Fan Rants

Here’s an interesting story…to me at least.

It seems that the students at the University of Mississippi recently voted that they no longer wanted a mascot called Colonel Reb. Seems that it reflected a time period that is best left in the past. In fact, the mascot has not even shown up to any games in about 7 years.

So how do you go about choosing a new mascot? Well with the sports teams at MU called the Rebels, it didn’t take long for one college geek to come up with a great idea. Why not have the supreme commander of the rebel forces be your mascot? And thus a grassroots campaign was launched to bring Admiral Ackbar on as the schools mascot.

Check out www.notatrap.org and give them some support. It seems that the students may get to decide on the new mascot, I am sure to the ire of the alumnists, lets hope the Force is strong in this one!

Here’s the trailer for the new movie “The People vs. George Lucas”, a story based on Mr. Lucas’ affinity for going back and changing what many people (myself included) consider to be a near masterpiece.  We’ve ranted more than once on the podcast about directors revisiting their moveis 20 years later to “make the movie closer to the intended vision” or some such bullcrap. It’s one thing to go back and lightly touch up the effects so they are cleaner. It’s a whole other thing to go back and add scenes and CHANGE scenes (HAN SHOT FIRST, DAMMIT). This movie looks like it’ll be a funny glimpse into that debate.

The movie was just picked to play at the South by Southwest Movie Festival (SXSW) sometime between March 12th and March 20th.  I’m hoping it gets a wider release than just the film festival circuit. I’m sure the creators are too. It sounds like the’ve put in a lot of work. “2 and 1/2 years…63,686 frequent flyer miles… 634 hours of footage…14 TB of drive space… 126 interviews… 719 fan submissions…” Sounds intense. Keep an eye on SXSW’s movie site (pops) for more info. The official site (pops) for the movie is a good source of information too.

For those out there like myself who cannot get enough of Seth Green and Matthew Senreich’s excellent TV series Robot Chicken, we are in luck!

According to a recent article in Variety, Adult Swim has ordered 40 more episodes of their great stop-motion animation show. This is a huge order and a major commitment from that studio.

The series has been on the air, sporadically, since 2005 and has brought droves to the Adult Swim late night programming venue. Each episode runs a meer 15 minutes and is generally made up of up to 10 skits. They have also produced several specials, including two Star Wars specials, some of which have appeared on DVD.

If you have not seen the show, take the time to watch a few of the skits. It is definitely up the alley of our reading/listening audience.