In the 1975 Disney movie Escape to Witch Mountain two orphans with paranormal abilities discover a clue to their past.  These clues lead them to Witch Mountain and the knowledge that they are in fact aliens.  This movie was followed up by a sequel in 1978 called Return from Witch Mountain, and a TV movie in 1982 called Beyond Witch Mountain, and then it was remade in 1995.

I’ve talked about this re-imaging before, but somewhere along the way my attitude has shifted.  Let’s say that I want to make a really cool movie about these kids with special abilities.  Every good movie needs a good McGuffin, so I make them orphans with a mysterious past.  They work to uncover evidence of who they really are.  It’s an allegory of us all trying to find our place in the world, and hoping that we can prove that the things that make us different are the things that make us special.  These kids find out that they aren’t oddballs, but they are actually part of an alien society.  They discover that they aren’t alone in the world and their abilities are real gifts.

Now, to help separate my movie from all of the other movies out there I want to tie into some sort of existing fan base.  I happen upon the old Disney movie Escape to Witch Mountain.  I research it a bit and discover that the movie is based on the 1968 Novel by Alexander Key.  After reading the novel I find this is really a “a very cool dark thriller”.

I find myself wondering how many melodies can be made from the same 12 notes, but then I sit back and enjoy the music.  I’m looking forward to sharing this movie with my kids.

Not really.  This is an image from a new film by Sandy Collora.  The movie is called Hunter Prey and the story centers around a crew of special forces commandos who must recapture an alien prisoner that has escaped after the military transport ship carrying it crashes on a desolate and hostile planet.  You can read the interview with Sandy over at io9.  I became familiar with Sandy’s work after seeing his fan film Batman: Dead End.  You can see it below.

I mentioned earlier today about the Boba Fett costume that was made for Jeremy Bulloch.  Here’s a video about the presentation of the suit.

This took a lot longer than I expected, but here’s the wrap up to the Fan Days II convention that took place in Plano Texas last month.

On the first day I decided that I would be in costume, well I guess it wasn’t much of a costume.  I think that I was asked if I was Boy Scout, or a park Ranger more than any one thought that I was a Clone Wars Officer.  So here I am with Rebel Scum forum member deathstar1000.  Great Biker Scout Daniel!

I didn’t get to go around a take a ton of pictures at the event, but here are a few of the other artists that were there. 

David Rabbitte, Chris Trevas, Ben Jones (and his wife),

Randy Martinez, Jason Sobol, Robert Hendrickson,

 and Steve Anderson

Sorry that I didn’t get a shot of everyone that was there.  As thing wrapped up on Saturday night we all got on the bus and went over to eat a Philip Wise’s shop for BBQ and to check out his collection.  You may have seen some of his collection on RebelScum.com.  It would appear that Philip is very serious about having the right tools in his shop.  I took a few shots of an R2 unit he was making as well as a Dejarik table.

There were quite a few people there, and poor Chris had to sit in the school chair.

This photo of Director Irvin Kershner, Jeremy Bulloch, and Dave Prowse, was hanging on the wall.

 Here’s Dave Prowse and I just hanging out, (with Matthew Wood sneaking in the shot).

We had plenty to  eat and then we went up to see the collection.

wow.

 Han in Carbonite is the door to get into the home theater equipment.  In the next photo I’m holding a miniature  George Lucas in Carbonite. 

 A movie accurate Boba Fett costume was made and presented to Jeremy Bulloch.  When that costume was made there was actually a second one made and this is it.

  I have to admit, Zam Wesell (Leeanna Walsman) was much nicer than Princess Leia. 

  From Left to right (bottom) we have Matt Busch and Randy Martinez.  Then we on the top row is Mark McHaley, Denise Vasquez, Matt Wood, and Leeanna Walsman.  The funny thing was that we sat down in the theater and started to watch the Clone Wars Episode from previous week.

  Then here is are host with the voice of Yoda from the Clone Wars Cartoon Tom Kane.

I turns out that Tom is a fan of muscle cars and had watched the whole series on the rebuilding of the Bandit.  He came by my table Sunday morning and I gave him my autograph. 

 I then went around and caught up on a few more photo ops with the celebrities.

 Robert Watts producer of Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.

 Ori Shoshan played Shaak Ti.

 Matt Wood  the voice of General Grevious and Amy Allen who was Aayla Secura.

 And Erin Grey, l Wilma Deering from Buck Rogers. 

Well, I’m off to see the Quantum of Solace.  The title of the post is in reference to a previous post I made about the proposed Theme Song for the new Bond movie.  You can see it here.  I’ll let you know what I think of the movie on Monday.

Quantum of Solace from phoenix on Vimeo.

Google is just making more and more cool stuff.

I’ve got these two done and I’ve got two more requests on my list.  Color Sketch Card commissions for $30.00 (unless of course your a good haggler or you have galactic heroes to trade!)

Chris Dimino was given the following challenge.  Take this now useless item and give it a new life than it was intended to have.  The solution is presented in his typewriter series of sculptures.

My personal favorite is the “Corona-Matic”.  A typewriter turned into a waffle iron that makes keyboard shaped waffles.  I came across this image on Treehugger.  Click on the picture to go to his site and see more of his work.

The new Canon 5D Mark II is a pretty awesome camera.  It retails for $2700.00, which is quite a lot of money for a camera, but the results a remarkable.  I’m not a big photography buff, so it’s actually not the still image capabilities that caught my attention.  These new cameras are capturing High Definition images AND can capture video.  The full frame, 21.1 Megapixel EOS 5D Mark II is the first EOS with full High Definition video capability.  Click here for more info, or just watch some of the videos below.

I haven’t fully researched these but it looks like there are two great sample videos from this camera. The first video was done by a professional with tons of extra equipment and the second video was done by a news photographer and a laptop.  Here is a link to the super professional one, and I’ve posted the other video below. 

Yup, I had a birthday.  I decided for my cake this year that I would like to have warm brownies and vanilla bean ice cream, with crushed sugar cones and chocolate syrup.  mmmmmmm :]

There were a couple of problems though.  It was hard to get all the candles lit without burning my hands.  Then, when I blew out the candles, we had to open up the doors and turn on the fans so that the smoke detector wouldn’t go off!