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Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is one of my favorite movies, because it's one of the best ones. At 125 minutes long I don't always have time to sit down an watch it all. Thankfully, it's the latest installment of 1A4STUDIO's Speedrun webseries. This animation compresses the entire film down to a simple minute-long animation.

Three years ago, Casey Pugh kicked off an ambitious project called Star Wars Uncut. In it, the entirety of the 1977 sci-fi classic Star Wars: A New Hope was sliced and diced into 15 second chunks. Through the project's website, everyday folks could upload their shot-for-shot remakes of each section with the eventual goal of crowd sourcing the entire film. Though all the clips were apparently complete two years ago, it was only cut into one continuous film within the past few days. Let me tell you, folks: It is charming as all get out. It's an amazing labor of love, that makes you forget all the cynicism about the prequels and everything that has come since. My favorite bit so far? The part where instead of Princess Leia placing a holographic diskette into R2D2, a hand places a VHS tape on top of a shop vac. You need to see this.

In the 12th century, someone somewhere in Scandinavia carved the Lewis Chessmen, a collection of nearly 100 chess pieces of a particularly unique and expressive style. It wasn't the first ornate chess set, but it's certainly a strange and unique set with its shield-biting berzerkers and worried looking royalty. Since the Lewis chess set, the Western world has continued to make stranger and stranger chess sets. Perhaps this speaks to the power of the game, and it's captivating metaphorical nature. More likely it speaks to the human desire to spend stupendous amounts of money. Regardless, chess set making has come to the point where it's no longer about the game but about whatever weird twist you can put on it. And trust us, they've come a long way from simple walrus ivory carvings. So whether your covet these gameboards, or laugh at those that do, please enjoy this humble collection of the least humble chess sets the Internet has to offer.

If you think one of those things is not like the other, you're about to be sorely disappointed. This weekend Orlando, Florida is host to the Star Wars Celebration V (we guess it's the Empire Strikes Back themed one?), and the con has already been the source of news that will be debated for a while among fans. Some of the news was a much more expected surprise, as yesterday when George Lucas announced that both Star Wars trilogies will be coming to Blu-Ray within the next year, and showed a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi. More info, including video, below.

Estranged member of the original group that put Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back together, producer Gary Kurtz has some strong but ultimately unsurprising words for The LA Times, regarding George Lucas and the creative motivations behind the later Star Wars movies.

Instead of bittersweet and poignant [Lucas] wanted a euphoric ending with everybody happy. The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base. George then decided he didn’t want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason.

Well, we can't say that we don't prefer Han alive at the end of the trilogy, but gee, George Lucas makes bad writing decisions for the wrong reasons?

We are shocked.

It's safe to say that Episode IV: A New Hope is an icon in sci-fi/fantasy storytelling, and that any childhood and/or adulthood is incomplete without having been exposed to it. As such, I'm sure many can remember holding anything from a toy to a tree branch and pretending it was a real lightsaber. And that neighbor kid who always broke your things? Obviously a servant of the Dark Side, however cute she might have been. Or was that just me? At any rate, for nearly a year fans have been eagerly living out those fantasies on camera and posting them online in 15-second snippets thanks to a project known as Star Wars Uncut.

Electronics retailer Micro Center has received part numbers for four new Mac computers, which it says corresponds with three 15" and one 17" MacBook Pros. From MacRumors.com:

We've since received independent confirmation from another source besides Microcenter that those part numbers are real, and that we should expect new 15" and 17" MacBook Pros very soon.

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