Most excellent day, Rogue One, A New Hope and a partially festive living room

Today was a most excellent day. All the migrations are now done until mid January and so the normal working schedule can be resumed again. Sunday into Monday was our last migration of the year and despite some initial teething problems it went well, It will be nice to have some weekends to myself for a while! I even had decent breaks and finished on time so that was a great improvement over the last few weeks.

Tonight we watched Rogue One and A New Hope to continue our December Star Wars viewing.

The living room is now staring to take on a partially festive feel with the fireplace and altar now kitted out. Still more to come though :) 

The tree will be next and then we will be full on ready for festive frolics.

Cassian Andor live action series announced

On a recent Disney earnings call Bob Iger revealed that there is a new Star Wars live action TV series in the works based on Cassian Andor who was first introduced to us in Rogue One. Diego Luna will return to the role.

The 'fans' are already bitching about this but I really can't see why. They say Andor is a nothing character that we know the ending of but complain about the cancelling of the never confirmed Boba Fest movie. Boba Fett is one of the least interesting character there is in Star Wars, he looked cool, did nothing and we know what happened to him! I loved Rogue One so can't wait to see where they go with this! I'm really hoping that K-2SO makes has a role to play.

Off to Stratford-upon-Avon, snow, early Christmas & Rogue One

It was off to Stratford-upon-Avon to see mum this afternoon. We decided to go by train this time to make things a bit easier. When we arrived there was snow, and we were delighted.

It was a bit chilly by the time we got to mum's so cups of tea were had to take the edge off :) Much chat and hilarity then followed. A gorgeous vegetarian casserole for dinner and we also decided to have Christmas early, just because LOL

We are now a mere SIX days away from The Last Jedi!

The quite excellent Rogue One was the viewing choice for tonight as we move through the movies :)

Here's a The Last Jedi teaser trailer to help pass the time......

Star Wars Episode VIII title and other stuff

Well today in the Star Wars world some big news hit as the title for Episode VIII was finally announced. Yes folks, we have a name, the next movie in the franchise will be called The Last Jedi. Personally I like it and it fits in with some of the hints at the story that will unfold in this episode.

Don't forget, of course, that Jedi is both a singular and a plural! *grin*

We also got the first poster for the newly reveiled title:

Here's what Mark Hammil had to say about the title:

Daisy Ridley posted this on her Facebook page:

Watch out readers, the hype is real and will start building from now!

In other news Rogue One has now passed the one billion dollar mark at the box office making it an amazing success. Talking of Rogue One, The Star Wars Show has just done a wonderful episode on some of the easter egg secrets in the film. Don't watch this if you still haven't seen Rogue One. If you haven't then why not? LOL


Zen Studios have just announced that they have a new game coming out, Star Wars Pinball: Rogue One. I've quite enjoyed their previous Star Wars themed pinball games so am hopeful that this one will meet the same high standards. Here's a few screen shots:

We've also just seen the release of the synopsis of the new Thrawn novel, another reason to get VERY excited. You might remember my squeals of delight when Thrawn was brought out from Legends status to appear in Star Wars Rebels and so to have a new 'canon' book is amazing.

In this definitive novel, readers will follow Thrawn’s rise to power—uncovering the events that created one of the most iconic villains in Star Wars history.  

One of the most cunning and ruthless warriors in the history of the Galactic Empire, Grand Admiral Thrawn is also one of the most captivating characters in the Star Wars universe, from his introduction in bestselling author Timothy Zahn’s classic Heir to the Empire, through his continuing adventures in Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and beyond. But Thrawn’s origins and the story of his rise in the Imperial ranks have remained mysterious. Now, in Star Wars: Thrawn, Timothy Zahn chronicles the fateful events that launched the blue-skinned, red-eyed master of military strategy and lethal warfare into the highest realms of power—and infamy.  

After Thrawn is rescued from exile by Imperial soldiers, his deadly ingenuity and keen tactical abilities swiftly capture the attention of Emperor Palpatine. And just as quickly, Thrawn proves to be as indispensable to the Empire as he is ambitious; as devoted as its most loyal servant, Darth Vader; and a brilliant warrior never to be underestimated. On missions to rout smugglers, snare spies, and defeat pirates, he triumphs time and again—even as his renegade methods infuriate superiors while inspiring ever greater admiration from the Empire. As one promotion follows another in his rapid ascension to greater power, he schools his trusted aide, Ensign Eli Vanto, in the arts of combat and leadership, and the secrets of claiming victory. But even though Thrawn dominates the battlefield, he has much to learn in the arena of politics where ruthless administrator Arihnda Pryce holds the power to be a potent ally or a brutal enemy. 

All these lessons will be put to the ultimate test when Thrawn rises to admiral—and must pit all the knowledge, instincts, and battle forces at his command against an insurgent uprising that threatens not only innocent lives but also the Empire’s grip on the galaxy—and his own carefully laid plans for future ascendancy.

So that's the end of my latest Star Wars update. I'll leave you all with this wonderful fan made trailer for the Star Wars Saga:

Star Wars Rebels mid-season trailer

Star Wars Rebels starts up again this Saturday. We've already had some hints that Saw Gerrera will be putting in an appearance

The mid-season trailer they've just released though just has so much excitement in it and is going to make Rebels must watch TV if you are a Star Wars fan.

Gerera, Tarkin, Thrawn, Maul, Kenobi.......

Star Wars Rebels will bridge the gap nicely between Rogue One comedown and the soon to start hype for Episode VIII.

Goodbye mum, Natural History Museum & Rogue One

No extra sleep for us today as we had to get up early(ish) to take mum to the station as it was sadly time for her to return home. We had a really smooth journey to Marylebone with mum getting an earlier trained than planned. It's been great having her stay with us and we've promised to go up to Stratford early next year. This made me smile and started off the day nicely.

After dropping mum we whizzed round to Camden for a lovely buffet lunch at our favourite vegetarian Chinese restaurant Qing Xi.

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum where we indulged in a favourite British past time, queueing!

 The queue was pretty long and it took us an hour to actually get in!

Still, there was some nice architecture to see on the way round:

It was worth the wait though as we finally made it through the doors and were greeted by the Natural History Museum's iconic exhibit.

We had a brilliant time although there wasn't enough of it and we had hardly dented walking round before it was time to go. Here's a random scattering of pics:

We are planning on making a return visit but next time will get there before the doors open so that we can spent a whole day there.

Our day wasn't over though as we popped into a nice Indian restaurant for a bite to eat before the finale of our day. Love the name of the restaurant:

The food was delicious and we treated ourselves to a glass of wine too :)

Which bring us on to the finale. Our last stop was the Science Museum IMAX Cinema to go and see Rogue One in 15/70mm IMAX 2D. K-2SO did the introduction:

Third time round and Rogue One is still as brilliant as ever. I'm not bored of watching it yet. The quality of the IMAX compared with standard cinema digital was astonishing and we'll definitely be doing more IMAX screenings in the future.

We had a brilliant day just doing stuff and spending time together and plan to do lots more of this in 2017.

New Rogue One featurette and other Star Wars updates...(potential spoilers)

So what we have here is a new Rogue One featurette and a few snippets of other Star Wars updates (Rebels, Episode VIII and Han Solo)....  The Rogue One video appears before the **POTENTIAL SPOILERS** section.........

First off here's the Rogue One featurette called Locations

...and now you are about to enter the SPOILER ZONE
**POTENTIAL SPOILERS**
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Saw Gerrera (from The Clone Wars and more recently Rogue One) will be making an appearance in Rebels . It is believed that Forest Whitaker will be doing the voice rather than the usual Andrew Kishino (who voiced him in The Clone Wars).

..and here's a clip:

Billie Lourd (Carrie Fisher's daughter) will be reprising her role from The Force Awakens as Lieutenant Connix in Episode VIII. She's said that she should be getting more than one line this time and has more to do. Here's a video of her from a promotional tour for Scream Queens where she mentions the Star Wars stuff around the 17:20 mark. If you haven't seen Scream Queens it is well worth checking out.


In other Episode VIII news it appears that there will be some new furry friends coming on board in the form of inhabitants of Ahch-To (the place were The Force Awakens ends). It is being reported that creatures have razor sharp teeth and are a mixture of the terrifying and the adorable (the Episode VIII version of Ewoks perhaps?).  Luke has a rapport with them but Rey does not, these creatures don't think Rey has a right to be there but Luke does. There is also a strong rumour that, as part of her training with Luke, Rey will do battle with a large sea creature and defeating it will get her the approval of the new creatures.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Donald Glover about his upcoming role as Lando Calrissian in the Han Solo standalone movie which is due out in 2018. He talked about how he was approaching playing the part, "I remember Lando really well. He was like the only black guy in space. And he was the cool one. I just realized, he still has to be cool. And cool is an interesting thing. It changes(...) I was watching Black Mirror, and there's an episode where they go through time and in the '50s, there's a nerd, and by the time he gets to the 2000s, he's just a hipster. He's not a nerd anymore. Cool changes depending on the perspective. Also, it's fun because [the Han Solo movie is set] before [Empire Strikes Back], so he's still figuring it out a little bit, which is fun."

The Han Solo movie also stars Alden Ehrenreich as Han and Game Of Thrones star Emilia Clarke in as yet unknown role.

Rogue One thoughts (** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **)

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Please do not start reading this if you don't want spoilers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
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Now that we have the warnings out of the way please note that what follows are my thoughts on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and this will include spoilers so no getting upset if you read on and haven't seen the film yet.

** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **

It was back to Cineworld Bexleyheath for round two so I thought I'd share more detailed thoughts afterwards. What follows lacks real structure, it's just a brain dump of things that I thought of.

Rogue One starts in a manner we have all become accustomed to watching a Star Wars movie....

...and then it is all change. There is no opening crawl, there is no traditional Star Wars theme fanfare. This isn't a problem for me (although I've seen others complain about it). For the record the soundtrack for Rogue One is not scored by John Williams (who is busy doing Episode VIII) but is instead done by Michael Giacchino. He does an excellent job of imitating the feel of Star Wars music and there are lots of noticeable nods towards Mr Williams' legacy of work.

In the absence of fanfare of crawl we go straight into the action and in that we do have some familiarity. Large planet and a spaceship looming into view. What we have next is a flashback scene setting the background for how Galen Erso ends up back working with Orson Krennic and how Jyn Erso was spirited away by Saw Gerrera. The Death Troopers look absolutely awesome and I love the presence of Krennic, you dislike him from the start.

Lots of people have made comments about the CGI return of Grand Moff Tarkin. On first viewing it was clear that it was CGI but on watching A New Hope again you really appreciate how good a job they made of it. Second viewing you can suspend the CGI bit and just enjoy the return of TARKIN! Personally I LOVE that they did this and it really helps bridge the gap between Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope. The tensions between Krennic and Tarkin comes across really well.

I really loved Rogue One, it's up there near the top of my favourite Star Wars movies. It was a bold move by Disney/Lucasfilm to go and do a standalone but it worked really well. The costumes and set were perfect and as mentioned before Michael Giacchino did a grand job on the soundtrack to keep everything on point.

There are plenty of little nods to other films like blue milk and a plethora of brief cameos from characters from other parts of the Star Wars universe.

General Dodonna (A New Hope)

Mon Mothma (Revenge Of The Sith, The Clone Wars, Return Of The Jedi)

The Ghost (ship from Rebels)

Hera Syndulla (Rebels - pilot of The Ghost. We don't see her but there is an announcement calling her on Yavin 4) 

Chopper (Rebels)

Rian Johnson (director of Episode VIII)

Warwick Davis (The Phantom Menace, Return Of The Jedi, The Force Awakens)

RA-7 (Death Star Droid)

Mouse Droid
Viper Probe Droid

AT-ST (from Return Of The Jedi)

Red Leader (A New Hope)
Gold Leader (A New Hope)

Red 5 (who dies thus opening the vacancy for Luke in A New Hope) 

R2-D2

C-3PO

HAVw A6 Juggernaut transport (Revenge of The Sith)

Coruscant

Mustafar

Pondo Babba (A New Hope)

Dr. Evazan (A New Hope)

Captain Antilles (A New Hope)

Whills (Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus ware known as “Guardians of the Whills”. George Lucas' earlier writings for Star Wars were called Journal Of The Whills)

Tantive IV (A New Hope)

Bail Organa (The Phantom Menace, Attack Of The Clones, Revenge Of The Sith, The Clone Wars, Rebels)

That's all the stuff that I know about or noticed, there's probably a couple of other subtle ones I've missed too!

There are lots of questioned around things that were shown in trailers that clearly weren't in the movie but I'll save all that for a blog post somewhere down the line.

The thing that really impressed me with the end of Rogue One was the fact that they took a risk. There was no wishy washy escape for any of our band of young rebels to get a feel good factor. After getting the job down they ALL died. They all had good deaths in various manners with Jyn and Cassian's being particularly poignant

Delicious irony reigns supreme as Krennic meets his ultimate demise at the hands of his own weapon. The scene is beautifully shot..

Then of course we have THAT scene with Darth Vader. Just before the Tantive IV gets away we have Darth Vader go on a wonderful little rampage where he destroys a lot of rebels through the use of the Force and his lightsaber. Based on this scene alone I would be over the moon to see them create a standalone Darth Vader movie at some point!

To cap things off we even get a CGI Princess Leia at the end which was brief but most welcome and it lifts the end of the movie to a happier place leading into the film that started it all off.

Once the credits roll we do go out with the traditional Star Wars theme/fanfare which was great to hear.

A few Rogue One bits and mum has come to stay

Rogue One has now had it's UK and US releases and my self-imposed embargo is still in place. It's frustrating not being able to blog properly about Rogue One yet but I thought I'd give it a couple more days before I do a full write up. It will probably after I go and see it again on Monday for those of you that are interested.

If you haven't seen Rogue One yet then you probably won't want to watch this video as it contains some reveals of some of the easter eggs hidden inside the film.


In other Star Wars news it is probably safe to announce that John Williams has already started recording some of the music for Episode VIII with full scoring expected to happen in the spring. Kathleen Kennedy has said that we shouldn't expect much in the way of Episode VIII promotional until at least spring as they want to give Rogue One a good innings first.shooting for the Han Solo standalone is expected to start in February so it's all go on the movie front for Lucasfilm.

You'll all be relived to know that the Star Wars content is likely to go down a bit, at least for a short while.

Mum arrived at the house this afternoon. She'll be staying with us from now until after Christmas. It's good to see her again and to be able to spend some quality time.

New countdown has begun

Is it too soon for this?

Episode VIII is out in just under a year LOL. I promise to go easy on the countdowns for a short while so that everyone can get Rogue One out of the way.

Talking of which, I know it's out in the UK now but it hits the US tonight so there are still some TV spots being released for us to enjoy.


This looks like it is the final piece of video publicity as it is a teaser trailer called "Tonight" (obviously aimed at the US market)


Like I said in my other blog post, go and see Rogue One, it's a really good Star Wars movie!

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (NO SPOILERS)

This piece contains NO SPOILERS. A full review will follow in a few days to give people a chance to see it. The day had finally arrived! Toni, Sam and I hit the 00:05 showing of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at Cineworld Bexleyheath.

Wow is all I have to say. That was an incredible film. Everything was just so right. Despite being a stand alone it kept the look and feel of a Star Wars movie. The soundtrack was good too even though it wasn't scored by John Williams it still maintained that Star Wars vibe with a few echoes of common themes.

Gareth Edwards has done us proud with this one and has shown that the Star Wars franchise can now take risks and not play it too safe like the did with The Force Awakens. The cast were absolutely brilliant and the story was too.

This is definitely a must see! I'm not going bonkers this time round and watching it millions of times in one day but I'll definitely be going back for at least one more viewing.

I really can't wait to start talking about the movie properly but that is going to have to wait for a few days or more to give people a chance to see it so there will be no spoilers from me. Go and see it already so that I can start talking about it!!!!!

OK, here's one spoiler!!!!!! *cheeky grin*

Go and see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, you won't regret it!