Saturday Morning Central loves DK Publishing. They publish all sorts of awesome books that are equally as cool for adults as they are for kids. Back in October they let me participate in their blog team for the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary celebration they had, and it was a lot of fun. Now they’re back with another Star Wars book, the Star Wars Clone Wars Character Encyclopedia.

The title is pretty self-explanatory, and if you’ve ever had one of DK’s books before, you know what to expect: large spreads of images packed to the gills with information and trivia. This title is no different. It’s just over 200 pages long, and has just as many characters. Since this is a character encyclopedia, obviously there isn’t any sections devoted to ships or planets, but you probably already knew that.

Read More

Well, I might be a year late, but I’ve finally watched the new Clone Wars TV series. Since we don’t have TV (we have a tv, but we just use it for movies, digital files, and games), I haven’t been able to watch more than a few minutes of this show until now. The complete first season was just released on Blu-ray by Warner Bros, and I got my hands on a copy.

The Blu-ray is a three disc box set that includes a pretty cool “art of” booklet inside the case. There are all kinds of conceptual sketches, photos of models, and notes. There’s a grand total of 22 episodes, and 7 of them are presented as director’s cuts. They don’t have the original cuts on the discs, so I don’t really know what they changed.

There is a behind the scenes featurette for each episode, and a ton of 3D and 2D art to scan through. Besides that there are a few promos, one for season two, another for the new Clone Wars game, and the last about StarWars.com (in case you’ve been living under a rock or in an Amish community for the last 12 years).

The Verdict

I like this show a heck of a lot more than I thought I was going to. I’m a huge fan of the original 2D Clone Wars series by Genndy Tartakovsky, so I didn’t know what I would think of this new Genndy-less series. Beyond the typical prequel-universe annoyances (droids, droids, Anakin, droids), the series has a strong grasp of the Star Wars Universe, and benefits from its short episodic stories.

I like how they took risks like centering whole episodes on Clone troopers or an obscure character. While not as over-the-top and stylized as the Genndy Tartakovsky series, The Clone Wars is a fun show.

The Season One set is also available on standard-def DVD. It’s available now.