George Lucas

The short, wiry beard is beginning to be flecked with gray. But George Lucas, in a sweater and jeans, continues to look very much like the same reserved and intense young man he was as a USC student 20 years ago, when he was already marked as a film maker to keep an eye on. Lucas, who is now 44, had caught the industry's attention with a dazzlingly imaginative student film called "THX-1138-XEB," about one man's escape from a city in a grim totalitarian future.

Film producer George Lucas, creator of the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" movies, has been voted to receive the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board of governors, it was announced Saturday. The award is given to a "creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production," and is awarded only in years in which the Academy board feels there is a deserving recipient, spokesman Bob Werden said.

"George Lucas: Heroes, Myths and Magic," Jane Paley and Larry Price's one-hour documentary for "American Masters" (at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28), represents television's first introduction to one of the most successful and influential filmmakers of all time. On camera, the bearded Lucas is relaxed yet projects an unmistakable--and understandable--aura of self-assurance.

"Willow" (citywide) is a perfectly agreeable tale of magic, little people, heroic warriors, babies among the bulrushes and a wicked queen who must be overthrown lest the world be engulfed in evil. If it evaporates from memory with the airiness of a bubble bath, at least it leaves a friendly glow and a sense of a magical world lovingly evoked.

If all goes according to schedule, "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," ABC's new adventure series premiering tonight, will be the first stage in filmmaker George Lucas' fantastic voyage into the possibilities of 21st-Century technology and learning. Right now, all viewers can do is sit back and watch the exploits of young Indy on network television.

WhenWalt Disney Co.executives gave the greenlight to the project that became the Martian adventure film"John Carter,"they hoped they were launching the studio's next big franchise. It was to be directed by Andrew Stanton, who had been associated with a string of successful Pixar Animation Studios films - starting with the 1995 hit "Toy Story. " The source material was a century-old sci-fi touchstone that had inspired filmmakers including George Lucas and James Cameron. The movie would fit perfectly into Disney Chairman and Chief ExecutiveRobert A. Iger's big-picture plan to produce movies that would spawn sequels, become theme park attractions and drive sales of "John Carter" merchandise.

"Red Tails" squanders a great subject, reducing the real-life struggles and fierce heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen to rickety cliché. Some of the action's fun. But if something about that statement doesn't sound right, well, there's your chief problem with "Red Tails. " It sets out to ingratiate without provocation or complexity. This much can be said of producer George Lucas' long-gestating project: It avoids the aggravating Hollywood strategy of telling an African American story by way of a mass-marketable white protagonist, a la the Civil War drama "Glory.

Anybody can get a clock that chimes. But how many towns can boast one that moos, courtesy of "Star Wars" film maker George Lucas? The bovine timepiece hangs on the wall of the fire station in this tiny community north of San Francisco, courtesy of an idea from local historian Jack Mason. "The clock was . . . Mason's idea, and when he passed away last January, the town wanted to get it up as soon as possible in his honor," Western Saloon owner Judy Borello said.

George Lucas, the producer who brought us "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," is behind the new animated fantasy special "Defenders of Dynatron City." But that probably won't matter to most kids. What they will be excited about is that "Defenders" is the TV counterpart for the Nintendo game of the same name scheduled for release in April. So parents beware--if kids like the show, they'll soon be clamoring for the software. The superhero fantasy revolves around characters such as Ms.

In the patient eyes of George Lucas, "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"--an elaborately produced TV series that has consumed the last three years of his life, grinding his feature film work to a virtual halt--is still a TV franchise waiting to happen. Although only 11 episodes have aired on ABC in the last year, Lucas has 21 more episodes filmed and ready to go. Beyond that, he has 22 scripts written and an additional 22 stories worked out.