A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) When I was growing up in the 1970s and early ‘80s, the Miami-area television station which is now CBS4 (WFOR) was located on another place on the VHF dial: Channel Six. Back then, its call letters were WCIX and it was an independent station unattached to any of the Big Three national networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Before the advent of the Fox TV network and 1989’s “Big Switch,” WCIX used to air a mixed bag of local programming, blocs of syndicated reruns of older TV series (“I Dream of Jeannie,” “Bewitched,” and “Star Trek”), and movies from various decades and of variable quality. Until the VCR Revolution of the mid-1980s, the only way in which most Americans who did not belong to the One Percent could watch movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood was to catch them on indie stations.  WCIX aired them on weekday nights as the 8 PM Movie and on weekends at 1, 3, and 5 in the afternoon. One of the really good movies I saw back then wa

Part One: Confessions of a Film Score Junkie   From the first minute I saw this boxed set on the shelf at Camelot Music, I knew I was doomed.  It was the spring of 1996, and I had just celebrated my 33rd birthday. I had just gotten together with my best friends to celebrate and they had given me a few CDs and VHS versions of theatrical movies, but my mother and older sister had given me $50 between the two of them because they didn't know what I wanted, and I felt that I was much too old to sit down and put together a Wish List. I  did  own a custom-built PC with an Intel 386 processor and a 80 MB hard drive, and even though I didn't have a modem or an Internet Service Provider at the time, I  was  still very much into computer games and simulations. I thus entered Camelot Music (now FYE) with the intention of browsing around for a good PC-compatible game.  Because most music-and-video store managers know their buyer's psychology well, they are savvy enough t

The Cold War, that bizarre state of war-in-peace between the U.S.-led West and the Soviet-led East which began in 1945 and ended in 1991, was, until the post-9/11 War on Terror, the most dominant geopolitical conflict in my lifetime. For the first 28 years of my life, I knew that somewhere in the Soviet Union, an intercontinental missile lay in a concrete-and-steel silo with a nuclear warhead targeted on my home town of Miami, and that a single miscalculation by either an American President or a Soviet General Secretary could lead to the annihilation of the entire human race. Having grown up with the nightmarish fear of mushroom-shaped clouds rising over blasted cities and with an almost atavistic dislike of Soviet-style Communism, I developed a strange fascination for movies and books that dealt with the Cold War, particularly those that extrapolated from reality and explored the ultimate nightmare scenario of either a conventional or nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union/W

(C) Warner Home Video The McConnell Story (1955)       Originally titled  Tiger in the Sky, The McConnell Story  is a standard issue biopic about U.S. Air Force Capt. Joseph C. McConnell, Jr. (Alan Ladd), the top American ace of the Korean War (with 16 credited kills of Soviet-made MiG-15s) and of the entire jet era (as of this writing).  Written by Sam Rolfe ( The Naked Spur ) and Ted Sherdeman ( Them! ),  The McConnell Story  also starred June Allyson as Capt. McConnell’s wife Pearl “Butch” Brown and character actor James Whitmore as Col. Ty “Dad” Wyman, a former enlisted man who is Mac’s friend and Korean War commanding officer.  Directed by Gordon Douglas ( Robin and the Seven Hoods, Them! )  The McConnell Story  is a typical pro-Air Force movie of the 1950s.  Made in part to enhance the new service branch’s public reputation after it was split off from the Army in 1947,  Tiger in the Sky  began production while Mac was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base but had t

So Proudly We Hail! (1943)   It is May 1942.  Less than six months have passed since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Allied forces in the Pacific have endured defeat upon crushing defeat.  From Burma, Java, Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Rabaul and the Philippine Islands, the flag of the Rising Sun has replaced the Union Jack, the Dutch flag and the Stars and Stripes.  In Melbourne, Australia, a U.S. transport plane arrives with a group of recently-evacuated Army doctors, medics and  nurses aboard.  As they deplane, Lt. Janet Davidson (Claudette Colbert) is carried on a stretcher due to  her mental and physical exhaustion.  The nurses are then shipped Stateside aboard a Navy transport and given what amounts to first class treatment.  Most of them respond well to the care they receive, but “Davy” remains withdrawn and wheelchair-bound, perhaps haunted by her experiences during the sieges of Bataan and Corregidor.  Determined to help his patient recover, her attending p