A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

I've been enthralled by John Williams' scores for the original 1977-83 Star Wars Trilogy ( A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi ) since I first owned the 2-LP original soundtrack album from the first installment of the saga. For instance, I have bought the original 1977 recording in all available formats, from LP, eight-track, cassette, and compact disc. I also have the slightly expanded variation available in The Star Wars Trilogy Soundtrack Anthology four-disc box set and the even more complete Special Edition 2-CD set. So it shouldn't be a jolting shock to you, the reader, that I bought Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace' s 1-CD original soundtrack recording on the very day of its release (about a month prior to the premiere of Episode I). Like many Star Wars fans, I'd waited for 16 years for a new movie -- the 1997 Special Edition really didn't count as new movies -- since Return of the Jedi 's theatrical run ...

Pros:  Seven new segments and The Sorcerer's Apprentice, nice mix of music Cons:  Would one host have been better than many? Jury is still out on that one In the late 1930s, Walt Disney and his team of animators decided to revive interest in Mickey Mouse - whose popularity was being eroded by his fellow Disney stable mate Donald Duck - by featuring the beloved rodent in a fully animated version of the Goethe-Dukas fantasy  The Sorcerer's Apprentice . Envisioned originally as a stand-alone "upgrade" of the then-popular "Silly Symphonies" shorts, this project grew in ambition and scale once the eminent conductor Leopold Stokowski got involved (he volunteered his services as conductor for  The Sorcerer's Apprentice ); from one relatively short (nine minutes or so) cartoon to a feature-length animated film featuring eight different visual interpretations of classical music pieces from at least three different eras: Baroque, Romantic and Moder...

Pros:  Harrison Ford returns (one last time) to the Ryanverse. Cons:  The novel was too complex to adapt fully, and it shows. What can I say about 1994's Clear and Present Danger?  The third film in the Jack Ryan series (and the last one to star Harrison Ford) deals with America's war on drugs and also the abuse of power in high places. As in Clancy's original novel, the plot hinges on one crucial question: how far can a President go to achieve a laudable goal, even if the means cross moral, legal and international boundaries? As in the novel of the same name, the interception of an American-flagged yacht in the Caribbean results in the arrest of two Colombian sicarios (hit men) who have murdered the American owner (along with his entire family). The resulting FBI-CIA investigation reveals that Peter Hardin, the late yacht owner and personal friend of the U.S. President (Donald Moffat), had extensive ties to the Cali drug cartel. Hardin, as Jack Ryan (F...

“There’s a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn’t a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.” — Barbara Kingsolver If 1993's Schindler's List was director Steven Spielberg's soul-searching and ultimately redemptive examination of why we fought the war, then 1998's Saving Private Ryan is the emotional bookend that depicts the sacrifices made by citizen-soldiers who put their lives on hold -- and often lost them -- to save the world from becoming a charnel-house ruled by Adolf Hitler and his Axis partners. It is  a powerful and graphic film that has, in retrospect, reawakened our nation's interest in World War II and made us realize, however belatedly, how m...

Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) aka Die Hard 3 Directed by John McTiernan Written by Jonathan Hensleigh Based on certain original characters created by Roderick Thorp Starring: Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Larry Bryggman John McClane: I'll tell you what your problem is, you don't like me 'cause you're a racist! Zeus Carver: What? John McClane: You're a racist! You don't like me 'cause I'm white! Zeus Carver: I don't like you because you're gonna get me killed! In the spring of 1995, 20th Century Fox released director John McTiernan’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third film in a series featuring Bruce Willis as hard-to-kill cop hero John McClane. As in Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard 2 (1990), Willis’ character is once again “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This time around, the reluctant hero is in New York City, where he faces off against  a mad bomber (Jeremy Irons) who has a p...