A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

As February 2017 comes to its 28th and final day, we here at A Certain Point of View checked the Gallup Daily poll to see if President Donald J. Trump's popularity ratings have changed since Friday. Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump's job approval rating is still abysmally low. Per today's daily poll, only 42% of Americans approve of the President's performance one month into his administration. Of course, Mr. Trump and his base will say that all negative polls are "fake" and that a vast left-wing conspiracy led by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bernie Sanders, Elvis Presley, and the Loch Ness monster is behind every "fake news" article, critical blog post, and angry crowd of protesters. Perhaps the President's job approval ratings would go up if Mr. Trump wasn't such a narcissist who constantly obsesses about crowd sizes at his rallies and speeches, or if he decided to tell the truth more often. And calling off his Adminis...

In 1991, the  Star Trek  franchise celebrated its 25th Anniversary.  Although the feature films which starred the cast from  The Original Series (TOS)  had lost some momentum due to the lackluster performance of  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,  Paramount Pictures greenlit writer-director Nicholas Meyer’s  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country  and scheduled its release date for early December of 1991.  Although  Star Trek VI  had a few plot points and one crossover appearance by actor Michael Dorn, the  TNG  producers came up with a clever concept: why not have an episode set in the  TNG era  that obliquely referred to the events of  The Undiscovered Country  which would star Leonard Nimoy as Spock?  For  TNG’s  executive producer Rick Berman, Gene Roddenberry’s chosen “heir” to produce  TNG  and any possible spinoffs, this idea had a lot of appeal.  An ep...

1991 – the same year in which a U.S.-led coalition forced Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to retreat from Kuwait and the world witnessed the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union – was particularly noteworthy for  Star Trek  fans.  In September, the franchise celebrated its Silver Anniversary; 25 years before (on Sept. 8, 1966),  Star Trek: The Original Series  had had its premiere on NBC and won over an initially modest but loyal fan base which embraced the spacefaring adventures of the  Starship Enterprise  and her crew.  Though  Star Trek  was never a Nielsen ratings champ and lacked a great deal of support from either NBC or Paramount, it was kept on the air (barely) by the fans who wanted to see Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. McCoy carry out the  Enterprise’s  five-year mission “to explore strange new worlds.  To seek out new life and new civilizat...

Military history comes in various flavors, just like ice cream. On one side of the spectrum, you can find books that analyze the wider strategic and tactical aspects of a conflict, with emphasis on politics and the commanders on both sides. On the other, you find books that not only deal with the "big picture" but also strive to show the conflict from the combatants' vantage point. Desert Victory: The War for Kuwait  is one of those "big picture" books that focuses more on the strategies and tactics used by both Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and President George H.W. Bush and their respective military commanders. Written shortly after the war (it was published in the fall of 1991) by noted historian and military analyst Norman Friedman, Desert Victory traces the roots of the first Persian Gulf War to Saddam's rise to power in the late 1970s, his disastrous foray into Iran in 1980, the misguided policies of moderate Arab countries and two U.S. administr...