A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(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

FADE IN: INT. SOUTH MIAMI HIGH - MUSIC DEPARTMENT WING CORRIDOR - AFTERNOON We see JIM standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall opposite the closed door of South Miami Senior High's choral practice room. He looks a bit on edge and is trying to catch his breath after his sprint down the stairs from the second floor. As he stands there, the door swings open with a loud metallic squeak and two girls (MARIA and TERESA) step out of the chorus room. ANGLE ON MARIA AND TERESA We SEE two girls in their late teens, dressed in casual attire (jeans, blouses, comfortable shoes, etc. which are appropriate for a high school's dress code of the early 1980s.) MARIA is the clear "alpha" of the two, not just because she's taller and a tad more attractive than TERESA, but she's also the more outgoing and has presence. She smiles at JIM. BACK TO SCENE JIM looks at the two girls and smiles back politely in recognition, though he clearly simply wants to

(C) 2002 Del Rey/Lucas Books (Note: This review refers to the 2002 25th Anniversary Special Edition Star Wars Trilogy hardcover) In 2002, to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the premiere of Star Wars and coinciding with the release of Episode II: Attack of the Clones , Del Rey and Lucas Books published a new hardcover omnibus edition of the Star Wars Trilogy 's novelizations. It wasn't the first time that Del Rey, a division of Ballantine Books, had released a three-novels-in-one-volume edition; in 1983, when Return of the Jedi premiered, there was a "Star Wars Saga" trade paperback volume, as well as a less-expensive boxed set of three paperbacks. Later, when the Star Wars franchise was rejuvenated by the success of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and the 20th Anniversary Special Editions, Del Rey once again published omnibus editions both in trade and mass-market editions, as well as hardcover editions of each novel with the new artwork for the T

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the evolutionary, nay, revolutionary 1967 album by The Beatles, is one of the best, if not THE best, rock recordings ever. From the fantastic and iconic cover art by Peter Blake to the interesting idea of the "concept album," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band broke away from The Beatles' previous "I Want To Hold Your Hand"-styled songs and took the Fab Four into new musical territory. According to the liner notes included with the booklet, the conceit of the album was that The Beatles had morphed into an entirely new and different band, hence the title "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Geoff Emerick, the group's recording engineer, explains: "The Beatles insisted that everything be different, so everything was either distorted, limited, heavily compressed or treated with excessive equalization." This pure "studio album" was definitely avant garde for its mid-1960s e

High school doesn’t always prepare students for college. One of the concepts that most, but not all, of the teachers I had in high school tried to sell us was that if we worked hard, if we behaved and earned good grades, we would be prepared to deal with the challenges we’d face after commencement. I’m sure that this was – and still might be – true for students in advanced placement or “college bound” classes, but for those of us who attended regular courses in the core curriculum and then went to college – either at the two-year community college or four-year institutions, it was the educational equivalent of the snake oil and other fake remedies sold by “medicine peddlers” in the late 19th Century to cure almost any ailment known to man – but didn’t. (One thing that our high school teachers did not tell us was that more than half of us "regular class" students would have to take remedial courses in math or English at the community college level, but that's anothe

Considering the ever-decreasing amount of realism and quality in Universal Studio's Airport series, I'm willing to bet that the late Arthur Hailey, in the moments when he wasn't writing soapy novels or screenplays, sometimes had second, third, and even fourth thoughts about having sold the film rights to his original soapy-but-at-least-credible best selling novel Airport to producer Ross Hunter. True, Hailey's novels are in the same literary level as Sidney Sheldon's or, dare I say, Danielle Steel, but at least the first film of the airplane-in-distress franchise was good enough to earn over $40 million in the U.S. alone and earned various Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (it didn't win) and Best Supporting Actress (Helen Hayes, who did win). Although movie studios, like all business enterprises, have always been interested in making big profits for their owners and stockholders, the Changing of Hollywood in the late 1960s that saw the ret

When I graduated from South Miami High in June of 1983, I felt so connected to my alma mater, my teachers and my friends that it was inconceivable that I had had any moments in which I had not felt any stirrings of "Cobra Spirit" from my first day as a sophomore almost three years earlier. After all, by the time we of the Class of 1983 gathered at Miami-Dade Community College's Gibson Center to accept our diplomas I had served on both the yearbook and school newspaper staffs, sang in two choir ensembles, helped kick off Cobra Media Productions' TV club, and even attempted to perform in one of the drama classes. I proudly wore my South Miami High baseball cap regularly, along with various T-shirts which touted some of the above-mentioned groups or activity clubs. And yet, part of me still remembers that my initial feelings about the school were not, um, exactly positive. You see, from third grade on, I had been assigned to schools which were in Southwest Miami S

Blogger's Note: I really wanted to write something a bit more substantial today, but my Muse has apparently taken the day off; it must be the heat and humidity in subtropical South Florida. In lieu of a "proper" blog entry, I offer a not-very-comprehensive list of songs that I listened to as a "tween" and very young teenager. A List of Songs I Really Liked Back Then: 1. Yellow Submarine 2. Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree 3. Song Sung Blue 4. Ben 5. My Life 6. Rosalinda’s Eyes 7. Feels So Good 8. First Time Ever I Saw Your Face 9. Yesterday 10. Hey Jude 11. Nowhere Man 12. Theme from “SWAT” 13. The Night Chicago Died 14. You Are the Sunshine of My Life 15. Sing 16. Time in a Bottle 17. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World 18. September Morn 19. I Write the Songs 20. Mandy 21. At the Copa (Copacabana) 22. You Don’t Bring Me Flowers 23. The Shadow of Your Smile 24. If 25. Hopelessly Devoted to You

1. Wacky Packages: Topps, the trading card company which also published Star Wars trading cards and stickers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, introduced these graphic spoofs of well-known consumer products and brands, e.g. Spam = Cram . The cards and stickers – which we kids called “Wacky Packies” – were drawn by professional comic book artists and often featured violent, gross and scary images in a sardonic, almost gallows humor that, like the later Garbage Pail Kids cards, appealed to tweens’ often quirky sensibilities. Between 1973 and 1976, I used to go to the Seven-Eleven store close to the Tamiami Trail and SW 97th Avenue every Saturday and buy five packs for a quarter, which back then seemed to be a lot of money for a kid. I was such a big fan of “Wacky Packies” that I saved up $5.00 of my allowance and bought an unopened box. Unfortunately, I lost my entire collection when we moved to our present house; apparently, the movers “lost” some of our boxes during the four-m