Right on! Now I want to see that movie!

We usually don't go posting video game trailers on Cinematical, but this happens to be Star Wars related and it also happens to look hella cool. Entertainment Weekly has posted the first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a game in which you play as Darth Vader's apprentice -- kicking ass, taking names. It also seems like a pretty cool story, one I bet a lot of us would've liked to see up on the big screen. Based on the trailer, the game looks to feature a reversal on the Anakin Skywalker story. Instead of a main character who's eventually seduced by the Dark Side, we have a guy who starts out bad and eventually turns against those who taught him, like Vader.

I have a bunch of Star Wars video games in my collection, most of which I never finished because those damn games distract the hell out of me. And then I don't write. And then you don't get movie news. And then the world collapses and we all wind up selling turtle droppings on the side of a road in New Mexico somewhere. But anyway, I really liked the Revenge of the Sith video game because you got to go nuts with the lightsaber. The Force Unleashed looks similar and, well, I don't know about you, but anything featuring Darth Vader wins some of the money in my wallet.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed hits shelves September 16. Will you be making the purchase?

There are a few classic films that I simply refused to rent while growing up, specifically for the reason that I knew I should see them for the first time on a big screen. Of these, I managed to see both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner in a theater, while others, such as Lawrence of Arabia and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, were on television too often to ignore them on the small screen first. One film that I'm still dying to see in a theater is Terrence Malick's Badlands. A few years ago I actually went to a special screening of the film in Connecticut, but it was disappointingly (understatement) projected from a DVD copy. Then two months ago it played one show at NYC's IFC Center, but I had to miss it for another engagement.

Last week Entertainment Weekly presented an article/photo gallery titled "23 Movies You'd Like to See on the Big Screen," which lists these kinds of films (there's actually many more than 23 cited), most of which should ONLY be seen on the big screen, as they were originally meant to be. The list includes obvious epic choices like 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments, as well as other classics, like Malick's Days of Heaven, Casablanca, Once Upon a Time in the West, Star Wars, High Society, Halloween, Singin' in the Rain, To Kill a Mockingbird, Psycho, Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Searchers, Stagecoach and The French Connection.

Happy birthday Star Wars toys! 30 years ago, you came into our lives, and 30 years later, we're all kicking ourselves for not hoarding you away, keeping you in pristine condition and eventually getting rich by selling you to the highest bidder. Fortunately, there are more of you being made today and the London Times has declared which of you recently released, still-cheap items are likely to go up in value.

The spotlight is part of a list featured in today's Money Central section of the Times. Titled "The top 10 Star Wars collectibles," the list includes 30-year-old, super-rare action figures like Kenner's Darth Vader with double-telescoping light saber (currently valued at £5,000-plus, or almost $10,000 US) and this year's Lego version of the X-WIng Fighter (currently sold for £150, or $293 US). Coming in at #10 are the two-year old, "too cute" Galactic Heroes line of figures from Hasbro, which are currently only "the price of a rip-off sandwich" (£3, or $5.86 US).

Speaking of "too cute", I'm personally going for the plush SD Darth Vader (pictured) that the Times lists at #9. But I actually haven't learned anything from the past 30 years and so I'm going to actually play with it. Or use it as a stress reliever whenever I see articles telling us to invest in action figures. See, I believe toys are for playing with, comic books are for reading and collectibles made solely to be collectibles are a waste of space.

For images of all the toys listed in the Times article, check out the gallery below. I also included the unmentioned Galactic Heroes Darth Vader Unmasked toy, because it fits with the criticism that these toys are "too cute." What person who'd seen Jedi as a kid would have ever expected a cute version of the unmasked Vader/Anakin?



[via Fark.com]

• Lorenzo Odone (1978-2008) - ALD Patient - His story inspired the film Lorenzo's Oil, in which he was portrayed by child actor Zack O'Malley Greenburg and others. He died May 30 in Fairfax, Virginia. (Washington Post)

• Cornell Capa (1918-2008) - Photojournalist - Founder and first director of NYC's International Center of Photography. He was also a still photographer on the set of The Misfits. He died of Parkinson's disease May 23, in New York City. (AP)
• Alexander Courage (1919-2008) - Composer - Oscar-nominated for co-scoring Doctor Dolittle and The Pleasure Seekers (both with Lionel Newman) and best known for composing the original Star Trek theme. He also wrote original music for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Arthur Penn's The Left Handed Gun and André de Toth's Day of the Outlaws. As an orchestrator, he worked on Singin' in the Rain, Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Annie Get Your Gun, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Guys and Dolls, The Band Wagon, Funny Face, Porgy and Bess, Gigi, The Big Country, Hello, Dolly!, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Legend, Basic Instinct, Jurassic Park, Hook, L.A. Confidential, The Mummy, Mulan and many, many other films. He died May 15 in Pacific Palisades, California. (Variety)
• Bo Diddley (1928-2008) - Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist - Blues and Rock legend whose songs "Who Do You Love?" and "Mannish Boy" have appeared on multiple movie soundtracks. He also appears in Trading Places, Blues Brothers 2000, Rockula, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! and a number of documentaries, including D.A. Pennebaker's short Keep on Rockin' and Taylor Hackford's Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. For info on his death, see Monika's full post.

Before you continue bad mouthing George Lucas for what he's done to your childhood, first with the Star Wars prequels and now with the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you might want to worry that he'll send his daughter after you. Wait, what? Yeah, that's George's daughter, Amanda "Powerhouse" Lucas, in the image on the right. She's a member of an American all-female MMA (mixed martial arts) fight team, and she's seen here duking it out with a Kiwi kickboxer during a recent Auckland, New Zealand-set event titled Princesses of Pain. And according to Stuff.co.nz, footage of the bout may be featured in a planned reality series about the formation of a women's international fighting league as well as on the news program 20/20.

27-year-old "Powerhouse" Lucas appeared in all three of her father's Star Wars prequels, portraying the dancer "Diva Funquita" in The Phantom Menace, "Adnama, patron of the Outlander Club" in Attack of the Clones and "Senator Terr Taneel" in Revenge of the Sith. She also voiced a separate character in The Phantom Menace, Neimoidian communications officer "Tey How" (she was credited under the pseudonym Tyger). Outside of the Star Wars films, she's worked as a hip-hop teacher and has spent years training in multiple martial arts, including kickboxing, Muay Thai and Brazilian ju-jitsu. According to New Zealand's TV3, Lucas lost her debut bout, but she did win a medal for "gutsiest fighter," and according to the Princesses of Pain website, the whole match ended in a tie between Team America and Team Australasia, each winning 3 bouts.

I wanted to continue this whole week of Indiana Jones, but we've already given you movies reminiscent of the classic adventure series, and we've already given you retro reviews for each of the three films. So, I started to think about what I like about Jones and my favorite of the three, Raiders of the Lost Ark. One of the best gems of that film is Marion Ravenwood.

So, in celebration of how much Ravenwood rules, I wanted to celebrate women who are more than just damsels in distress. The might find themselves captured. They might get beaten down. But they don't wallow -- they fight back. And even better -- they're both old-school. One comes from the '90s, and the other first kicked butt on the big screen 31 years ago. I give you: Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia in Star Wars.

Despite the slower-than-expected installation of digital projectors into theaters, yet another movie is slated to be released in digital 3-D (which of course requires digital projection plus additional equipment such as a special screen). According to The Hollywood Reporter, New Amsterdam Entertainment plans to re-release George Romero's 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead into theaters after the film is modified, or "dimensionalized," to be shown in stereoscopic 3-D. The transition from 2-D to 3-D will be handled by In-Three, the company that handled George Lucas' presentation of a segment of Star Wars in 3-D at ShoWest back in 2005. The project is expected to be finished within the year. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which New Amsterdam remade in 2004, will likely be only the second film to be re-released with a 3-D version, the first being The Nightmare Before Christmas.

As wonderful as it is, the original Dawn of the Dead seems like an odd choice for 3-D, which often capitalizes on the gimmick of having objects jump out at the audience. With this film, we'll instead get to see zombies ever-so-slowly coming towards us as we nonchalantly continue eating our popcorn without fear. Perhaps we'll even have time to head to the restroom before the zombies actually seemingly make their way out into the space of the auditorium. See, that was part of the humor of Romero's Night of the Living Dead sequel, that the characters had time to run in circles around the undead mallrats. It would be much more frightening to see a dimensionalized version of the remake, which featured much quicker zombies. Presently there appears to be no set release date for the re-release, but depending on how crowded the 3-D marketplace is a year from now, I'd guess New Amsterdam is hoping for a 2009 bow.

Remember serials? I don't, because I'm too young, and by the time I began going to the movies, it was already the practice for cinemas to stick to single, self-contained, feature-length fare. With the way screenings are arranged today, scheduled so that both theater owners and studios can get as much money from as many showings as possible, there's just no room for any accompanying shorts, especially the kind that don't end in a conclusive manner.

I'd probably be okay with being left out of that experience from the moviegoing past, but each time another Indiana Jones movie is released, I can't help but think I'm at least a little less appreciative of George Lucas' intent than some of the older folk in the audience. When Lucas thought up the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, he partly meant the film as homage to the serials he remembered from his childhood.

Yet Raiders didn't end with a cliffhanger, as most serials had on a weekly basis. And with the third sequel to that film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, arriving in theaters this week, I still wonder why at least two installments couldn't have been connected with the serializing device. Lucas had already somewhat shown us, through the uncertain ending of The Empire Stikes Back and continuation/resolution beginning of Return of the Jedi, that it could be done.

Now that George Lucas and his crew are preparing to launch the first big-screen Star Wars flick in all CGI, some folks are wondering whether that means he'd be down to eventually continue the saga where Return of the Jedi left off -- especially since it wouldn't be hard to bring back original actors like Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to do the voice work. Fans, of course, would publicly bash such a move ... even if they'd secretly been wishing for the return of Luke, Leia and Han for years. So, would Lucas do it? Is he considering it?

In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Sith King himself claims there will be no such film from him. Lucas says, "There really isn't any story to tell there. It's been covered in the books and video games and comic books, which are things I think are incredibly creative but that I don't really have anything to do with other than being the person who built the sandbox they're playing in." He continues, "I get asked all the time, 'What happens after "Return of the Jedi"?,' and there really is no answer for that. The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that's where that story ends." Star Wars: The Clone Wars arrives in theaters on August 15, then heads to Cartoon Network and TNT for a weekly series.

Would you rather see a CGI Star Wars flick that takes place during The Clone Wars or after Return of the Jedi?

In a little over a week from now, Iron Man crashes into theaters -- signaling the official start of the summer movie season. I know we say this every year, but come September, we could be looking back at one of the greatest summer movie seasons in history -- with popular franchises like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Batman, Hellboy and The Chronicles of Narnia returning to the big screen. We're eagerly anticipating the arrival of new superheroes like Iron Man and Hancock, there's another adorable Pixar movie, an equally-as-adorable stoner flick from Judd Apatow and the revival of a very funny '60s television show on the big screen. What's not to love?

So in the spirit of sharing our love (or lust, depending on the lighting) for all things movie-related, we at Cinematical present our 10 most anticipated films of summer 2008. Our writers got together, looked things over, and, after sending the information through a magical robot (who talks like a black Robert Downey Jr.!), here's what we came up with. Click on any of the 10 photos below to get started ... and feel free to enjoy all the goodies we have on the other end. (Just leave the bag of Twizzlers for me, please).

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