A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Did the fact that "vader" means "father" in Dutch give any clues to the identity of Darth Vader when Star Wars was originally released in 1977? According to George Lucas’s post-1999 revisionist history of how he created the   Star Wars   saga, the story was always going to be about the conflict between Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader and his twin offspring, Luke and Leia. In every interview or audio commentary track related to the   Star Wars   movies - especially the prequels - that was the Gospel According to George. That’s the “official version” in 2018. But just because that’s what Lucas said between 1999 and 2012 doesn’t mean it’s true. According to most authoritative accounts of the genesis of the original   Star Wars   trilogy (the saga’s Holiest of Holies, as it were), Lucas originally thought of “Darth Vader” as a supporting character and not as   The Star Wars ’ Big Bad. Tha

(C) 1987 Presidio Press Harold Coyle's Team Yankee: A Novel of World War III (Presidio Press, 1987) was published a year after Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising's triumphant debut in hardcover.  Although it is thematically similar (Soviet forces invade West Germany after a series of crises escalate into an all-out conventional war), Coyle's approach is very different from Clancy's. Instead of creating his own possible scenario for a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact confrontation, he asked for, and received, permission from British author (and retired General) Sir John Hackett to set Team Yankee within the scenario created in Hackett's two "speculative fiction" books The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story. Team Yankee takes place within a two-week period in an August in the late 1980s. Since late July, a series of crises precipitated by the Iran-Iraq war has morphed into a clash between U.S. and Soviet naval forces in the

(C) 2004 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Luke Skywalker (Hoth Attack) Action Figure While patrolling on Hoth, Luke was savagely attacked by a Wampa and dragged by the ice creature to its cave, where he was suspended from the ceiling in anticipation of becoming the Wampa's next meal. Luke used the Force to retrieve his lightsaber from the floor of the cave and freed himself from the ice entrapping his leg. The Wampa attacked again, and Luke fought the vicious creature, escaping only after severing one of the Wampa's arms. – Product blurb: Luke Skywalker (Hoth Attack) Action Figure Luke Skywalker has had a very bad day on Hoth. While on a routine mounted patrol on the surface of the ice world Hoth, the young Rebel Commander had spotted what looked like a meteor falling from the sky. Before he could investigate, the huge clawed paw of a hungry Wampa Ice Creature slammed him off his tauntaun and knocked him out. When Luke regained consciousness some time

(C) 1993 William Morrow & Co.  Martin Blumenson's The Battle of the Generals: The Untold Story of the Falaise Gap – The Campaign That Should Have Won World War II is an interesting, though never quite captivating study of the controversial Battle of the Falaise Gap, the climax of Operation Overlord in August of 1944. Blumenson, author of Breakout and Pursuit (1963) and an eminent military historian, focuses on the "big picture" as he focuses on what he frankly believes was the Allies' biggest blunder in the campaign in Northwest Europe: the failure of the Allied armies to close the Falaise Gap and trap the shattered remnants of two German armies west of the Seine River. Blumenson states point-blank that had Eisenhower, Bradley, and Montgomery paid more attention to the immediate goal of destroying the German army in Normandy instead of being diverted by visions of a triumphal march into Germany, many German troops and their equipment would have been se

Darkest Hour (2017) Directed by: Joe Wright Written by: Anthony McCarten Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, Ronald Pickup, Stephen Dillane On December 22, 2017, Universal Pictures released Darkest Hour, a historical dramatization that depicts the ascension of Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) from First Lord of the Admiralty to Prime Minister and the immense challenges he faced in the spring of 1940 - Great Britain's "darkest hour" during World War II. Written by Anthony McCarten ( The Theory of Everything ) and directed by Joe Wright ( Atonement ), Darkest Hour earned six Academy Award nominations at the 2017 Oscars ceremony and took home two trophies (Best Actor - Gary Oldman and Best Makeup and Hairstyling - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, and Lucy Sibbick), plus another armful of award and accolades at the Golden Globes, British Film Awards, Austin Film Critics Awards, and other film fetes.  Darkest

I prefer canon. Star Wars,  after all, did not originate from a book or series of books a la  Harry Potter ,  Hunger Games,  or the Jack Ryan films. It was, first and foremost, a film that grew into a movie franchise, with tie-in novelizations, comic book adaptations, and even radio dramatizations. With the exception of  Splinter of the Mind’s Eye,  none of the first “Expanded Universe” novels published by Del Rey between 1978 and 1985 took place within the same time span of the Original Trilogy.  Splinter  stands out because it was an adaptation of George Lucas’s “Plan B” for a quick and inexpensive sequel to  Star Wars  in case the 1977 film was not a big success at the box office. But the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies that were published during the Original Trilogy era all describe events that occur before the Galactic Civil War. The Expanded Universe that emerged after Bantam Spectra published Timothy Zahn’s  Star Wars: Heir to the Empire  started out, as

If you're a reader of Bantam Spectra's long-running Star Wars: X-Wing novels by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Alliston, you know the books were not only inspired by George Lucas' original Star Wars Trilogy and the subsequent Expanded Universe novels by Timothy Zahn and other authors, but also by Star Wars: X-Wing , a best-selling series of PC games from Lucasarts Games. Designed by Lawrence Holland ( Strike Fleet ) and Edward Kilham, Star Wars: X-Wing first appeared in 3.5-inch floppy disk format for DOS-based IBM PCs and compatible machines which used the Intel 386 processor. I couldn't afford it back then -- a brand new 5-disc set with manual and a copy of The Farlander Papers cost about $50 back in 1993 -- but my then-neighbor Geno Betancourt had a brand-new copy. Geno, knowing I love Star Wars and PC games, loaned me his Star Wars: X-Wing software and the manual -- he was both working and studying long hours back then, and he wasn't playing the g