Out with Flowers, In with Stormtroopers

Next weekend marks a changeover of sorts, with the final weekend of the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival and the first of four Star Wars Weekends. Mickey Dolenz performs at Epcot in the final Flower Power concerts of the year in place of the late Davy Jones, his Monkees bandmate who passed away earlier this year.

Meanwhile at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Ray Park (Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace ), Jerome Blake (Rune Haako/Mas Amedda in The Phantom Menace ), and Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Captain Rex and Clone Commander Cody in The Clone Wars ) are scheduled to appear, along with event hosts James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Clone Wars ) and Ashley Eckstein (Asoka Tano in The Clone Wars ).

In further news, the final celebrity guest for the third weekend has been announced as Catherine Taber, voice of Padmé Amidala in Clone Wars . Here is the now-final listing of all celebrity guests:

George Lucas was born on May 14, 1944, in the California valley town of Modesto. He poured himself into his passions; nerds are a blessing.

He started as a California car nut, which influenced his first commercial success, American Graffiti , a low-budget classic that received an Academy Award nomination for best picture and best director, and launched, or re-launched, the careers of some of Hollywood’s most famous actors, Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams and Candy Clark.

While hanging around racetracks, Lucas added film to his list of passions, and impressed some of the gearheads with his dedication and camera technique. Lucas ended up going to the University of Southern California, where the film school had begun building a reputation for smart, new kinds of movies. Lucas graduated in 1967 and tried to enlist as an Air Force officer, but was rejected for his inordinate number of speeding tickets. He was drafted by the Army, but categorized as medically unsuitable when tests revealed he had diabetes.