A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2013, Henry Holt and Co On October 22, 2013, Henry Holt and Co., a publishing company that operates under the umbrella of Macmillan Publishers, released the box set of  Rick Atkinson's  The Liberation Trilogy, a monumental account of how the Anglo-American alliance liberated Western Europe and helped usher in the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.  The trilogy consists of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 ; The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-1944 ; and The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe 1944-1945 . Published over a period of 11 years, these works showcase some of the best historical writing about World War II since Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far came out in 1974.  (Want to read my reviews of the three books? Just click on the links you see on the preceding paragraph.) The definitive chronicle of the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II, Rick Atkinson's Liberation Tri

"When you are given immunity, that means you have probably committed a crime." - Michael Flynn to Chuck Todd, Meet the Press, September 25, 2016 With the news that former national security adviser Michael "Mike" Flynn is offering testimony before the Congressional hearing about alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials prior to Donald J. Trump's election in exchange for immunity, cracks are beginning to open in the President's wall of denial and obfuscation. According to an Associated Press report published in MSN News, it looks like the disgraced Flynn - who was either fired or forced to resign after the revelation that he had talked about existing sanctions on Russian government figures with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak last December - is willing to talk...but only if he is granted full immunity.  "General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances pe

(C) 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Buena Vista Home Entertainment In April of 2016, less than four months after the theatrical premiere of J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) released the blockbuster movie on Blu-ray and DVD. This home media release was a huge success in its initial run; The Force Awakens was the No. 1 best-selling Blu-ray/DVD combo set at Amazon and other retailers, including Best Buy. As I wrote in my review of that release: Buena Vista Home Entertainment did a remarkable job with its first BD/DVD of a Star Wars feature film. J.J. Abrams’ foray to that galaxy far, far away looks and sounds great on HD TVs, especially large sets connected to 5.1 stereo home theater systems. What I didn't know at the time was that Disney-owned BVHE had released, in addition to its regular plastic-packaged Blu-ray/DVD combo three-disc set, a SteelBook edition exclusively for Best Buy.  Now, if you are a regular reader of A Certa

Why do some American liberals admire these two Marxist revolutionaries, anyway? Although I used to consider myself a middle-of-the road voter when I was younger, I suppose some of my more conservative friends would call me a liberal. After all, I support women’s rights, LGBT rights, the Civil Rights movement, and I’m very open-minded about sex. I’m also not very religious   and   strongly support a woman’s right to choose. That having been said, there are some issues/opinions that are espoused by many liberals, especially those on the extreme left of the political spectrum. In no particular order, here are my top peeves: Anti-vaccination movement Free universal college tuition The notion that the military and intelligence communities are inherently “evil” and that the U.S. should  never, ever  resort to military force The 9–11 conspiracy theory that claims the attacks on Manhattan and Washington were carried out by the CIA and the U.S. military The idolization of Communist

If you are a regular reader of A Certain Point of View , you know that I'm not a fan of Donald J. Trump, the New York City real estate mogul and former reality TV star who now occupies the White House. I wasn't happy when he won the Republican Party nomination as its Presidential candidate last summer, and I was crushed when he won an Electoral College victory during the general election in November. I thought then, and I still think now, that Mr. Trump's moral character, code of ethics, and temperament make him the least suitable man to earn the title leader of the Free World.  I suppose that many of my readers - especially those of you who disagree with me about politics - think that I'm just a liberal Democratic voter who's sore because Hillary Clinton lost and The Donald won. Oh, if it were only that simple. Well, it's not.  First, as I may have said in other posts that I've written about Mr. Trump, I have never registered to vote as either a Repub

American military history - as well as that of our adversaries - is full of controversies. And even though the Second World War is a rare case where the morality of the Allied cause is indisputable, the nature of the conflict and the fateful decisions made by the Axis and Allies still stir up heated debates about how it was fought - and how it was brought to an end. As historian Richard B. Frank writes in his introduction to Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, "[h]ow World War II ended in the Pacific remains one of the great controversies in American - and Japanese - history. At the center of this controversy is the atomic bomb. Indeed, almost all accounts of this period position atomic weaponry as the hub around which other considerations orbit. This approach, however, profoundly fails to recreate history as it originally unfolded." As a result of this fixation with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a mythology has been created in both the U

Remember last week's failure of Donald J. Trump's much-touted American Health Care Act ("Trumpcare") to pass through the Republican-controlled Congress? You know, the President's ballyhooed and long-promised project to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act of 2010? Well, guess who Mr. Trump is pinning the blame on? Can you give me three guesses? Ready? Go! If you said that he, like all good leaders tend to do, took responsibility for Trumpcare's big failure last Friday, you'd be wrong. According to ABC News , Mr. Trump once again logged on to Twitter to accuse the GOP, especially the uber-conservative House Freedom Caucus. This influential group of  Republican members of the House of Representatives refused to sign off on the AHCA in part because it would leave millions of Americans without medical insurance. In a sarcastic tweet from his  @realDonaldTrump Twitter account, Mr. Trump said: The Republican House Freedom Caucus was abl

(C) 2016 Marvel Comics & Lucasfilm Ltd. Cover art by Phil Noto On December 6, 2016, Marvel Comics published Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a 136-page hardcover compilation of the six-issue comics adaptation of director J.J. Abrams' eponymous blockbuster space-fantasy film. Written by novelist, screenwriter, and game designer Chuck Wendig ( Star Wars: Aftermath ) and illustrated by Luke Ross and Frank Martin, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is based on the screenplay by J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt, as well as the characters and situations created by George Lucas. IT'S TRUE - ALL OF IT!  THE BIGGEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR JUMPS FROM THE BIG SCREEN TO THE COMIC-BOOK PAGE! It's been three decades since the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star and toppled the Galactic Empire...but now, on the remote planet of Jakku...there is a stirring in The Force. A young scavenger named Rey...a deserting Stormtrooper named Finn...an ace pilot named Poe...and a d

During the past two months, Donald J. Trump and his various spokespeople (Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway being the chief mouthpieces of the Administration) have stated that no one in the Administration has any links to Russia or its kleptocratic leader, Vladimir Putin. And, despite evidence to the contrary, they insist that there is no hint that Russian hackers with connections to Russia's military intelligence agencies planted "fake news" in U.S. social media sites and tried to sway the election in Mr. Trump's favor.  In one of Mr. Trump's rare Presidential press conferences back in February, he repeated this claim even after he had to accept then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for allegedly misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his pre-election contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.  According to a February 16 report on NPR.org  (National Public Radio's website), Mr. Trump vehemently denied any link between his camp