photo credit: brunkfordbraun

Edit: yep. You guessed right. This was an April fools thing. Ha ha.

In a rare slip of the tongue, George Lucas hinted that a Blu-Ray release of the entire Star Wars saga awaits fans later this year in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the release of Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Attending the dedication ceremony (and 80th birthday bash) of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts this past Sunday, Lucas stated that “it was tough, from a technical standpoint, to make it the best possible experience on that format, but we should be seeing them [the six Star Wars films] on Blu-ray this year.”

Why this year? As we all know, and as Lucas pointed out, 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of TPM’s release. “I think it would be neat to do the release this year,” stated Lucas, “because it would get Star Wars back on the collective consciousness. Between the Clone Wars, the anniversary, and the Blu-ray release; it should be an exciting time for fans.”

Might we expect some new “special edition” type modifications? When asked, Lucas simply laughed it off. “I’ve moved on to other things.”

Check out the links for additional details!

Links

• Star Wars Coming to Blu-Ray At Last (Bit.ly)

His hand wasn’t severed by his father during a duel, but rather it happened accidentally while in a car as he rested his hand on the window ledge. He isn’t a Jedi Knight in training, but rather a 19 year old university student in England. But Evan Reynolds is cool, no doubt. His accident was unfortunate, to be sure, but as a result he is the recipient of an amazing prosthetic hand. Skywalker style.

He needs to wear a black glove over it and — more important — recover the lost hand, otherwise it might be used to create an evil clone of him in the future. You never know.

Links

• Telegraph: Bionic hand gives student new lease on life [via Digg]

It is with great pleasure that we announce that First Strike has made it into the Top 100 Mods of 2008 here at ModDB. Now the second stage of the Mod of the Year awards commences, and the voters must narrow the selection down to the top 5.

Once more we ask the faithful to rise up. Head over to ModDB’s Mod of the Year website to get your votes in, and let’s see if we can’t reach that final stage. If you enjoy First Strike, show your appreciation by casting your vote today. Remember, you do have several votes to use in this round, so be sure to vote for the other mods you enjoy as well.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the community and all those who already voted for helping us make it to the top 100. It really is you guys, the members of our community that make First Strike what it is. We couldn’t do it without you. To show our appreciation, we have this lovely wallpaper made by FSDev| RedMonkey that showcases one of the new vehicles in First Strike v1.4, the T-16 Skyhopper:

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So thanks for voting, thanks for playing, and thank you for your continuing support of First Strike. Now get out there and vote!

Vote here: ModDB’s Top 100 Mods of 2008

photo credit: Official Star Wars Blog

Alas, today I ran across unexpected and unfortunate news: Michael Heilemann’s Star Wars collection on Flickr was shut down due to a takedown notice from Lucasfilm. Sad. Lucasfilm has traditionally been fan friendly with things like this. I can’t imagine the rationale behind this, and Michael makes a good point that the popularity of his collection underscores the demand and need for an organized collection of production photos and related materials on the internet.

Perhaps this signals a move by Lucasfilm to make a similar collection available to the public in the very near future. That’s my theory. In the meantime, this will be missed.

Link

• Star Wars No More: Michael Heilemann’s Flickr Photostream

Now that we are in the election afterglow, or aftermath (it depends greatly on your own point of view) it’s time to look at some election year humor with our Star Wars glasses on. Funny or Die recently posted a funny video featuring viciously competitive campaign ads in a race between Lando Calrissian and Emperor Palpatine as Leader of the Galaxy. I vote Funny.

Links

• Vote for Lando Calrissian (with Billy Dee Williams)