The idea of seeing a full orchestra live, playing iconic music that I’d grown up with excited me.

I was looking forward to the concert until I’d seen a few comments on the web and read a review which prepared me for the worst.  I realise that this may have instilled me with some preconceptions and had the possibility of me viewing the event in a less than favorable light but I’m glad I had them – I felt happier about going  in there expecting a poor show and being pleasantly surprised when it was fantastic.  Knowing there were going to be one or two issues with things lessened the impact whilst I was there.

We got pretty decent seats – I say decent seats when what I actually  mean was that the seats were terrible and made the detention cell from ANH look super comfortable.  They were positioned very well though; We were in the front block closest to the stage, 4th row back in seats 13 and 14.  Not a bad view really, especially since the two people sitting in the 3rd row directly in front of us didn’t turn up.  Got a nice view of the stage, the orchestra and Anthony Daniels who moved from one end of the stage to the other.

The orchestra were absolutely fantastic, they brought the John Williams masterpieces to life with such enthusiasm and gusto, it was everything I had expected it would be.  It was hard at times to ignore the goosebumps and hairs on the back of your neck standing up.  There were two large cranes which were set up to provide video of the orchestra and conductor as they played.  Despite these sometimes getting in the way of the view of the stage,  it was fascinating to watch the conductor and to watch the video footage of them playing.  The rest of the time, the giant HD screen displayed montages of footage from all six Star Wars films.

The lights dimmed, the THX signature audio came through the speakers and then the orchestra started to play the 20th Century Fox fanfare.  It took me straight back to 1999 when the lights dimmed in the cinema for my first viewing of Episode 1.  The hairs on the back of my neck were on end, I had goosebumps and the biggest smile on my face ever.  The orchestra burst into life with the familiar Star Wars theme.

After the theme song, something broke, there was a pause and an announcement went out that we were taking a break for a brief technical reset.  It interrupted the flow of the show but everyone maintained their composure.  Anthony Daniels wasn’t on stage by this point but he arrived pointing out the disturbance in the force (ho ho).

Unfortunately the Star Wars video montages caused me a lot of problems.  They were using a narrative format in chronological order moving from episodes I – VI.  We started with Anakin on Tatooine and ended with the final battle at Endor.  Problem is it looked as though the person who put together the video footage had never seen Star Wars before.  Ever.  We had clips from Phantom Menace with Anakin Skywalker a 9 year old boy interlaced with footage from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi Starfighter arriving at Genosis 10 years in the future.  Just because Geonosis is a similar colour to Tatooine it doesn’t give artistic license to mix the two segments up.  This was enough to upset any Star Wars fan.  The casual fans wouldn’t have noticed, they would have been too engrossed to notice such a travesty.  My wife said she loved it, she’s only seen the films a couple of times and doesn’t know what happens in which film to the point of knowing a video segment is out of place.

This happened all the way through the concert with footage from the prequels being mixed in with the Original Trilogy.  The biggest problem for me was that you had these iconic John Williams tracks from my childhood that were soiled with images of Jar Jar Binks and other prequel failures.  I don’t mean that – I’m not a prequel hater, I like the movies and I can watch them.  I see them as two separate sets of films from two different times with a story arc that stretches across all IV movies.  I can forgive most of Lucas’ meddling with the OT (Except Han not shooting first) but for someone to put together footage from movies to show alongside an orchestra playing it was in parts really rubbish.  The only parts that worked were the character montages – Leia’s video footage in particular worked okay, despite jumping from ANH to ROTJ and back to Empire.

I’m being overly critical but I feel at £65 + £6.50 booking fee I have the right to.

One part that was pretty cool and was then dipped into a swamp on Degobah was the part where Obi-Wan hands Luke his father’s lightsaber.  We see a flashback to Anakin fighting in the Geonosian area, with a green lightsaber.  The spare lightsaber he’d been thrown by another Jedi since his own lightsaber at the time was broken in the droid factory.  That was sloppy.  There were plenty of occasions in ROTS where he uses the blue saber that they could have used.  Speaking of which I realised at that exact moment that the lightsaber Obi-Wan does give to Luke is the same one that was used by Anakin to cut down the Younglings.  Creepy.

They messed around with the script too – when Vader and Luke are facing off in the throne room, Luke on the platform, they injected “It’s too late for me, Son” which is from the shuttle station on Endor shortly before their return to the Death Star.  More meddling.

At times I closed my eyes and just listened, other times I watched the orchestra and ignored the giant screen.  I’d go and see them again because it was fantastic and I take my hat off to the orchestra for doing a sterling job, the art direction/whoever was responsible for the footage needs to go back to the drawing board or at least watch the films.  There’s nothing quite like hearing those pieces of music live.

Anthony Daniels was good with narration, he got a big round of applause for a couple of C3P0 quotes – the biggest being for the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field (I wanted to shout out “Never tell me the odds!’)

Merchandising – they were selling programmes for £20 and small light up lightsaber keyrings for £12.  They had a small stall selling t-shirts for £20 and hoodies for £45.  Unfortunately these all said “Star Wars in concert” rather than just Star Wars.  This was a little bit of brand snobbery on my part but the t-shirts might as well have said “Star Wars tribute movies!” on them.  Having’ in concert’ on the shirt made it a copy of a Star Wars t-shirt.

If you get the chance, go and see this fantastic orchestra playing the Star Wars music live.  If you’re a die hard Star Wars fan who knows that interlacing parts of the Naboo Battle with footage (and music) from Endor then close your eyes and listen.  As if it wasn’t bad enough with Ewoks – they’ve added Gungans to the same montage.  Sadly they haven’t placed Jar-Jar’s head on a spike and used him as a drum in the ewok celebration sequence.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1E_JI41aq9Q

Superb

The opening scene is also good

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnqMZ-pwzw&NR=1

Not quite sure what it was, started on Friday at work with me just feeling completely out of it.  A walk into town made me feel a little better but still not great.  Saturday morning I had full on cold symptoms, took some day nurse capsules and it never came back – thats bizarre. 

Sunday wasn’t too bad for most of the day, I felt a little woozy but nothing major. 

Monday morning I woke up and felt completely out of it, worse than Friday, Steve picked me up and as soon as I got in his car I knew I should have stayed at home in bed, the forward motion was just tripping me out completely.  I ended up getting sent home from work, caught the bus home and just pretty much sat on the couch all day.  Same thing Tuesday. 

Was back at work today as I felt marginally better, still zoned out but at least theres some colour in my cheeks.  Felt much better after a walk into town, concentration levels and mindset seemed to get better and better as the day went on.  Hopefully a good night’s sleep tonight should mean I wake up in the morning feeling spot on.  We’ll see

Couple of decent developments on the games side of things today (not like I’ve felt like playing anything recently).  Bioware and Lucasarts have FINALLY announced “The Old Republic”.  New Star Wars MMO.  Superb. 

Also, LIPS – the Xbox 360 karaoke game has been given a proper release date.  It was slated for December 26th, its now been brought forward to 1st Dec.  I love a good sing.  Hopefully the DLC will beat Singstar to the ground in a bloody pulp.  Which reminds me, when I get paid, I need to get some more XBL points cards so I can get Nevermind for Rockband.  Awesome. 

Sue’s birthday on Friday, we’re going out for a curry to the Inn-Dian, can’t wait.  Hope she has a really good day.  I keep thinking about booking the day off but I might save it and take her away for the weekend sometime in November.  That’d be nice.  Another long weekend away somewhere like Whitby.  It would give us another chance to get out with the cameras too.  Speaking of which – have you checked my photoblog recently? :-p