A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

As a fan of classical-styled film scores, I've developed an affinity for the works of various composers who work mostly in this genre. Topmost among these artists is, of course, John Williams, but as moviegoers and music lovers know, there are other composers who enhance the moving images we see on those theater screens with their compositions. I first became aware of the late James Horner when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kha n premiered in June of 1982. Director Nicholas Meyer, anxious to give his entry in the Star Trek franchise its own identity apart from the less-than-acclaimed first motion picture, commissioned the young Horner to write a score that evoked the nautical traditions Meyer wanted to infuse into his vision of Starfleet and the starship Enterprise . He asked for, and got, music that calls to mind seagoing sailing frigates and the age of Horatio Hornblower, albeit with a 23rd Century backdrop of dueling starships. Considering Horner's penchant for composing sco...

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet: Jack and Rose Redux? After the phenomenal success of James Cameron’s 1997 Academy Award-winning film Titanic , millions of its fans speculated if its two stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, would ever work together again, especially in a movie where they would be a couple again. What many Leo-Kate fans wanted to see on the silver screen was essentially a Titanic -like love story without the Titanic, which, like its real-life counterpart, had sunk after a collision with an iceberg several hundred miles off the Newfoundland coast. A direct sequel was out of the question; DiCaprio’s character, Jack Dawson was dead, and since Titanic lies in the historical fiction/romance genre and not science fiction, he could only have co-starred in such an unlikely project either in flashback sequences or as a figure in Kate Winslet’s character’s dreams. Finally, after a decade’s worth of reading Hollywood’s proverbial tea leaves for any signs of ...