The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo (who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original) to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom… Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

George Lucas • Addressing one of the biggest fan complaints relating to his serial re-tinkering of Star Wars. There’s two main points here that we somewhat object to: first, Lucas claims that people who thought Han Solo fired his blaster before Greedo did in the original cut of Star Wars were mistaken, and that it was merely unclear that Greedo fired due to the framing of the shot. We’d suggest this is flatly, evidently not the case by any reasoned examination of the original scene. Also, Lucas seems to paint those who’d prefer Han to have fired first as wanting their beloved space-smuggler to be a “cold-blooded killer,” an idea we suspect many would dispute. There’s a difference between being a cold-blooded killer and being unwilling to let every backwoods bounty hunter get a shot off at you before you fire back, isn’t there? But, we digress — what do you think? source (via • follow)

I hate Death of the Author crap so much, but damn if George Lucas isn’t the perfect example of a creator who interprets his own stories WORST OF ANYONE.

George Lucas: Hollywood Didn't Want To Fund My Film Because Of Its Black Cast

motherjones:

“It’s because it’s an all-black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all…I showed it to all of them and they said nooooo. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.”

Train of thought on this movie: “World War II movie? How cool-looking! Oh, George Lucas is doing it? That’s extra cool-looking! Oh, hang on, that means George Lucas doing race relations? Less cool-looking. Aaron McFreakingGruder is doing it WITH him? This is cool-looking once more.”

inothernews: Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits not one, but two stars, and they’re — informally — calling it “Tatooine.”  From the New York Times: From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing. Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other. Such is life, if it were possible, on the latest addition to the pantheon of weird planets now known to exist outside the bounds of our own solar system. It is the first planet, astronomers say, that has been definitely shown to be orbiting two stars at once, circling at a distance of some 65 million miles a pair of stars that are themselves circling each other much more closely. A team of astronomers using NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced the discovery on Thursday in a paper published online in the journal Science and in a talk at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office. Lucas is expected to cast it in a movie starring the insufferable child actor Jake Lloyd yelling “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” as Jar Jar Binks throws the Emperor down the Sarlaac Pit, which shot Greedo first because it turned out that even though they kissed, Greedo was Leia’s brother.
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inothernews:

Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits not one, but two stars, and they’re — informally — calling it “Tatooine.”  From the New York Times:

From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing.

Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other.

Such is life, if it were possible, on the latest addition to the pantheon of weird planets now known to exist outside the bounds of our own solar system. It is the first planet, astronomers say, that has been definitely shown to be orbiting two stars at once, circling at a distance of some 65 million miles a pair of stars that are themselves circling each other much more closely. A team of astronomers using NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced the discovery on Thursday in a paper published online in the journal Science and in a talk at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office.

Lucas is expected to cast it in a movie starring the insufferable child actor Jake Lloyd yelling “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” as Jar Jar Binks throws the Emperor down the Sarlaac Pit, which shot Greedo first because it turned out that even though they kissed, Greedo was Leia’s brother.