A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2005 Ballantine/Del Rey Books In 1979, almost a year before the release of Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, I purchased my first copy of Carol Titleman's The Art of Star Wars. The trade paperback edition of a hard-to-find Limited Edition hardcover published by Ballantine Books, Titleman's book not only had the stuff you might expect from a book titled The Art of Star Wars - sketches, production paintings, storyboards, costume and set designs, and pictures of the various models used in the movie - but it also contained the complete fourth revised draft of George Lucas' screenplay for the movie. Titleman's book - which was later reissued in 1997 as The Art of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope - was only the first in a series of Art of Star Wars tomes; each of the live-action Episodes plus the new Lucasfilm Animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars has had an "Art of" volume dedicated to it. J.W. (Jonathan) Rinzler's The Art

Schindler's List , Thomas Keneally's 1980 non-fiction "novel" about Oskar Schindler's transformation from a bon vivant German (actually, Sudeten German, born in what is now part of the Czech Republic) war profiteer to savior of over 1,000 Jews during World War II, is one of the most fascinating accounts about the darkest chapter of that global conflict, the Holocaust. It vividly portrays the horrors of the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish inhabitants in German-occupied Europe while at the same time proving that one person, no matter how flawed and contradictory in nature he or she is, can rise to the occasion and make a difference. In his Author's Note, Keneally explains that he uses the oft-used technique of telling a true story in the format of a fictional account, partly because he is primarily a novelist (Confederates, Gossip From the Forest) and "because the novel's techniques seem suited for a character of such ambiguity and magnitud

(C) 2009 Pocket Books/Paramount Pictures If you have been a regular visitor to your favorite bookstore's (be it brick-and-mortar or online) science-fiction/fantasy section, chances are that you've bought - or at least browsed through - a few books written by Alan Dean Foster. Since 1972, Foster has written over 100 books - way more than Tom Clancy, Stephen King and Danielle Steel - and many short stories, most (but not all) of them delving into worlds and characters that exist in the realms of the possible (sci-fi) and the impossible-yet-entertaining (fantasy). One of the subgenres Foster is best known for is the movie tie-in novelization; after adapting Star Trek: The Animated Series' episodes into the popular Star Trek Logs series, Foster ghost wrote the best-selling novelization of the movie originally known as Star Wars for writer-director George Lucas. Since then, the author has written many other tie-in novels based on scripts for the first three Alien fil

When President Barack Obama’s administration announced in early 2010 that it was canceling Project Constellation, the next manned-spaceflight program which was supposed to take American astronauts back to the Moon and – eventually – on to Mars, I couldn’t help but think that John F. Kennedy – to whom Obama had often been compared during the 2008 Presidential race – would be extremely disappointed with America’s lack of determination and “can-do” spirit as far as space exploration is concerned. Though Obama is a Democratic President as was the late JFK, he and his advisers are – depending on one’s point of view – pragmatic realists who are dealing with two wars overseas, the Great Recession, the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and a lack of bipartisan support in Washington, or bleeding heart liberals who are willing to tax and spend billions of taxpayer dollars on a wrong-headed mission to create a “socialist” welfare state along the lines of those in Western Europe and Scandina

When I first saw George Lucas' Star Wars (aka Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope ) in the fall of 1977, not only was my imagination totally blown away by its story, characters and fantastic visuals, but I almost instantly became enchanted by the music composed for its score by John Williams. Although I had often paid attention to movie themes before I saw Lucas' space fantasy film set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," I'd never been so enthralled by a film score until I listened closely to Williams' neo-Romantic styled score on that Saturday in mid-October of 1977 when I finally went to see the movie everyone and his (or her) cousin was talking about . Because I was familiar with science-fiction A and B movies from the 1950s and '60s, I expected the music from Star Wars to be futuristic, minimalist and full of electronic sounds and other-worldly ambiances. To my surprise, with the exception of the two Cantina Band tracks heard in A

If you were to ask me if I remember what happened on Monday, September 10, 2001, I would have to be honest and say "Nothing, really." I surely must have walked my six-year-old Labrador retriever, done some ghostwriting work for a (now former) client and chatted online with friends and my (now ex-) girlfriend. It was quite an ordinary day, and September 11, 2001 promised to be just one more ordinary day, not just for me, but for nearly 300 million Americans and the rest of the world. As it turned out, however, a man named Osama Bin Laden and his followers in a terrorist organization named Al Qaeda (The Base) had other ideas, and September 11, 2001 turned out to be our generation's Day of Infamy. On that Tuesday morning 10 years ago, I woke up a bit after 8:30 AM; I made my way downstairs and went through the usual routine of serving myself a bowl of cold cereal and making two cups of coffee in a Mr. Coffee brewer. As the coffee brewed (making those weird gurgling

A few weeks ago - not sure of the exact date now but it wasn't more than a few weeks - I received a Facebook (FB) invite from my friend Leigh to play the FB version of The Sims. Now, unless you have been living under a rock for the past 15 years or so, you probably know that The Sims is a popular series of computer/console games published by Electronic Arts that allows you to create little human-like avatars and be responsible for their happiness, career, health and even (PG or PG-13) sex lives. (I have never owned or played the full version of this series, but I understand that in it, your Sims age, get sick and even pass on after a while.) Because I like interacting with Leigh on Facebook, and because I don't really want to spend $39.99 on the REAL game, I accepted the invite, thinking (logically) that I'd be able to choose my Sim's gender, personality, physical attributes and clothing. And since I'm a straight man in my late 40s, I figured my avatar woul