A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Publicity photo of Buena Vista Home Entertainment's region-free Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga 18-disc box set. © 2020 Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On Monday, April 20, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) and Lucasfilm Ltd. released the 18-disc variant Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, a counterpart to the larger 27-disc box set of the same name released less than a month earlier as a Best Buy exclusive. I bought my from Walmart.com – I haven’t seen it as an official release on Amazon, although I have noticed that the 27-disc version of The Skywalker Saga is sold at the site by third-party sellers at inflated prices – this smaller, less elaborate box set was intended primarily as the region-free European release, as it sports the rating seals from the British and Irish counterparts to the Motion Picture Association of America as part of its indicia.  From a young Anakin Skywalker’s descent into the dark side to the rise of the Resis...

Promotional photo of Buena Vista Home Entertainment/Lucasfilm Ltd.'s 18-disc Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Blu-ray box set.  This is the region-free edition made for the UK/Europe but sold in the U.S. by Walmart. © 2020 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Hi, there! Welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the more "personal" section of A Certain Point of View where I just chat about everyday topics and stuff that doesn't fall neatly into the categories that I usually write about ﹘ reviews, politics, or life in the time of COVID-19. It's a nice morning in my corner of Florida; as I write this, the temperature outside is 78℉ (25℃) under partly sunny skies. According to my computer's weather app, today's forecast calls for a high of 84℉ (29℃) under mostly cloudy skies. It's going to be a humid and maybe even rainy day at times (52% humidity and 60% chance of precipitation), but it doesn't look as if it is going to ...

The new slipcover (and jewel box) art for the Multi-Screen Edition of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On September 22, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. reissued the 10 existing Star Wars live-action films in Multi-Screen Editions in Blu-ray and DVD along with codes for digital versions for streaming on Movies Anywhere and other Disney partners. Dubbed the "Multi-Screen Edition," this re-release came three months in advance of the theatrical premiere of the last Skywalker Saga film, Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which opens on December 20. This promotional photo shows nine of the 10 titles in the Multi-Screen Edition collection of Blu-ray/Digital Code sets released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm on September 22. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Although Buena Vista and Lucasfilm (both wholly-owned subsidiaries of The Walt...

Slipcover (and Blu-ray jewel box) art for the 2019 Multi-Screen reissue of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Twenty years after its initial theatrical release and nearly three months before the December 20 premiere of Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, the first installment of George Lucas's Star Wars Prequel Trilogy was reissued on Blu-ray disc (BD) as part of Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Limited's 10-film  Star Wars Multi-Screen Edition collection. This marks the first Disney-era reissue of Star Wars material that was originally distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment since The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox and the distribution rights to the first six  Star Wars films earlier this year . This promotional photo depicts the slipcover art for the Multi-Screen Edition reissues of the Skywalker Saga films. Rogue One and Solo (not shown here)   also ge...

The cover art for the 2019 Multi-Screen Edition Blu-ray release of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is based on a classic poster from 1983. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On September 22, 2019, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm  released all 10 existing live-action films in the Star Wars film franchise, almost three months before Star Wars -Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker' s premiere on December 20. Though both wholly-owned subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company have issued home media releases of Star Wars films and television shows produced in 2015 and after, this is the first time they have dropped both the Classic and Prequel Trilogies on physical media since George Lucas retired in 2012 and sold Lucasfilm to Disney. Publicity photo of nine Star Wars Multi-Screen Blu-ray/Digital Copy home media sets. Note that Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is not shown, but the two Anthology films ( Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A ...

The packaging for the 2019 "Multi-Screen"  re-issue of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back  blends elements of Roger Kastel's classic 1980 "Gone With the Wind"-style poster art with new elements depicting iconic characters and vehicles from Irvin Kershner's classic follow-on to Star Wars: A New Hope. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On September 22, 2019, in anticipation of the December 20 premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) re-issued the existing Star Wars Saga and Anthology films on Blu-ray. This re-release features all-new cover art loosely based on poster art from the 1970s, '80s, '90s, 2000s, and the current Disney/Lucasfilm era. It's also dubbed the "Multi-Screen" Edition because each Blu-ray package comes with both the physical Blu-ray disc (BD) and a code for the Movies Anywhere/iTunes/Google Play/Vudu digital copy.  Publi...

A publicity illustration depicting the new covers of the 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment Re-Issues of the Star Wars films on Blu-ray. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Hello, everybody. Welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On, my blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View, which is where I write posts that are neither reviews nor commentary on today's crazy and often depressing political scene. It's Thursday (What, already?), and here in my corner of Florida, it's already early evening. Right now it's already getting dark, and it's chilly! The temperature outside is 62℉ (16℃) under mostly clear skies, and the sun's already beneath the western horizon, so it's dark and nippy - and it's going to get nippier  because the low tonight is expected to go down to 45℉ (7℃). As the old Meredith Wilson song says, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." And apparently, it's beginnin...

Why did Star Wars video games give a "Very Special Thanks" to George Lucas in the credits? George Lucas is the (now-retired) founder and CEO of Lucasfilm Ltd., the parent company of LucasArts Games, which was originally named Lucasfilm Games. Lucas also created the  Star Wars  movie and television franchise in the 1970s, starting with  Star Wars,  aka  Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope,  in 1977. All of the  Star Wars  video games, whether they were published directly by Lucas Arts or by entities such as Atari (whose  Star Wars: The Arcade Game  was a personal favorite of mine when it was introduced in 1983) owed their existence to the films. Without Lucas’s space fantasy set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” the programmers, game designers, graphics artists, salespeople, and composers might not have even gone into the video game industry in the first place. So it is natural that many of those individuals who playe...

© 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Will Kevin Feige's Star Wars film spell the end for the George Lucas era? No. The “George Lucas era” ended in the fall of 2012. In case you didn’t notice, George Lucas sold his company, Lucasfilm Ltd., to The Walt Disney Company, for $4 billion (half cash, half in Disney stock) in October of 2012. Lucas stopped making  Star Wars  live-action films in 2005 but continued to work in the franchise as creator and executive producer of the CGI animated series  Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  He did not micromanage that 2008–2014 show; he leaned on Dave Filoni, Catherine Winder, and others for that, although he signed off on all of the big storylines, such as the return of Darth Maul, the one-off appearance of Chewbacca, and the Mortis story arc. He also said many, many times that he had  no  plans to make any more  Star Wars  films set after  Return of the Jedi  and t...

Are Star Wars animated series only placeholder canon until the movies decide what actually happened during that time frame? No.  Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels,  and  Star Wars: Resistance  are coequal in canon to the live-action films. Especially  Star Wars: The Clone Wars,  because that series was created and executive produced by George Lucas and was the last  Star Wars  content he personally oversaw. The only animated series that meets the “placeholder” criteria is the 2003–2005  Star Wars: Clone Wars  2-D micro-series created by Genndy Tartakovsky and co-produced by Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network. Intended as a means to bridge the three-year in-universe gap between  Attack of the Clones  and  Revenge of the Sith,  Tartakovsky’s series was just one of many elements in Lucasfilm’s multimedia Clone Wars campaign, as well as a backdoor pilot to George Lucas’s CGI animated series.  Star Wars...