A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Written by: Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan. Based on characters created by George Lucas Directed by: Ron Howard Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Paul Bettany, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo On May 25, 2018 – 41 years after the premiere of George Lucas’s original Star Wars film, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released Solo: A Star Wars Story, the second standalone movie in Lucasfilm Ltd.’s series of Anthology films set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Written by Lawrence Kasdan ( The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark ) and his son Jon, Solo: A Star Wars Story was originally directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the filmmaking duo behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, but they were replaced four-and-a-half months into principal photography and replaced by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard. It is based on characters and situati

Cover art for the 1991 re-release of the DOS edition of F-15 Strike Eagle II.  (C) 1989, 1991 MicroProse Software B ack in the early days of computer gaming, particularly the 1980s and early 1990s, MicroProse Software of Hunt Valley, MD was one of the leading game publishing companies in the U.S. Founded in 1982 by a retired Air Force pilot named William ("Wild Bill") Stealey and legendary game designer Sid Meier, MicroProse earned a well-earned reputation for its innovative and entertaining games and simulations, beginning with Meier's Hellcat Ace and Spitfire Ace, two World War II-set flight simulators for Atari 8-bit computers that were released in 1982. Eventually, MicroProse's library of hit games grew to include Silent Service and Silent Service II, Red Storm Rising, Sid Meier's Covert Action, M-1 Tank Platoon, F-19: Stealth Fighter and its more realistic update F-117 Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0, and Sid Meier's Civilization. I was a huge fan of

(C) 2000 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  In 1984, Ballantine Books’ imprint Del Rey published Raymond Velasco’s A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, an A-Z reference book about the characters, vehicles, weapons, and locations in George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy and various tie-in media works, including the early Expanded Universe novels and Marvel comic books. Although some of the entries in Velasco’s book were one-line descriptions of aliens, planets, spacecraft, or weapons, it was the first book of its kind and – in that dark period when no one thought there would be any new films or stories set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” – it sold well and many Star Wars fans had a copy in their collection of books and magazines. 10 years later, Del Rey revisited the Guide in an expanded and revised edition by West End Games’ writer-editor Bill Slavicsek. By this time, Bantam Spectra had won the publishing rights to new Expanded Universe novels, the first of

The cover for the paperback edition. (C) 1998 Bantam Spectra and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Take the artistic talents of the late and acclaimed designer Ralph McQuarrie and the writing skills of prolific author Kevin J. Anderson ( The Jedi Academy Trilogy ) and you get The Illustrated Star Wars Universe , a coffee table book that gives readers a glimpse of the various planets showcased in George Lucas' original Star Wars Trilogy (1977-83). Using McQuarrie's production sketches and paintings for A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and other Lucasfilm projects set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” (including the Endor-based television specials of the mid-1980s plus preliminary sketches for the 1997 Special Edition updates), Anderson takes readers on a grand tour of the most important planets seen in the Original Trilogy of the Star Wars Saga.  A production painting for Star Wars (1977) is used to illustrate the chapter on Tatooine. 

As a writer/reader, I’ve learned over the years to stop expecting book-to-movie adaptations to recreate novels, short stories, plays, or Broadway musicals with 100% fidelity. It is a nearly impossible task to translate a medium - such as literature - that concerns itself mostly with the internal, mental, and emotional processes of a story’s characters  perfectly  into another medium (film or TV) that is mostly visual and needs imagery and motion to tell a story. I’m a huge fan of Stephen King’s 2011 novel. It was the first King novel I bought after a long drought (nearly 10 years) since I had bothered to get one of his books ( Wizard and Glass ). But when I found out that Stephen King had written a time travel story in which the protagonist’s task is to prevent JFK’s assassination, I was eager to see how Steve-O would pull that rabbit out of his magician’s hat. I read the novel in less than a week - a miracle of sorts, because at the time I had a lot going on in my life, most

Cover art by Two Dots. (C) 2018 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  On July 24, Penguin Random House’s science fiction imprint Del Rey Books published Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances, the second canonical novel by Timothy Zahn that features the Hugo Award-winning author’s most famous character, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Set between Seasons Three and Four of Star Wars Rebels, Thrawn: Alliances is a sequel to 2017’s Star Wars: Thrawn, Zahn’s origins-of story that is partially based on details from the original Expanded Universe/Legends version of how an exiled Chiss military genius joined Emperor Palpatine’s New Order but was tweaked to consider the character’s canonical introduction as a Grand Admiral before the Battle of Yavin. As the book’s title and cover art by the Paris-based studio Two Dots suggest, Thrawn: Alliances is a story that is many a Star Wars reader’s dream-come-true: the joining of forces between Emperor Palpatine’s most powerful servants, Grand Admiral Thra

(C) 2009 Picador Books In 1989, when Rick Atkinson was on a leave of absence from his job as   a staff writer at the Washington Post, Houghton Mifflin published his first work of military history, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of the West Point Class of 1966. Based on a series of interviews with three West Point graduates of the titular Class of ’66, The Long Gray Line earned rave reviews for its intimate and often painful account of a handful of American boys who entered the U.S. Military Academy, endured the brutal hazing and harsh discipline of cadet life, and graduated during the Johnson Administration’s rapid escalation of the Vietnam War. James Salter, the Post’s book critic at the time, hailed The Long Gray Line as being “enormously rich in detail and written with a novelist’s brilliance.” Another contemporary reviewer, writing in Business Week, called Atkinson’s first major work of military history “the best book out of Vietnam to date." Two decades