YouTube removed all parody/fanfilm/spoof Star Wars content two days ago due to copyright violation. This morning, in an incredibly awesome PR move, Lucasfilm contacted YouTube, and told them to put it all back online – every last one.

Lucasfilm has been informed that YouTube recently removed from its site several fan-made Star Wars spoofs and parodies. We would like the fan film community to know that this was not done at our request.

Apparently the action was taken by YouTube as a result of a misunderstanding of a request to remove an item containing material taken from starwars.com without our permission. We have asked YouTube to restore any works that they inadvertently removed.

Warner Brothers announced that its upcoming sequel to 2005’s hit Batman Begins will be called The Dark Knight and will feature Heath Ledger as the Joker.

The 7th Atjaro (Gateway) Festival (9-11 June, 2006) is the leading science fiction and fantasy convention in Hungary. It will take place in the buildings, park and an open air stage of Millenáris Park, a civic center in the heart of Budapest. […] Among our special guest stars are actress MIRA FURLAN from Lost and Babylon 5 and actor ADRIAN PAUL from Highlander and Tracker. We will also have one of the supporting actors from the Star Wars saga GERALD HOME and GARRICK HAGON who has played in Tim Burton’s Batman and in Mission Impossible.

better late, than never:

the 1977 theatrical version of Lucas’ Star Wars will be issued on home video again, but for the first time on DVD, on Sept. 12, LucasFilm announced Thursday.

The theatrical versions of 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Return of the Jedi, Star Wars’ companion movies from the original trilogy, also will make their DVD debuts on that date.

A Massachusetts observatory unveiled a powerful new telescope on Tuesday designed to capture possible light signals transmitted to Earth by extraterrestrials.

[cnn]

Stanislaw Lem, 84, a Polish-born writer of “reality based” science fiction who tweaked Communist authorities and became one of the world’s best-selling authors with books such as “Solaris” and “The Futurological Congress,” died March 27 at a hospital in Krakow, Poland. He had a heart ailment.

Paramount Pictures has acquired screen rights to Stoneheart, the first installment of a fantasy trilogy about ancient statues that come to life in London, Variety reported. Scott Rudin and Lorenzo di Bonaventura will produce, and Charlie Fletcher will write the script from his novel, which will be published in the United States by Hyperion and by the Hachette-owned Hodder Children’s imprint in the United Kingdom.

In Stoneheart, a shy 12-year-old on a class trip to London’s war museum knocks the head off a stone dragon and quickly finds himself menaced by stone serpents that adorned the museum and have come to life. The kid is saved by the bronze statue of a soldier.

Paramount’s excitement about Stoneheart can be seen in the fact that its top two producers - Scott Rudin (Failure to Launch, The Royal Tenenbaums, Zoolander) and Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers: The Movie, Derailed, Four Brothers) - both wanted the book when it was brought to the studio. Instead of choosing one man to guide the project, the studio persuaded them to agree (eagerly, supposedly) to collaborate for the first time.

“Blogs scare me!” She and Bart then conferred for a while on the “unreliable” nature of blogs; by the time Lemire was shaking her head back and forth and increduously exclaiming, “Nobody is fact checking these things!”, I lost the ability to keep my mouth shut. I raised my hand, and when teacher called on me, I introduced myself, and told her that I work for a blog that is, in fact, fact-checked – in real time, by our readers. “If we get something wrong,” I said, “Our commenters tell us so, and they make sure we correct it.

charlize theron is free and single again…

Painful Publicity Whoring - Captain Sexy gave Hatcher the fuck-n-run, and she had no choice but to go to VF with an unrelated, attention-grabbing story. Don’t we all deal with break-ups like that?