Eighteen days into my month-long homage to Star Wars and I appear to have lost all reason. Not that I had much of that at the start of all this. I could have just stopped when I’d written about Episodes I – IX, though I’m sure no-one would have begrudged me writing about ‘Rogue One’…
Category: review
May The Seventeenth Be With You: Star Wars: Ewoks
Alongside ‘Star Wars: Droids – The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO’, another Star Wars inspired cartoon was made in 1985. It was about the Ewoks. It was, appropriately enough, known as ‘Star Wars: Ewoks’. The two shows ran alongside each other, though aside from the fact they both notionally stemmed from the same source material,…
May The Fifteenth Be With You: The Great Heep
‘The Great Heep’ is a bizarre entry into the Star Wars ‘back catalogue’. A feature length special of an already cancelled TV show, which very few people actually watched. It would be easy enough to have viewed this as just an extended episode of the aforementioned show, which I wrote about yesterday, as it seems…
May The Fourteenth Be With You: Star Wars: Droids – The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO
I remember this cartoon from the eighties but I can’t really say I was ever that big a fan as a child. Which is strange because I loved Star Wars and I also loved cartoons. I suppose I just didn’t find a cartoon about C3PO and R2D2 that inspiring. But it wasn’t bad. No worse…
May The Thirteenth Be With You: Ewoks: The Battle For Endor
Following on from 1984’s ‘Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure’, 1985’s ‘Ewoks, The Battle For Endor’ was another TV movie that somehow found itself in cinemas in the UK. But you wouldn’t have found me in any of those cinemas. Because unlike the first Ewok film, which is firmly established as a seminal moment in…
May The Twelfth Be With You: Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
Originally a TV movie for American audiences simply called ‘The Ewok Adventure’ this 1984 Star Wars spinoff was retitled ‘Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure’ when it was released in cinemas internationally. I saw it in the UK. Which is where I lived in 1984. Indeed it is where I live now. And I saw…
May The Tenth Be With You: Star Wars Holiday Special
Can you truly call yourself a Star Wars fan if you’ve never seen the 1978 ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’? Yes. Of course you can. Indeed for your own sanity, you should avoid watching this at all costs. And back before the Internet, it was easy to not watch this. It was only ever shown on…
May The Ninth Be With You: The Rise Of Skywalker
So here we are, on the last of the Star Wars movies, collectively known as ‘The Skywalker Saga’. Episode IX of IX. The official ‘end of the story’. The culmination of a journey some 42 years in the making. And by definition the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. No,…
May The Eighth Be With You: The Last Jedi
Expectations were quite possibly at an all time high when this one hit the cinemas. Not only had 2015’s ‘The Force Awakens’ been generally well-received by fans and critics, but the first standalone Star Wars movie of the modern era (though not, of course, the first standalone Star Wars movie ever), ‘Rogue One’ had also…
May The Seventh Be With You: The Force Awakens
‘Return of the Jedi’ is the end of the story. It wraps everything up neatly. The Empire is beaten, the rebels are victorious, Luke is a Jedi, Han and Leia are in love and Darth Vader has found redemption. In 1983 Star Wars was pretty much complete. What we didn’t need were any prequels. But…
May The Sixth Be With You: Return Of The Jedi
And so, to the last of the original trilogy, a movie that is not quite as good as its predecessors but still much better than the prequels. Which is not necessarily much of a compliment, but this is a good film with some really great bits that more than make up for the ‘not great’…
May The Fifth Be With You: The Empire Strikes Back
Today is not Star Wars Day. That was yesterday. But I’m still writing about Star Wars. Because I’m doing that all month. Or for as much of this month as I can manage. I explained why I’m doing this in a previous post, but in all honesty it’s not for any good reason at all…
May The Fourth Be With You: A New Hope
Happy Star Wars Day everyone! When did this become a thing? I think I first came across the notion that the 4th May was considered to be Star Wars Day around eighteen years ago when a colleague (in whatever mundane admin job I was doing at the time) told me their birthday was on Star…
May The Third Be With You: Revenge Of The Sith
So we get to the last of the much-lamented prequel trilogy. This one did at least have a slightly better title. And clearly no-one learned anything from the preceding two films about managing expectations because there was a massive hype surrounding this one too. To be fair, it actually did deliver in some respects. Although…
May The Second Be With You: Attack Of The Clones
Three years after everyone got upset by ‘The Phantom Menace’, we all failed to learn our lesson and flocked to the cinemas in our droves to see ‘Episode II’, the equally badly titled ‘Attack of the Clones’. I actually went to a midnight showing, so I could see it before everyone else. And I thought…
May The First Be With You: The Phantom Menace
Thus, begins my mission to write about Star Wars for days, if not weeks, on end. And where better to begin than Episode One? That would seem like the obvious place to start. Except for two important reasons: As most people know, it wasn’t even close to being the first Star Wars film to be…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 26: Zeitgeist
And so we arrive at ‘Z’ in my shamelessly nostalgic A-Z of albums that I liked to listen to when I was young. Thanks to everyone who has chipped in with comments along the way, even if it’s to tell me that you’ve never heard of the bands I liked or that you completely disagree…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 25: You’ve Come A Long Way Baby
It’s the penultimate day of the A-Z challenge 2020 and it’s time to ask ‘Y’. Specifically we must ask ‘Y’ to tell us what today’s album is. It wasn’t easy. I assumed a lot of album titles would begin with the word ‘you’. Or ‘yesterday’. But these were not popular choices in the nineties apparently.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 24: XTRMNTR
No A-Z would be complete without the letter ‘X’. Because ‘X’ is very much a part of the alphabet. But it’s not the most accommodating of letters and it’s pretty hard to do an A-Z of anything without cheating a bit on ‘X’. But I don’t think I’ve cheated too much today. The album I’ve…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 23: Wake Up!
Who, what, why, where and when are all words that begin with ‘W’. And so does today’s album. Because we’re on ‘W’ in my A-Z of albums. So it should begin with ‘W’. That is literally the only expectation we can reasonably have of this album. But it is also one of my all time…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 22: Version 2.0
As we near the end of this A-Z of albums that I liked when I was younger than I am now, and mostly still like today (except for some albums that frankly only made the cut because they began with the right letter) I feel I should acknowledge the heavy bias towards UK acts. This…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 21: Urban Hymns
We’re now at the part of the A-Z Challenge that is all about ‘U’. “About time,” ‘U’ must be saying. And I’m sorry I had to make ‘U’ wait. However, there are 20 letters that come before ‘U’ in the alphabet. But they’ve had their time and now we finally get to ‘U’. U is…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 20: Tellin’ Stories
We’ve finally got to the 20th letter of the alphabet, which means the end is in sight. But we’re not there yet. First we have to stop for ‘T’. I prefer mine with milk but no sugar. Cos I’m sweet enough (ah that office banter that we’re all missing out on because of the lock-down).…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 19: Spiders
If this were an A-S of albums I liked when I was young, then we’d already be at the end. But it’s an A-Z, so we aren’t at the end. Because ‘Z’ comes after ‘S’ in the alphabet. But if you look at ‘S’ in the mirror, it looks like a kind of curvy ‘Z’.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 18: Return To The Last Chance Saloon
If you’ve been looking forward to this A-Z getting to the eighteenth letter of the alphabet then here we ‘R’. But where exactly ‘R’ we? At the letter ‘R’ of course. I’d have thought that was abundantly clear from the way I just cleverly substituted the letter ‘R’ for the word ‘are’ above. And then…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 17: Quench
And so to ‘Q’ in my A-Z of albums I liked to listen to when I was young. ‘Q’ is always one of the more difficult letters in an A-Z challenge. And it was quite the conundrum in this challenge too. Not as difficult to solve as ‘X’ in the end but still quite tricky.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 16: Pablo Honey
If only there were a way to get to the sixteenth letter of the alphabet without referencing the immortal Blockbusters joke, “I’ll have a ‘P’ please Bob” But there isn’t, so I did. Obviously the above reference may mean nothing to you, particularly if you didn’t watch the quiz show Blockbusters in the 80s and…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 15: On
And so to ‘O’ that most circular of letters. And when you think about the great albums of the nineties, there really could only be one choice for the letter ‘O’. So it’s almost beyond belief that I’ve gone with a different one. But I stand by today’s choice. It was an album that I…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 14: 1977
And so we are officially in the second half of what really is a self-indulgent set of posts about the music I liked when I was younger. If you’re just joining me, then welcome. Although you are going to have to work hard to keep up with the others. If you’ve been with me since…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 13: The Man Who
The halfway point of the alphabet lies somewhere between ‘M’ and ‘N’. Which is where we’ll be at the end of this post. For we are on ‘M’ today. I’m not sure if the fact that we’re almost halfway there is a source of comfort or distress really. M is for The Man Who Yesterday’s…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 12: Laid
And so we’re at the time of our A-Z journey through nineties music nostalgia when we ask, what the ‘L’? And ‘L’ is coming, make no mistake about that. But what fresh ‘L’ is this? L is for Laid I could hardly do a series nineties nostalgia posts predominantly about indie music without including a…
