A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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...

Apocalypse Now (1979) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola Narration written by Michael Herr Based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, G.D. Spradlin Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Apocalypse Now, director Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic, is one of the greatest films ever made. Winner of the 1979 Palme d’ Or award at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for Best Picture at the 1979 Academy Awards, Apocalypse Now was also a com...

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...