A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On August 9, Warner Home Video will release the Blu-ray (BD) and DVD edition of “11.22.63,” Hulu’s eight-part miniseries based on Stephen King’s 2011 best-selling time travel novel “ 11/22/63. ” Warner Home Video Co-executive produced by King and J.J. Abrams (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Lost”), the highly-anticipated adaptation of the award-winning book follows the odyssey of Jake Epping (James Franco) as he travels back to the early 1960s to prevent President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. The limited-run series originally aired on Hulu’s subscription service between February 15 and April 4, and consists of eight episodes: ·         The Rabbit Hole ·         The Kill Floor ·         Other Voices, Other Rooms ·         The Eyes of Texas ·         The Truth ·         Happy Birthday, Lee Harvey Oswald ·         Soldier Boy ·         The Day in Question According to the “11.22.63” product page on Amazon, Warne

Hi there, Constant Reader. It’s 11:03 a.m. EST on a cool Saturday morning in Miami. The current temperature is 76 degrees Fahrenheit under cloudy skies. With an east-northeasterly wind blowing at 15 mph (gusts of up to 21 mph) and humidity levels at 51%, the feels-like temperature is 76 degrees Fahrenheit. So it’s not too chilly here, but not warm enough to turn on the air conditioner. I have been reading a lot over the past few days. Partly because I have been a voracious reader since I was a child, partly because I am a book reviewer for Examiner, but mostly because I need to read a lot in order to be a good writer. Right now my main focus is non-fiction, with an emphasis on U.S. military and political history. I’m also half-heartedly reading some fiction, especially Stephen King’s 11/22/63 and his epic Dark Tower series. I used to post my “current reading lists” at the now-defunct Bubblews and the soon-to-be defunct Persona Paper every so often, especially in “blog doldrums

November 22, 1963 is one of those dates that, like December 7, 1941 or September 11, 2001, has left its mark on the collective memories of Americans who, for good or ill, were alive and at an age to be able to remember exactly what they were doing and where they were when they heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had died an hour after being shot in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza shortly after 12 PM Central Standard Time. JFK’s assassination has, of course, been one of the most chronicled and hotly-debated crimes in American history; hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-fiction and fiction books, articles, documentaries and movies have been produced since the mid-1960s, each one with its own spin on how and why the 35th President of the United States was murdered as he rode in a motorcade through downtown Dallas on the last leg of a political trip to Texas. Along with the many non-fiction books that stick to the “Lee Harvey Oswald-did-it-alone” account, there are man

Adapting a literary work, no matter if it's a novel, play, short story, poem or a non-fiction book or magazine article, is a process which requires a lot of careful analysis, patience and a knowledge of how film differs from the various written media. The biggest difference between, say, a novel and a movie derived from it is that though both tell essentially the same story and feature the same protagonists and antagonists, the form in which they're presented and (of course) "consumed" is very different. Take, for instance, Stephen King's It , a 1000-plus page doorstop of a novel which is set in two different time periods (1958 and 1985) and has a huge set of characters and situations, as well as a complex plot and a very "big" finale. Before ABC-TV aired the television miniseries based on the novel, my friends and I often wondered how such a huge novel could ever be adapted into a satisfying audio-visual experience. After all, It not only had a