New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
Oscar Isaac shuts his eyes tight, guitar in hand, and the world goes away. Which is convenient, because the world keeps presenting him with unwelcome facts, here in his 37th year: Turns out that if you’re a dreamily handsome actor who delivers fierce, incandescent, once-in-a-generation performances worthy of Pacino and De Niro, and then takes big roles in Star Wars and X-Men movies, you will become famous, and people will start calling you a movie star. Who knew? “I’m an actor, not a star,” he’ll say, bristling politely, if probed too hard on the subject of his rise. “I don’t really know what you mean when you say ‘star,’ ‘movie star,’ that stuff.”
Isaac never planned for any of this – never planned for much of anything, really – and he’s trying to keep it all out of his head. He’s obsessed with craft, indifferent to celebrity, private by instinct. The money is nice, not that he’s spending much of it, but the only part of success he truly covets is having his pick of roles. He’s bemused by the fervent female fan base he’s acquired, with bloggers calling him “the Internet’s boyfriend.” “The Internet never struck me as being into monogamous relationships,” he says with a small laugh. “It’s very promiscuous, the Internet.” (The Internet almost dumped him last year when an old picture emerged of him wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the cover of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. “I liked the design,” he says. “I didn’t think wearing the shirt was saying I agreed with all her politics. I’m not a libertarian!”)
Isaac still lives in the same one-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he bought before his career’s recent uptick. He doesn’t own a car (“You know how much a garage is? It’s like paying rent!”). He did at least renovate his Brooklyn place, and purchased homes for his mom and sister. He’ll consider a larger apartment if he has kids, or, as he puts it, “if I duplicate or replicate.”
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Image via Rollingstone.com
Via Thegaurdian.com:
Actor and writer reveals good-natured battle against studio-ordered weight loss in new documentary about relationship with mother Debbie Reynolds
Carrie Fisher has revealed how the makers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens sent a personal trainer to her home to weigh her, remove unhealthy food from her cupboards and persuade her to exercise.
Fisher was at the Cannes film festival this weekend for Saturday’s screening of the HBO documentary Bright Lights, about her relationship with her mother, the 84-year-old Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds.
The film, directed by The Cove producer Fisher Stevens, shows the 59-year-old actor being persuaded to perform lunges and use a cross trainer.
While working out on a treadmill, the actor wonders if she will be retrospectively thinned down by Star Wars’ makers if her character Leia Organa should die and return as a “Force ghost”. She asks: “My question is, if you die when you’re fat, are you a fat ghost, or do they go back to a more flattering time?”
At one point in the film, the fitness professional empties Fisher’s kitchen of unhealthy food and drinks. But Fisher reportedly fought back against the fitness regime, buying cans of cola and refusing to do lunges.
Bright Lights features footage of Fisher when she was a little girl, as well as archive material highlighting her mother’s years of Hollywood fame. The actor and comic previously riffed on the relationship for her 1987 semi-autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge, which was later adapted by the author for the acclaimed 1990 film starring Meryl Streep, who received an Oscar-nomination for the role.
Fisher reprised her role as Leia Organa in JJ Abrams’ blockbuster space opera The Force Awakens last year. She will return as the Resistance leader in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VIII.
In December the actor and writer revealed she felt pressured to lose 16kg (2st 7lb) for her return to Star Wars, directing criticism at the “insane” image obsession of Hollywood. “They don’t want to hire all of me – only about three-quarters! Nothing changes, it’s an appearance-driven thing,” she told Good Housekeeping magazine. “I’m in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say get younger, because that’s how easy it is.”
Via Comicbookmovie.com:
Prior to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, some fans were all but sure they had figured out the identity of Andy Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke. Now, a Lucasfilm story executive is shooting down the theory…
Besides trying to decipher the parentage of Rey in the most recent chapter of the Star Wars saga, fans have been puzzled as to just who Supreme Leader Snoke is. Little is known about the character outside of him having suffered some grave injuries, his leadership of the First Order, and his training of Kylo Ren. One of the most popular theories prior to the film’s release was that Snoke was really Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord who trained Emperor Palpatine. The character is believed to be dead, murdered by Palpatine, but fans who held this theory claimed he must have survived with grave injuries. This certainly would have been an interesting path, tying the saga back to the much-maligned prequels in a way that helped to serve the story.
With The Force Awakens giving us no clear indication either way on Snoke’s true identity, fan speculation has continued rampantly, despite denials from J.J. Abrams and Andy Serkis, who portrays the character via motion capture. Now, Pablo Hidalgo, who is the Creative Executive of the Lucasfilm Story Group, has engaged with some fans on Twitter and has seemingly shot down the rumour as false. “…he was said to possess the ability to keep loved ones from dying. Not himself. His apprentice killed him.” Of course, there’s always room for denial and misdirection when it comes to Star Wars; secrecy was a big deal when it came to stifling plot leaks from The Force Awakens. However, Hidalgo was pretty adamant that there is no misdirection when it comes to Plagueis. “I said Sidious killed Plagueis. He killed him. Killed. As in ‘to kill’. Like, there was killing.”
All in all, that seems pretty definitive. Do you think Snoke has a familiar identity, or is he just a new character with sinister motivations?
New Zealand Mint is thrilled to announce two major new officially licensed Star WarsTM coin collections. The Star Wars Classic collection highlights many of the great characters associated with this cultural phenomenon. The Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection shows engraved and colored illustrations of the key characters appearing in the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. To see and order these new Star Wars coins, click here.
Via Slashfilms.com:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is one of the most popular movies of all time, and we’ve posted about all the hidden Easter eggs, seen many video essays about the plot comparisons to A New Hope (which even Abrams has admitted was by design) and seen a bevy of posts and videos pointing out the film’s flaws. But one error I haven’t seen mentioned many places in the mainstream press is the fact that Star Wars: The Force Awakens opening crawl features a different font from the previous six live-action films. And there’s almost nothing nerdier than typography and font geekery, but if this kind of thing interests you, hit the jump and find out how it’s wrong.
An essay on Medium by FixTheCrawl was the first to point this out:
The ‘roll-up’ has a very specific typographical treatment in the previous six films — and the font used for the episode title, “The Force Awakens”, is wrong. Really wrong. The Star Wars opening crawl is perhaps the most famous narrative device in cinema history. Star Wars has many stylistic hallmarks, such as the Kurosawa-inspired scene wipe. But the opening crawl has become so associated with Star Wars that no other film could possibly use it without seeming like a blatant lift. In fact, you might say that the opening crawl is the thing that makes a Star Wars film feel like The Real Deal™. When series creator George Lucas got his chance to make the first sequel to Star Wars (1980’s The Empire Strikes Back), he made a very controversial move — re-titling his original blockbuster, Star Wars, by appending Episode IV — A New Hope. With this in mind, he decided the visual consistency of the opening crawl across all future episodes would be so sacrosanct, that he completely re-shot a new opening crawl that contained the new title and episode number. Ever since, every main saga episode of Star Wars has contained the Episode number, typeset in the News Gothic family, and the title of the film itself, typeset in the Univers family.
But apparently Disney got it wrong with The Force Awakens opening crawl. The episode’s title is set with a condensed version of News Gothic, when it should be set in Univers, Ultra Condensed. I’m not nerdy enough to explain how it’s different, so here is another excerpt from FixtheCrawl:
News Gothic (also used for the body text) is very round, friendly, and readable, whereas Univers gives the title of the film some stately heft — telegraphing the impression that the events about to transpire are carved in the stone of destiny (or something). … It’s subtle, but noticable. The ‘S’ and ‘R’ glyphs, in particular, are very different. Overall, it’s boxier, and feels more staid. Less urgent.
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Check out a new Limited Edition Rey Statue from Iron Studios. Based off of the original movie references and manufactured in polystone. Each piece is hand-painted and includes two posing options, with light saber (which does not light up) and with her staff. A base is included and it will be priced at $350 USD (Retail). Rey will ship in the second half of 2016. Check out some images below:
Check out the NEW Star Wars Fathead wall décor just in time for Star Wars Day™! Including a new LIMITED EDITION* Darth Vader Elite Fathead, with only 50 units available. (*Limited quantity. Will not be reprinted.)
Via Ign.com:
Star Wars Day is fast approaching and Kmart is celebrating the fan holiday by introducing its newest Star Wars collectible action figure: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Black Series Rey Figure Exclusive.
The exclusive Rey figure features a Starkiller Base that is similar to Kmart’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens Black Series Kylo Ren Figure Exclusive that was released last year in advance of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere.
While sold separately, both exclusive figures’ Starkiller bases interlock, replicating the epic snowy woods battle scene between Rey and Kylo Ren in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens film. Far-far-away fans and collectors alike can snatch up the new exclusive Rey figure in-store or online at Kmart.com beginning on May 4, 2016 for $24.99. The exclusive Kylo Ren figure is currently available for $24.99 in-store and online at Kmart.com.
