A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

1. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. 2. I believe that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had no advance knowledge that there was going to be an attack on American installations on the Hawaiian island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941. I also believe that FDR did not “sit” on any intelligence reports that a Japanese fleet was on its way to Pearl Harbor so that American forces would be caught by surprise and thus enable FDR to drag the nation into World War II. 3. I believe that the Holocaust – the attempt by Nazi Germany to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe – did happen, no matter what David Irving, that bizarre Catholic Bishop Williamson, the President of Iran, and many Holocaust deniers claim. 4. I believe that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and is therefore a legal citizen of the United States of America, no matter what some nuts out there (including, for Pete’s sake, a Democ

One of the hardest questions a reviewer – whether in print media or online – needs to ask him- or herself when starting out is “Do I want to be trusted or do I want to be popular and get a lot of hits to my reviews?” In a perfect world, the answer is “both,” of course.  We humans tend to seek some reassurance in being admired and well-liked, and those of us who want to eke a living out of writing tend to want popularity, critical acclaim, the respect of our peers and the reader’s trust, sometimes too much so. Unfortunately, on planet Earth nothing is perfect, and more often than not it becomes difficult to strike a healthy balance between writing what is truly in the writer’s mind and writing what some readers might want to hear, not out of conviction but to get those “helpful” votes at Amazon or other consumer review sites. For instance, I discovered early on in my “career” as an unpaid reviewer at Amazon that when you try to express an honest opinion that runs coun

A visit to my favorite hot dog place (Arbetter's Hot Dogs) in my home town of Miami, FL Hello, there. Welcome to A Certain Point of View, my new blog here at Blogger.com. My name is Alex Diaz-Granados and I'm a (a) writer, (b) budding screenwriter, (c) single guy, (d) online reviewer and (e) die-hard Star Wars fan of the "1977 Generation" who still remembers when the first movie was simply titled Star Wars  and not, as it has been known since 1981, Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.  (I also seem to be a rarity among Star Wars fans from the '77 Generation because I like the Prequels and the digitally-retouched versions of the Classic Trilogy as much as I love the original editions that I watched in 1977, 1980 and 1983.) How die-hard of a Star Wars fan am I, you ask?  For starters, this blog's title is derived from a line of dialogue spoken by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi: Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side