George Lucas - The World Will End in 2012

[psynapz]

Or, George Lucas believes that the world will end on December 21, 2012, so this whole deal is moot.

Fully-stocked and staffed seafaring long-term survival yachts don't pay for themselves, you know!

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So I guess this means all future releases and re-releases will not have the iconic 20th Century Fox fanfare intro that leads into arguably the most beloved theme song of all time. I watched the beginning of ep2 the other night on TV and honestly it's difficult to not get butterflies and goosebumps when you hear it.

[8bitagent]

By the end of the year, the $4.05 billion sale of Lucasfilm to Disney should be finalized. And since George Lucas owns 100 percent of his company - which has little to no debt - all that money goes to him. After that, Lucas plans to quickly put the bulk of the money into a foundation which will primarily focus on educational issues, a spokesperson for Lucasfilm tells THR. "George Lucas has expressed his intention, in the event the deal closes, to donate the majority of the proceeds to his philanthropic endeavors."
...
"For 41 years, the majority of my time and money has been put into the company," Lucas said in a statement Wednesday. "As I start a new chapter in my life, it is gratifying that I have the opportunity to devote more time and resources to philanthropy."

The spokesperson noted that this "announcement continues a commitment that Lucas made in 2010 to The Giving Pledge where he stated, "I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future--and the first step begins with social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt--as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so.'"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/d ... ill-384947

[MinM]

Alabama Got Pumped For Tonight’s BCS Championship Game By Watching Zero Dark Thirty

According to ESPN's Tom Rinaldi, Alabama players and coaches spent last night watching Zero Dark Thirty, the much anticipated film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The movie doesn't come out until Friday, meaning that someone on the Alabama staff got their hands on an advanced copy. We're super jealous.

Anyway, a spy thriller (one that runs 157 minutes to boot) strikes us as an odd choice for a pump-up movie. Something like 300 or Gladiator would be a more logical choice for amping up a bunch of post-adolescents who are about to go violently banging into other post-adolescents in the biggest game of their lives.

But as Rinaldi explains, the coaches wanted their players to take inspiration from a scene at the end of the movie, in which Seal Team Six has to complete its mission even after suffering through a helicopter crash. That scene could provide the players with a good lesson in overcoming adversity, but we're willing to bet that Nick Saban got much more inspiration and enjoyment out of the torture scenes.

http://deadspin.com/5973880/alabama-got ... socialflow

George Lucas thanks Nick Saban for thanking him

Nick Saban has gone Hollywood and the favor is being returned.

Prior to winning the national title, Saban took his team to see "Red Tails" the new movie about the Tuskegee Airmen produced by George Lucas.

Saban mentioned the movie in his post game comments.

Lucas responded in kind:

"The cast and crew of 'Red Tails' are together in New York for Tuesday's world premiere so you can imagine the excitement when we heard Coach Saban reference 'Red Tails' at the forefront of his postgame comments after winning the national championship. Everyone associated with the film was so honored that Coach Saban elected to have his entire team screen the film on the eve of their championship game. And then to have 'Red Tails' and its inspirational message of overcoming adversity, never giving up, self-sacrifice and ultimate teamwork so deeply touch the Alabama team is personally very gratifying. I want to congratulate the Crimson Tide on their tremendous victory...the Tide truly rolled on Monday night."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... king-him/1

Zero Dark Thirty

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Prior to winning the national title, Saban took his team to see "Red Tails" the new movie about the Tuskegee Airmen produced by George Lucas.

Alright, this is from VDARE so obviously no link etc unless you're down with taking fascists on full bore when they link back to us. However, it reminds me of that George Lucas' wife post I put up a couple of years ago -- how she was essentially the "brains" behind all of this Star Wars shit. (Gotta go find it), unless the great archivist and reposter MinM can find it quicker. Now he is engaged with an African American woman who is the president of a Chicago Investment Bank.

George Lucas (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and now Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen) is a smart man. He wouldn’t be worth $3.2 billion were he a man of limited intelligence.

Years ago, I picked up a copy of The Power of Myth, a book that captured a conversation between the famous student of myths Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers.

Throughout the discussion, Campbell kept referring to his admiration for Lucas’ Star Wars saga. Moyers commented: “This is a very old story in a very new costume.”

Campbell went one better. He described how Lucas—through the character of Luke Skywalker—“has put the newest and most powerful spin to the classic story of the hero.”

The classic story of a hero. Campbell makes the important point in his seminal The Hero with a Thousand Facesthat all civilizations must have foundational myths to unite their people around a common shared history, and which they must always remember, protect, and honor.

Once a civilization, once a people, lose their heroes—forgetting to honor them—well, that nation is doomed. But nature abhors a vacuum, so new heroes will always arise to replace those discarded, be it through revolution, conquest—or a malevolent neglect from that civilization’s elite.

Red Tails is being released January 20 in theaters across the country. With its production and marketing bankrolled by Lucas personally to the tune of more than $100 million, it is designed to be the blockbuster that establishes in the hearts and minds of millions of impressionable moviegoers a new myth: in effect, that the vaunted Tuskegee Airmen single-handily won World War II for the Allied Powers.

That these valiant Black aviators, who overcame prejudice at home in the Jim Crow South (though they had to pass the same IQ and other aptitude tests as potential white pilot trainees) and battled the insidious Nazi Luftwaffe over the airspace of mainland Europe is proof that the more than 400 deployed Tuskegee Airmen of the 332d Fighter Group are the real heroes of World War II.

Never mind that, unlike more than 1200 white Army Air Force pilots in World War II, not one Tuskegee Airmen earned the honorific of “ace” (five or more confirmed enemy kills). Never mind that the myth of “never losing a bomber” that they escorted was finally discredited after it had been propagated via HBO’s 1995 film The Tuskegee Airmen and President George W. Bush had awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee Airmen in 2007. What matters is that these Tuskegee Airmen battled the combined forces of Nazism and Jim Crow-ism, striking the idea of white supremacy a deathblow in the process.

And never mind that, of those currently flying in the US Military, less than two percent are Black (segregated flying units did allow black pilots and commanders to emerge, but with integration the high standards of flight excellence have proved too difficult for most black pilot school trainees). We must continue to honor the story of the Tuskegee Airmen as one of the primary foundational myths of this new, more inclusive civilization that America has become.

(For perspective, see Nine Myths About The Tuskegee Airmen [October 11, 2011] and The Tuskegee Airmen and the "Never Lost a Bomber" Myth,by Dr. Daniel L. Haulman , Chief, Organizational History Division, at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, who was able to debunk some of the myths promulgated by Hollywood.)

After all, wasn’t it Barack Obama’s own Interior Secretary who bemoaned the overwhelming whiteness of the National Register of Historic Places, in light of our booming Hispanic population, not to mention the sorely neglected Black population?

With the nation’s Latino population booming and now the country’s largest minority group, the Obama administration’s top Hispanic official is concerned that the federal government is not giving enough attention to Hispanic history and culture.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in the past year has pushed the National Park Service to identify more sites or properties related to the histories of women and minorities that could be added to the National Register of Historic Places or be preserved as national parks or historic landmarks.

“Less than 3 percent of all the national landmarks that we have — the highest designation you can receive as a historic landmark — are designated for women, Latinos, African Americans or other members of minority groups,” Salazar said in a meeting with reporters last week. “That tells you that the score is not even.”

.[Ken Salazar urges more Latino-themed national parks, sites, By Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post, October 11, 2011 ]

(For an example of this national landmark revisionism in action in California’s Muir Woods, see here).

So that old civilization, to which many people still pledge allegiance, has more than 97 percent of its national landmarks designated to white males (the majority of whom are of the dreaded Dead White Male variety)?

Hard to believe Americans were so intolerant as to exclude non-whites from contributing to the building of this great nation.

Hence the need for new myths, like that of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, or the Tuskegee Airmen.

And a man of Lucas’ intelligence understands that history will judge him by his contributions to this new civilization.

Now you see why street after street across this nation is renamed for Martin Luther King or the Tuskegee Airmen, a constant visual reminder of our new heroes. Now you understand why elementary, middle, and high school’s across America are having the dead white male adorning the name of the school removed to make way for an individual more in line with contemporary adoration.

In a recent New York Times interview with Bryan Curtis [George Lucas is Ready To Roll the Credits, January 17, 2012], Lucas gave his reasons for making the movie:

“They say, Now, who are you making this for?”

“I’m making it for black teenagers.”

“And you’re doing it as a throwback movie? You’re not going to do it as a hip, happening-now, music-video kind of movie?”

“No, that’s not a smart thing to do. There’s not really going to be a lot of swearing in it. There’s probably not going to be a huge amount of blood in it. Nobody’s head’s going to get blown off.”

“And you’re going to be very patriotic — you’re making a black movie that’s patriotic?”

“They have a right to have their history just like anybody else does,” Lucas said. “And they have a right to have it kind of Hollywood-ized and aggrandized and made corny and wonderful just like anybody else does. Even if that’s not the fashion right now.”

But HBO had already “Hollywood-ized” the Red Tails story in its 1995 The Tuskegee Airmen. Indeed, it was this movie, largely a work of pure fiction, that propelled the story of the segregated Black flying unit that “never lost a bomber” to the stratosphere of the elite mindset in America that is always on the prowl for the best form of entertainment that induces the greatest amount of white guilt.

The Hollywood-ization of the “Tuskegee Airmen” means that the other historical airmen—essentially all of whom were white—who really carried the brunt of World War II, battling the Germans and Japanese in legendary dogfights, are to be overshadowed.

Their civilization, where 97 percent of national landmarks celebrated dead white males, is being largely supplanted. And their descendants are losing the right to celebrate their own history.

Lucas is a student of Campbell; he knows the power of myths.

The Tuskegee Airmen story is just that: a myth. But it has put a Black face on that “very old story” of the hero, and a powerfully new Politically Correct spin.

Paul Kersey[Email him] is the author of the blog SBPDL, and has published the books SBPDL Year One, Hollywood in Blackface and Captain America and Whiteness: The Dilemma of the Superhero.

I post this to be AWARE of what is coming. Star Wars is perhaps the most POWERFUL marketing force on Earth (now that it's combined forces with Disney) and the tribulations of minorities over time can be funneled through this. I also post this as a nascent warning of what would we might expect in the future. I don't know which way this is going and fully admit. However I thank, MinM for bringing it up again, as I was about to do so. Now to go searching for Lucas' first wife's story. Posting shortly.

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Remember too, that there were no black people in The Empire as well. None. Black people and "creatures" were all relegated to the "Rebels" or Rebel Alliance. WTF was and is going in that billionaire's mind who has re-released his movies and CHANGED them fucking about 100 times in the last 30 years -- not to mention all the spinoffs?