A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Did ABC do the right thing in canceling “Roseanne” after her attack on Valerie Jarrett? Honestly, yes, and here is why. Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, large numbers of people with animosity toward other people (liberals, people of color, immigrants, religions other than Evangelical Protestantism, and LGBQTs) have shed whatever cloak of civility they used to wear and now feel able to say whatever they like, whenever they want, consequences be damned. Apparently, Roseanne Barr, the one-time stand-up comic and star of the ABC’s hit comedy show that bears here name, is one of those individuals who feel that now that Trump is President, she can make any comment she likes on fora such as Twitter with no fallout whatsoever. Barr, of course, has always been a controversial celebrity. Several years ago, Barr posed in a Hitler disguise, standing in front of an oven with a baking pan of human-shaped cookies. It was a satirical photo taken for a...

DVD Cover Art (C) 2012 Cable News Network, Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. CNN Presents: Cold War (C) 1998 Turner Original Productions, Inc.   In 1998, seven years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, CNN and Britain's BBC Two network aired Cold War, a 24-part miniseries co-produced by Turner Original Productions and Jeremy Isaacs, a British producer who is best known for his 1970s series about World War II, The World at War.   The idea of the series originated with Jeremy Isaacs Productions and was financed by CNN founder Ted Turner. Isaacs then put together a team of writers and producers to make 24 46-minute-long episodes that are presented in the same style and format of The World at War. Many of Isaacs' collaborators, including co-producer Pat Mitchell, writers Neal Ascherson and Jerome Kuehl, and composer Carl Davis, had worked on the earlier series. Thus, Cold War can be considered to be a sequel to The World at War.  As you might ex...

Today’s Question:   In today's political climate, would maverick presidents like Teddy Roosevelt be treated much like Trump by the media? Dear Quora Member : Theodore Roosevelt was not, as you say, a “maverick” President, at least not in the same “inexperienced tyro with lots of money (supposedly, anyway)” maverick persona as that of “The Donald.” TR was already a well-known Republican politician by the time that the GOP grandees convinced incumbent President William McKinley to choose him as his running mate for the 1900 Presidential election. Even by today’s standards, Roosevelt was experienced; by 1899, he’d already been a member of New York’s state assembly, police commissioner of New York City, governor of New York, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, war hero in the Spanish-American War, and, perhaps, a possible candidate for the Presidency in the near future. Roosevelt believed that he was living on borrowed time, and that he was born to be President of the United...

A few thoughts, if I may: American military personnel do not fight for the flag of the United States of America. They might express reverence for it as a symbol of the nation they swore an oath to protect, preserve, and defend, but they don’t consciously fight for the flag  per se.  That conservative extremists have hijacked the notion that our troops fight for the flag is undeniable. And perhaps the rawest, most naive recruits may believe that they joined the military to defend the flag, but that’s a bill of goods that they’ve been sold. If anything is true about the men and who fight and die, or suffer wounds, or are captured while serving their country, it is this: They don’t consciously fight for a flag. They don’t go to battle thinking, “This is for Mom, Dad, apple pie, or democracy.” They are too scared, too caught up in the horrors of war to be thinking  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. John McCain suffered severe injuries during the Vietnam War, fi...

On September 21, 2009, Universal Studios Home Entertainment (UK) released Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series, a 20-disc Blu-ray collection that presents all four seasons of the 2003-2009 "reimagined" military science fiction television series that originally aired on the Sci-Fi (now SyFy) Channel. Based on Glen A. Larson's original Battlestar Galactica TV series that aired on ABC during the 1978-79 season, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick's was grittier, darker, and was geared for a more adult audience than its 1970s forerunner.  The plot of Moore and Eick's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica follows the outline's of Larson's original version. In a distant corner of our galaxy, humans live in the star system of Kobol, on 12 planets they call the Colonies. The Colonials have developed faster-than-light space travel, advanced electronics, and even a race of highly intelligent robots called Cylons that serve many of their needs.  "The Cylon...