A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Is Trump a "modern-day Lincoln"? Some of his fans think so. But trust me, he's not. Photo Credit: NBC Nope. Not in the slightest. The only things in common that Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln are: Party affiliation: Republicans Ethnicity: Caucasian of European origin Last Job Held: President of the United States Gender: Male Other than that, besides the fact that neither Lincoln nor Trump were shoo-ins during their first run to the White House, they are  dissimilar in  most areas. An 1863 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. Photo Credit: Moses Parker Rice. Mead Art Museum collection  "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."  Abraham Lincoln "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot ...

Lincoln (2012)       Abraham Lincoln:  All we've done is show the world that democracy isn't chaos. That there is a great, invisible strength in a people's union. Say we've shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere. Mightn't that save at least the idea of democracy to aspire to? Eventually to become worthy of? -  Lincoln       Steven Spielberg’s  Lincoln  is a movie that is far removed from  Jaws ,  Close Encounters of the Third Kind,    Raiders of the Lost Ark,   E.T.: The Extraterrestrial  and other crowd-pleasers that made him well-known and successful. It is not a rollicking globe-trotting action-adventure, nor is it a sweet fantasy for kids of all ages.  Instead, the 66-year-old director’s  Lincoln  is closer in tone and genre to his historical dramas  Amistad, Schindler’s List,  and  Munich,  which deal with slavery, the Holocaust, t...

Pros:  Fine (if sometimes inaccurate) script, great narrator, and always-interesting presentation "We have felt the incommunicable experience of war. We felt - we still feel - the passion of life to its top. In our youths our hearts were touched with fire."   - Oliver Wendell Holmes. On September 23, 1990, just as units of the XVIII Airborne Corps were taking up defensive positions in the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Public Broadcasting Service aired "The Cause," the first of nine episodes of director Ken Burns’  The Civil War . It was an odd juxtaposition - as an almost unbelieving nation was sending the vanguard of what eventually became a 350,000-troop force to war against Saddam Hussein, millions of television viewers were watching what was to become the defining documentary about America’s bloodiest conflict. Although Burns wasn’t an unknown filmmaker...

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...