Star Wars - The Making of the Movie (1980)

The masses can keep their May the 4th celebration but I'll always celebrate May 25th as the real Star Wars day! Today in 1977 is when it all began so I wanted to do a little something to commemorate the 44th anniversary.

 

While I was enacting #BasementPurge2021 a couple months ago, I came across a box with Star Wars books from the 70s/80s. There were old favorites that I read cover to cover I don't know how many times like The Star Wars Album and the Art of books. But there was also the book I'm featuring today which I don't really remember so it was like finding a treasure from 41 years ago.

 

 The Star Wars Album (again, the book, not a record) had a lot of behind the scenes info about how the movie was made and that's what really got me interested in the behind the camera aspect of movies. This particular book is a Step-Up book written for kids that are ready to move beyond beginning reader level so the text may not be that interesting to older readers.

While anything from the original movie era is a treat, I did find a couple of images in this book that I hadn't seen before. That's something I really appreciate!

Like the above image, for example. Brand new to me! If you're an old timer like me, you'll no doubt see lots of images you remember seeing from your childhood, including the infamous Pink Shorts Boom Operator.

In addition to the special effects, the book also talks about some of the full costume characters and the actors inside them, cantina aliens, and the early drafts of the Star Wars that might have been. It wraps up with a summary of the movie.

I'm not a professional digitizer/scanning person. I wanted to preserve the book as best I could so some of the pages will be slightly tilted but I still hope you'll enjoy blasting back to 1980 to read about the making of Star Wars.

Click on the book cover above to check it out.

Star Wars Poster Magazines

Jumping back even further this week to the original Star Wars era when every tidbit was a new piece of the ever expanding galaxy far, far away.

There are download links below each image but if you're not the download type, you can find the poster books, except for the Return of the Jedi 1 & 4 among my Star Wars gallery on Flickr. Even though these are poster magazines, most of these scan are just the articles with no posters.

I should also add that these are not my scans, just things I happened upon while travelling through cyberspace and squirreled away like a Jawa with droid parts.

 This UK magazine has a great Vader poster using an image I had never seen anywhere else. If you're a long time fan, you're used to seeing the same promo shots over and over. Not this one! It still amazes me after all this time that there can still be something "new" to find.

Here's a four pack of magazines from Empire. We take all of Star Wars for granted now, especially if you weren't around when these were released. Things like these poster magazines and the backs of trading cards were a gold mine for new trivia.

 

The Return of the Jedi pack also has four magazines. Issues 1 and 4 were taken from StarWars.com. For some strange reason, one of the pages in each looks like it was photographed (making it almost impossible to read) instead of scanned.

 

Be sure to tune in next week on the "real" Star Wars Day, May 25th for a special surprise!

Star Wars Greeting Cards (1994)

 1994 was an odd time in Star Wars history. Just a few years prior, Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire was released ending what a lot of fans call the "dark times" when it seemed like we'd gotten all the Star Wars we ever would. 

After Return of the Jedi, the final Kenner toys, the Ewok TV movies, the Droids/Ewoks cartoons, and the original Marvel comic series ending in 1987 as far as we knew...that was it. (The West End RPG was just taking off but that's definitely not as mainstream as it is today.) I credit Zahn's books with kickstarting the Star Wars renaissance of the 90s. For better or worse, the next year we'd start getting new (beefier) action figures.

While going through more boxes for #BasementPurge2021 I found a Hallmark bag with some Star Wars greeting cards. These aren't something I generally collect so I'm going on the idea that these were the first new cards to be produced in awhile.

 

I thought they'd make a fun blog post and I can just make a Star Wars month out of May. Why keep it to just one day? 

Let's have a look!

 

Talisman: Star Wars Board Game

 Over the years, the Star Wars license has been slapped on many classic board games including Operation, Clue, Life, Trouble, at least a half dozen versions of Monopoly, and most recently, Uno. Unlike all these other games, you'll have to shop outside the US to get this one. I assume it's because Hasbro has licensing rights to board games in the US.

If you're not familiar with Talisman, it's a fun way to kill an afternoon with friends. The original is set in a generic fantasy world. Each player has a character with its own abilities. You travel around the board encountering creatures and places, finding allies and gear, and building up your power while searching for a Talisman that allows you to travel to the center of the board to win the game.

This version is basically the same but Star Wars-ified. In the original, a character can be Good, Neutral, or Evil. Here, there is only Good or Evil and you're making your way to the center to defeat or overthrow the Emperor on Exegol.

Monthly Media Recap - April 2021

 Wow, was it just me or did April fly by? 

 

Streaming

The Owl House (Disney Channel)

I happened on this when channel surfing and really liked the art and weirdness to it. Since all the eps are on Disney+ I decided to check it out from the start. I'm only a handful of episodes in but I am loving it. It's got an Adventure Time/Gravity Falls vibe to it which is not surprising, since the creator did storyboard art for GF and GF's creator is a creative consultant!

 

Creepshow (S2, Shudder)

I thought they were going to shoot themselves in the foot this season by putting what will likely be the best episode up first. The rest were pretty good and the season finale was great. Not as good as the opener but close behind.

Mindhunter (S1, Netflix)

I had seen a lot of people talking about it online but never really gave it a look until GI Jigsaw recommended it to me in last month's Recap when I mentioned I was on the lookout for some good true crime. I was a little hesitant at first because it was a show and not a documentary but it hooked me in pretty quickly. A couple eps in and Anna Torv showed up adding a whole new dynamic to the two main characters and that pretty much sealed the deal.

Gilmore Girls (S1, Netflix)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Not something I would ever expect to see show up here either! Mrs Dex wanted to watch it so I gave it a shot and it's really good. The Girls have great chemistry, the dialog is insanely witty, and there's plenty of people in the cast before they became household names to have fun going "Hey, look who it is!"