A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Since the late 1940s - as a result of the passage (in 1944) of what is colloquially known as the GI Bill - Americans have been brought up to believe that almost universal availability of a college degree is the Golden Key to attaining the American Dream.  For the young men (and women) of the Greatest Generation, their kids and grandkids, the idea that going to a college or university and earning a degree practically guarantees success in getting a good-paying job, owning a house, and the ability to raise well-educated children has been drummed into our collective consciousness that it almost seems like an inalienable birthright. From my perspective, although there are many grains of truth to the Great American College Myth, it seems to me that going to college and earning a bachelor's or post-graduate degree is less a guarantee of getting a well-rounded education and attaining financial security and more of a quixotic endeavor that does more harm than good. According to Time ma...

On November 4, 2008, roughly seven years after Lucasfilm Limited and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the two-disc DVD set of  Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace  and slightly four years after the unveiling of the somewhat controversial  Star Wars Trilogy  box set, the two companies went ahead and issued the first box set of  Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy  in tandem with a redesigned  Star Wars Trilogy  box set comprised of the 2006 Limited Edition DVDs which contain – due to high demand from fans – both the enhanced Special Edition and original theatrical release versions of  A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back  and  Return of the Jedi . For some reason, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment waited a bit over three years to produce a box set of the Prequels –  Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Episode II: Attack of the Clones  and  Episode III: Revenge of the Sith  – which had pre...

Pros: Visually stunning HD remastering; more in step with source novel Cons: Might be too long for non-Tolkien fans; otherwise none The Bottom Line: As good as Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Lord of the Rings books are, these Extended Edition versions are even better. Plot Details: This opinion reveals no details about the movie's plot. Author’s Note: This review is solely based on 2011’s   The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy – Extended Edition  Blu-ray Collection.  There will be some comments on plot and characters in the critiques, but no reviews of the films themselves. Although I have always been more of a  Star Wars/Star Trek  buff than a high fantasy one,  I’ve been a casual fan of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories – primarily  The Hobbit  and  The Lord of the Rings -  ever since I saw Ralph Bakshi’s laudable 1978 animated adaptation of the latter novel during its theatrical rel...

When most of us talk about the genre labeled "science fiction"  or "sci-fi," we often associate it with such movies or franchises as  Independence Day, Star Trek  and/or  Star Wars , with perhaps a nod to Stanley Kubrick's  2001: A Space Odyssey  and Steven Spielberg's  Close Encounters of the Third Kind  thrown in almost as a distracted coda. Star Wars,  of course, isn't  true  science fiction; George Lucas's multimedia franchise is better described as "space-fantasy" or "space opera" and is instead a high tech update of the old  Flash Gordon  and  Buck Rogers  serials of the 1930s and early 1940s.   Gene Roddenberry's  Star Trek  (and its various spin-offs) is closer to true science fiction but it's still more of an action-adventure tale gussied up with plausible but still fantastical advanced technology (warp drive, subspace communications and transporters) which is designed to get ...

At the heart of the original Star Wars trilogy, amidst the epic battles between the evil Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance, is the journey Luke Skywalker makes from his humble Tatooine farm boy roots to hero of the Alliance and, more importantly, to becoming a Jedi Knight. In classic mythological and storytelling terms, Luke's role is that of the Hero on a Noble Quest, propelled into action by a captive Princess' call for help, helped along by a wise mentor and a motley crew of friends, and, along the way, confront and ultimately redeem his father, the fallen Jedi-turned-Sith Lord Darth Vader. Knowing all this, I thought it was quite proper that Hasbro chose Luke Skywalker as its 100th 12-inch scale Action Collection figure. Yes, Han Solo is the more contemporary character in the Classic Trilogy, getting some of the best lines -- and the Princess' heart -- in the films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, but just as the current prequels are ...

This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot. The Arsenal of Freedom Stardate 41798.2 (Earth Calendar Year 2364) Original Air Date: April 11, 1988 Written by Richard Manning and Hans Beimler Story by Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin Directed by Les Landau   On stardate 41798.2, the  Galaxy- class  Starship USS Enterprise  (NCC-1701-D), under the command of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), arrives at Minos, a Class M world located in the Lorenze Cluster.  Her assignment: to find any trace of the missing  USS Drake  (NCC-20381), a Federation starship of the  Wambundu  class commanded by Capt. Paul Rice (Marco Rodriguez). For the  Enterprise’s  First Officer, Commander Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), the disappearance of the  Drake  is of interest on both a professional and personal level, for not only is Capt. Rice a friend of Riker’s from their Academy days, but Riker had been offered command of...