A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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 December of 1945,  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Loews released director John Ford's They Were Expendable, a film about a U.S. Navy motor torpedo boats fighting against the Japanese during the dark days of late 1941 and early 1942. Starring Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed, They Were Expendable is an adaptation of William L. White's 1942 best-selling book of the same title.  Written by Frank "Spig" Wead, a former naval aviator, the screenplay dramatizes White's "non-fiction" account of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron  Three and some of its officers and men, covering the dark days of the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands (December 1941-May 1942). Though its factual veracity is, shall we say, doubtful, is one of the best war movies made during World War II, (or the period shortly after) partly because - except for the score - They Were Expendable tries hard to capture the emotional truth of the PT men's struggles to survive under th...