A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

So Proudly We Hail! (1943)   It is May 1942.  Less than six months have passed since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Allied forces in the Pacific have endured defeat upon crushing defeat.  From Burma, Java, Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Rabaul and the Philippine Islands, the flag of the Rising Sun has replaced the Union Jack, the Dutch flag and the Stars and Stripes.  In Melbourne, Australia, a U.S. transport plane arrives with a group of recently-evacuated Army doctors, medics and  nurses aboard.  As they deplane, Lt. Janet Davidson (Claudette Colbert) is carried on a stretcher due to  her mental and physical exhaustion.  The nurses are then shipped Stateside aboard a Navy transport and given what amounts to first class treatment.  Most of them respond well to the care they receive, but “Davy” remains withdrawn and wheelchair-bound, perhaps haunted by her experiences during the sieges of Bataan and Corregidor.  Determined to help his patient recover, her attending p

Heartbreak Ridge,  the 13th film directed by Clint Eastwood, is a strange war movie that takes  very  familiar stock characters and situations and attempts to give them some contemporary (at least in 1980s terms) twists to a story about the training of a Marine platoon and its eventual baptism by fire in battle.  Eastwood, who also produced  Heartbreak Ridge,  plays Gunnery Sergeant (GySgt) Tom “Gunny” Highway, a 30-plus year veteran and holder of the Medal of Honor who is facing retirement after seeing combat in Korea, the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic and – of course – Vietnam.  Because he has been in the Corps since he enlisted as a young adolescent, Highway is not too thrilled at the prospect of mustering out and feels he still has some role to play in the service.  Naturally, since the Marine Corps is one of the smallest branches of the military and “Gunny” is well-connected within the network of noncommissioned officers, he arranges to be transferred to the same

To: Mace Neufeld, Harvey Bernhard, Robert J. Anderson and Brian Taggert From: Perplexed Film Viewer Re:  Omen IV: The Awakening Gentlemen, As someone who has been watching and reviewing movies for a very long time, I am well aware of the film industry's true nature, i.e., that film studios and television networks' main focus is to make money for their corporate owners' stockholders - any real entertainment value of the projects that get "green-lit" is purely incidental. Because most businesspeople tend to be very conservative and risk-adverse, it's therefore not surprising that studios and producers are attracted to sequels, prequels and franchises, even when a film - such as  The Omen ­  is intended to be a stand-alone viewing experience and isn't - like the first two  Superman  movies - part of an organic multi-episode series. Franchises, when they succeed, often result in big payoffs for everyone involved in their creation; George Lucas, Stev

Although the average film-goer may not be aware of this, some of Hollywood’s best films are often inspired by movies made in other countries, such as those directed by Japan’s Akira Kurosawa, whose  Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress  and  Yojimbo  inspired American films such as  The Outrage, Star Wars  and  Last Man Standing.  (Kurosawa’s  Yojimbo,  in particular, was also the somewhat controversial template for Sergio Leone’s  A Fistful of Dollars , but  Last Man Standing  is an officially sanctioned remake.)  Perhaps one of the most popular Americanized remakes of a Kurosawa “Easterner” is 1960’s  The Magnificent Seven,  a Western written by William Roberts and officially acknowledged (in the main title sequence) as being inspired by Toho Films’  Seven Samurai  (1954)   .  That  Seven Samurai  could be adapted fairly easily from a film set in a medieval Japanese setting to a Western set in a late 19th Century Mexican village just south of the Texas border is easily explained: K