A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On Quora, member Alex Meed asks: Why didn't John Williams compose the scores for the Star Wars spin-off films? My answer:  There are several reasons why Maestro John Williams didn’t compose the scores for  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  and  Solo: A Star Wars Story. First, Williams is, even at age 87, the five-time Academy Award-winning composer is still a sought-after guest conductor for at least two orchestras (he is the Boston Pops Orchestra’s Laureate Conductor, 25 years after stepping down as its principal conductor and music director). Health issues have forced Maestro Williams to reduce his travel schedule; this is why he has recorded the Sequel Trilogy scores with a Los Angeles-based studio orchestra instead of crossing the Atlantic and performing the music for the  Star Wars  films with the London Symphony at the Abbey Road recording studio. Second, Williams is still an active composer with a busy schedule that limits his availabi...

Superman was also released as a "Christmas movie" in 1978. It didn't change the "true meaning of Christmas." © 1978 DC Comics and Warner Bros.  Someone on Quora asks: Do you think that Disney's plan to release Star Wars movies around Christmas is to make the holiday about Star Wars instead of the true meaning of Christmas? Hardly. Traditionally, all of the major movie studios, including Paramount Pictures, Columbia, Universal, MGM, and Disney’s newest acquisition, 20th Century Fox, have  always  released major movies during the December holiday season. This is nothing new, and it’s not, as you suggest, a marketing strategy centered around one movie franchise. There are several reasons behind this strategy, but the biggest ones are: The holiday season is when most businesses usually make the most money Children and adolescents are on winter break The last quarter of the year (October, November, and December) is when most studios releas...

The Post (2017) Written by: Liz Hannah and Josh Singer Directed by: Steven Spielberg Starring: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Poulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys   Robert McNamara: If you publish, you'll get the very worst of him, the Colsons and the Ehrlichmans and he'll crush you. Kay Graham: I know, he's just awful, but I... Robert McNamara: [Interrupting and getting extremely angry] He's a... Nixon's a son of a bitch! He hates you, he hates Ben, he's wanted to ruin the paper for years and you will not get a second chance, Kay. The Richard Nixon I know will muster the full power of the presidency and if there's a way to destroy your paper, by God, he'll find it. Director Steven Spielberg’s The Post is a timely political how-they-done-it about how The Washington Post (following the lead of its much larger and more prominent rival, The New York Times ) helped unco...

On Tuesday, April 17, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released Steven Spielberg's 2017 political/historical thriller The Post on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K UHD Blu-ray. Starring Academy Award-winning actors Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and the newspaper's dogged editor Ben Bradlee, The Post dramatizes the duo's 1971 decision to publish "the Pentagon Papers" in defiance of the secretive - and vindictive - Nixon Administration. (C) 2018 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment OSCAR ® winners Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks team up for the first time in this thrilling film based on a true story. Determined to uphold the nation’s civil liberties, Katharine Graham (Streep), publisher of The Washington Post, and hard-nosed editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) join forces to expose a decades-long cover-up. But the two must risk their careers –– and their freedom –– to bring truth to light in this powerful film wit...