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Nailing the final entry of a classic cinematic trilogy is always the most difficult to get right. Tasked with sticking the landing and tying the narrative strands across three movies together requires a precise amount of pre-planning that must be executed in ways that both trump its predecessors and satisfy fans at once with a compelling conclusion. Every once in a while, we get perfect trilogy-enders like The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, The Return of the King, or The Last Crusade. But more often than not, we get limp and lackluster results like The Godfather Part III, Jaws 3D, Terminator: Rise of the Machines, Alien 3, Back to the Future 3, Men in Black III, and countless other movies that fail to live up to the first two instalments. That begs the question, where does Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome register on the scale of all-time good or bad final chapters in movie trilogies?...

Australian actor Peter Sumner, who portrayed Death Star security officer Lt. Pol Treidum in the original 1977 “Star Wars” film, died after battling a long illness, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. He was 74.

Sumner was best known for his scene in “A New Hope” when he notices two stormtroopers (Han Solo and Luke Skywalker) out of their assigned stations and says, “TK-421, why aren’t you at your post? TK-421, do you copy?” Later, he’s seen being taken out by Chewbacca.

According to the Herald, the actor was traveling in England with his family when “Star Wars” was being cast. He earned £60 a day for two days’ work on the film and forever cherished the experience. He was a regular at fan conventions and replied to fan letters over the years. He later reprised his role of Treidum in the 1999 “Star Wars” fan film “The Dark Redemption.”

Read More: ‘Game of Thrones...

The Max Max trilogy, which began with the eponymous 1979 film (the 20-year Guinness World Record holder for the most profitable movie ever made), continued with 1982’s Mad Max 2 — aka The Road Warrior — and concluded with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, is a series of films not only about the end of civilization, but also about its rebirth. The original film finds the world torn down. Lawlessness reigns supreme and the nuclear family — specifically Max’s family — is destroyed. In Mad Max 2 it’s all been laid to waste, a post-apocalyptic landscape ruled by freaks and marauders who take what they like and steal what they don’t. And while bands of survivors have formed their own camps and taken steps towards rebuilding, it’s not until Thunderdome that a new kind of society has sprung up in place of the old.

That new society, called Bartertown and run...

Hawke

Nearly thirty years ago George Miller and Phil Noyce co-wrote and partly directed the acclaimed mini-series "The Dismissal", a drama about the most infamous day in Australian politics when left-wing Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was forced out of power. Since then there's been little in the way of films or TV about Australian politics, though that changes shortly with the TV movie "Hawke".

The biopic runs from 1977-1991 covering the life and career of Bob Hawke (Richard Roxburgh) from his boozy, womanising days as the trade unions president, his nine years of service as Prime Minister, his extramarital affair with his biographer Blanche d'Alpuget, and the leadership challenge that saw treasurer Paul Keating take over as Pm.

The TV movie will first be broadcast on Channel Ten in Australia on July 18th and a trailer for it was recently released which can be watched below:

Brothers and Sisters...