A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Once I made the decision to adapt my short story - Love Unspoken, Love Unbroken - as a no-frills, just-to-see-if-I-can-do-this screenplay, I had to start thinking about the story’s structure and how best to approach it so it works well as a movie. One of the reasons for choosing this story instead of, say, my thinly-disguised recollections about my first time with a woman, was its simplicity. It is, in essence, a long flashback (with a dream sequence tacked on for good measure) set in June of 1983 during the main character’s/narrator’s last hours as a high school student, with a frame story set in what was “present day” in 1998. Love Unspoken, Love Unbroken has several built-in advantages that make it fairly easy to adapt, at least in theory. It has only a small set of main characters. There’s Jim, the narrator, a college professor and best-selling author in the frame story, and a Harvard-bound high school senior in the main body of the story. There’s Mark, his best friend

Even though my writing career has taken many unexpected turns (such as my becoming a journalism student in high school and, more recently, becoming a regular online reviewer for such sites as Amazon, Epinions and Viewpoints), I’ve always dreamed about either writing a novel (doesn’t every writer?) or an original screenplay. Over the past 30-plus years, the biggest literary projects that I’ve successfully completed (other than reviews and online musings) have been a trio of short stories which I’ve submitted to a website called Literotica. Two of them, as you might have guessed from the website’s name, are about sex; I (rightly or wrongly) wanted to write a thinly-disguised account about my "first time" and share it with at least part of the world, plus I thought it would be a good “pushing the literary envelope” exercise. The third major story which I submitted to Literotica was not about sex at all but rather my first major stab at serious fiction, a short story titled

alexdg1's Full Review: Jaws 4 - The Revenge Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot. One of the unhappy realities of a moviegoer's existence is Hollywood's penchant of exploiting a popular and critically-successful film that was intended to be a one-time affair and makes unnecessary (to the audience, anyway) sequels that are (a) rehashes of the first film, (b) not as well-made as the original, and (c) so illogical and awful that they can't be even be considered "so bad that they are good" guilty pleasures. Jaws: The Revenge (also known as Jaws 4 ) is one of the best examples of totally worthless sequels. It makes More American Graffiti look like a masterpiece worthy of a zillion Academy Awards, and it is even sillier than Jurassic Park III (which doesn't even have a Michael Crichton novel to justify its existence on film). Written by Michael de Guzman and directed by Joseph Sargent, this movie asks us to

Ever since I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in the spring of 1981, I have been a huge fan of George Lucas’s Indiana Jones, the fedora-wearing, whip-wielding, fast-quipping globe-trotting archaeologist-spy-soldier of fortune who risks life and limb going after “rare antiquities” imbued with supernatural powers. Like many Raiders fans of my generation – I was in my teens when that first George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaboration was released – I loved that film and its two sequels partly because of the non-stop action set pieces, partly because John Williams had composed a kick-butt score, partly because they mixed elements of the old Saturday matinee serials and the James Bond flicks, but mostly because Harrison Ford was so likeable playing the Man in the Hat. Now, even though I own all four feature films and the three Adventures of Young Indiana Jones box sets, I only own a few of the novels and novelty books which fill in some of the gaps in Indy’s long car

Quality or quantity? As an online reviewer at various sites, I have tried – not always successfully – to strike a balance between being prolific and giving readers well-written, honest and balanced reviews. Because how much I earn – which is not a heck of a lot of money – depends on how much material I produce, there is always a temptation to try to write as many reviews as possible within a month’s time. It does not matter if I am paid a fixed rate per article at one site or if I have to hope I have written about "hot" (i.e., popular) products which will bring in some income share at another site. If I do not write over 15 reviews a month, I simply will not earn enough money to make it worth my while. The logical assumption is that it is acceptable, even preferable, to write as many reviews as possible within a particular span of time (a month, say). Some people actually do try to write two, three, or even four reviews in one day and keep up this pace for a month or

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