A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On March 29, 2018, Warner Bros. released Ready Player One, director Steven Spielberg’s ambitious and visually stunning adaptation of Ernest Cline’s eponymous science fiction novel set in a dystopian near-future in which virtual reality and pop culture from the past are the only means of escape in a crumbling post-Information Age world. Co-written by Cline and Zak Penn ( The Last Action Hero ), Ready Player One combines live action sequences with immersive video game-inspired computer graphics – making this one of Spielberg’s most complex movies in his storied career. The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. ...

The term “greatest generation” used to smack of journalistic hyperbole or nationalistic jingoism, but the more I read the works of Stephen E. Ambrose ( D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, Band of Brothers ) or watch such classic documentaries as The War: A Film by Ken Burns and The World at War , the more I am inclined to agree with Tom Brokaw's use of that term to describe the men and women who came of age in the 1930s and '40s and created modern America. Brokaw, one of America's best television journalists and the former anchor of NBC's Nightly News, not only coined the phrase when he wrote The Greatest Generation; he backs it up in   his fascinating and inspiring collection of personality profiles of men and women, some famous (Bob Dole, Julia Child, George H.W. Bush), some not-so-famous but prominent (Norman Mineta, Daniel Inouye), and some neither prominent nor famous yet vitally essential (Leonard Lomell, Jeanette Gagne Norton) who e...

(C) 2011 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  The Lucasfilm Limited/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment team has, over the past 10 years, released the six live-action Star Wars Episodes which make up"The Tragedy of Darth Vader" on DVD several times; the Prequels initially as individual 2-disc sets (2001-2005) and the Original Trilogy (or Classic Trilogy, if you prefer) originally presented in a four-disc box set (2004). These initial DVD releases have been followed by two more re-releases, the first being the 2006 Special Limited Edition re-issues of the Classic Trilogy which include the "transfer from laserdisc" theatrical versions of Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) because fans weren't thrilled that they had only the 2004 "for DVD" versions of the 1997 Special Edition re-edits. Two years later, Lucasfilm re-issued both trilogies in separately-sold box sets with slimmer ...

(C) 2011 K. Akhter and CreateSpace Publishing Platform I have discovered that as a writer, online reviewer and even runner of a household, it is vitally important to set goals - whether on a big scale that affects my writing career or the smaller day-to-day scale that guides what meal to prepare, what bills to pay and what leisure activity to pursue. Now, there are people who have the good fortune to innately set goals for themselves and meet them without really having to "try" hard to do so, but most of us - myself included - need, at some point, a guide to help us map out a path to success in almost every possible endeavor we choose to undertake. K. Akhter's book Goal Setting: Discover What You Want in Life and Achieve It Faster than You Think Possible is a very good guide to help the average reader to conceive actionable plans, figure out what steps to take and obstacles to overcome, discern the costs and benefits of goal setting, and how to organi...

On October 26, 1987, Columbia Records released Billy Joel's second live album,  Концерt, which is Russian for "Concert." Recorded during his six-performance gigs in Moscow and Leningrad (now called St. Petersburg), Концерт was the first American rock-and-roll album ever recorded in the then-Soviet Union.  In its original 1987 version - Columbia re-released it in 2014 as an expanded album titled A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia - Концерt is a 16-track recording released as a double-LP vinyl set, a double-length cassette, and on compact disc. It presents one Russian song ( Odoya ), 13 songs from various Billy Joel albums, including 52nd Street, An Innocent Man, and his then-current The Bridge, which Joel was promoting in his "The Bridge Tour." Концерт also includes two covers: The Beatles' Back to the USSR , and Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' .  Track List: 1. Odoya : Performer – Zhournalist: 1:17 2. Angry ...

(C) 2011 Judy Murphy, and Kindle Direct Publishing When I was younger, especially in my days as a high school student, I was one of those guys who made friends easily with both teachers and fellow students but had a hard time when it came to dating and achieving certain goals which required collaboration from others. It wasn't that I was an "ugly duckling" - even though at times I thought I was - or a disagreeable fellow; I had a circle of friends from a cross-section of my high school's student body that included football players, choir singers, members of the drama club and - of course - some of my fellow journalism students. However, when I really wanted to start dating girls, I tended to "wimp out" and become the "invisible man" because I couldn't find a way to get women to notice me in a positive light. Looking back on those days and even further on into my adulthood, I realize now that although shyness played a lot of havoc both in my...

(C) Kam Knight and Amazon Publishing Kam Knight 's Memory: Simple, Easy, and Fun Ways to Improve Memory is dedicated to the process of "exercising" our memory in order to maintain our ability to register, store and retrieve information. Its multitude of chapters provide readers with various techniques - including repetition, maintaining (or even creating) interest in the topic or concept you want to remember, visualizing, the use of positive reinforcement and even dietary suggestions to keep the body-mind combination healthy and able to work properly. It tells us, for instance, that the brain and the body have distinct ways of storing and retrieving information, and that various methods are needed in order to enhance memory. It also tells us how repetition - a term which is often associated with boredom and lack of imagination - is actually a crucial element of memory enhancement: "You can use repetition to memorize any number of tasks and skills. To memor...

(C) 2017 Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), Florentine Films, and PBS. (Photo Credit: PBS.org) On September 15, 2017, Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) released The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick – The Soundtrack, a 2-CD album that features 38 of the 120 music tracks used in the 10-part, 18-hour documentary that premiered two days later on the 300-member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Per the press release from UMe, the album complemented Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Vietnam War: The Original Score, which features 90 minutes’ worth of instrumental music composed for the most in-depth exploration of the Vietnam War yet filmed. According to the UMe public relations staff’s press release issued last August: Sarah Botstein, the senior producer on the film, said, "We are indebted to a great number of musicians, their families, agents, lawyers, technicians and others, all of whom came together to make it possible for our f...

Cover art by Two Dots. Cover Design by Scott Biel. (C) 2018 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Star Wars book fans, rejoice. Timothy Zahn is back with a new canonical novel set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," a novel that features Emperor Palpatine's most feared servants: Lord Darth Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn. On Tuesday, July 24, Random House's science fiction/fantasy imprint Del Rey Books published the U.S. edition of Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances, the sequel to Zahn's New York Times bestselling novel from last year, Star Wars: Thrawn, which reintroduced a long-time fan favorite character from the former Expanded Universe and placed him in the "official" timeline to coincide with Thrawn's appearance as the main antagonist in Season Three of the  Star Wars Rebels animated series .  “I have sensed a disturbance in the Force.” Ominous words under any circumstances, but all the more so when uttered by Emperor Palpatine. ...

One of the truly outstanding scores composed for a television series was the late Michael Kamen's music for the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers , a 10-part adaptation of the late Stephen E. Ambrose's eponymous non-fiction book about E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Executive produced by Ambrose, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg, this monumental miniseries follows an elite light infantry unit from its training stages at Camp Toccoa, GA to the 11-month campaign in Northwest Europe, starting from the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944 to the surrender of Germany and E Company's capture of Hitler's private "Eagle's Nest" in Bavaria. When I finally saw the first episodes of Band of Brothers on the History Channel 14 years ago and heard the strains of the "Main Theme" (Track 1), the credits had not finished rolling, and because the style was similar to John Williams' music for Savin...