A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

In June of 1963, five months before the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Warner Bros. released director Leslie Martinson’s  PT-109 , an adaptation of Robert J. Donovan’s non-fiction book  PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II.   Starring Cliff Robertson ( Charly, Spider-Man ) as Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy and co-starring Ty Hardin, James Gregory, Robert Culp, Robert Blake, Norman Fell and even an uncredited George Takei (Hikaru Sulu of  Star Trek: The Original Series ), the film is a fairly accurate depiction of JFK’s naval service in the South Pacific as the commander of a motor torpedo boat given the Navy pennant number PT-109 (the PT standing for the Navy ship designator “Patrol Torpedo”).  Although Hollywood had made movies in which former Presidents (either living or dead) were depicted, producer Bryan Foy, under the direct guidance of Warner Bros.' head of production Jack Warner (who, in turn, was influenced by Joseph P. Kennedy, a f

With less than six months to go before Mark Hamill returns to the big screen as Luke Skywalker in Rian Johnson's "Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi," it's worth noting that the actor has played other roles in films with much lower profiles, including "Corvette Summer" and "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia." Hamill, now 67, is best known as George Lucas's farmboy-turned-Jedi Knight in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, but his career never reached the same lofty levels as his co-star Harrison Ford's. While Ford became an in-demand leading man as Indiana Jones and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Hamill's best-known film appearance beyond the "Star Wars" saga is probably Private Griff in Sam Fuller's World War II drama "The Big Red One." Written and directed by the crusty Fuller, "The Big Red One" is not a Hollywood-style all-star extravaganza. Other than Hamill, "The Big

"Hanover Street" (1979) Written and directed by Peter Hyams Starring: Harrison Ford, Lesley-Anne Down, Christopher Plummer, Richard Masur, Patsy Kensit, John Ratzenberger David Halloran: You people actually drink this stuff? Margaret Sellinger: No we just like to put it in our cups and stare at it. David Halloran: Tastes too much like, boiled water. Margaret Sellinger: It is boiled water. David Halloran: I knew there was a reason. During World War II, London was the nerve center of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany. From 1939 to 1945, tens of thousands of service personnel from many nations, including the United States, flooded into Great Britain's capital to plan and execute a myriad of military operations to liberate Europe from Hitler's tyranny. Inevitably, the war fostered a "live and love for today, for tomorrow we may die" attitude among the men and women in Britain. This led to a surge of sudden and passionate roman

(C) 2008 Miramax, Heyday Films, BBC Films Writer-director Mark Herman’s 2008 film “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a faithful but (necessarily) condensed adaptation of John Boyne’s 2007 novel about a German boy, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), an eight-year-old inmate in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.  Like Boyne’s novel, the film is not a definitive history of the Holocaust. It’s not as graphic or historically accurate as Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic “Schindler’s List,” nor was it intended to be. (Indeed, Herman says in the behind-the-scenes featurette “Friendship Beyond the Fence” that he doesn’t consider “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” to be a “Holocaust film.”) Set in the early 1940s at the height of Nazi Germany’s power, the film follows Bruno on a journey that takes him and his family from Berlin to German-occupied Poland. His father Ralf (David Thewlis) is a newly-promoted SS officer with a new posting: commandant of