A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Cover illustration by Nicolas Delort. (C) 2017 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) TO BB-8 OR NOT TO BB-8? THAT IS THE QUESTION! The curtain rises on a galaxy-wide drama! New characters take the stage as Rey, Finn, BB-8, and Poe Dameron clash with Kylo Ren and the vile First Order. Star-crossed lovers reunite, a lost knight is found...and tragedy befalls the house of Solo.  The fault, dear Brutus, is in our Starkiller...What's past is prologue! A new chapter of the Star Wars saga begins, with The Force Awakens reimagined as a stage play from the quill of William Shakespeare - featuring authentic rhyme and meter, woodcut-style illustrations, and sly asides that will delight pop culture fanatics and classic-literature lovers alike, Join the adventure in a galaxy far, far away, penned in the style of the Bard of Avon. There has been an awakening in the verse! - Dust jacket inner flap blurb, The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh On October 3, 2017, Qui...

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Directed by: Michael Curtiz and William Keighley Written by: Norman Reilly Raine and Seton I. Miller Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, Alan Hale. Eugene Pallette On May 14, 1938, Warner Bros. Pictures released The Adventures of Robin Hood, a Technicolor action-adventure film starring Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, Alan Hale, and Eugene Pallette. Based on ancient English legends that date as far back as the 1200s, The Adventures of Robin Hood was written by Norman Reilly Raine ( The Life of Emile Zola ) and Seton I. Miller ( Here Comes Mr. Jordan ), from a story treatment by an uncredited Rowland Leigh ( The Charge of the Light Brigade ). The Adventures of Robin Hood was originally assigned by producer Hal B. Wallis to director William Keighly when the project began as a vehicle for James Cagney. When Cagney didn’t take on the role of Robin Hood and w...

Two questions about Donald Trump on my Quora feed: 1. Should Donald Trump win the Nobel Peace Prize? Why? What has Donald Trump done to merit the Nobel Peace Prize? What, did I hear you say “He got the two Koreas to talk and declare that they are ending the Korean War after 65 years…”? Although it is true that the President will get some reluctant brownie points from me for agreeing to talk to North Korea’s dictator Kim Jung Un in the not-too-distant future, I don’t believe that Trump’s name-calling and threats against North Korea were the catalyst for the thaw between the isolated Communist North and the more democratic, dynamic South. I believe that other factors were involved in the North’s sudden decision to stop testing nuclear weapons and begin negotiations with the South. Their nuclear weapons testing ground collapsed, prompting fears of the effects of nuclear radiation and the resulting damage to the environment in a small country like North Korea. The regime wil...

(C) 2015 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Someone asked this question on Quora recently: How many more Star Wars movies are left to make from the original books? My Answer:   Star Wars is not a movie franchise that is based on a book or series of books. The Saga comprised of Episodes I-IX and its various TV and film offshoots got its start on May 25, 1977 with the release of the original Star Wars, which is also known by its 1981 alternate title, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. (Some fans use either A New Hope or ANH, but most folks just call it Star Wars. ) Now, even if you argue that a novel titled Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker was published in late 1976, almost six months before the film’s official premiere, you still have to remember that it was based on an earlier draft of the movie’s screenplay. (Herman Raucher did the same thing with his screenplay for Robert Mulligan’s Summer of ‘42. To build interest for the ...

(C) 2004 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  The bone-chilling cold is not the only danger that awaits a traveler on the Hoth plains. Despite standing over two meters in height, the Wampa ice creature is nonetheless a stealthy predator. Camouflaged by its white fur and the howling Hoth winds, a Wampa surprised Luke Skywalker while he was on patrol and dragged him to its cave as his next meal. When the Jedi freed himself, the Wampa fought him - and lost an arm in the struggle. – Product blurb, Wampa (Hoth Attack) I've been collecting Star Wars figures for 40 years, and even though my collection is far from being even close to complete, I own enough of the small action figures to know that the quality of the figures has improved over the past two and a half decades. Not only are the 21st Century Hasbro figures more detailed than their 1978-1985 Kenner Toys counterparts, but they also now include little "extras" that make them more attractive to adult collectors...

(C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Did the fact that "vader" means "father" in Dutch give any clues to the identity of Darth Vader when Star Wars was originally released in 1977? According to George Lucas’s post-1999 revisionist history of how he created the   Star Wars   saga, the story was always going to be about the conflict between Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader and his twin offspring, Luke and Leia. In every interview or audio commentary track related to the   Star Wars   movies - especially the prequels - that was the Gospel According to George. That’s the “official version” in 2018. But just because that’s what Lucas said between 1999 and 2012 doesn’t mean it’s true. According to most authoritative accounts of the genesis of the original   Star Wars   trilogy (the saga’s Holiest of Holies, as it were), Lucas originally thought of “Darth Vader” as a supporting character and not as   The Star Wars ...

(C) 1987 Presidio Press Harold Coyle's Team Yankee: A Novel of World War III (Presidio Press, 1987) was published a year after Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising's triumphant debut in hardcover.  Although it is thematically similar (Soviet forces invade West Germany after a series of crises escalate into an all-out conventional war), Coyle's approach is very different from Clancy's. Instead of creating his own possible scenario for a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact confrontation, he asked for, and received, permission from British author (and retired General) Sir John Hackett to set Team Yankee within the scenario created in Hackett's two "speculative fiction" books The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story. Team Yankee takes place within a two-week period in an August in the late 1980s. Since late July, a series of crises precipitated by the Iran-Iraq war has morphed into a clash between U.S. and Soviet naval forces in the ...