A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Muse:  It was supposed to be easy. I take ship... ransom... nobody get hurt.   Captain Richard Phillips:  You had thirty thousand dollars. And a way to Somalia. It wasn't enough?   Muse:  I got bosses. They got rules.   Captain Richard Phillips:  We all got bosses.       Captain Phillips,  directed by Paul Greengrass ( United 93 ), is one of those based-on-a-true-story thrillers that keep a viewer’s attention even when the ending is not in doubt. Like Kathryn Bigelow’s how-they-got-Bin Laden film   Zero Dark Thirty  or Greengrass’ docudrama about the hijacked 9/11 plane that  didn’t  hit its intended target because its passengers resisted the terrorists,  Captain Phillips  is not a whodunit but rather a movie that answers the question “How did he survive the ordeal?”  Starring Tom Hanks in the title’s role of Captain Richard Phillips, the 2013 film focuses on the hijacking of the  MV Maersk Alabama,  a U.S.-flagged container ship captured by four Somali pirates in Apri

In the summer of 1987, Universal Studios released  Dragnet,  the third feature film based on the long-running radio and TV police procedural series created in 1949 by actor-director-producer Jack Webb.  The show, which ran on-and-off from ’49 to 2003 on various media platforms on two networks and in syndication, is famous for its musical theme (“Dum - - - de - DUM - DUM"), its cinema verite approach to storytelling, and Webb’s deadpan delivery of his dialogue.  Five years after Jack Webb’s death (which came just as a new version of  Dragnet  was in pre-production), writer-director Tom Mankiewicz teamed up with actors Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks to create a comedy which was part parody and part loving tribute to Webb’s very straight-faced drama.  Here, Ackroyd, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mankiewicz and Alan Zweibel, stars as Joe Friday, nephew and namesake to Webb’s famous Los Angeles Police Department plainclothes sergeant.  The younger Friday is a bit taller and stockie

Robert Zemeckis’ 2000 drama  Cast Away  is one of those films that aspires for cinematic greatness, nearly achieves it, yet leaves the viewer with no small amount of disappointment at the very end.   Essentially a 20thCentury take on Daniel Defoe’s classic tale  Robinson Crusoe, Cast Away  stars two-time Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks as a FedEx systems analyst who is stranded on an island after his plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean.  Chuck Noland:  We live and we die by time. And we must not commit the sin of losing our track on time.   It  is late 1995.  Chuck Noland is one of FedEx’s most driven analysts; he is a man who is obsessed with efficiency and time management, which is logical considering that he works for a company which lives by its "Absolutely, Positively Anytime" slogan.  Based in the company’s headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, Chuck is tasked with ferreting problems with the transit of packages in such places as St. Petersburg in Russia.  If t