A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

In 2002, Rick Atkinson, a former staff writer and senior editor at the  Washington Post,  published the best-selling  An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943,  Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy. Critically acclaimed as “the best World War II battle narrative since Cornelius Ryan’s classics,  The Longest Day  and  A Bridge Too Far, ”*  An Army at Dawn  won the Pulitzer Prize in history the following year. In  An Army at Dawn,  the author covers the trials and tribulations of the inexperienced U.S. Army and its allies in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia as they sought to eject German and Italian forces from North Africa.   Five years later, Atkinson continued the saga of the Anglo-American campaigns against Nazi Germany in The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.   Again, Atkinson’s account of the long and almost forgotten Mediterranean ventures against what Winston Churchill called “the soft underbelly of the Axis” earned critical and commercial succe

The Departed,  Martin Scorsese's 2006 Academy Award-winning remake of Hong Kong's  Infernal Affairs , marks the New York City native's return to the gritty crime drama genre in which he made his mark back in the 1970s. Instead of turning his cinematic eye on the mean streets of the Big Apple, Scorsese ( Taxi Driver, Goodfellas ) explores the dark underside of Boston, Massachussets in a tale about corruption, the rivalry between the Irish and Italian mobs, and internal strife within Boston's law enforcement officers. Written by  William Monahan ( Body of Lies, Kingdom of Heaven ) and based on the original  Infernal Affairs  script by Alan Mak and Felix Chong,  The Departed  features Jack Nicholson as an aging but wily mobster named Frank Costello. Costello (loosely based on the notorious Whitey Bulger) is a menacing yet seductive gangster who early in the film recruits 12-year-old Colin Sullivan (Conor Donovan) into his circle of criminals. (Costello is shaking down a g

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season Three But it was in the third season that ( Star Trek: The Next Generation ) began to come into its own, at least in part due to the arrival of Michael Piller as head of the writing staff. Piller had both written and produced for the TV series “Simon & Simon”…. Says Piller, “I can’t claim full credit (for the success); we had a lot of good writers here. I will claim credit for my contribution, which is that I just have an idea for what I think makes a good dramatic story….”  -  J.M. Dillard,  Star Trek – Where No One Has Gone Before: A History in Pictures The third season of Gene Roddenberry’s  Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST-TNG)  was yet another period of transition for the series, albeit one with good portents rather than bad ones. Maurice Hurley, one of the show’s co-executive producers, left the staff, as did several other writers, including Michael Wagner.  Meanwhile, Roddenberry, the series’ creator, took less of an act

Man of Steel,  director Zack Snyder’s ambitious 2013 reboot of Warner Bros. Superman film franchise, is an earnest but sometimes dour and plodding retelling of the DC Comics superhero’s origin story. Starring British actor Henry Cavill ( Stardust ) in the dual role of Kal-El/Clark Kent and co-starring Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, and Michael Shannon,  Man of Steel  reinvents Superman’s backstory from the ground up. In essence, it tells Superman’s Moses/Jesus-inspired saga of how Kryptonian scientist Jor-El (Crowe) sends his newborn son to Earth to save him from his home planet’s destruction. Because the screenplay by David S. Goyer (based on a story by producer Christopher Nolan) pretends that the Christopher Reeve/Brandon Routh Superman films don’t exist,  Man of Steel  begins on Krypton. As in the comics and the Richard Donner  Superman: The Movie,  the planet is doomed. However, in Goyer’s reboot, Krypton’s red sun has nothing to do with the planet

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Complete Season Five “Ready he is to teach an apprentice. To let go of his pupil, a greater challenge it will be. Master this, Skywalker must.” –  Yoda,  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  (2008) All Good Things… On October 3, 2008, George Lucas’s CG-animated series  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  premiered on cable’s Cartoon Network. The 3D animated show aired two months after the theatrical release of the eponymous animated feature directed by Dave Filoni, the man tapped by Lucas as the TV show’s supervising director. After five seasons on Time Warner-owned Cartoon Network and 108 episodes,  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  ended its run on March 2, 2013. Lucasfilm, now owned by the Walt Disney Company, decided to wind down  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  in order to focus on the new live action Sequel Trilogy of Episodes VII-IX. Lucasfilm also needed its animators to start production on a new animated series,  Star Wars Rebels. ( Star Wars Rebels  will begin

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Two   Background: Capt. Picard:  There's still much to do; still so much to learn. Mr. La Forge - engage!   –“The Neutral Zone” (Season One  finale) Star Trek: The Next Generation’s  (ST-TNG) first season officially ended with these optimistic words on May 16, 1988. On that date, many television stations broadcast  The Neutral Zone,  the 26th and last first-run episode of the syndicated show’s premiere season. Created by Gene Roddenberry at the insistence of Paramount Pictures,  ST-TNG  was a daring concept for its time. Intended to be a sequel to the canceled  Star Trek  TV series that aired on NBC  in the late 1960s, The Next Generation  was one of the first direct-to-syndication series produced. Paramount had shopped the show’s concept to ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, but – to the studio’s relief – was turned down. Paramount Television and Roddenberry were secretly glad about the big networks’ rejection. The producers were now free from network c

The Measure of a Man Stardate 42523.7 (Earth Calendar Date 2365) Episode Production Number: 135 Episode Number (Aired): 35 Original Air Date: February 13, 1989 Written by: Melinda M. Snodgrass Directed by: Robert Scheerer While docked at Starbase 173 for scheduled repairs and refits, the  Galaxy- Class  USS Enterprise  NCC-1701-D, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) commanding, receives a visit from Admiral Nakamura (Clyde Kusatsu). The admiral, an old friend of Capt. Picard, is the ranking Starfleet officer in the sector, and Starbase 173 is strategically important because it’s located close to the Romulan Neutral Zone. After exchanging small talk with Picard during a tour of the  Enterprise,  Adm. Nakamura introduces Picard to Cmdr. Bruce Maddox (Brian Brophy), a cyberneticist assigned to the Daystrom Institute. The ambitious Maddox is an admirer of Dr. Noonien Soong, the scientist who created Lt. Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner), and seeks to replicate his accomplishments. A