A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert Formats Available: VHS (1999) DVD (2007) Chapter 15: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert (Disc 8, Volume Two – The War Years) Written by: Frank Darabont Directed by: Simon Wincer Palestine : October 1917: Having completed several intelligence-gathering assignments in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, young Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery), known to his superiors in the Belgian army as Capt. Henri Defense, has been reassigned to the Middle East to assist the Allied war effort there. As in the African theater of operations, the Anglo-French endeavors in Arabia and Palestine are considered a “sideshow to the main show” of the battlefields in Europe; Britain wants to protect the Suez Canal and her links to India from interference by  the Central Powers, while France seeks to expend her sphere of influence in the region, aided and abetted by her British allies. To...

Although Mel Gibson's self-destructive behavior over the past decade or so may be ushering in a premature end to his days as a Hollywood star, there's no denying that the man has had considerable success as both an actor and filmmaker ever since he began his acting career in Australian television back in the late 1970s. One of Gibson's earliest co-starring roles on his way to stardom was 1981's  Gallipoli,  Peter Weir's somber look at the experiences of Australian soldiers during World War I as they fight and suffer horrendous casualties in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915. Weir, who wrote the story on which David Williamson's screenplay is based, doesn't set out to give the Gallipoli Campaign - which was devised by a young Winston Churchill as a way to knock Turkey out of the war and give the Allies unfettered access to the Black Sea - the traditional "recreation of a major battle" treatment a la  The Longest Day  or  A Brid...