A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2021 Paramount Home Media Distribution and Lucasfilm Ltd.  Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s mid-afternoon here in my corner of Florida on Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Currently, the temperature is 83˚F (28˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 73% and the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 9 MPH (15 KM/H), the heat index is 92˚F (33˚C). The forecast for the rest of the day calls for occasional thunderstorms throughout the afternoon and evening hours; the high will be 85˚F (30˚C). Tonight, storms will continue to pass through our area, and the low will be 74˚F (24˚C). The Air Quality Index (AQI) is 34 or  Good . If you recall, I ordered the Indiana Jones: 4-Movie Collection 4K UHD Blu-ray box set on Amazon as a pre-order on March 16. Paramount Home Media Distribution scheduled a release date of Tuesday, June 8 – just a few days before the 40 th Anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s theatrical release (June 12, 1981). Initially, Amazon – basing its estimates on Paramou...

On Quora, I keep on seeing questions such as this one: Does George Lucas still own the Star Wars franchise after it was taken over by Disney? My answer: © 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corp.  No. When George Lucas sold his company, Lucasfilm Limited, to the Walt Disney Company in 2012, he sold  all  of the rights to intellectual properties Lucasfilm owned, including: The  Star Wars  franchise and brand, which includes the five  Star Wars  films produced by Lucasfilm before 2012. 20th Century Fox owns the distribution rights for those until 2020, at which time the rights will be transferred to Disney. Fox, however, still owns the rights to  Star Wars,  aka  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope,  in perpetuity   because the studio financed the making of the film in addition to releasing it. The four  Indiana Jones  movies and the  Young Indiana Jones  TV series ,  which Paramount Pictures ...

He is always close at hand, in a very positive way, musically; he’s extremely fond of music. His greatest pleasure, he tells me…and I believe him…is the time when he can come sit on the stage and listen to the orchestra play as we accompany the film. – John Williams on Steven Spielberg, in an interview with Lukas Kendall Not too long ago in a country not so far away, adventurer-archeologist, Indiana Jones, embarked on a historically significant search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Joining him on this supernatural treasure hunt was the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of composer John Williams. Were it not for many crucial bursts of dramatic symphonic accompaniment, Indiana Jones would surely have perished in a forbidding temple in South America or in the oppressive silence of the great Sahara Desert. – Steven Spielberg in his director’s note for the 1981 album of the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack In the spring of 1981, Columbia Records – which at the time...

In 1994, a year after ABC canceled George Lucas's ambitious but expensive  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles , Lucasfilm Limited produced a two-hour TV movie which continued the adventures of a college-age Henry Walton Jones, Jr. (Sean Patrick Flanery) before he became a professor of archaeology and a globetrotting adventurer. Written by Jonathan Hales ( Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones, The Scorpion King ) and Matthew Jacobs (T he Emperor's New Groove ),  Young Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Follies  was the first of four follow-up stories that were shown on cable's The Family Channel after its original network pulled the plug on the critically-acclaimed but very pricy "edutainment" series. Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies Also known as  Young Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Follies (VHS) Chapter 22: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies (Disc 9, Volume Three: Years of Change) Set in 1920 Hollywoo...

In the middle of the 1991-92 TV season (March 1992, to be precise), ABC and George Lucas's Lucasfilm Limited attempted a daring experiment; to give viewers a mixture of educational material - primarily focusing on early 20th Century history - and entertainment (edutainment for short) in a series titled  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Like Lucasfilm's current Cartoon Network animated series  Star Wars: The Clone Wars ,  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles  was an anthology; instead of being a linear narrative which starts in 1908 and ends in 1923, the series jumped around the timeline and alternated episodes with preteen Indy (played by Corey Carrier) and teen/young adult Indiana/Henri Defense/Henry Jones, Jr. (Sean Patrick Flannery).  Each episode was "framed" with prologues and epilogues set in the series' "present day" and starring George Hall as "Old Indy", a 90-something retiree who still wore his trademark fedora but also sported an ey...

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade's soundtrack recording, like most albums of the genre, has its virtues and vices. Even keeping in mind that it was released originally in 1989 in records, cassettes, and the still-new CD format, it is still an album that offers John Williams' score for the third film in the Indy series, but not enough of it.  Having veered by design into dark thematic and musical territory in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, director Steven Spielberg, producer George Lucas and composer Williams decided to revisit the more fun and thrilling tones of Raiders of the Lost Ark, adding depth to Indy's character by including his father, Professor Henry Jones, Sr. and new themes reflecting the father-son dynamic and the quest for the Holy Grail.  Keeping in mind the limitations of this album, the music here is enjoyable. Listen to "Indy's Very First Adventure" (track 1) and you can almost see young Indiana Jones (as incarnated by the late River...

After the cancellation by ABC of his ambitious and expensive television series,  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,  executive producer George Lucas tried several methods to save the show and give viewers - especially pre-teen kids and young adults - its trademark mix of education and entertainment. For instance, after ABC axed  Young Indy  from its lineup (citing the show's lavish budgets as its primary reason), Lucasfilm Limited produced four made-for-TV movies which aired on cable's Family Channel over a two-year period (1994-1996).  Another life-saving measure was the hiring of film editor T.M. Christopher, who not only had worked with Lucas as an editor on the Classic  Star Wars  Trilogy, but also with Milos Forman in cutting 1984's  Amadeus. Christopher (who also was involved in the 1997 updating of the original  Star Wars  films into their still controversial Special Edition versions)  was assigned to  re-edit 44 episod...