A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On August 31, 2018, Amazon's Prime Video began streaming Season One of  Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, an eight-episode action-adventure/political thriller web television series based on the eponymous character created by the late Tom Clancy. Starring John Krasinki ( The Office, A Quiet Place ) as Ryan, Wendell Pierce as James Greer, Abbie Cornish as Dr. Cathy Mueller, Ali Suliman as Mousa Bin Suleiman, and Dina Shibabi as Hanin Ali, Jack Ryan is not an adaptation of any of Clancy's novels but is a reimagining of the best-selling author's multimedia "Ryanverse" that borrows elements of the literary character's DNA to create a story set in the troubled times we live in. Created by Carlton Cuse ( The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Lost ) and Graham Roland ( Fringe, Prison Break, and Lost ), Jack Ryan focuses on the efforts of Central Intelligence Agency analyst John Patrick Ryan to find a shadowy Muslim terrorist and prevent him from carrying out a terro...

On Quora, an anonymous member asks: If '11.22.63' was a movie, do you think it deserves more than 1 star? From what I understand,  11.22.63  was going to be a feature film (aka “theatrically-released movie”), but the people involved (the late Jonathan Demme had optioned it) had an incredibly hard time adapting it into a viable screenplay.  11/22/63  (the novel) is a long and exquisitely detailed book, so the film version was abandoned. Fortunately, J.J. Abrams is a huge fan of the book, and when he emailed Stephen King to say how much he’d loved it, he also mentioned that it should be made into a miniseries. © 2011 Scribner (I love that book cover!) So…J.J. Abrams, James Franco, Stephen King, and Bridgette Carpenter teamed up and produced  11.22.63  for the Hulu streaming network. Not as a movie, but as a nine-part series. © 2016 Hulu  (This guy doesn’t look like Lee Harvey Oswald as much as Gary Oldman did in  JFK,...

(C) 2018 CBS Studios/Paramount Home Media Distribution On November 13, Paramount Home Media Distribution released Star Trek: Discovery - Season One, a four-disc Blu-ray set of the newest television series in the Star Trek franchise. Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery is the seventh television series set in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s and the first new show to premiere since the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. Although it was co-created by Kurtzman, one of the writers of 2009's Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: Discovery is not set in the Kelvin timeline in which the current feature films are set. Rather, the new show's setting is the Prime timeline seen in all the other television series. Like Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, but its tale takes place a decade before the five-year mission of Capt. James T. Kirk...

Episode Nine: A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick South Vietnamese forces fighting on their own in Laos suffer a terrible defeat. Massive U.S. airpower makes the difference in halting an unprecedented North Vietnamese offensive. After being re-elected in a landslide, Nixon announces Hanoi has agreed to a peace deal. American prisoners of war will finally come home - to a bitterly divided country. - from The Vietnam War 's Episode List On September 27, 2017, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired "A Disrespectful Loyalty (May 1970-March 1973), the ninth episode of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War. Produced by Burns, Novick, and Sarah Botstein, this 10-part documentary series is an attempt to explain, as best as possible, one of the most tragic and controversial events in American history. A decade in the making, The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn...

Episode Eight: The History of the World (April 1969-May 1970) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick With morale plunging in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. As news breaks of an unthinkable massacre committed by American soldiers, the public debates the rectitude of the war. An incursion into Cambodia reignites antiwar protests with tragic consequences. - from The Vietnam War 's Episode List On September 26, 2017,   PBS premiered "The History of the World (April 1969-May 1970),” Episode Eight of  The Vietnam War,  a 10-part documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick ( The War, Prohibition ). Produced by Burns, Novick, and Sarah Botstein, this 18-hour exploration of one of the most divisive events in modern American history was 10 years in the making. It features interviews of participants from all sides, including civilians and veterans from North and South Vietnam. (Hence the serie...

Episode Six: Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick At the onset of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the South, suffering terrible losses but casting grave doubt on the Johnson administration's promise that there is "light at the end of the tunnel." The President decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List On September 24 2017, millions of television viewers watched "Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968)" on their local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations, streamed it on the PBS.org website, or had already binge-watched it on high-definition Blu-ray (the box set was released on September 19). Per PBS:   Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the e...