A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The Battle of the Fulda Gap, August 1, 1985. Actual gameplay screenshot from a session I played of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. Images © 2014 Slitherine Ltd./Matrix Games and On Target Simulations Hello again, Dear Reader! Welcome to yet another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics section of A Certain Point of View. It's Friday, February 28, 2020, and it's a chilly day here in my corner of Florida. Currently, the temperature in my neighborhood is 58℉ (15℃) a few minutes after noon; it was colder earlier, of course, and I don't think that we'll see anything warmer than 60℉ (16℃). The low tonight is expected to be 46℉ (8℃), which reminds me of how cold my apartment in Sevilla (Seville), Spain, could get in late November or early December 1988. I usually like to start writing early in the morning; it doesn't matter if I'm working on a new script, a short story, a review, or a blog post, but I'm tap-tap-tapping on my keyboard no ...

Hey, there, Dear Reader. Hi and welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On,   the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View where I step out of my usual roles of media product reviewer and political commentator and share my thoughts and observations about other topics that I think might be of general interest. Well, my friends, a cold front has passed through the part of Florida where I live; the current temperature is 39℉ (4℃) under clear skies, and the National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch for our area. It's still dark outside (it's not quite 7 AM as I write this), and it will warm up some by the middle of the afternoon; the forecast calls for a high of 54℉ (12℃) and, at night, a low of 32℉ (0℃). Inside the house, we will be relatively warmer, and I doubt that I'll have much reason to wander outside. If you're a regular reader of A Certain Point of View, you probably remember that on January 10 I reviewed the Blu-ray edition of w...

Hi, there, Dear Reader! Well, last time we talked, I told you what my plans were for this week regarding "A Certain Point of View." They were, you'll recall, modest in scope; I'm not working on any big literally projects at the moment, so I've pretty much decided to focus on the blog until I can get my shit together as a writer and crank out a story I can be proud of no matter what the format is; ideally I'd like to do a novel, but every time I've started working on one, I either listen to bad advice from well-meaning people or I become intimidated by the prospect. And, yes, I know; novels, short stories, and screenplays don't write themselves. Either I write one, or I should stop calling myself a writer and give up. I'd rather write one - even if it's bad - than admit defeat. But until I can figure out what story I want to tell, I'll stick to the blog and see if I can get it to the 1000-posts mark. Anyway, about those plans I announc...

This is a review of Warner Bros. Entertainment's Dunkirk three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/UltraViolet set. To read my July 2017 review of Christopher Nolan's film, check out this post: Movie Review: 'Dunkirk' On December 19, 2017, Warner Bros. Entertainment released the home media editions of  Dunkirk, director Christopher Nolan's World War II dramatic take on Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of nearly 400,000 British, French, and Belgian soldiers from the beaches at Dunkerque, a French port city on the English Channel coast, under unceasing Luftwaffe attacks and the threat of annihilation or capture by advancing German armies.     Nominated for eight Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Design, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Production Design) and winner of other accolades, including three Golden Globe awards (Best Picture - Drama, Best Director, and Best Original Score), Dunkirk is now available...

I know that many, if not most, of the problems that affect everyone's hit counts are purely technical or related to the site's business model. We reviewers can't solve  those  problems. Sure, tech-savvy Epinions members who know how to crunch data and have hands-on experience with website design and operation should chime in and suggest fixes to Damon and his colleagues. I'm a writer, so I can only sit on the sidelines when we discuss Google Panda, Alexa ratings, the SdC database, and things of that nature. As a writer, though, I think we need to consider the possibility that we need to change how we write our reviews. Many of us, including me, tend to write long and detailed reviews in an attempt to cover every feature of a product. We have a site-wide tendency to describe not only a product's important features, but to pad reviews with "facts" that a typical website reader might not care about. The average reader does not like having to wade through ...

Dear readers, Even though I am not feeling all that well as of late (I seem to have picked up a nasty chest cold or something), I will be working on a few reviews this week for Epinions' $10-for-10 December promotion. I'm not sure in what order I'll do them,  and given the circumstances I don't know if I'll even be able to get them all done by December 31, but these are the products I plan to write about: Prometheus, the Alien semi-prequel directed by Ridley Scott The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan's final film of his Batman trilogy Seven of the Harry Potter movies (I've already reviewed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ) Charles B. MacDonald's Company Commander Regarding Henry , a film by director Mike Nichols.   I bought it for my mom's Christmas present so I haven't watched it yet, so if I do review it, it will probably be one of the last reviews I'll write this year. If I can "suggest a product" (SA...