Lego produces Advent calendars for several of its most popular product lines, and for the past few years I’ve gotten the Star Wars ones. Spending a few minutes each morning putting together that day’s model and taking a photo of it for Instagram is a fun thing to do during a stressful month.
Except I already managed to fall behind… Day 1’s landspeeder model and Day 2’d Rose Tico minifigure ended up getting photographed together in a quickly assembled holiday scene late last night.
Florida Supercon was earlier this month and my friends made sure I got autographs from the Star Trek and Star Wars guests who were attending even though I couldn’t be there myself.
William Shatner gets me a little bit closer to the Classic Trek collection I will never complete. Of those who are still with us, I just need George Takei… but I don’t have DeForest Kelley or Leonard Nimoy.
Gates McFadden leaves me with just three to go to complete the Next Generation bridge crew… I just need Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and Wil Wheaton to finish that set. (We’re going to ignore season two, unless I have a chance to see Diana Muldaur somewhere.)
Nana Visitor gets me about halfway there with the Deep Space Nine cast, something I’m a little bit sad about since that’s my favorite Star Trek incarnation. I have Avery Brooks, Visitor, Michael Dorn, Terry Farrell and Armin Shimerman. I’m missing Rene Auberjonois, Colm Meaney, Alexander Siddig, Cirroc Lofton, Aron Eisenberg and Nicole de Boer.
Hugh Spight is not a famous face, but he played a role in my favorite Star Wars film, portraying one of the Gammorean guards in service of Jabba the Hutt. This is an unusual photo I hadn’t seen before.
We’ll have to see if I can return the favor when New York Comic Con comes around.
Do you collect autographs? Are you working on any particular collection themes?
I finally made it to see Solo: A Star Wars Storytoday with my friend Vinny, and we both enjoyed it.
Solo is a fun, action-packed summer popcorn flick that can be enjoyed whether it’s your first Star Wars experience or if you’ve seen all nine previous live-action films plus all six seasons of Clone Wars and three seasons of Rebels.
Alden Ehrenreich may not be Harrison Ford, but he ably brings a younger version of Han Solo to the screen. (Solo primarily takes place 10 years before the events of the original 1977 Star Wars film.) He’s got good chemistry with his co-stars, particularly Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca.)
Veteran actors Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton and Paul Bettany created wonderful new characters in the Star Wars universe, though Newton’s Val was shamefully underused. Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian and his co-pilot L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) stole the show for me, though.
There are some amazing action sequences (including the best “car” chase in a Star Wars film) and a lot of fun Easter eggs and cameos.
I hope that Solo’s disappointing opening weekend won’t prevent us from seeing some additional adventures involving Ehrenreich’s Han, Glover’s Lando and Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra.
I’m loving the New York Mets’ start this season (9-1 is the best in franchise history), but I haven’t been having a ton of luck with baseball autographs lately. I went 0-for-5 with the requests I mailed out to spring training camps and just got a return to sender from Dusty Baker last week.
I started working on my non-baseball autograph collections more this year, and I’ve gotten four new photos to add to my albums this week.
First up is a signed photo of two of the members of the cantina band from the original Star Wars film. Speedy Turtle Autograph Service ran private signings with Kim Falkinburg and Jibralta Merrill, two ILM staff members who were drafted to play band members and my dual-signed photo arrived on Monday. Continue reading “A few new autographs…”→
Earlier this week, I received a signed photo from actor Marton Csokas who’s in a Broadway play with Uma Thurman that ends in early March. Csokas is probably best known to genre fans for playing Celeborn in two of the Lord of the Rings movies and Trevor Goodchild in Aeon Flux.
In an uncredited role, Csokas provided the voice for Geonosian leader Poggle the Lesser in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. And that’s why I wrote to him to ask for an autograph. He responded in less than a week, and I have my first new Star Wars autograph of 2018. Pretty cool
But you know what? I’m coming around to the idea that a Star Wars caper movie could be really fun. And in the little bit we see of Ehrenreich in these clips, he seems like he’s got Han Solo’s mannerisms down.
So yeah, I’m looking forward to watching Solo on Memorial Day weekend… though I’m not sure how well it’s going to fare among all the summer blockbusters. (Avengers: Infinity War comes out May 4, Deadpool 2 is coming on May 18 and Ocean’s 8 will be out June 8.) But hey, that’s Disney’s problem.
Now I’m totally going to be there to watch all of it as long as it is entertaining. But as far as collecting goes? I think it’s time to re-evaluate.
I have literally hundreds of Star Wars action figures, and in a couple of months it will be time to buy new ones for Solo: A Star Wars Story. Except maybe I won’t.
I will get whatever comes out for Episode IX to finish the sequel trilogy… and then I’m definitely out. I can’t display everything I have now… and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Star Wars will probably still be going long after I’m gone. (Although, based on Hasbro’s fourth quarter earnings report, I’m less confident about the long-term future of Star Wars action figures.)
I’m not sure where I am with autograph collecting, either.
I have a nice original trilogy collection (no Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Harrison Ford, Frank Oz or Ian McDiarmid, but I do have all of the other main characters and a lot of minor ones.) I have an interesting prequel trilogy collection (Jake Lloyd, Ahmed Best and Temuera Morrison are the only main characters, but I have a lot of the minor Jedi and other colorful characters.)
I have no one from the sequel trilogy. Spencer Wilding is the only one I have from Rogue One. The principal characters either aren’t available or aren’t affordable. (Sorry, Felicity Jones, you were great as Jyn Erso but I couldn’t swing the $200 you were charging at New York Comic Con last year.)
So is it really worth pursuing autographs from the casts of these new films? Or am I better off trying to add more from the original and prequel trilogies? I haven’t really decided yet.
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