Star Wars Exhibition photos

Yes, I like Star Wars. (So do you, probably.) In the summer I visited the excellent Star Wars Exhibition. Having visited the one in 2000(?) and really enjoyed it, I was keen to visit the largest exhibition of movie memorabilia in history (!) as well.

Thinking that most of the new films where CGI, I was expecting to see the original trilogy represented more, but I was wrong and, as a result, slightly disappointed (no Chewbacca?), but I was also surprised at how much model work was actually used in the new trilogy. Considering how people go on (and on) about the use of computer generated imagery in the recent films, I think most would be surprised to see just how many old school methods were used in creation of buildings, ships and characters.

I took a photo of every model, piece of artwork and costume in the entire exhibition (geek, moi?), but these are the ones which came out best. I hope you enjoy them!

Click for larger images.





This one always makes me smile: It looks like Darth has gone for a night stroll (depending on how your monitor displays it), maybe walking his dog.









My girlfriend alerted me to some more photos here, too. I don't know the author, but I think some of them are really good. Hope you enjoyed my shots!

Sunny, beach holiday blues...

Is it just me or am I having a really bad run of luck? I know it's nothing catastrophic and I know there's people out there going through worse, but! I'm beginning to feel like I'm cursed at the moment...

Tomorrow I leave for Newquay for a holiday I've had booked since March. It's the longest I've ever had a holiday planned in my life, and in theory, having given myself so much time to prepare, everything should go smoothly, right?

The trip is for two weeks and it's supposed to be a relaxing reunion of old friends mingled with some attempts at surfing. In fact, I've been so looking forward to the trying-to-surf part that I've pre-booked the equipment for the whole two weeks.

The main goal of this trip was always to de-stress, and given some recent events in my personal life, it couldn't have come along at a better time.

So, what could go wrong?

Well, two weeks ago I woke up with a crick in my neck which took two days to go away. Not a big deal (other than how surprisingly painful it was), these things happen from time to time, after all. Bizarrely, though, it decided to return this week as I was leaving a particularly stressful day at work. By the time I'd ridden the tube home my neck was killing me again. As I write this, four days later, I'm still turning my whole upper-body to look at things, like some badly designed robot. What the hell?

A crick in the neck, it turns out, is a stretched ligament which can take 10 - 14 days to heal fully, if you're sensible. I don't remember not being sensible at any point, but in some unknown way I must have agitated it, and it's decided to come back. With a vengeance. I'm hoping to prove medical science wrong, but even the most optimistic person has to admit that it puts a bit of a dampener on my ambition of spending the next two weeks surfing - I don't think it's covered under 'sensible'. (I have images of damaging it further and being, not only a self-conscious amateur, but the only surfer in a neck-brace.)

Now, ok, that's annoying, but when you add the following to the mix, you can understand why I'm feeling particularly unlucky at the moment: Last week I discovered that someone in Croatia has stolen £865 ($1,740) from my bank account using a fake debit card.

All my holiday money.

Bloody hell. I've never even been to Croatia, let alone knowingly shared my PIN number with someone from there, and yet I'm told they must have gotten it somehow. Still, thankfully I should get my money back. The only problem is that it's going to take the HSBC several weeks to investigate my claim. Brilliant, except, if you recall, I leave tomorrow.

All is not lost, in theory, as I still have my overdraft from my long gone student days and some kindly friends have even offered to lend me money. Again, fantastic, except I had to cancel my debit card when I reported the fraud, so I no longer have any access to any money.

Luckily I gave the HSBC a week's notice to send me my replacement, which was just long enough for me to get it before I left, or at least it would have been if there didn't happen to be a mail strike on this week.

No card, no money, and I'm off tomorrow morning.

Oh, and I did I mention the shark?

So much for planning in advance. Next time I'm booking it last minute and flying by the seat of my pants. In fact, for my next holiday I might just turn up at the train station/airport blindfolded and ask the person behind the desk to surprise me. As a friend once said to me; if you don't make any plans, nothing can technically go 'wrong'.

I know there are worse things happening out there, and you might well be going through much more difficult things yourself, but considering how much I've been looking forward to de-stressing over the next two weeks, I can't help but feel the irony.

My graphics tablet arrived today...!

Yes! My Wacom Intuos 3 arrived a few hours ago. (Happy birthday to me!) This is the first drawing I've ever done with any sort of graphics tablet, completed just a few minutes ago. It's not great, in fact it's pretty lame, but it was damn fun! Can't believe I didn't invest in one sooner!

(Apologies for the lameness of this post... Just pretty excited! I have one useful thing to add: If you're thinking about buying a graphics tablet, don't worry about the size like I did, it turns out that A5 is absolutely perfect!)
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In other news, Wrestlevania has written a response to my post about Peter Molyneux and 'emotional' gaming in his blog, and gives some interesting examples of how such a system might possibly work in a game like Fable. (Go give it a read for goodness sakes!)

I have to say that I'm really surprised and very happy at how my post has sparked a lot of interest and debate; thanks to everyone on the various forums I've posted it on who has commented in some way!

Oscar reactions

Well the most overblown, self-aggrandizing and, ultimately, meaningless, award ceremony is over for another year, and I have to say I really enjoyed this one! There was a bunch of really great nominees to choose from, even if the Academy didn't always pick the best ones.

Best film: Should have probably been Babel. The Departed (the actual winner) was not really "Best Picture" quality. Considering that the original film, Infernal Affairs, which it is so closely followed, didn't even get a Best Foreign Film nomination, just shows that this award was probably more for Martin Scorsese than Graham King (the producer who won it).

Directing: Martin Scorsese for The Departed, as predicted by everyone, took this award even though it was for a film that wasn't even his best work. Alejandro González Iñárritu did a better job with Babel, and although I haven't seen it, apparently Paul Greengrass was the one who should have won this award for United 93. Of course, this award was really an acknowledgement of the brilliant films Scorsese has made throughout his career, and that's something Greengrass couldn't really compete with.

Best male lead: Forest Whitaker took this one with no surprises. Peter O'Toole could have been awarded it for the 8 previous nominations he had, but sometimes it just goes to the best of that year. Who knows, if something had been made of O'Toole's other work, leading up to the Oscars, he could have possibly got this the same way Scorsese did.

Best female lead: Helen Mirren took this one, again, no surprises. I haven't seen her performance, but I doubt it could have been better than Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal.

Best supporting male: Thank god that Marky bloody Mark didn't win this one. His performance wasn't even the best in The Departed, never mind the rest of the films this year. Alan Arkin took this award, which no-one seemed sure which way was going to go. I don't see why Jack Nicholson got overlooked, though, his performance in The Departed was masterful.

Best supporting female: Adriana Barraza should have got this one, easily. If it wasn't her, then it should have been Rinko Kikuchi. Instead, Jennifer Hudson got this one, although to be fair, I missed Dreamgirls. She better have been damned good to beat Barraza!

Original screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine got this one, congrats to those guys. There was no obvious winner in this category.

Screenplay from other: The Departed, got this, god knows why, especially when you consider how close it was to the completely non-Academy recognised original. Notes on a Scandal was excellent, and probably deserved to win. Haven't seen the other nominations, though.

Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth's Guillermo Navarro took this one home, although Children of Men's Emmanuel Lubezki seem to do a stunning job.

Editing: The Departed's Thelma Schoonmaker took this one, her third Oscar. I thought that Babel's Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione possibly deserved it, but there's no doubting Schoonmaker's talent.

Best Foreign Film: The very popular Pan's Labyrinth surprisingly didn't get this one, instead it went to The Lives of Others, which thoroughly deserved it (definitely the best film of the year).

So in all it was Scorsese's year. Highlights included; Ellen DeGeneres, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Seinfeld (did a great bit that showed he was a little more comfortable on that big stage than DeGeneres, perhaps a contender as next year's host?), Jack Black, John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell's song, Helen Mirren's acceptance speech, but the best moment was worth waiting for: Coppolla, Speilberg and Lucas getting together to award their contemporary, Scorsese, with his Oscar.

I've probably forgotten some of the best bits, but like I said, it was a good year for Oscar overall!