A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1983, 2004 WGBH Boston The Series On Tuesday, October 4, 1983, PBS stations across the U.S. aired Roots of a War (1945-1953) , the first of 13 parts of Vietnam: A Television History. Co-produced by WGBH, Boston's PBS station, with Britain's Central Independent Television/UK and France's Antenne-2 in association with  LRE Productions, this documentary miniseries was an in-depth look at America's "lost crusade" in Vietnam, starting with France's failed attempt to reassert its colonial authority after World War II and ending with America's withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the North Vietnamese capture of Saigon, South Vietnam's capital. The series - as the New York Times' reviewer wrote in 1983 - was "a landmark of television journalism" because it attempted to " tell us what things were, not what we might have liked them to be."  The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal called it "an extraordinary film

(C) 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Buena Vista Home Entertainment On Tuesday, April 4, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) - Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio's home media division - released the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy three-disc set of director Gareth Edwards' blockbuster hit  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. This home media debut of the first in a series of Star Wars Anthology stand-alone films comes less than four months after its theatrical premiere and almost one year after the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Blu-ray and DVD.  Although BVHE offers various "exclusive" editions for specific sellers (such as the "SteelBook" edition for Target), most Star Wars fans will probably buy the set that I bought from the Disney Store - the three-disc edition with two Blu-ray discs (BDs), one DVD, and the code for a digital download (which expires after April 4, 2022).  In many respects, BVHE'sBD/DVD/HD Digital Copy Rogue One  combo package resemb

We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope. - Jyn Erso Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  is the eighth live-action feature film in the Star Wars saga and a direct prequel to George Lucas's original Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. Directed by Gareth Edwards (who also directed 2014's Godzilla ) and written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy (from an original story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta), Rogue One is the first in a series of stand-alone Star Wars Anthology movies produced by Lucasfilm Limited and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Rogue One was conceived by John Knoll, the chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and supervisor of visual effects for Lucas's Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. He came up with the concept of making a movie that explained the back story of A New Hope's famous opening crawl 10 years before Lucasfilm's new chairman, Kathleen Kennedy, approved it.  This crawl, in a nutshell, is the genesis of Rogu

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.- Franklin D. Roosevelt, first Inaugural address, March 4, 1933 On September 14, 2014, producer-director Ken Burns' The Roosevelts: An Intimate History premiered on PBS. Written by Burns' frequent collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward ( Baseball, The Civil War, The War, and Jazz ), thi

(C) 2007, Alfred A. Knopf On September 23, 2007, PBS aired A Necessary War,  Episode One of Ken Burns' seven-part series The War. Co-written by Burns and historian Geoffrey C. Ward, The War is a 14-hour look at World War II and how it affected the U.S. through the experiences of four geographically-distributed towns in America - Luverne, Minnesota; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; and Sacramento, California. 12 days earlier, Alfred A. Knopf had published a companion book, The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945. The 408-page hardcover was co-written by Ward ( Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905 ) and filmmaker Burns. (Ward and Burns have co-written five books and collaborated on many documentaries since 1990's The Civil War, including Baseball, Jazz, Prohibition, and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. ) The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who