Star Wars

The scene: York Road, in front of the Senator Theatre, Tuesday night, a little after 10. Another sold-out screening of "Star Wars." The crowd empties onto the light-bright sidewalk and moves down the road to the parking lot behind Staples. A police cruiser, with two young officers in the front, crawls along with the human traffic. One of the cops picks up a microphone and, through the cruiser's loudspeaker, does his best Darth Vader: "Luke, I am your father. I am your father, Luke."Big laughs in the night, according to Susan Caro and Steve Quinn, who were there.

Everyone knows that George Lucas' Star Wars series takes place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ... " But the key line repeated verbatim in the dialogue of all six Star Wars movies is, "I have a bad feeling about this." It would be dramatic to report that 30 years ago today, during the original Star Wars' premiere, Lucas' competitors were having "a bad feeling about this." Dramatic - but wrong, because Lucas' rivals had no feeling about Star Wars at all. Unlike Jaws, which had ruled the summer two years earlier, Star Wars wasn't based on a best-seller.

Unless you've been secluded in Jedi training camp on Dagobah recently, you've probably noticed that the original Star Wars trilogy has come out on DVD. Along with the movies, LucasArts has released a new Star Wars game that lets players satisfy their darkest desires. No, you can't make Han shoot first, but you can blow up Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks in the new Star Wars Battlefront. Battlefront is an all-out action extravaganza that lets you play both the bad guys and the good guys in the most famous battles from the Star Wars films.

MEMO TO director George Lucas: Stick to your word on this one, big fella. You know what I'm talking about here. You said this would be the last Star Wars movie. You said it would end with Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith - by the way, can these titles get any longer? - opening today in theaters everywhere, as they say. So we're holding you to it. No more "prequels." No more "trilogies." Let's give the whole crazy saga a nice long rest after this, shall we? Look, big guy, don't take this the wrong way. This is no knock on the Star Wars movies themselves, which are fine.

Lucasfilm's new feature-length cartoon, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, has a light heart and a spring in its step. It's not exactly thrilling, and it doesn't cover much new ground. But young audiences will lap it up like ice cream, and its good humor and faith in the Force will put adults in a Saturday-morning frame of mind even at midnight showings. Ever since Luke asked Obi-Wan, "You fought in the Clone Wars?" in Star Wars: A New Hope, fanboys (and, let's face it, fangirls too) have wondered what the cataclysm would look like on the big screen.

PAUL SARBANES - he's a U.S. senator from Maryland - voted for ''star wars'' the other day. So did Barbara Mikulski, the junior U.S. senator from Maryland. They're all for 'star wars!' (Cue Bill Murray, from old "Saturday Night Live" lounge-singer routine.) Nothing but 'star wars!!' 'St-st-st-star wars!!' Actually, Sarbanes and Mikulski opposed 'star wars' when Ronald Reagan proposed it. That was 15 years ago, when we were still in the throes of a Cold War with the evil Soviet empire. Remember?

Who could have imagined it? The movie "Star Wars," the visual effects sensation of 1977, also turned into one of the most popular radio dramas of all time. And now National Public Radio has dusted off and spruced up the audio story of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Princess Leia and those irrepressible robots, R2-D2 and C-3P0.Give yourself a treat and tune in "Star Wars," airing for 13 weeks at 7 p.m. Sundays beginning this weekend on Washington's NPR affiliate, WAMU-FM (88.5).First heard in 1981, when NPR claimed its largest audiences to date, the series has been digitally remastered to improve the sound effects, and lengthened somewhat by the addition of scenes originally edited from the show.

John WilliamsStar Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace (Sony Classical 61816)In his liner notes to the soundtrack from "Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace," composer/conductor John Williams mentions that during the recording sessions with the London Symphony, some of the younger members of the orchestra made startling confessions to him. Writes Williams, "[A]s children, they had seen and heard 'Star Wars,' and immediately resolved to study music with the goal of playing with the London Symphony."

WASHINGTON -- House and Senate negotiators approved a $288 billion military spending plan yesterday for the 1991 fiscal year that limits financing for the B-2 Stealth bomber and cuts nearly $2 billion from the Bush administration's request for the "star wars" anti-missile program.The compromise does not halt production of the Stealth bomber, as House members had sought, but military analysts said the conference report cast serious doubt on the future of the bat-winged warplane, which the Pentagon has hailed as an essential part of its strategic arsenal.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library's Southeast Anchor Library is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars with a free party running from noon-4 p.m. tomorrow. Screenings will include the documentary The Making of `Star Wars' (1 p.m.) There also will be Star Wars characters, cake and free comic books. The library is at 3601 Eastern Ave. Information: prattlibrary.org. Film, free speech "Film and Free Expression," a series sponsored by the ACLU and showing at the Charles on Saturdays through June 2, offers Abraham Polonsky's 1948 Force of Evil, starring John Garfield and Thomas Gomez as brothers at odds over how the local mob should divvy up the numbers racket.