The Empire Strikes Back: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Special Edition)
Composer: John Williams
London Symphony Orchestra
1997 Release

WARNING! THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS!

It’s been thirty years since The Empire Strikes Back, the much-anticipated sequel to George Lucas‘ 1977 mega-hit cultural touchstone Star Wars, opened in theaters around the world and the impact it made upon audiences and critics has not dulled a bit, and for good reason. The movie proved that the success of the first Star Wars film was no well-timed fluke and even a movie that essentially paid homage to space operas, samurai films, and westerns could evolve beyond its influences and become its own beast. Best of all it was better than Star Wars in every possible way: the script by Leigh Brackett (screenwriter of such classic films as The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, and The Long Goodbye) and Lawrence Kasdan (who later went on to co-write Raiders of Lost Ark and enter his own directing career) opened up the universe Lucas had created and expanded the scope with an epic, serpentine tale that was more darker, richer, and emotional than the original and overflowing with memorable characters, and quotable dialogue; the direction by Irvin Kershner was professional and assured; and the cast, free of George Lucas’ stilted writing and relative inexperience with actors (despite the fact that he had directed the actor-heavy American Graffiti to great success), were able to give deeper and more nuanced performances under the direction of the deferential Kershner.

Empire Magazine celebrated their 20th anniversary a while back, and they made sure to do it proper. Many big news stories and goodies came from the event, but one of the big plans they hatched, was to attempt to book a bunch of the world’s biggest Hollywood stars for a photo shoot where they would re-create some of their own classic film scenes.

The result: big stars showed up. Lot’s of them. And though they didn’t get completely dressed in costume (the plan was to simply shoot them in nice attire with obvious props used to clarify the film), many fantastic images now exist. The list of names is impressive and includes Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Christian Bale, Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Mel Gibson, Laurence Fishburne, Ben Stiller, Viggo Mortensen, Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon, Anthony Hopkins, and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, naturally! Movies that were re-created include Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Braveheart, The Matrix, Sev7en, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, and Shaun of the Dead.

Click over to the other side to check out some of the images we were quite smitten with; head over to Empire in order to see many more, including a lot more stars and movies not mentioned here!

A party bag of new images from some big time new movies have been released all over the ‘net today. The images are basically just some sneaky behind the scenes shots of filming, but they’re our very first look at these movies, which makes them pretty exciting. There’s also a new image of Sam Worthington from Louis Leterrier‘s Clash of the Titans from Empire, which you can see at right!

The first movie we’re getting our first good look at is The Green Hornet. Splash News has a collection of pictures from filming, and they show writer/producer/star Seth Rogen as the Hornet himself, along with sidekick Kato, played by Jay Chou. As you can tell, they’re being pretty faithful to the look of the characters, so fans should be pretty excited.

Click on over to check out these cool first peeks, and head to source sites for more!

Empire Magazine has been throwing quite the birthday party for themselves after turning an impressive 20-years old recently. Along with some great movie stories and information, the magazine has now created The Cryptic Canvas, and they’re inviting you to come on over and see if you have the ultimate movie knowledge it takes to de-crypt the cryptic!

Basically, it’s one giant painting, and on this giant painting are 50 different things that depict a movie title. You look around, then click it on an image in the painting and a box opens where you type in the movie title. The site promises that all films come from the past twenty years to coincide with their 20th anniversary, but be warned, I did find at least one sneaky sneaky one that slipped in. I know your tricks, Dewey.

After figuring out that these weren’t literally translated, I was personally able to get about half deciphered before hitting the proverbial wall. Since then it’s been a slow, pecking process toward the completion of this master movie puzzle.