Red2 shoots us this heads up for some cool prequel articles from today's Village Voice. Here's the report:

Check out the Village Voice today! Got some great articles on Star Wars and some great cover art. I live in New York but I don't have a scanner so get whoever does to scan in the cover and the inside page--there's a great piece of artwork that shows off George as God, Michelangelo style. Articles are mirrored on their website:

www.villagevoice.com

There are two articles in the Features section and one small piece (that mentions theforce.net) in the Machine Age section.

Here's an excerpt from the first article:

Star Wars would establish a franchise, but back in May 1977, Variety was too awestruck to consider the bottom line: "Like a breath of fresh air, Star Wars sweeps away the cynicism that has in recent years obscured the concepts of valor, dedication and honor. Make no mistake- this is by no means a 'children's film'. . . . This is the kind of film in which an audience, first entertained, can later walk out feeling good all over."

What is overdetermined now was spontaneous then. Lucas's geeky pulpfest caught the movie studios, the toy stores, and the media by surprise. As late as Christmas 1977, a month after Star Wars topped Jaws, theater owners were still fighting to keep it on their screens. Not since Chaplinitis swept America in 1915 had cinema inspired so heady a craze. Perhaps we can date the decline of mere movies to that moment. A year after The Rocky Horror Picture Show began building its fanatical midnight following, Star Wars established a cult on an unprecedented scale. Francis Ford Coppola wasn't entirely kidding when, according to Lucas, he suggested his onetime prot?g? turn Star Wars into a religion: "With religion, you really have power."

And another from the second:

As the line snakes around the movie theater, a massive bulge builds up at the front of the box office, bringing to mind a boa constrictor swallowing a small pig. Clusters of teenagers dot the mostly adult crowd of couples on dates, husbands and wives, and those inevitable curlicues of random bodies arguing over exactly where they're supposed to be on the line. I reflexively grab my father's hand and ask him for the third time to define "movie." I am four years old. The explanation is accurate but misleading. "A big TV screen," he says. In May of 1977 I see my first "movie": Star Wars.

May rolls around 21 more times and I find myself sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on 54th Street in front of the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan.