A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On Quora, Justin Mihalick asks: Were the films Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country the two worst Star Trek films with the original cast? No. I do not agree with that supposition, at least not as far as  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country  is concerned. Of the six  Star Trek  feature films released between December 1979 and December 1991, actor-director William Shatner’s  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier  is considered by most fans and film reviewers to be the weakest of the bunch. It got low marks for its low-budget special effects, an uneven script, a story twist that the late Gene Roddenberry disliked intensely (although, to be fair to Harve Bennett, David Loughery, and William Shatner, Roddenberry disliked many of the movies’ concepts, such as the more militaristic aspects of Starfleet introduced by Nicholas Meyer in  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ), and cheesy humor that was added into the scri...

(C) 2018 CBS Studios/Paramount Home Media Distribution On November 13, Paramount Home Media Distribution released Star Trek: Discovery - Season One, a four-disc Blu-ray set of the newest television series in the Star Trek franchise. Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery is the seventh television series set in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s and the first new show to premiere since the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. Although it was co-created by Kurtzman, one of the writers of 2009's Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: Discovery is not set in the Kelvin timeline in which the current feature films are set. Rather, the new show's setting is the Prime timeline seen in all the other television series. Like Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, but its tale takes place a decade before the five-year mission of Capt. James T. Kirk...

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is not a Sherlock Holmes movie. It's a movie about Sherlock Holmes. That's different. - Nicholas Meyer, When Sherlock Met Sigmund Before the mid-1970s, most moviegoers' memories of Sherlock Holmes centered on the 14 films that featured Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as his friend and biographer Dr. John Watson. Starting with 20th Century Fox's The Hound of  the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - both made and released in 1939 - and continuing with 12 more films produced by Universal Pictures, Rathbone and Bruce created a stereotypical version of Holmes and Watson: the former being the pipe-smoking, violin-playing great detective, slim and taciturn beneath his deerstalker hat, while the latter was the rotund, jovial, and easily amazed sidekick.  Below is a sample from one of those old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies: Sherlock Holmes : There are still some gaps to be filled, but all in all, things are...

Hi, all. It's a hot mid-spring day here in the ol' Sunshine State; it is hot (91 degrees), muggy, and it looks as though we may get some scattered storms this evening. I'm as well as I can be; I am getting over a cold that has been bugging me since last week, but other than that, I'm in good shape. There are days when I miss my mom so much that I can't think straight, but by and large my life is slowly but surely getting back on an even keel. (C) 2011 Yale University Press I was going to write a book review of Robert Gerwarth's Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich today, but I feel sleepy and can't focus well enough on the task to do a good job, so I'll put it aside for a while. It's an interesting biography of the only Nazi leader targeted for assassination by the Allies during the war, so it deserves a well-written critique.  But. I. Don't. Feel. Up. To. It. At. The. Moment. Right now I'm having a hard time staying awake...

In 1979, five years after the publication of his Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel The Seven Percent Solution and two before he directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Nicholas Meyer made his directorial debut with Time After Time.  Meyer got involved with this time travel thriller after his friend Karl Alexander, the author of the eponymous novel which inspired both the film and the recently canceled ABC TV series, showed him part of the manuscript and asked for a critique.  Nicholas Meyer was then best known as a novelist and budding screenwriter, and his Seven Percent Solution was widely admired by readers and critics alike. Intrigued by Alexander's concept - famous novelist H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper in 1970s San Francisco, Meyer bought the film rights; after Steve Hayes and Alexander wrote a screen story, Meyer then wrote a screenplay and eventually sold it to Warner Bros. with one condition: that he would be the film's director.   H.G. Wells: My name...

On June 7, 2016, Paramount Home Media Distribution released “Star Trek II: The Director’s Cut,” a one-disc Blu-ray (BD) edition of Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 box office hit that pits Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the Starship Enterprise against their deadliest foe, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). Unlike its 2002 DVD predecessor, the BD re-issue not only contains the slightly longer (by three minutes) version of Meyer’s movie; it also includes the 113-minute-long edition as it was seen in theaters back in 1982. One of the most celebrated and essential chapters in Star Trek lore, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” is now presented in this spectacular Director’s Cut from legendary filmmaker Nicholas Meyer. On routine training maneuvers, Admiral James T. Kirk seems resigned that this may be the last space mission of his career. But Khan is back, with a vengeance. Aided by his exiled band of genetic supermen, Khan – brilliant renegade of 20 th Century Ea...

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Directed by Nicholas Meyer Screenplay by: Jack B. Sowards, Harve Bennett, and Nicholas Meyer (uncredited), based on a story by Harve Bennett & Jack B. Sowards Based on the “Star Trek” television series created by Gene Roddenberry Starring:  William Shatner ,  Leonard Nimoy ,  DeForest Kelley , James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Kirstie Alley, Bibi Besch, Merritt Butrick,  Ricardo Montalban In June of 1982, less than three years after the premiere of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” Paramount Pictures released director Nicholas Meyer’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Executive-produced and co-written by Harve Bennett, “Star Trek II” was more of a swashbuckling space opera than Robert Wise’s leisurely-paced and effects-heavy mish-mash of “2001”-style science fiction and producer Gene Roddenberry’s New Age-flavored humanism. In the 23rd Century….. Years after the Starship...