Jerry Nelson (1934-2012), Muppeteer of many beloved characters, passed away yesterday at the age of 78.

Lisa Henson, CEO of the Jim Henson Company, posted on the Jim Henson Company facebook page:

“Jerry Nelson imbued all his characters with the same gentle, sweet whimsy and kindness that were a part of his own personality. He joined The Jim Henson Company in the earliest years, and his unique contributions to the worlds of Fraggles, Muppets, Sesame Street and so many others are, and will continue to be, unforgettable. On behalf of the Henson family and everyone at The Jim Henson Company, our deepest sympathies go out to Jerry’s family and to his many fans.”

Nelson is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Count von Count (one apple, two apples, three apples ha ha ha ha!) on Sesame Street and Gobo Fraggle on Fraggle Rock.  His last role was as an uncredited telethon announcer on The Muppets, released in 2011.  He also provided the voice of Floyd Pepper of the Electric Mayhem Band, Kermit the Frog’s nephew Robin, Lew Zealand, Emmett Otter, and Camilla the Chicken.

He will be missed, and he joins the growing group of Muppet performers who have already left us, including Richard Hunt and the beloved irreplaceable Jim Henson.

There is no doubt that the guest creating the most buzz at Star Wars Celebration is Ian McDiarmid, perhaps better known to fans as Emperor of the Universe.  This is at least partly due to the fact that he has never attended a Celebration, so fans are clamoring to meet him.

James Arnold Taylor, the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi on the Clone Wars, took to the stage with McDiarmid yesterday to chat and learn a bit more about the man behind the Emperor.   Eager fans filled the seats after standing (or sitting) in line for several hours, and then they were herded like cattle from a holding area to the actual presentation.

Ian McDiarmid first came to the attention of George Lucas after appearing in the play Seduced, and his agent received a call saying that Lucas would like to meet him.  They met and talked briefly, but nothing was said about the films or even the part.  However, Lucas said, “Hey, great nose!” as the meeting concluded.  Soon after, his agent informed him that he had gotten the part.  “Which part?”  The reply:  “The Emperor of the Universe.”

McDiarmid, upon hearing that, imagined his costumes would include a crown and elaborate robes, a wardrobe befitting an intergalactic ruler.  He was more than a little surprised to learn that the Emperor wore only a cowled black robe.  He was shown Clive Revill’s performance in The Empire Strikes Back and was asked to match the voice, but he thought the Emperor resembled a slimy black toad and adjusted his voice to sound more amphibian.  There was always the concern that his voice would be dubbed over after production, though, but when Steven Spielberg saw his performance and said, “Oh my god, you’re so evil!” he knew then that his voice would be safe in the final version.

He acknowledges that he did not have a lot of lines in the film, but he feels they were good lines, and he had a particularly great time saying the word ‘friend,’ since he felt that Palpatine had none.  Even for such a small role in the classic trilogy, he shows a great attention to detail, thinking of who Palpatine is beyond the scenes in the movie.

Some people may not realize that McDiarmid was not the first person cast in the role of Emperor.  Though he did not mention anyone by name, he revealed that a “distinguished British actor” originally had the part but was unable to wear the menacing yellow contact lenses.

Years passed, and he had no contact with Lucas since he was thrown down the Death Star’s chute (“chute shooting, he called it), but Lucas asked to meet with him again, wearing the same shirt, McDiarmid quipped.  He was asked to be in the prequels but was jealous when Christopher Lee received a lightsaber and he did not.  Naturally, he was pleased when he was given his own Sith lightsaber in Revenge of the Sith, though a stunt double and swordmaster performed the more complicated fight scenes.

Interesting to note is that he referred to the opera in that film as a “prawn ballet,” and that very scene between Chancellor Palpatine and Anakin was shown to thunderous applause in the audience.  It’s an excellent scene to watch for the more subtle expressions of McDiarmid, and to see the way his eyes light up just a little when discussing the demise of Darth Plagueis.  The opera was chosen since Lucas felt that too audiences had already seen too much of Palpatine’s office by this point, and he wanted a different location.

McDiarmid was asked if he would like to have any of the powers possessed by the Emperor, and he admitted that a little electricity in his pinkie would be nice to have.  Nothing much, nothing to kill or maim anyone, but a little something.

He also told of the time Liam Neeson approached him after a screening of The Phantom Menace and said, “You’re him!  You never told me!” He was, of course, speaking of McDiarmid’s dual role as Senator Palpatine and Darth Sidious.  The scripts never gave any indication they were going to be portrayed by the same actor, if I recall correctly.

And, as Swank-mo-tron already discussed, McDiarmid made quite a few references to the live-action Star Wars television series.  He joked that Lucas would have to ask him to participate on bended knee, but he would truly hate it if someone else were to portray the Emperor while he was still alive.

When asked if he felt more evil playing the Emperor or the Senator, he chose the Senator, explaining that Senator Palpatine was so recognizable as a contemporary politician.

It was an incredible panel charged with excitement and energy.   I suppose it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that fans love the bad guy, and the Emperor is such a great character, brought to vivid life by McDiarmid’s incredible portrayal of him.

Yesterday, at Ian McDiarmid’s panel (which Scarlett Robotica will be recapping in its entirety later for your enjoyment) there were quite a few mentions of the Star Wars live action show.

But they didn’t necessarily originate with the crowd.

They originated with McDiarmid.

This seems very unusual for a guy who says he just sort of walks away from the world of movies when he’s not physically making them and doesn’t keep up and just puts on his plays. But he started saying things that seemed a little bit more specific than I would have expected. He seemed to be talking from a place of knowledge.

Or maybe he was trolling the lot of us. But McDiarmid seems too… Legitimate and British to do that.

The first hint he dropped was almost a throwaway. He was discussing the differences between acting with physical sets and using your imagination and then spoke about how astonished he was that it was just as expensive to build something in real life as it was to do it digitally. Then, from no where, he explains that this is the reason George is holding off on the live action series.

He talked about it in about as much depth as anyone who pretty closely follows Star Wars news would know, so it didn’t seem too odd, but McDiarmid just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.

Then, as he began to talk about Palpatines back story he said rather coyly, “It’d be nice to see if Palpatine’s back story was followed up… wouldn’t it?”

Which you can think was just him being interested, but there was something about the way he said it that felt like it was a hint.

I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. A fan finally got to ask a question and asked him point blank if he’d do the live action TV show. A smile grew across his face and he answered thusly:

“If he happened to pop up in the script and I was still alive, I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to do it.”

And he said it in a way dripping with double meaning. Maybe that’s just what Ian McDiarmid does. And maybe that’s why he’s The Phantom Menace, and I’m letting my imagination run away with me due to years of dissecting and re-dissecting the double meanings in every one of Palpatine’s machinations, but I really do feel like McDiarmid was speaking from a place of knowledge here.

But… We don’t know for sure.

This is just conjecture, but I feel it’s well reasoned conjecture. And I’m not the only one to think so. Others are pointing out the same things.

Look for Scarlet’s recount of the entire panel later in the day, with more pictures!

Be sure to keep up with me on Twitter for all the latest updates from Celebration VI…

The first night of Star Wars Celebration VI was capped off by a command performance by none other than Kevin Smith himself. While Smith has never directly done anything with Star Wars, he was certainly a force in fandom with credible Star Wars homages in his films.

He spent the evening regaling the crowd with stories of his fandom and how it connected him with other people from other cultures across the globe and got across quite capably a sense of how Star Wars bridges more divides than it separates.

When one fan asked him about how he’d change the prequels, he practically auditioned for the “Why We Love the Prequels Panel.” He wouldn’t have done much of anything to change them and loved them for what they were. Sure, they weren’t perfect and Jar Jar was equivalent to him to the Ewoks, but none of it stole from his enjoyment. “Some of these losers were saying you know that George Lucas raped their childhood, but that’s really an insulting slap in the face to the guy who built my childhood. He didn’t rape anything.” (I’m paraphrasing there, but the spirit is the same.)

He then proceeded to tell a rousing tale of the whispers through his youth of the creation of Vader and that fateful volcano-top battle we’d all heard legend of and, upon seeing it, he was reduced to tears. It gave me the chills in the same way the movie does.

The man is truly a Star Wars fan. One of us.

And at the end of his presentation he implored us all to create our own entertainment and allow our passion to guide us like into creating something. We can all generate our own content and we are all unique, making that content valuable and original, even if there are a hundred thousand other people doing what we’re doing.

It was incredibly inspirational.

I was awed, too, that Kevin Smith hadn’t actually met George Lucas. It made me feel that much more privileged for the time I was able to. Like Smith, my fandom has allowed me to see and do a lot of cool stuff that’s worth much more than physical memorabilia.

But there were plenty of other great moments and I wasn’t the only one there for the show.

BaldassBot was there and here were his impressions:

“How do you say ‘ear pussy’ in sign language?”
Kevin Smith had a lot of fun at the expense of his deaf interpreter. She took it well. Even when he referred to her as Silent Bob. And she didn’t get it until after the translation.

When it comes to ending a day of Star Wars, what better way to do it than spending An Evening with Kevin Smith. I expected this to be a highlight of the show for me and I’m not disappointed. He was at times heartwarming, maudlin, cruel, etc. But he was always funny. Lines like “How do you say ‘ear pussy’ in sign language?” didn’t actually seem out of place. Most poignant were his comments about making films about Star Wars when no one was talking about Star Wars. I can’t help but think its resurgence in 1997 with the Special Editions was made possible by, even inspired by, Smith and others like him. Did George even know we were there out there before Dante and Randall talked about stormtroopers installing toilet mains?

He also said some great thing about Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. It’s obvious he respects them as actors, not just idolizes them as characters. But he does that too. In particular, he had one story about Jason Mewes and Carrie while shooting Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Mewes hit on Fisher between takes, relentlessly and with a complete lack of tact. It was so bad that she eventually got fed up and unleashed on him. She accused him of being disingenuous with his flirtations: “Deep inside, maybe I’m a 20 year old girl and maybe I wanna do those things. But you don’t mean it and can’t do it and saying it like you really want to do it to me makes you like Ben Affleck.” I’ve probably misquoted most of that, but it’s definitely the right idea.

A fan asked Kevin which made for a better fanboy moment, Mewes trying to go down on Carrie Fisher (on camera, not the above story) or himself crossing ‘sabers with Mark. His response should be collected in a quote book somewhere. “Sometimes, to accomplish you dreams, you have to tarnish a hero.” There’s probably some political advice here relevant to many presidential campaigns but Kevin didn’t mean it that way and I’m not going to take it down that path. I felt this response was applicable to both options, but he was referring specifically to making Mark the Cockknocker. Which, of course, led to a wonderful story about Kevin’s mom speaking with Mark during the shoot. She thought it was great that she was seeing Kevin relive his childhood, same toys but a bigger scale.

This was a great experience and it’s tough to have it happen on the first night of Celebration. I can’t expect to have such a singularly great event over the next three days. Then again, my mood is now right for making the most of it.

BaldassBot tells me he has some video from the panel as well we’ll be getting up soon.

“>And if any of you are interested, I did an interview with Kevin Smith in 2010 that you can watch in its entirety.

Be sure to keep up with me on Twitter or Instagram (both @swankmotron) for the up-to-the-minute breaking news from Celebration VI.

This trailer gave me the chills. This is one of my most intense geek pleasures these days and I’ve been dying for new episodes of Doctor Who.

The series will be premiering on September 1st, a full week earlier than the September 8th some outlets were reporting. With our luck, since time is a big ball of timey-wimey, we’ll all wake up tomorrow and find that the premiere was actually last week.

By now you may have heard that Nintendo Power is going to be ending production after 24 years of bringing all-Nintendo news to loyal fans and subscribers around the globe.

As Ars Technica reported this morning, Nintendo Power is going the way of most print magazine publications: “Nintendo Power is one of the longest-running game magazines in the country, having been published continuously since the summer of 1988, when it started as a bi-monthly outgrowth of the previous Nintendo Fun Club newsletter. Nintendo produced and distributed the magazine (with articles that were often just thinly veiled marketing copy) from 1989 through late 2007, when it started contracting the brand out for a more independent angle from tech-and-game-focused Future Publishing… Nintendo Power‘s shuttering comes during a time of continuing struggles for the US magazine industry, which saw overall circulation numbers decline 10 percent in the first half of 2012. Gamers have increasingly come to rely on online sources for more timely and less space-limited gaming coverage, leading the venerable GamePro magazine to stop publishing late last year after 23 years in print.”

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that it’s just too difficult to preserve this type of print publication given the vast stores of information and up-to-the-second news we crave from the internet. I’m not saying we needed a Nintendo Power anymore, but it does hit me that something so special from my childhood is ready to be put into retirement.

What began as an expansion to Nintendo fan club letters in 1988 had grown into a major part of my childhood by the early ’90s. I can still remember eagerly tearing the protective plastic off each issue when they arrived. Long before the internet and long before I knew of a whole lot outside of the tiny New England town in which I was raised, Nintendo Power brought me comics, posters, cheats and announcements that really helped to develop my passion for video games. It’s true – I was a Nintendo fangirl through and through from a very young age – always eager to get my hands on the next issue and to hang more fun posters of Link and Star Fox on my wall.

The following is a really a great retrospective video about Nintendo Power from the Angry Video Game Nerd. It says a lot about how much this magazine meant to the kids that loved Nintendo in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s:

It may sound silly, but I did get pretty excited to line up all the issues each year and see the photo the spines made. You usually knew the image long before you had collected all the issues (Mario…Zelda…they weren’t really trying to make it difficult), but I always thought it was a neat addition for collectors to be able to show off the issues on their bookshelves.

Here’s a Howard and Nester comic favorite of BSR Contributor Kill-Tacular-Tron. You can find more at this archive:

And we can’t forget to include one of The Metroid comics that could be found in so many issues:

All in all, I am a bit sad to see Nintendo Power go, but perhaps Nintendo will come up with a new way to engage its audience now that it can shift resources and priorities away from the defunct publication.

What are your thoughts? Sad to see it go? Good riddance? Sound off in the comments below!

Mark Dago, rapper and all around cool guy, has put together this Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader themed song. I think it’s better than anything guys like MC Chris have done, but maybe that has more to do with the fact that I think Mark deserves more recognition than he’s getting.

This is the perfect song to get you to Star Wars Celebration VI.

You can download it free on Bandcamp, and I recommend you do so. While you’re there, check out the rest of Mark’s stuff. You’ll like it.

I’m not usually a fan of mash-ups, but this one was well done, original, and great.

I’m a big fan of The Powerpuff Girls and I obviously like Star Wars. I’d love to see something like this go into production officially. Star Wars aimed at girls seems like a no-brainer, right? We’ll just have to settle for an unofficial production, since these guys are premiering a full episode of this at Celebration VI.

If they get the girls hooked with cartoons, maybe we’ll get more kick-ass female characters across the board, right?

You can get more information on the filmmakers at their website.

Thomas Edison has quite a reputation for being a jerk. Any fan of Nikola Tesla could tell you a hundred stories of despicable behaviour on Edison’s behalf. But the story of how Edison tried to control the entire film industry is a much lesser known story.

Try this on for size:

Imagine you just purchased a brand new automobile. And imagine that since the company who invented the car developed the method with which you press down the gas pedal. Then, imagine that every time you drove when you engaged that pedal, the company who created the pedal asked you to pay them a nickel because they’d patented the method.

It sounds pretty absurd, right?

Well, that’s pretty much what happened back at the dawn of cinema, only it concerned film cameras. Thomas Edison created a consortium of all the biggest film companies of the day (Vitagraph, Biograph, Essanay and others). They got together under the banner of “The Patents Company.” They owned all of the patents and copyrights relating to the brand new film camera. And if you wanted to make a film, you had to use what was called a Latham Loop to thread the film through the camera so it wouldn’t get chewed up through the gate. A man named Latham came up with that specific method and patented it. Edison and his companies bought the patent (and any others germane to the operation of a camera) and insisted that any one who wanted to film a motion picture had to pay them for every time they used this method, knowing it was impossible to film without it.

The Patents Company (you can see Edison in front, left of center in the cap)

Independent filmmakers of the time had bought their cameras outright (which were very expensive and hard to get), and many of them bristled at the thought of paying any more money to Edison and his men to make a film.

To prevent these rogue independent filmmakers from operating, Edison would send armed thugs and gangsters to bust up the cameras and disrupt productions.

According to Allan Dwan, a classic film director with over 400 films under his director’s belt (he directed The Sands of Iwo Jima, Heidi, and the Douglas Fairbanks 1922 version of Robin Hood), Edison and his men sent their goons to Universal Studios’ New York production facility and tried burning the place down. He related the story to Peter Bogdonavich for the book Who The Devil Made It:

To prevent us from operating, [Edison] employed roughnecks and hard-arm people and gangsters to destroy us. At one time, they raided the Universal facilities in New York–almost burned them down. Two or three people were shot. That was a hoodlum attack–probably a number of gangsters there–and the police were in on it. But in addition to that kind of violence, they sent snipers out with long-range rifles.

Long range rifles?

Yes. You read that right. Long range rifles.

Snipers were hired by the patents company and given missions to destroy the cameras of any film production that didn’t pay their protection fee. Independent filmmakers these days think they have it bad, how do you think filmmakers of today would react if they had to compete with all the normal pressures of filmmaking and have snipers added to the mix?

Film crews took to arming themselves and shooting films in more and more remote areas of the country, hoping to avoid the armed thugs on Edison’s payroll.

This is actually the reason film companies moved west to Hollywood, to get out from under the thumb of Edison and his Patents Men.

It’s important to remember that this was all happening in the early 1900s, and film companies were making one-reelers and transporting their crew and equipment on horse-and-buggies. They were shooting a film or two week, and releasing them across the country to any barn, movie house, or legitimate theatre that had a projector. In 1914, the average ticket price for a movie was a dime, twice that for an adult. Charlie Chaplin hadn’t even yet become a star: his career started with Mack Sennett long after he moved to California to escape Thomas Edison.

The movie industry seems so entrenched in Hollywood and California these days, that it’s hard to imagine what the film industry would look like without Edison driving it west.

Eventually the Supreme Court threw out the legal basis for Edison’s protection racket and the film industry blossomed into the massive, creatively bankrupt construct that we know and love today.

This story is one that’s been on my radar for a long time and I hope you guys find it as interesting as I do. Well, maybe not AS interesting as I have, I’ve written a feature length screenplay set around this idea and an eventual novel, both called The Latham Loop. Check my author website for more details about that when one of them eventually happens.

You can read past History Geek columns here.

We ladies of the Big Shiny Girlcast discovered this new Beauty and the Beast poster this morning and had to share it with you. The show, which is set to air this fall on the CW, has launched this poster in what is obviously yet another attempt to ‘Pied Piper’ all the young, vulnerable women in to watch the premier. I mean, how could you resist? (I really hope the sarcasm hits you here, readers.)

Look at this guy (Vincent…Keller, wait, really?) – he’s got the Photoshopped-beyond-reason features we all look for in a man! Bony vampire cheekbones with a dangerous-looking (but hinting at vulnerable) fake scar; bronzed, glowing eyeballs intended to pierce your soul; and, of course, a slightly moist, pouty mouth that signals, “Hey, I’m dangerous, but you should still want to jump me.”

Please. To quote Darcy, “So that guy’s a beast cause he’s got a wicked sexy scar?! COME ON.”

But wait, there are not one but TWO amazing posters like this being promoted right now? How could I not mention the Arrow poster in which Oliver Queen has been turned into a Playgirl cover model. Stephen Amell is back ladies – prepare yourself for his…whatever this is:

 I think Bizzarobot really hit it this morning when she told me, “1. If you have big scars – you also have little ones. In medical terminology it is called a ‘satelite wound.’ Most things that leave BIG, you-need-stitches style scars are not singular stab wounds. So, the make-up here looks just plain dumb. 2. His face looks like a baby’s arse with stubble. They must be forcing that actor to keep a ‘5 o’clock shadow’ because, without it, his doe-like eyes and perfect, smooth skin would make him look a little too much like ‘tween bait.”

Yep. Personally, I don’t even know what to say about this, other than, I do not find myself attracted to it at all. Oliver Queen in the comics was usually portrayed as a strong looking archer with a goatee and long-ish, untamed hair that shouted “I am too damn busy being the hero that Star City needs to give a shit about what I look like!” (and, I need to add, he never had much trouble getting the ladies.) Here, it’s more like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll totally go put an arrow into any villains that cross my path, but first I need to make sure my perfectly waxed abs will reflect the moonlight!”

Bleck. If anyone needs me I’ll be somewhere washing all of this out of my brain.