A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Although the average film-goer may not be aware of this, some of Hollywood’s best films are often inspired by movies made in other countries, such as those directed by Japan’s Akira Kurosawa, whose  Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress  and  Yojimbo  inspired American films such as  The Outrage, Star Wars  and  Last Man Standing.  (Kurosawa’s  Yojimbo,  in particular, was also the somewhat controversial template for Sergio Leone’s  A Fistful of Dollars , but  Last Man Standing  is an officially sanctioned remake.)  Perhaps one of the most popular Americanized remakes of a Kurosawa “Easterner” is 1960’s  The Magnificent Seven,  a Western written by William Roberts and officially acknowledged (in the main title sequence) as being inspired by Toho Films’  Seven Samurai  (1954)   .  That  Seven Samurai  could be adapted fairly easily from a film set in a medieval Japanese setting to a Western set in a late 19th Century Mexican village just south of the Texas border is easily explained: K

After the cancellation by ABC of his ambitious and expensive television series,  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,  executive producer George Lucas tried several methods to save the show and give viewers - especially pre-teen kids and young adults - its trademark mix of education and entertainment. For instance, after ABC axed  Young Indy  from its lineup (citing the show's lavish budgets as its primary reason), Lucasfilm Limited produced four made-for-TV movies which aired on cable's Family Channel over a two-year period (1994-1996).   Another life-saving measure was the hiring of film editor T.M. Christopher, who not only had worked with Lucas as an editor on the Classic  Star Wars  Trilogy, but also with Milos Forman in cutting 1984's  Amadeus. Christopher was tasked with re-editing 44 episodes of  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles  and fashioning 22 "movies" out of them by marrying chronologically-close stories together into a (hopefully) seamless na

It is spring, 1945.  Almost six years have passed since Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and began history's largest and bloodiest conflict, the Second World War. Once, Hitler's Third Reich -- which he had boasted would last 1,000 years -- dominated most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Now, having committed the biggest blunders of his 12-year reign of terror -- the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 and his ill-considered declaration of war on the United States six months later, Germany's Austrian-born Fuhrer watches his Nazi empire shrink as first his conquered territories in Western and Eastern Europe are liberated by the advancing Allies, then his vaunted defenses are broken and German towns and cities find themselves occupied by the Soviets in the east, the Anglo-Americans in the west. Even the mighty Rhine River -- Germany's "moat" -- is no longer an effective defensive barrier against General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Al

(C) 1998 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd.  You have to hand it to Jabba the Hutt. He might be the slimiest, most vile gangster in the galaxy, and he does surround himself with scum and villainy, but man, he does have some redeeming qualities.  Er, two redeeming qualities: he likes good music, and he likes dancing girls. He has been known to hire such renowned groups as Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes -- the jazz-like band that was present at Chalmun's Cantina in A New Hope -- and Max Rebo's Band, currently playing at Jabba's fortress-like palace on Tatooine.  Although the core of the group is the trio of Max Rebo, Sy Snootles, and Droopy McCool, the Band has been known to hire additional musicians, including Joh Yowza, a Yuzzum from Endor; Barquin D'an, a Bith musician (and relative of Figrin's), and three shapely backup singer-dancers, Greeata, Lyn Me, and Rystall.  Hasbro's Jabba's Dancing Girls is one of the 10 three-figure Power of th

If you (or someone you know) attended the typical American public school at any grade level, you doubtlessly remember that unless you were lucky to get a creative and enthusiastic instructor who had great motivational skills, most of the core curriculum classes were, well, boring. In most cases, one of the most boring courses students have to suffer is American History, which is often broken up into two units during a school year (U.S. History to 1877 and U.S. History From 1877 to the Present). Now, history as a subject in and of itself shouldn’t be boring; it has a huge scale and a great deal of human drama, what with the rise and fall of civilizations and empires, the emergence of great (and not so great) leaders, technological, scientific and philosophical advances, the foundation of great cities and – inevitably – conflicts of all sorts and sizes. However, with teachers often teaching history according to the Great Men school of thought and cramming hundreds of dr

This review is from:  Greetings From Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer (Paperback) One of the principles I live by is "never really take back-cover blurbs seriously," so when I read the "Warning: This Book May Have You Laughing Out Loud in Public" blurb in Mari SanGiovanni's debut novel "Greetings From Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer," I (a) rolled my eyes in the universal "yeah, right" expression and (b) took it as a challenge to read it and not laugh, be touched, or even be turned on just a little bit. Aside from a few books by Dave Barry and Douglas Adams' five book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, I don't, as a rule, read too many comedic novels. Either I never have time to do so, or when I do, I don't find them very funny. Good thing, then, that I came upon a copy of Mari's wonderfully zany novel about an attractive, witty, bright, talented, if somewhat eccentric lesbian writer, Marie Santora, whose zany Italian-A

Blogger's Note: This review was written originally for Amazon sometime in November of 2003, then updated (twice) for Epinions. It is not about the four-movie box set which was released in late 2008 after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, nor is it about the soon-to-be-released Indiana Jones Blu-ray box set. Since the advent of the Digital Video Disc format in the late 1990s, there were two long-awaited movie trilogies: the Classic Star Wars films and the Adventures of Indiana Jones. The former was first released in September of 2004, but the daring fedora-wearing archaeologist had almost a year's headstart when Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Video released a 4-disk set in November 2003. The Adventures of Indiana Jones  box set consists of the first three films of the George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaborative creation, 1981's  Raiders of the Lost Ark , 1984's  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Cru