A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Reviewing  Star Trek: The Motion Picture  is one of those “some say the glass is half-empty, some say it’s half-full” conundrums. Robert Wise’s final science-fiction film is a decent film in some respects, but a dull, even cold and soulless one in others. Greenlit by Paramount Pictures in a bid to compete with 20th Century Fox’s  Star Wars,  the film was  Star Trek  creator Gene Roddenberry’s second and last theatrical production. He didn’t write the screen story (Alan Dean Foster’s ‘In Thy Image,” the treatment for a pilot episode to a canceled TV series titled  Star Trek: Phase Two  was the movie’s starting point), nor did he write the screenplay (Harold Livingston wrote a partial script that was added on to during filming). But he sure loaded it with many of his favorite  Star Trek  tropes and saddled it with an unnecessary amount of pretentiousness and a cold, sterile look that is the antithesis of the television show that begat...

  Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition (2001) Directed by Robert Wise Written by Harold Livingston, based on a story by Alan Dean Foster Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Collins, Persis Khambatta In December of 1979, more than a decade after NBC canceled Gene Roddenberry’s now-classic Star Trek television series, the crew of the Starship  Enterprise  set forth on its first big screen adventure, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. When a powerful living machine destroys three Klingon battle cruisers on the edge of the Neutral Zone and takes a direct course for Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) returns to the recently refit USS  Enterprise.  Along with his reluctant first officer, Commander Will Decker (Stephen Collins) and the veteran officers who served with him during the  Enterprise’s  legendary five-year...

“West Side Story,” produced by The Mirisch Corporation and Seven Arts Productions for United Artists, is a 1961 film adaptation of a 1957 Broadway musical conceived by Jerome Robbins and with a book by Arthur Laurents. Set in the West Side of New York in the late Fifties, the show is a modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” As in the Bard’s 16 th Century tragedy, “West Side Story” focuses on a pair of “star-cross’d lovers” caught in the middle of a blood feud. Since the play takes place in post-World War II New York City, the two rivaling factions are two teen gangs: The Jets make up the “American” gang: the Sharks are Puerto Ricans. Tony, Laurents’ stand-in for Romeo, is a former Jet trying to go straight. “West Side Story’s” Juliet is Maria, the younger sister of Bernardo, the Sharks’ leader. Featuring music composed by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim, “West Side Story” was a big hit during its initial Broadway run. It won t...