A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

For the past 34 years or so, Kenner and Hasbro have produced many diverse lines of Star Wars figures, from the Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi production waves to the current Star Wars collection, and as toy making technology improves and more tiny details can be added, the figures themselves are much more attractive and detailed. Costume variations and weathering, accessories (such as lightsabers and blasters), even characters' faces look more detailed and less generic than their 1978-1985 counterparts. For several years now, Hasbro has released multi-figure sets called Scene Packs, Cinema Scenes, or more colloquially, three-packs (so-called for the usual number of 3.75 inch scale figures in each box), which are assortments of action figures posed in front of a nicely printed backdrop to form a mini-diorama of specific scenes from particular Episodes. Starting in the late 1990s with such Scene Packs as Purchase of the Droids (featuring Uncle

With the success of the 2007 Star Wars parody episode Blue Harvest, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, writer Kirker Butler, co-developer David Zuckerman and director Dominic Polcino returned to that galaxy far, far away to skewer the second entry of the Star Wars Classic Trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back. The result: Family Guy's 148th aired episode, Something Something Something Dark Side, which mixes a condensed retelling of George Lucas's Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and the sometimes tawdry humor of the animated comedy series which Fox has canceled - and renewed - twice. As in both Blue Harvest and It's a Trap! (the concluding chapter of Laugh It Up Fuzzball: The Family Guy Trilogy ), Something Something Something Dark Side begins with the Griffin clan (voices of Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green and Mila Kunis) losing their electricity while watching television and paterfamilias Peter telling wife Lois, sons Chris and Stewie, daught

Although Mel Gibson's self-destructive behavior over the past decade or so may be ushering in a premature end to his days as a Hollywood star, there's no denying that the man has had considerable success as both an actor and filmmaker ever since he began his acting career in Australian television back in the late 1970s. One of Gibson's earliest co-starring roles on his way to stardom was 1981's  Gallipoli,  Peter Weir's somber look at the experiences of Australian soldiers during World War I as they fight and suffer horrendous casualties in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915. Weir, who wrote the story on which David Williamson's screenplay is based, doesn't set out to give the Gallipoli Campaign - which was devised by a young Winston Churchill as a way to knock Turkey out of the war and give the Allies unfettered access to the Black Sea - the traditional "recreation of a major battle" treatment a la  The Longest Day  or  A Brid

In March of 1992, almost three years after the premiere of Steven Spielberg's  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade  and 16 years before the release of  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , George Lucas, Amblin Entertainment, and the ABC television network attempted to create a 70-episode television series that would explore the childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood of the globe-trotting archaeologist/adventurer best known for being an "obtainer of rare antiquities" imbued with supernatural properties.  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles  was a collection of one-hour episodes that skipped back and forth in the chronology of Indy's formative years, some featuring a very young "Junior" (Corey Carrier), with most starring Sean Patrick Flanery as Indiana Jones between the ages of 16 and 21.  Part Indy prequel, part history lesson, this was one of the rare television projects personally overseen by Lucas, and it was intended to enterta

Because World War II was the defining conflict of the 20th Century - its aftermath continues to shape our lives almost 70 years later - and because it was a globe-spanning conflict, it is not surprising that many filmmakers continue to chronicle those awfully bloody six years that ended over 50 million lives - most of them civilian lives. Some, of course, are big Hollywood recreations of actual battles ( The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far ) or fact-based miniseries along the lines of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Others are fictional stories that range from the somber eulogy of Saving Private Ryan to the more action-oriented baubles a la The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare, both of which exemplify the Commando Raid Adventure sub-genre. Nevertheless, from the dawn of the Television Age back in the 1940s and ‘50s, the millions of feet of combat and propaganda footage shot by both the Axis and Allies have been mined for a plethora of documentaries made for television, st

Capt. Picard: We are what we are, and we're doing the best we can. It is not for you to set the standards by which we should be judged!    Q: Oh, but it is, and we have. Time may be eternal, Captain, but our patience is not. It's time to put an end to your trek through the stars, make room for other more worthy species.    Capt. Picard: You're going to deny us travel through space?  Q: [laughs] No! You obtuse piece of flotsam! You're to be denied existence. Humanity's fate has been sealed. You will be destroyed.   When  Star Trek: The Next Generation  premiered on September 28, 1987, I – like many  Star Trek  fans – was eager to see if series creator Gene Roddenberry could pull off the daunting trick of continuing the story he began in the 1966-1969 original.  At the time, Paramount Pictures had already released a quartet of feature films based on (and starring the cast of) Star Trek: The Original Series .  In fact, the success of director Leonard Nimoy’s  S

The Story:  It is November 1943, and the Second World War is in its fourth year. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich is fending off Allied advances in the Eastern Front and in Italy. German cities are being bombed "around the clock" by the American and British air forces. Across the English Channel, the Anglo-American forces are marshaling troops and making plans for history's greatest amphibious operation, which is tentatively scheduled for May of 1944.  But even though Germany has suffered great defeats in North Africa and the vast territories of the Soviet Union, Hitler still has hopes of winning the war. Desperately seeking a significant propaganda victory and inspired by the rescue of fellow dictator Benito Mussolini by a team of German special forces, the Fuhrer (egged on by SS chief Heinrich Himmler) orders the head of Military Intelligence (Abwehr) to carry out an even more daring special forces mission: to capture British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bring h