The Bearded Trio

The existence of a new Star Wars cartoon based on a line of super-deformed toys has leaked out of Skywalker Ranch.
A source at IESB has revealed a new Star Wars animated series that will be based on the Star Wars: Galactic Heroes line of toys. The Galactic Heroes toys are a collection of super-deformed miniature figures that include a wide variety of characters from Lando Calrissian to Yoda.
A director has just been hired to guide the new show, which reportedly has a working title of Squishies. This may seem like an incredibly odd name, but it makes a little more sense when you consider that a very young audience of preschoolers to kindergartners is being targeted for the show. Even for a kid's cartoon, this is a pretty young age group, so maybe Squishies could end up being some kind of educational program in the same vein as Yo Gabba Gabba or the like, but one that features lightsabers and Boba Fett. I, for one, think that would be pretty cool for kids.
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This demo-reel shows examples of film-effects work done by James Rowell at Industrial Light & Magic, Pacific Data Images (now Dreamworks Animation) and ESC.

The work done by James in this video includes particle and dynamics effects, 3d lighting and digital image compositing. For a shot breakdown - please see the write-up at www.orangeimagination.com.

So Avatar is out Monday 26th April, just in time for Earth Day but the general vibe on the web is that this is a bare bone version with the ultimate version out next year. No extras are on the DVD or Blu-Ray with Fox saying that they wanted all the room on the discs for the picture and sound quality. Hmmmm! I'm not convinced on that statement as a second disc could have contained all the extras.

Anyway is it worth buying? Well if you have a blu-ray player then one hundred percent yes it is! The picture and sound quality is the best yet and will definetely show off your home cinema setup. The colours are remarkable and Pandora will still come to life even with the missing 3D. If you have a standard DVD then I would save your money until the Summer when Avatar will get released in the cinema again with six minutes of delete scenes. Avatar is like beer. You buy a beer and on the side of the bottle it will say "best served cold". Avatar should say "best watch…

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President Barack Obama presented John Williams with the 2009 National Medal of Arts on Feb. 25, 2010 at the White House in Washington. Williams was lauded “for his achievements in symphonic music for motion pictures", and cited "as a pre-eminent composer and conductor [whose] scores have defined and inspired modern movie-going for decades."

Video of the awards - John Williams is about 17 minutes in

Mayor Vaughn: Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.

Mayor Vaughn: I don't think either of one you are familiar with our problems.
Hooper: I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and BITES YOU ON THE ASS!