Back in 2009 Casey Pugh put out a call to Star Wars fans and budding filmmakers everywhere to help create one of the most ambitious and beloved displays of appreciation for George Lucas‘ standard-setting space opera saga ever seen. Internet users everywhere were asked to remake Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 15 seconds at a time. Two years after the project began Star Wars Uncut: The Director’s Cut has been completed and is now available to watch online, or at least until Darth Lucas and his cadre of high-priced lawyers file a cease-and-desist order due to the film’s extensive use of Star Wars footage and audio. [...]

Few characters have inspired as many entertaining and visually-inspired fan films as Batman. Over the years the Caped Crusader has starred in several labor of love short films financed and created by longtime admirers of the classic DC Comics superhero including Sandy Collora’s Dead End (which pitted Batman against the Joker – played by the late Andrew Koenig – as well as Aliens and Predators) and World’s Finest (Batman teams with Superman to battle Lex Luthor); Jeffery Scheetz’s CGI-animated New Times (featuring the voices of Adam West and Mark Hamill); and John Fiorella’s Robin-centric Grayson. [...]

A Kickstarter account for a project called This Batman Life hit was launched this week that will give blogger Geoffrey Brett Williams an experience that many Batman fans like myself have wanted to do for quite some time. Becoming Batman.

Williams plans to use donated money from the Kickstarter service to pay his way to study various martial arts fighting styles, private investigation, and the free-running martial art of parkour to train like Bruce Wayne before he became The Bat. In his journey to become The Dark Knight, Williams will be traveling between Chicago, New York City, DC, and Nashville to train and volunteer with various charitable organizations to experience the philanthropic side of the man behind the mask [...]

Have You Seen The Surfing Trooper?

He’s a stormtrooper on vacation from the Empire who’s surfing around the world.

Visit Surfing Trooper to see photos of his travel adventures so far and be on the lookout for him in your area. You never know when and where he’ll show up!

Chances are, he’ll have a surfboard, but even when he doesn’t, the pics are great, like this one — probably my favorite one of his travels thus far — where he goes to kick some hobbit ass in Hobbiton in New Zealand!!! [...]

A 22-year-old woman in Jacksonville, Florida named Alexandra V. Tobias has pleaded guilty in the death of her 3-month-old son, Dylan.

The reason for such a despicable act? She tells investigators that she was busy playing the highly popular Facebook game, Farmville, when the child started crying. She explains that she became so angry, she shook the baby, went and smoked a cigarette to try and calm down, and then shook the baby more. She also added that while she was shaking him, he might have hit his head on something.

Tobias has been charged with second-degree murder, and could face up to life in prison…though it is noted that this sentence could be much, much less because “state guidelines” place the charge at 25-50 years imprisonment.

Farmville is a real-time strategy game that allows users to maintain their own virtual farm, plowing your lands, planting crops, harvesting what you’ve grown, and raising your own various livestock. [...]

May 2010 has undoubtedly turned out to be Star Wars month. With the 30th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back and Universal Day of the Jedi on May 25 (tomorrow!), we also had “May the 4th be with you,” “Revenge of the 5th” (wished-for by ThinkGeek.com), and George Lucas’ birthday. It’s been a big month of celebration for Star Wars fans around the world.

The Star Wars saga has developed a prosperous history over its 33 years of integration into the consciousness of pop culture, including the ever-developing Expanded Universe; which, through novels, games, comics, and more, has fleshed out an in-universe chronicle stretching from thousands of years before the life of Luke Skywalker, to hundreds of years after his death.

Arguably, one of the most unique aspects of the Star Wars saga is the lightsaber. The preferred weapon of the Jedi and the Sith, it is representation of, in the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “a more civilized age.” Since the release of the first Star Wars film on May 25, 1977, fans have embraced the lightsaber as a representation of the Jedi, as have the creators of the Expanded Universe.

Within the Expanded Universe of the Star Wars saga, we can find a historic view of how the lightsaber came to be — its advancement and chronology. So, in-universe, how did the symbolic weapon of the Jedi come into being? [...]

Anyone who has ever played the Magic: The Gathering card game will probably remember the high price of the game’s original beta print run. These cards are basically the same as the first set regular edition cards except for some sizing differences. Collectors, on the other hand, must have them.

If you’ve got $89,000 collecting dust in some savings fund, you can head on over to eBay to bid on a Beta Black Lotus with a grade of 10, which is allegedly the only one in existence.

For anyone that doesn’t play Magic or has never played it, a mint condition Beta Black Lotus card is the equivalent to an Amazing Fantasy #15 for comic book geeks. If you don’t know the significance of either of those two items then you need to keep reading our site for further knowledge of geek culture [...]

So you’re a Trekkie, eh? These are the days that you dream of.

A company in Las Vegas called Propworx is preparing to sell around a thousand different items from Star Trek: The Experience, which ran for ten years and shut down in 2008. The many items will apparently be sold via auction and in a giant warehouse (okay, so it’s not really a yard sale, but close enough) tomorrow.

The attraction featured many replications and props from the Trek universe, and also featured some popular rides. These rides included an encounter with the Klingons and even a 4D Borg attack.

There’s good and bad aspects to all of this. The good is that these are just replicas, so most of the stuff is pretty affordable to all. The bad part is that if you don’t live in Vegas, you might just miss out on a lot of the goodies!

Once I discovered the above-linked Propworx website (where you can go and see lots of images and gain info on the sale), however, I did find out that there was still a way for you Trekkies around the country to still get your hands on some treasures…if you’re lucky. [...]

Once upon a time, someone somewhere created a sleeping bag re-creation of the Tauntaun corpse that Luke Skywalker used for warmth in that classic scene from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. This someone was greatest online store ever created (proclaimed by I, anyway), ThinkGeek, and it was actually just a little April Fools silliness. Well, the gag was so popular, that people were called, papers were rustled, and ThinkGeek was given permission by George Lucas and Lucas Films to actually produce the sleeping bag, and you…yes, YOU can go and own one soon.

The sleeping bag (seen above, click to go large) is made of a nice, soft Tauntaun fur, and the inside is over-flowing with the natural comfort of intestinal embrace. Better yet (and my personal favorite touch) is the inclusion of a little lightsaber zipper, that allows you to cut open your desperate escape from the freezing cold winter every single time you use it! [...]

If you got the reference in the title, you’re awesome and we’re putting you right up on the fridge.

Many of us cool kids are children of the ’80s, and as such, one of the greatest forms of entertainment ever to be created, is the Muppets. The Muppets are a creation of the late genius Jim Henson, who built an army of funny and lovable puppet characters who appeared in a countless amount of TV shows, specials, movies, music videos, cartoons, and everything in between. As life moved on and new generations of kids showed up, the Muppets faded off slowly, but never completely disappeared, making delightful cameo appearances on shows and events from time to time. But now, thanks to the massive Disney D23 Expo, we’ve learned that the Muppets are coming back in a big way, and their ready to take over the world again!

Back in March of 2008, we learned that we would finally be getting a brand new Muppet movie, with Forgetting Sarah Marshall team Jason Segel and Nick Stoller joining the Jim Henson Company to write and direct a new movie. [...]

As you may have noticed, our video team on the scene (I just made that up — gold star for me), Doug E. Karate and Rob E. Danger did a fantastic job of finding interesting things and people at Dragon*Con ’09 and showcasing them for all who didn’t attend to see.

This time around we have three pretty epic videos for you to enjoy — two interviews, and even an in-depth lesson in the Gothic culture. The first chat is with a woman talks about how she fell in love with The Green Lantern while watching the cartoons in Spanish growing up, and who even attended the convention dressed as a Lantern herself. Next up, you’ll meet a real, live inventor who brought along one of his creations. I can’t honestly tell you what it is or what it does, but it does throws a bunch of random phrases at you. The contraption is rather big and hangs around our new friend’s neck as he strolls. It actually kind of looks like an ’80s computer and a calculator had a romantic romp inside Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly machine, and then was teleported via the ship from Galaxy Quest, resulting in some form of inside-out electronic device. [...]

Dragon*Con 2009 has come and gone now, but the goodies may just never stop. We really spoil you kids.

Today comes another harvest of mini-interviews composed of course by Doug and Rob, and featuring some more of the convention’s best in show. As we all know, conventions like this one are mass gathering points for those who simply love to dress up as their most-favoritest of geeky characters and walk the floors proudly. So who better to have a little chat with, I ask thee? No one, that’s who!

In this installment, we’ll meet two interesting folks. First up is Loxida Delude, the fittingly geek-named hairdresser from Tennessee who’s all dolled up as a Night Elf Druid. She’ll share her convention experience and her gaming vices us. Next up will be a young man who is attending the convention with his mother and father, and claims to be dressed as a character from the game Kingdom Hearts 2, though I kind of think he’s a closet Twilighter and actually dressed up as Robert Pattinson. That hair puts wild to shame [...]

A brand new website has been making waves as of late, and the time has come to spread the word of its existence. The website is called Flickchart and was created by Nathan Chase and Jeremy Thompson. In just its early stages, it has quickly abducted the hands of some of the ‘nets biggest movie geeks with the subtle begging for just one more click of your mouse; followed by another…and then just one more. Before you know it, you’ve chosen thousands of movies over thousands of others, and your mouse is a melted, warped plastic blob.

Basically, Flickchart is a new kind of social networking for movie fanatics. The site presents you with two movies and you simply choose one. However, as you do this more and more times, you repeatedly discover yourself in a vicious stalemate with your own personal preferences. While many of these selections can be incredibly painful to break through, there is also another catch: every single time that you click, your stats are calculated, and eventually, you will build your very own ultimate top 20 movies list. [...]

A fan of Douglas Adams’ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will attempt to thumb his way from his village in Germany to the late author’s gravesite in London with nothing but his coat, a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, and of course, a towel.

Mathias-Emanuel Hartmann wrote last week on his blog, Me and My Towel, that he will embark on May 5 from his hometown of Rambin, a small village in the north of Germany, to the London Highgate Cemetery, where Adams is buried. The author died on May 11, 2001.

According to Hartmann, his only provisions on this hitchhiking journey will be his morning coat, a copy of the guide, and his trusted towel. He plans on blogging and posting pictures of his experience, which will take him across about 750 miles (1207 km), whenever he’s able to find an internet connection.

Any good samaritans along the route, be sure to give a fellow geek a hand on his lofty quest [...]

What does cantankerous comic scribe extraordinaire, Warren Ellis, think about when he’s not busy writing amazing scripts for titles like Ultimate Human, Transmetropolitan, Thunderbolts, and Black Summer. Compiled here are ten of his most interesting thoughts, aggregated via awesome micro-blogging platform, Twitter.

Given the time in development and the abundance of top-notch screenwriting talent, it is surprising that the screenplay of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is a bit of a mess. The movie left me asking questions about how or why certain things happened. After 18 years and several screen writers, shouldn’t all these questions be answered? Here’s a look at the top five unanswered questions from the film.

In honor of George Lucas’s birthday, our resident Star Wars geek explores the origins of her Star Wars obsession, revealing her loyalty to all things Lucas.