The Natalie Portmanteau Round

 How best to explain this round from September? Maybe I should make having to work out how to play it a feature, rather than a bug.... It's basically a Star-Wars-related "Answer Smash" (two answers elided into one). For example, the answer to the above picture clue is "Judith Hann Solo", as that's a picture of Tomorrow's World presenter Judith Hann on the left, and the actor who played Han Solo on the right (and because I felt that Kathryn Hahn might be even harder to identify than Judith Hann, so went with the standardised pronunciation of "Han", father than the canonical.) The rest I'll let you work out for yourself. It won't always be a person on the left – it might be a show or a thing or a place – but it will always be an actor who played a character in Star Wars on the right, although I haven't actually included Natalie Portman in the end. And I don't care about the spelling. Aswers will be posted in the comments. Chwat!

 

1. 

 

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3.

 

 4.

 

5.

 

6.

 

7.

 

 8.

 

9.

 

10.

The Evil Lord Such-and-Such Round

 Ahh, Star Wars. 

 All the Star Wars...

 Because, of course, there wasn't just the Star Wars, but all the Star Warses they made as well as the Star Wars! Yes, the success of that first "Episode IV" meant I grew up in a cinematic landscape silly with fantasy, and never had to make do with westerns – whatever westerns were – or, I don't know, kids solving crimes? Knights? What did children get out on video before Star Wars? Did children even get out videos? No, I don't want to have to think about it. Here are pictures from just the tiniest fraction of those other Star Warses, and all you need to do is match – pitch, if you will – these ten baddies...

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

4.

 

5. 

 

6.

7.

8.

 9.

 10.

 ... to their relevant motley band of heroes. Here's this post again if you think setting them side by side might help. The answers, as ever, will be posted in the comments. And may the path be kind to your protons...

A.

 

B.

C.

D.

 

E.

 

F.

 

G.

 

H.

 

I.

 

J.

Some Lesser Known Carl Sagan Quotes (Still Actioned)

 "I felt very bad that at the end the Wookie didn't get a medal. All the people got a medal and the Wookie, who'd been in there fighting all the time, he didn't get any medal." 

"Han Solo talked about getting to a certain place in only so many parsecs of time or speed, when it's a unit of distance. It's like me saying from here to San Diego is thirty miles an hour."

Carl Sagan

 

 

  Having only recently learnt of his brilliant contribution to the depiction of alien intelligences in 2001, I now find Carl Sagan was also responsible for this. Oh well... I mean, he's not wrong. These just wouldn't necessarily be top of my list of wishes to grant Sagan eternal rest forty years on.

 Also, when were talkshow backdrops so rural?

Something Something Origins Something!!

  In 2000AD's "D.R. & Quinch go to Hollywood" two alien sociopaths steal a handwritten screenplay from a corpse at a bus-depot only to discover once their bravado has ensured the project's greenlighting that, apart from the third word of the title which might be "oranges", the script is totally illegible.

 

 Fortunately the star they've procured, known simply as Marlon, is not only an unintelligible mumbler but also, secretly, completely unable to read, and so their secret is safe, unlimited "stuff that was sort of useful-looking" is purchased, and filming begins reardless. More than "Hearts of Darkness", more than "8 and 1/2", more than "Lost In La Mancha", more than "Fitzcarraldo", Jim Shenk's superb promotional documentary charting George Lucas' making of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace reminds me of "D.R. and Quinch Go to Hollywoood".

 

 

  I'd already seen clips in Mike Stoklasa's brilliant, infamous and quite educational 70-Minute Phantom Menace Review (here) but hadn't realised how little cherry-picking he'd needed to do. The documentary's an astonishingly candid portrait of a workforce with the power to build worlds harnessed to a mind too lazy and/or frightened to remember to say "action". Only once, at the very end does Lucas look like he either knows or cares what he's talking about, in the sound editing of the Pod Race, and it's heart-breaking because that's exactly what everyone was waiting for all this time, and it's far too late. And everyone wanted this to work. Frank Oz looked so excited to be handling Yoda again. Ewan McGregor looked so happy working his nuts off as Obi Wan, bonding efforlessly with a frightened, miscast ten-year-old Anakin whom he'd end up having next to no scenes with. And I've already wrote about Ahmed Best. But George Lucas doesn't know what to do with any of it. Shenk's "Making Of" never actually goes so far as to say "and the film was inevitably shit", it just fades mercifully to silence on an audience cheering wildly over the opening scrawl – and hey, look, if you actually like the film, then this is a thrilling account of a maverick artist's triumph over adveristy. 

 But it's really not. Enjoy.

 

The Annotated "The Empire Strikes Bac" by Simon, aged 9

  Continuing this blog's Star Wars long weekend: One of the things I used to make as a child were unfinished pastiches of Mad Magazine. I'd write and illustrate parodies, articles and little Sergio-Aragonés-type doodles in the margin, just like Mad, but laid out in landscape, because I was using the gum of the notebook to hold the pages together, and that's how they opened. I had definitely read Mad's parody of The Empire Strikes Back (above) by the time I came to make my own. I'd also read the photobook, the behind-the-scenes book, and bought the action figures. I knew the names of the bounty hunters, and what "AT-AT" stood for. I'm just not sure I'd actually seen the film but anyway, knowing all good parodies subtly and hilariously change the name of the title, I began work on "The Empire Stikes Bac" without a "k" below. Exelanto!

 Pithy punchline from C.G.P.O. there. I wouldn't be aware of "Quee-er" as a gay slur until I saw Five Go Mad In Dorset a few years later. And I remember being shamefully aware of how little Pham Shmoelo looked like Harrison Ford, but also quite excited to have accidentally captured the likeness of Jack Lord from Hawaii 5-O. I am pretty merciless in my depiction of Mark Hamill's new nose...

 

 "Fab on" indeed! Frame seven of this page contains the first evidence of me knowing that rude body parts and functions are, in theory a staple of comedy, without actually knowing what any of them are called. I would later learn that an appendix is not rude. Barbara Woodhouse was of course a celebrity dog trainer at the time – television's always been turning out reality stars – but I might have spelt her name wrong. However there seems very little guesswork in the design of either the snow steed, the snow beast or the AT-AT, so I was probably using my own toys as models. I also notice. Nice foreground/background stuff in the frame with the spy droid by the way. Nice gag too. I'm also particularly proud of this next visual gag...

 Another cracking panel seven, politics of course also being a staple of comedy. Dusty Bin's there too, great. Giant nostrils, yep. Puke is in his vest and pants when he gets kicked off the ship because he was definitely wearing a vest on Dagobah in the photobook so I assumed he was doing PE. Which he sort of was. And I've clearly abandoned any hope of making Pham Shmoelo look like Harrison Ford now and am just doubling down on the Jack Lord thing.  Panel two of the next page features another botched bodily function joke: Is Puke farting, sneezing, burping, shitting? No idea...

 "You nerdy jerk!" "Baboons' pants"! What filth was I reading? And why is "a matron" asking for money for seats. Do I mean "usher"? I know jobs have names, again I'm just not quite sure what any of them are. "Your Tallness" is a valid honorific though, and knowing how unpublishable my drawings of Short Round from the The Temple of Doom were, I'm hugely relieved to see how handsome I've made Landoff...

The light sabres here were drawn with a rubber. Now Vader carbon-freezing Solo just to test the kit, was that an actual plot point from the film? Seems weird. There's a little misunderstanding here about who is being fined for not having a driving license, but nothing remotely comic. But I'm really filling these frames with research: Boba Fett, Slave One, Ughnauts. I don't know where I got "I must only use the Force for defense and thought" from, but I applaud the simplicity of itssentiment. It's a good mythos, isn't it, Star Wars, though I still maintain Leia doesn't get nearly enough to do in this one.  Oh, there's a little marginal Aragonés-type doodle coming up top left...

 

 "Michael Foot". Heh.

Sometimes this blog will just be "Star Wars" on the radio for fifteen hours.

 

 Yes, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Star Wars, so here come three vaguely relevant posts, beginning with an epic 1981 extrapolation from National Public Radio first recommended to me by the great Peter Davis. You can read the whole story here of how NPR decided to reignite American interest in radio drama with a Star Wars adaptation, buying the rights off George Lucas, together with all the film's score and sound effects, for just one dollar. What I've heard so far is pleasingly solid stuff as radio sagas go, entirely convincing of a broader mythology from which the films themselves were adapted, and while much of the cast is different, Mark Hamill is still Luke Skywalker, making his way around the imagined geography of a Tatooine moisture farm with grunts and sighs worthy of The Archers. You can see why he'd become such a sought-after voice actor, and I still have John Lithgow as Yoda to look forward to. All the sites that hosted downloadable episodes of this seem to have taken them down now so I don't know how long they'll stay on youtube either, but while they're here, cosy up...

 

 

More and More I Pitch Memories To Myself As Clickbait Or I Always Did And There Just Wasn't A Word For It.

  Noel Fielding ignores George Lucas explaining how to get shot.

 "Good luck."
 Leia's words to Luke before he swings her across the abyss: simple, benevolent, fearless, sincere and also, I now realise forty years later, such a great power move. "Good luck." My bet is Carrie Fisher improvised that line, and I'm also pretty sure the instant I saw her wish it is the instant Princess Leia became my first love.

Not a kiss. She's taking cover in his cheek.

Is "Star Wars" Uh Secretly A Cathedral Um Or Something?

 

 Wait. That was a costume?! 

 I joke, of course. Probably the most abiding joy of the Mos Eisley Cantina is knowing these creatures come straight out of a sketch-book - that they're the result of designers and make-up artists just making whatever they want. 

 And it occured to me recently these alien extras were a lot like the gargoyles, or more accurately "babewyn", of a cathedral (strictly speaking "gargoyles" are just the water spouts), anonymously crafted chimerae specifically designed to look out of place, images of sin upon which the workers' imaginations could run wild.

 And then I tried to remember which I'd experienced first: Star Wars or a catheral, because other similarities were also springing to mind. Shared ingredients. That Star Destroyer passing overhead in the opening shot of "A New Hope", for example, felt a lot like when one first steps in and looks up at those impossibly high vaulted ceilings. Nearly all the images are of men, apart from one beautiful, robed virgin to whom the world defers. And big pillars.

 What else? Luke at the end firing plasma into the reactor shaft is like when you're given the bread, you know, communion wafers. Look, I haven't got very far with this idea which is why today's post is mainly just these excellent behind-the-scenes photos which I found here.

 All I'm saying is: one of the reasons Star Wars was so popular might be that it was secretly a cathedral - Wait... That was a set?! 

 There are more monsters in yesterday's blog, a Grand Unified Theory of monsters in fact, and here's today's Defoe, which opens with me suddenly realising where the word "quarantine" comes from: