Recent interview with Nick Gillard

I might have missed Lightsabre.co.uk‘s interview with PT stunt coordinator Nick Gillard had it not been for a mention of it on Club Jade. Scroll way down to the bottom of the page or look up under “Stars” 2008 interviews. Nick’s was done in December. In it he talks about Hayden’s skills, funny moments on the set, and other tidbits.

More about this Friday’s CW episode…

SciFi Wire has an interview with the young writer of this week’s CW episode, “Jedi Crash.” She’s none other than Katie Lucas, George Lucas’s 20-year-old daughter. Nepotism gets you everywhere ;). Seriously though, this is exciting and given Katie’s enthusiasm for all things SW, I’m sure she’s going to do a great job!

starwars.com has an interview with Ashley “Ahsoka” Eckstein where she talks about lil’ Snips’s relationship with Anakin.

Four episodes of CW on DVD March 25

starwars.com has confirmed recent rumors about the first series of CW Season One coming to DVD in March. This collection contains the first four aired episodes: “Ambush” and the “Malevolence” arc and it will hit stores for $19.95 on March 25. A second set of episodes will be released this summer. If they release only four episodes at a time a couple of times a year, it’ll take a while just to get all of Season One!

Preview of this week’s CW

starwars.com features a short piece about Aayla Secura’s “debut” on the show, which airs on Friday. Interestingly enough they are giving her a French accent and she will teach Aayla about the problems with attachments. Because God knows she didn’t learn any of that from Anakin ;).

New SW packaging for ’09

starwars.com has posted images of new packaging for SW products we’ll see hitting shelves late summer-early fall ’09, roughly about the time CW Season Two kicks off.

Interview with Jake Lloyd

Lightsabre, the British SW fan site, has a new interview up with Jake Lloyd. The 19-year-old wants to return to acting plus he has some amusing anecdotes about Liam Neeson on the set of TPM and other interesting insights. Go check it out!

Ten Years of TPM: Vanity Fair February 1999

The February 1999 issue of Vanity Fair hit the stands 10 years ago today, January 11, 1999. Filled with new images from the movie photographed by celebrity shutterbug Annie Leibovitz, the magazine issue earned a lot of publicity in its own right. I recall I was temping at a Washington, D.C. law firm at the time and there was a CVS around the corner from the office building. I went in there during lunch break and during an afternoon break and there was nothing. (New magazine issues generally hit the stands on Tuesday but living relatively close to New York City often meant new issues could appear on Monday). Discouraged, I took the Metro home and on the way, planned on visiting a Crown Books (RIP) near my house on the way home. Crown didn’t have it either. Out of desperation, I thought of checking a Giant supermarket in the same shopping center. There it was, waiting for me. I tried not to squee in public.

It marked the first time Vanity Fair covered SW, since the magazine had originally folded years before ANH debuted and wasn’t revived until 1987. It was the first time Leibovitz had photographed anything SW since her shoot for Rolling Stone back in 1980 featuring the cast of TESB. But unlike those photos, these were of the actors in costume doing things their characters were supposed to be doing. What we didn’t know yet was that Leibovitz staged these tableaus and they weren’t literal stills from the actual film ;). Leibovitz would be brought onto the set of the next two SW films to repeat the same technique for AOTC and ROTS.

The magazine featured a long interview with George Lucas by David Kamp that was surprisingly spoiler free, with the exception of the opening crawl. I avoided reading it, if you can believe it! But it certainly stirred a lot of “discussion” on TFN. It talks about TPM’s “likelihood” it will top Titanic, Lucas affirms for the zillionth time there will be no Episodes VII-IX, it notes the actors are better-known than their OT predecessors, and it has this prescient quote from Lucas: “If there’s any trepidation I have, it’s issues with the media, which has gotten much more savage and worse and gossipy.” Little did he know it not only turned out to be true, it was also far worse than even he could have expected.

Interview with Matthew Wood

If Magazine has a short interview with Matthew Wood, sound editor and the voices of General Grievous and the battle droids. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

Two years ago, George was saying “just work on this and we’ll just do a few episodes to get people started and then we can hand it off.” Now, 26 episodes later, he’s still involved. Him and Dave Filoni, they definitely run the ship and it’s been great watching Dave work. I’ve worked with George since I started out here and having Dave come on to Clone Wars has been great. It totally invigorated the Star Wars story.

PT references

The official starwars.com blog features two new PT references. One is a video of an assistant to actor Milo Ventimiglias (Peter Petrelli on Heroes) donning a clonetrooper helmet as he performs his underling duties.

I never watch 30 Rock but from what I understand the show does drop SW references such as this one (copped from the starwars.com blog):

Oh come on, really? You have all those different languages and the costumes and that big meeting room; it must be like working in the Galactic Senate in Star Wars.

They are similar. We are also very concerned about the growing influence of the Sith lords.

Clone Wars Debriefing: “The Gungan General”

starwars.com has an interview with the actor who voices Hondo, plus commentary on last night’s episode. I didn’t catch that was the Staff of Ra! Well, here’s what I thought…