A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Over 30 years have passed since Billy Joel debuted as a pop/rock singer with his "Piano Man" album  Listeners throughout the world know him as a versatile songwriter/singer with the ability to change styles almost effortlessly. And even in some of his "pop" songs, careful listeners can detect influences of such classical composers as Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin and Grieg.  Listen, for instance, to the doo-wop styled "This Night." The catchy chorus? The melody is from a Beethoven piano concerto. His "Lullabye (Good Night My Angel)" started out as a straightforward solo piano piece; owners of the Limited Edition box set can hear this version on the fourth CD of the collection. I have even heard that "Uptown Girl" was once a piano piece....I close my eyes and can hear the melody as a Mozart-like composition.  The 10 compositions for solo piano are played skillfully by Richard Joo, and they definitely show the influence of those compose

(This review was originally written for Amazon.com in November 2003 by Alex Diaz-Granados...me.  I've altered it slightly to mark the fact that 2013 will be the 50th Anniversary of JFK's assassination.)  Over the past 50 years, no event in American history has been so scrutinized or conjectured about than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Millions of words have been written about that tragic day in Dallas: Some point the finger of blame solely at Lee Harvey Oswald, while others weave a confusing web of conspiracy theories that accuse the Mafia, French criminals, Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cuban exiles and/or militarists in the government who wanted to expand America's role in Vietnam.  One of the best books on the Kennedy assassination is the late Jim Bishop's gripping The Day Kennedy Was Shot, a detailed hour-by-hour account of the events of November 22, 1963, starting with the President's 7:00 AM wake-up at Fort Worth's Hotel Texas and ends 20

If you are a constant reader of noted science fiction author Timothy Zahn's  Star Wars  novels, you may have noticed that he often introduces a character, concept, or strand of storyline in one novel, seemingly leaves it alone for some time, then develops that person, concept, or situation more fully in a later novel. Such was the case when in  The Last Command  (1993), Zahn had Borsk Fe'lya make a comment that a Rebel mission to the Emperor's treasure trove on the planet Wayland could possibly have serious consequences for the Bothan people. In that  Thrawn Trilogy  novel nothing untoward happens, but a later visit to Wayland by Princess Leia and its dire repercussions become prominent plot points in  Specter of the Past  and  Vision of the Future .  One of the more prominent secondary storylines in Zahn's  Thrawn Trilogy  is the tale of Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth and his ambitious plan to seek out new worlds and new civilizations beyond the galaxy in a huge c

Part One: Lost in Let's Remember, or How I Became a Billy Joel Fan Without Really Trying.... Although my taste leans heavily toward the classical/symphonic end of the musical spectrum, there are a few other genres that I like to visit from time to time, and pop/rock is one of them. Granted, I  am  a bit narrow-minded when it comes to rock; I tend to meander about in the softer, more sentimental stylings of early rock 'n' roll from the Fifties and early Sixties, preferring to listen to the Platters, the Skyliners, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles rather than to KISS, Metallica, or Alice Cooper. Hell, I'll even try listening to Alan Jackson or Garth Brooks if given a good incentive...say, a romantic evening with someone special who likes those singers and will be patient and loving enough to play me her favorite songs by those country singers to share part of herself  with me. I've learned, from personal experience, that a positive introduction to unfamiliar musical st

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)   If you have ever watched a film series based on a multivolume literary tale – like, say,  The Lord of the Rings  or Twilight –  you’ve probably noticed that the first movie is the “expository” installment in which we are introduced to the characters, settings and situations of the story.  Usually, these first movies are sometimes a bit long and leisurely paced so that we can get our bearings in their universe, especially if they take place in a fantasy Utopia with magical themes and otherworldly creatures.  Second films in  continuing sagas , on the other hand, tend to flow better and with a firmer grasp on the story and characters because the introduction of characters and the setup of the overarching tale have all been dispensed with.  The pacing of the story is usually brisker – even if the running time is not particularly short – and the writers, director, and actors can get on to the meat of the tale.  Such is the case with director

One of the more interesting aspects of the four-film  Alien  saga is the way in which the audience was given a seemingly satisfying conclusion at the end of each chapter in the Ellen Ripley-versus-the-xenomorph saga, then, after a decent interval of five or six years, a new installment was released by 20th Century Fox that dispelled whatever feeling of closure Ripley (and the audience) felt after each “fade to black.”  At the end of James Cameron’s  Aliens  (1986), it seemed impossible that there could be another installment of the Alien  franchise. After all, Sigourney Weaver’s signature heroine had nuked the Company/Weyland-Yutani’s “Shake-n-Bake” colony on LV-426 and duked it out mano-a-mano with the Alien Queen aboard the  Sulaco  before going into her cryogenic sleep tube just like her fellow survivors Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt (Carrie Henn). Ripley’s tale, it seemed, was happily over.  Until, of course, producers David Giler, Walter Hill, Gordon Carroll, Ezra Swerdlow

In 1984, Paul McCartney starred in what amounts, basically, to an overlong and unremarkable music video titled Give My Regards to Broad Street , which centered upon the theft of the master tapes to Paul's newest album and the musician's resulting efforts to retrieve them. And just like  The Magical Mystery Tour  film a decade-plus or so earlier,  Give My Regards to Broad Street  failed to follow in the celluloid footsteps of  Help! ,  A Hard Day's Night,  or even  Yellow Submarine.   Of course, sometimes even failed films come with a soundtrack album, and  Give My Regards to Broad Street lends itself well to having its spinoff record -- and of course, because it  was  a Paul McCartney project, the powers that be did release an album that is a mix of songs from Paul's Beatles career to his solo/Wings years.  Although I didn't care much for the film (which I've almost totally forgotten), I do like this album, considering that I'm a Beatles fan and thus appr

Before the November 2009 release of  Star Wars - The Clone Wars: The Complete Season One  Blu-ray and DVD sets, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm released two four-episode "volumes" of episodes of the Cartoon Network's animated anthology series set between  Attack of the Clones  and  Revenge of the Sith. The first volume,  A Galaxy Divided,  is a no-frills presentation of the series' first four episodes ( Ambush, Rising Malevolence, Shadow of Malevolence  and  Destroy Malevolence ); the first of these is a Yoda versus Asajj Ventress battle of wits, while the others make up a complete story arc in which Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin's Padawan Ahsoka Tano are on a seek-and-destroy mission against a Separatist superbattleship commanded by General Grievous. Because  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  (like Lucasfilm's  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles ) doesn't have a well-defined chronology, Volume Two : Clone  Commandos takes th