Star Wars weekend

I managed to get myself in to a Star Wars weekend in Seacombe on the Wirral last week and I had a pretty darn good time. The event took place at a science museum, specifically directed at astronomy etc. so it was a fitting place for the event to be held. There first was a queue of some significant length, but we were kept entertained by folks in Stormtrooper outfits marching up and down, keeping us in line as well as posing for photos with children etc. There were an impressive amount of them there, they were from a semi-proffesional costume group called Knights of the Empire who had a decent array of high quality costumes including stormies, Vader, A Tusken Raider, several Boba Fett's/Mandalorians and even a Padme who soon retreated out of the cold! This gave rise to some decent photo ops, I managed to get hold of a hefty clone trooper rifle for a pose with Vader, then got a shot of me trying to eat Darth Revan's candyfloss!!

There were a few props around, such as a full sized speeder bike as well as the odd gun here and there. There was also a never before seen behind the scenes film of Return of the Jedi (made when it still had the title Revenge of the Jedi) centering around Warwick Davis, who played an Ewok before going on to be a legendary actor doing, as he said, small parts! Warwick wandered around, bumping into Harrison Ford, Mark Hamil and Carried Fisher before eventually winding up on Endor and then making it back in time for tea. It raised a few eyebrows, but it was an interesting look at how films were made in the days before DVD bonus features.

The highlight was to meet some of the actors who played parts in the original trilogy, there was Dave Prowse, who played Vader, Jeremy Bulloch who played Boba Fett and the aforementioned Warwick Davis, who actually looks younger now than he did playing Willow etc. The group were all chargind £10 plus for autographs and were swamped by children so it was hard to get anything out of them, but at least I saw them. But there was also Karen Traviss, who is a Star Wars author and I got her to sign one of her books which was cool and I also managed to chat to her for a little while, getting her to confirm that Boba Fett will be making more appearances in Star Wars literature and that the next Sith Lord will, unfortunately, not be called Darth Blair!!

Well, that's about it - I've been to see TMNT so I'll try and post a review up soon and I've got some Matrix stuff to talk about too

Au revoir