A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

I originally wrote this movie review for the Diversions section of the Miami-Dade Community College - South Campus student newspaper in March of 1989. Silent Running was being screened by the Campus Student Activities Department as part of a science fiction film series. It was published on March 9, 1989.  'Silent Running' is science fiction with a message Alex Diaz-Granados Staff Writer It is the 21st Century. After centuries of ecological mismanagement, Earth has been defoliated, the average temperature of the planet is 75 degrees and many species of plants and animals are quickly becoming extinct.   Out in deep space, a fleet of American Airlines space arks contains the few surviving specimens of Earth fauna and flora, carefully preserved in perfectly reconstructed ecosystems. Silent Running, director Douglas Trumbull's vision of the future, is a fascinating film which deals with the deterioration of the environment and the ultimate sacrifice a human can ma...

(C)  2012 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) Director of American Sequences: Richard Fleischer Directors of Japanese Sequences: Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda Screenplay by: Larry Forrester, Hideo Oguni, and Ryuzu Kikushima Based on: The Broken Seal by Ladislas Farago and Tora! Tora! Tora! by Gordon W. Prange Starring: Martin Balsam, So Yamamura, Jason Robards, Joseph Cotton, Tatsuya Mihashi, E.G. Marshall, Takahiro Tamura, James Whitmore. Eijiro Tono, Wesley Addy On September 23, 1970, 20th Century Fox released Tora! Tora! Tora!, a $20 million docudrama about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Naval Base and other military bases on the island of Oahu. Conceived by studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck in the mid-1960s as an epic follow-up to The Longest Day, his successful 1962 recreation of the Normandy invasion on D-Day (June 6, 1944), it received a warmer reception in Japan than it did in American movie houses or in the eyes of co...

In the fall of 1977, Arista Records (a now defunct label owned by Sony Music Entertainment) released Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, a 10-track selection of cues and themes composed by John Williams for Steven Spielberg's eponymous "humans meet aliens" UFO film. Arista released the album as a single-disc vinyl LP, as well as on cassette and eight-track tape. It also released the disco version of "Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on a 7-inch single, which was included as a bonus on the vinyl release. The theme, if memory serves, was incorporated into the tape editions as a bonus track; this was also done with the 1990 compact disc distributed by Varese Sarabande Records under license by the original label. Composer John Williams and director Steven Spielberg began working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K) as early as 1975, shortly after Jaws (the duo's second collaboration) was completed....

(C) 1977 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd. Poster art by Tom Chantrell Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. - Roger Ebert, in his 1977 review of Star Wars Star Wars celebrated its 40th Anniversary yesterday.  For those of us who were alive when George Lucas's groundbreaking space-fantasy epic set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" premiered, it's hard to remember what the 1970s were like before Star Wars. Because the film (which was renamed Star W...

The Movie Originally released on January 25, 1970, director Robert Altman’s “MASH” is an antiwar black comedy set in the 4077 th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. It was adapted from Richard Hooker’s “MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors” by Ring Lardner, Jr. and though it was set in South Korea, the film’s sardonic and irreverent tone was really a commentary about the then-ongoing Vietnam War. “MASH” was both a commercial and critical success; it earned five Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing) and won one (Best Adapted Screenplay). It also spun off three television situation comedies – “M*A*S*H,” “Trapper John, MD,” and “AfterMASH.” Starring Donald Southerland as Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, Elliott Gould as Capt. “Trapper John” McIntyre, Tom Skerritt as Capt. Duke Forrest, Sally Kellerman as Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, and Robert Duvall as Maj. Frank Burn...

(C) 1979 Universal Pictures 1941 (1979) Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, based on a story by Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and John Milius Starring: Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Ned Beatty, Nancy Allen, Lorraine Gary, Wendie Jo Sperber, Dianne Kay, Murray Hamilton, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, Slim Pickens [ reporting over the radio on a riot at the USO ] Raoul Lipschitz : Ladies and gentlemen, every where I look... soldiers are fighting sailors, sailors are fighting Marines! Directly in front of me, I see a flying blond floozy! Everywhere I look... everywhere, pure pandemonium... pandemonium! Steven Spielberg is doubtlessly  one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of the movie industry. As a member of the New Hollywood group of directors and producers that emerged in the 1970s, Spielberg has helmed such successful films as Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T.  the Extra...