Thousands in Birmingham bring the Star Wars force to streets for city run
Thousands of runners have taken to a city's streets for the AJ Bell Great Birmingham Run with one group, a paramedics team, finishing to a "heroes' welcome".This year's half marathon and 10km races saw 16,000 people take part with the fastest runners finishing in "amazing times", organisers said, as fancy dress costumes, including Star Wars, were singled out for praise.Spectators turned out in force with many bringing along banners and placards to cheer competitors on.As runners made their way around the city centre route, race organisers posted on Facebook: "Thousands of runners. One incredible city. Unlimited energy. You've got this Birmingham."
Times for the top three runners in the men's half-marathon were Alexander Lanz finishing in one hour eight minutes one second, Aidan Banfield seven seconds later and James Douglas a further six seconds back.
Times for the top three runners in the women's half-marathon were Georgie Campbell, finishing in one hour 21 minutes 22 seconds, Charlotte Bush in one hour 21 minutes 56 seconds and Olivia Bailey one hour 24 minutes 26 seconds.
Finishing times for the top three in each category were posted on social media by organisers.
Jack Gray was fastest in the men's 10K with a time of 29 minutes 48 seconds, and Hayley Carruthers came top of the women's 10K with a race time of 36 minutes 29 seconds.
Fancy dress costumes in the race included Darth Vader as the run was held on the unofficial Star Wars day - 4 May - named after the pun May the Fourth be with you.A post on the official Facebook page read: "The runners are strong and so are the costumes. Everyone bringing the Force (and the fancy dress) at the AJ Bell Great Birmingham Run today!"
After a paramedics' crew set out to run the 13.1 miles in full uniform, carrying equipment and a stretcher, organisers wrote: "They've only went and done it!"The crew from West Midlands Ambulance have absolutely smashed today's AJ Bell Great Birmingham Run and finished with a heroes' welcome in Smithfield!"The team completed the race in 02:36:05 – unbelievable achievement!"
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Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE What happened to the Star Wars baby who played Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa in Revenge of the Sith?
Last month marked the 20th anniversary of 2005's Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, director George Lucas' third prequel to his original trilogy. This month marked the 21st birthday of a pivotal but largely unsung cast member, Aidan Barton, who has the distinction of playing two Star Wars legends. Barton was just six months old when his father Roger Barton - the editor of Revenge of the Sith - suggested using his newborn son in scenes where both baby Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa are handed to their new guardians. During his visit home to Los Angeles - on a summer break before his final year at the University of Colorado film school - Barton opened up about his unique role in the galaxy far, far away. In an exclusive interview with he revealed the hilarious reason why his father wanted to put his son in the movie, and his first experiences meeting fans on the convention circuit. He even shared some never-before-seen footage from the set of Revenge of the Sith with his parents and Lucas. Aidan's father Roger and his wife, actress Andi Wagner, just welcomed Aidan while production on Revenge of the Sith was still happening in 2004. Lucas was planning on using a doll for the scenes where Luke and Leia are handed off to their respective guardians, with Aidan revealing he was 'only six months old' when they shot those scenes. 'I think the first time that, like I was told, was the first time I'd ever seen the movie myself,' Barton admitted. 'I was very young at the time, I'd say probably 4 or 5 when they first showed it to me, and it was kind of one of those moments where we got to that scene, and my dad's like, "This is you, Aidan." And I was like, "Oh, you're funny," and he's like, no, I worked on this movie, and that is you,"' Barton added. He admitted, 'I don't think it really set in until like later in middle school, when I tell a friend, and that, like the reaction, was just crazy and kind of grown into like my love for Star Wars as well.' 'So when I watch the movies and I on my yearly reruns of all the the movies I get to mine. It's just really cool being able to watch it at the end and see myself. He added that when Revenge of the Sith was re-released in theaters last month for the 20th Anniversary, he brought a group of friends and, 'It was quite the experience.' Barton added that he recently got access, 'to a family vault of all my childhood footage,' which included two videos taken of him as a six-month-old baby on the set of Revenge of the Sith, which you can see below. Andi is seen doting over her newborn son as she talks to George about his naps before they decide to change his diaper. Another brief video is after Lucas got the shot, joking with Andi and Roger, 'all that for two seconds on film,' as Andi - while holding Aidan - poses for a photo with George that you can see below. Aidan's father Roger Barton has quite the impressive resume, serving as an associate editor on Titanic and Armageddon before editing Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II and The Amityville Horror before working on Revenge of the Sith. 'I think they got him from Titanic, which he had shot or edited beforehand, and that kind of led... I don't know the whole connection path, but that's kind of where he ended up,' Aidan said of his father landing the Revenge of the Sith editing gig. Aidan was not officially listed in the film's credits, and his name was known by very few until Mark Hamill decided to tweet a 'fun fact' about Aidan in 2019. He also revealed that his father had a rather hilarious reason for taking on the job... to get his son laid in the future. 'He did it to get me laid. He was telling my mom that, "Hey, we have to do this. This will get him late in college one day putting him in a movie like this." And because he's the editor, he had control over how much time I was on screen,' Aidan said. He added, 'After they had shot me, they put me on screen, and George came into the editing bay and was like, "Roger. This is way too long, like you're you're putting him there just to to keep him up on screen.' 'And my dad's like, Okay, okay, I'll cut it. So he cut it with George in the room, and as soon as he walked out. He just hit command Z a couple of times and left it as is before. So the the time I'm on screen is the one he originally set.' Growing up as the son of an actress and a film editor, Aidan said it helped foster his love for travel. 'Whenever my dad was working on a movie, he'd go on location for 6 months at a time and me and my mom would come visit. So we've been to like Australia, Berlin, like London bunch of areas, so that I got to like travel as a young kid, which kind of grew into my love for travel as my early teens and late whatever,' he said. Aidan also got to be an extra on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which his father edited, adding, 'I got to meet Johnny Depp, which was pretty cool.' These days, he will be going into his senior year at the film school at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, after he originally wanted to pursue photography. 'They don't have a photography program. So I kind of went more with the film route. I'm hoping to kind of take a path into Hollywood and follow in my dad's footsteps, so I've had a couple of internships this summer for Company 3, and then one for Flawless AI coming up pretty soon,' he said. 'So I'm hoping to go more in that route of film, because there's not much money in photography at the moment, and it's really hard to find a career path that still pays a decent living wage. AI is kind of just killing the industry right now,' he added. He has posted two of his short films on Instagram (@ the first of which he worked on with classmate Kelly Pinch. 'I worked on that, and it was just shot in a week. It was his script and idea that he had for quite a while, and it fit the genre of the project that we had to work on,' he said. The second was also a school project, but a much more personal one, going through footage from his childhood and interspersing that with footage of his home in Pacific Palisades that was destroyed in the recent wildfires, which he posted in April. He was on break from school when the fires broke out, but he wasn't at home in L.A., he was hiking in Peru. 'I was actually in Peru, hiking, a 5 day trek. So the day I left I had no service, and that's when the fire started. So those 5 days I had no idea what was going on, and as soon as I got cell service I was hoping to like text my parents and be like, "Hey, I'm off the trail. Here's some photos," but I just got bombarded with hundreds of texts and news articles, and that's kind of when I found out that the the fires had taken everything,' he said. When asked if making that film was an effort to get some closure while also tackling a school project at the same time, he admitted, 'Kind of both.' 'So I had a final project at that time that I had to be thinking about, and after like discussions with my dad, and he really encouraged me to create a piece that would both be like therapeutic and like an outlet for closure,' Aidan said. 'But his idea was more like narration voiceover, from what I was going through in Peru. But after going home that first time and like getting that drive of hundreds of hundreds of family home videos. I just couldn't not like have that kind of... I don't even know the transition between the two. There was just so much footage at that house that I didn't even need to venture outside of it to create this film,' he said. When asked if his mother Andi was able to rescue anything from the home, he said she was only able to grab, 'a box of files and the dog,' but everything else was lost to the flames. Hilariously, just like Aidan, the family dog is also a 'child actor,' portraying the real Clifford The Big Red Dog in the 2021 film of the same name. 'When she was a puppy. They dyed her bright red and did all the 3D models and scans of her. So she is Clifford in the movie. They just used her like pictures to animate,' Aidan said. While Aidan wasn't officially credited in Revenge of the Sith, his name was first put out there by Star Wars legend Mark Hamill himself. 'FUN FACTS: A) Aidan Barton played both Luke AND Leia in #StarWarsEpisodeIIIRevengeOfTheSith. B) He is the son of that film's editor, Roger Barton. C) I have never met him. D) He is now in high school. E) YIKES! #TimeWaitsForNoOne,' Hamill tweeted, along with photos of young Aidan. However, most of those photos were not actually of Aidan, and Hamill corrected the mistake a few days later. 'WHEN FUN FACTS GO WRONG: A) Aidan Barton played both Luke AND Leia in #EPIII B) He is the son of that film's editor, Roger Barton. C) I have never met him D) He is now in high school! E) 3 pics I posted were NOT HIM. His mom kindly sent me these photos of the #ActualAidan-#MyBad,' Hamill said. Aidan added, 'He made a tweet years and years ago, and he just looked up Aidan Barton, and of course my name was nowhere out there, so he just pulled the 1st 3 images he found, which was some lacrosse player from New England. It was like this is Aidan Barton.' 'FUN FACTS: A) Aidan Barton played both Luke AND Leia in #StarWarsEpisodeIIIRevengeOfTheSith. B) He is the son of that film's editor, Roger Barton. C) I have never met him. D) He is now in high school. E) YIKES! #TimeWaitsForNoOne,' Hamill tweeted, along with photos of young Aidan. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Aidan Barton (@ 'My mom was like hell no, there's no first release of him. So she contacted his agent, made him make up a new post that had my like new photos,' Aidan said, adding he was supposed to meet up with Hamill, though that didn't happen. 'The day I was supposed to go over to his house in Malibu, the COVID lockdowns hit,' Aidan said, adding there has been 'no contact with the agent' since then. 'But I think it'd be really cool to be up there with him,' Aidan said of Hamill. When I mentioned that Disney recently announced Star Wars Celebration will be in Los Angeles for the franchise's 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2027, I said there should be a panel with him, Mark Hamill, Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. 'Oh I would love that. That would be incredible,' a smiling Aidan said in response. You can follow Aidan on Instagram (@ and TikTok (@aidanroams) and watch his touching short film about his childhood home in Pacific Palisades above.
The Herald Scotland
15 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Father and son: Starring with Harrison Ford in whisky ad was ‘surreal'
The episodic ads are directed by actor and filmmaker Joel Edgerton, and feature the Star Wars actor playing himself as they follow the production of Glenmorangie Original 12 Years Old and The Infinita 18 Years Old, in Tain. The adverts, being shown on TV and social media and also available on YouTube, are said by Glenmorangie to celebrate 'the significance of its home, its craftsmanship and the people that make its award-winning whiskies'. Ford is shown on film getting to grips with Scottish pronunciation and kilt etiquette, bonding with locals over a dram, and getting to know the Duff family. READ MORE: In the second ad, The Campaign, Ford arrives and after mistaking Mr Duff Jnr for another Alan in another department, is given a lesson on how to pronounce Glenmorangie correctly. Mr Duff Jnr, a production operator, said: 'I was very proud to be chosen to play opposite Harrison. You knew you were in the presence of someone so successful, but he made us all feel so comfortable and gave me the advice to just be myself on screen.' He joined the distillery nine years ago after graduating from university, and said the Hollywood star made him forget they were being filmed. Mr Duff Jnr said: 'Filming the scene itself was a lot of fun, but totally surreal. He is such a good actor, I was in awe watching him and sometimes didn't know when he was in or out of character. 'He kept me on my toes when he went off script but gave me the space to wing it and bounce off of him, so much so I forgot the cameras were there. 'Not all fathers and sons have the opportunity to learn alongside each other so I consider myself lucky to get to work with my father every day, and sharing the experience acting alongside Harrison Ford together is something I'll never forget.' Promotional photograph of Harrison Ford wearing a kilt (Image: Lachlan Bailey) In the fifth advert, The Distillery, Ford meets the whole production team, including the father and son due, and he jokes to Mr Duff Snr: 'Ahhhh… he's your fault.' Ford then instructs Mr Duff Jnr: 'Look after me car' – a rare Eagle Speedster Jaguar E-type. In the 10th episode, called Teamwork, Ford raises his glass to toast 'the good people of Glenmorangy' – before being corrected again by Mr Duff Jnr, who tells him: 'It's Glenmorangie.' Mr Duff Snr, a production operator for nearly 30 years, said: 'I was quite nervous to 'act' alongside a global icon like Harrison Ford, but he was a gem of a guy and it was great to see him working. 'My son Alan managed to grow quite a rapport with him, so when Harrison uncovered the fact I was his father, we all had a joke about that.'
Spectator
19 hours ago
- Spectator
AI is rotting our children's minds
'He's more machine than man now', complains Obi-Wan Kenobi of his notoriously fallen apprentice Darth Vader in Star Wars. The same thought crossed my mind last week in the wake of the worst betrayal I have suffered as an English tutor. Something is wrong when your favourite pupil uses AI to generate the two-line reference they had offered to write for you, making you sound even blander than feared. 'Ottillie,' – not her real name – I blurted, 'how could you?' The reply was endearing but terribly ominous: 'I wanted it to be perfect.' ChatGPT is already shockingly good, much better than most people admit. Get it to rewrite itself to sound less like a robot, remove anything preposterous, and you might be done. I know journalists writing AI articles and barristers writing AI submissions; it conquered business months ago, where, to be honest, everyone already sounded like that. And having spent the spring preparing children for their exams, I can confirm that only the seriously dull ones are still writing any of their homework themselves. Rational friends tell me to give up writing because AI will write all the good books we want Some of them ought to start reading the machine stuff over before they hand it in. I wasn't persuaded by a summary of Casino Royale in which Bond gets up after having his balls flogged, drives Le Chiffre back to the casino for another hand and seduces Oddjob. But such obvious nonsense has been rarer this year as the algorithm has improved, and it's terrifyingly easy to make the opposite error. I recently accused several entirely innocent teenagers of cheating, only to find that they really had thought of something so ridiculous it didn't sound like human work. An especially charming example appeared in a coursework essay on Macbeth, in which Shakespeare warns us that treacherous characters like to 'win us with honest trifles', i.e. reel us in with small truths before deceiving us in larger concerns. My tutee really did write a paragraph praising the 'trifle' as a confectionary metaphor, expressing the complex and layered psychology of the play. The young man responsible for this analysis was, of course, unusually bright, but the hushed-up fact in education at the moment is a stunning collapse in teenage sentience. I have loved all my students, but many have come across as stranded, alien souls, unable to express residual human thoughts. 'Yeah, aargh, it's good! Isn't it?' began one recent lesson. After minutes of consternation: 'Sorry, aargh: it's good to see you! That's what you say, isn't it?' Yes, it was a common greeting, once upon a time. To think is to connect ideas, hard to practise if you can ask a robot for your next one. 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If they struggle with plot ideas, I have them memorise my short story about a donkey, which can be used to answer an astonishing variety of creative writing questions. Meanwhile, it takes a seriously expensive school to avoid choosing the shortest books on the English literature course each time. The impact of AI on young minds is worrying for the same reason that outstanding machine writing has been elusive. Genius entails uniqueness as well as intelligence, and good writers are at their best when most unmistakable, connecting infinity to a particular time and place. Having already sorted young people into a set of inane subcultures, the internet will now ensure they converge to acquire the character of an average, semi-robotic child. Meanwhile in the adult world, we will enter a Valley of Dissociation: a long period in which AI writing is useful enough to be everywhere, but not good enough to be healthy to read. Yet the company of the young always provides hope. 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Judging by the sheer malaise of the young in their AI-drafted world, I think some form of soul-like residue may prove to be a strangely robust illusion, and that the masses may demonstrate a little more craving for the spark of reality than feared. We are on the brink of a tide of nonsense, but also resistance.
