A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Pros: Excellent scripts, great acting, and superb production values makes this WWII true-life drama worth owning. Cons: It's expensive...and lacks English subtitles for the hearing impaired. I couldn’t watch Band of Brothers when it aired on HBO in 2001, so I bought the late Stephen E. Ambrose's book of the same name. It was the tie-in edition with the cover art taken from the miniseries; promotional materials and a new foreword by the author describing the genesis of the miniseries and his praise for executive producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Ambrose stated that their personal interest and attention to detail were impressive, for they wanted to make sure they got everything right. I did ask one of my best friends if he could tape it for me; he has HBO and a whole batch of premium channels and he does record programs he can't watch while he's at work, but even though I had logged on to HBO.com and gotten the airing schedule for Band of Brot...

What do you get when you combine the talents of writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, whose films are character-driven and meditative, and Stephen King, whose stories often focus on ordinary people in extraordinary (and often horrific) situations? You probably expect to see an odd hybrid that is part “The Big Chill,” part “Stand by Me.” Well, if you toss in a smidgen of thematic material from Byron Haskin’s 1953 invaders-from-Mars classic “The War of the Worlds,” the result of such a mashup is Kasdan’s 2003 film “Dreamcatcher,” a science fiction/horror tale based on King’s eponymous 2001 novel. Co-written by Kasdan (“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”) and William Goldman (“A Bridge Too Far,” “Misery,” “The Princess Bride”), “Dreamcatcher” tells the tale of four lifelong friends (played by Damian Lewis, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, and Timothy Olyphant) who stumble upon an alien invasion while on their annual hunting trip to a cabin near Derry, Maine. Kasdan be...