A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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

Heartbreak Ridge,  the 13th film directed by Clint Eastwood, is a strange war movie that takes  very  familiar stock characters and situations and attempts to give them some contemporary (at least in 1980s terms) twists to a story about the training of a Marine platoon and its eventual baptism by fire in battle.  Eastwood, who also produced  Heartbreak Ridge,  plays Gunnery Sergeant (GySgt) Tom “Gunny” Highway, a 30-plus year veteran and holder of the Medal of Honor who is facing retirement after seeing combat in Korea, the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic and – of course – Vietnam.  Because he has been in the Corps since he enlisted as a young adolescent, Highway is not too thrilled at the prospect of mustering out and feels he still has some role to play in the service.  Naturally, since the Marine Corps is one of the smallest branches of the military and “Gunny” is well-connected within the network of noncommissioned officers, he arranges to be transferred to the same