A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Pros:  2010's  cast, including Roy Scheider and Helen Mirren. Good script. Great visuals. Cons:  Real life rendered its Cold War political undertones obsolete. In the years after the 1968 release of Stanley Kubrick's landmark science-fiction film  2001: A Space Odyssey,  he and collaborator Arthur C. Clarke were asked many questions about how it was conceived, how the realistic special effects had been done, why did Kubrick decide to use classical music pieces in the soundtrack, and if HAL was a punny jab at IBM's corporate name. Another question that followed both the director and the writer for years was  Will you ever do a follow-up to  2001 ? Kubrick, of course, wasn't interested in doing a sequel and generally stayed away from science fiction; the only other set-in-the-future projects he ever envisioned after  2001  were  A Clockwork Orange  and penning the basic story idea for ...

(C) 1977 Columbia Pictures “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO classic, is the thematic antitheses to 1996’s “Independence Day.” While Roland Emmerich’s retelling of “War of the Worlds” is a throwback to 1950s “invaders from space” flicks, Spielberg’s vision of a “close encounter” between humanity and extraterrestrials is more mysterious and, in the end, more hopeful and awe-inspiring. Instead of exchanging bullets and “heat rays,” humans and aliens communicate by using musical notes.   Spielberg’s screenplay divides “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” roughly into three acts, basically corresponding to each of the three kinds of “encounters.”   In the first category, sightings of a UFO, we first see a very strange sight in the Mexican desert: an international team of researchers led by French UFO expert Lacombe (the late Francois Truffaut) and guided by several Mexican “federales” finds five World War II vintage Grumman TBM Avenge...