A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The Bottom Line: If you still own a VCR or can transfer this VHS tape's content to digital media, From Star Wars to Jedi may be worth getting. Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot. On Wednesday, May 25, 1977, 20th Century Fox - somewhat skeptically - released  Star Wars,  writer-director  George Lucas's third feature film, hoping that enough movie-going science-fiction "geeks" would go see it on Memorial Day Weekend for the studio to recoup its $9 million investment. Considering that science fiction movies rarely earned enough box office "take" for studios to earn much more than the seed money that they reluctantly doled out to even visionary directors like Stanley Kubrick, neither the board of directors at Fox nor Lucas himself had any hopes that  Star Wars  would set the movie world on fire.  Indeed, the studio "suits" - and some of the film's British crew - figured that Lucas's spac...

One of the great truths in life is that all art, as writer-director Nicholas Meyer ( Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ) is fond of saying, reflects the times in which is it created. A good example of this is 1970's  Kelly's Heroes,  a wry, dark, and sometimes downright daffy caper-comedy set in World War II. Starring Clint Eastwood as an oft-busted ex-lieutenant-but-now Private Kelly,  Kelly's Heroes  is not so much a giddy Blake Edwards-inspired World War II comedy a la  What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?  but more of a Vietnam War-era revision of all those war movies wherein the G.I.s are always portrayed as imperfect but well-meaning "angels in battle dress and helmets" who are fighting to liberate Western Europe from Nazi tyranny. Kelly's Heroes,  directed by Brian G. Hutton, whol made only a handful of fair-to-middling features and a score or so TV episodes of various series before switching careers to plumbing, is essentially a Sergio Leone spaghe...

In almost every TV series which airs in any country at any given time - at least as far as I have seen, anyway - even the best of shows seem to have their off-par episodes and, sadly, even off-par seasons. Take, for instance, the recently-canceled  24.   It started out strong in the fall season of 2001 and was - for the most part - a pretty good series until its fifth season.  Then, when it introduced James Cronwell as Jack Bauer's shady father and had him teaming up with villainous Chinese agents against his own son, the show ‘jumped the shark" and caused its most loyal fans to start wondering whether it had run out of creative steam. And even during its great seasons,  24  had its fair share of eye-rolling moments.  Who can forget Teri Bauer's bout with amnesia in the first season, or the nearly-deadly close encounter between Kim Bauer and a mountain lion in the second? (Not to mention all the moles who managed to infiltrate the happily ficti...

Note: This a major revision of one of my first Epinions reviews. I wasn't too happy with either my original version or the rather low "turnout" hits-wise, so I decided to rewrite it almost completely.   Part One: Confessions of a Rank Sentimentalist  I love this book.  As a guy who has read hundreds of novels and non-fiction works, I can be classified as a certified (and, some might add,  certifiable ) bibliophile, and most people would say, "Hey, he reads and reviews lots of books...doesn't he love them all?"  Obviously, if I buy a book -- I rarely  borrow  books, and I haven't checked out any from the Miami Dade Public Library system in over 20 years -- I have to at least  like  it, so maybe I do love most of my books. I rarely say, point blank, that I  love  a book.  I can, however, honestly say that I love Michael Walsh's  As Time Goes By: A Novel of  Casablanca .  Not only am I a fan of the m...

On June 22, 1961 – by coincidence, the 20th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union – writer-producer Carl Foreman’s  The Guns of Navarone  premiered in the United States. Not only was it the first of several adaptations of novels by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean to become big-budget action-adventure movies, but it also marked the return of Foreman, who had been blacklisted during the Red Scare of the 1950s as one of the Hollywood Ten, to the limelight of the movie industry after years of working anonymously for more than a decade.  Starring Gregory Peck as Capt. Keith Mallory, David Niven as Corporal Miller, Anthony Quinn as Andrea Stavros, and Anthony Quayle as Maj. Roy Franklin,  The Guns of Navarone  tells the exciting – if at times a bit implausible – tale of a small Allied commando team tasked with one hell of a mission: Infiltrate the German-occupied island of Navarone in the Aegean Sea, avoid detection, and blow up a pair of ...

When Libyan rebels ousted the late Muammar Khaddafy's dictatorial regime in the late fall of 2011, their difficult task was made easier by the international community's timely declaration of a "No Fly Zone" enforced not only by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but also by various members of the Arab League. Carried out by military aircraft from France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Qatar, Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Sweden, and Norway, Operation Freedom Falcon and several supporting naval missions helped keep Khaddafy's forces from achieving air supremacy, prevented massive civilian losses from loyalist air strikes on rebel-held cities and degraded the regime's capacity to carry out successful ground counteroffensives against the Free Libyan forces. Back in 2011, the anti-Khaddafy coalition could count on the West, particularly the United States and her allies, to provide military assistance that would assist...

Although most  Star Trek  fans would probably say that the show’s third season was its weakest due to Gene Roddenberry’s absence as line producer and the poor quality of many of its scripts, there were  some  good episodes which aired on NBC in 1968 and 1969.  One of the best shows which were produced under the aegis of Fred Freiberger was  Star Trek’s  77th episode,  The Savage Curtain ,   which was co-written by Gene Roddenberry and Arthur Heinenmann, based on a story by Roddenberry and directed by Herschel Daugherty ( Bonanza, Emergency! ).  The Savage Curtain   Stardate 5906.4 (Earth Calendar Year 2269)   Original Air Date: March 7, 1969   Written by Gene Roddenberry & Arthur Heinenmann   Based on a Story by Gene Roddenberry   Directed by Herschel Daugherty   On Stardate 5906.4, during the fifth year of her deep space exploration mission, the  USS Enterprise,  Capt. James T. Kirk (William S...