A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2016 Del Rey Books/Random House and Lucasfilm Ltd. On December 20, 2016, four days after the theatrical release of director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , Del Rey Books (an imprint of Random House) published the novelization by Alexander Freed ( Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company ) Based on the story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, and the screenplay by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story chronicles a pivotal event in the mythos created by George Lucas: how the Rebel spies acquired the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon - the Death Star.  Set, of course, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away before the events in Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, Rogue One fleshes out the title crawl seen in the original 1977 movie: It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to

Gareth Edwards' blockbuster Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a film that boasts many "firsts" in the history of the 40-year-old franchise created by George Lucas. It is the first stand-alone Star Wars film that's not centered on the Skywalker family It is the first Star Wars film that focuses on ordinary beings from various parts of the galaxy that aren't Jedi or Force users It is the first Star Wars film to identify most of the planets with onscreen tags It is the first Star Wars film with no title crawl, no transitional "wipes," and only the second to use a pan-up establishing shot (the other being Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones It is the first live-action Star Wars film without a musical score composed and conducted by John Williams Lucasfilm President (and Rogue One producer) Kathleen Kennedy and her creative team pulled all the stops to make Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a separate part of the Star Wars universe yet faithful

Last Thursday's cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airfield - in which two U.S. warships launched 59 Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAM) allegedly in retaliation for a deadly chemical attack that killed "dozens of civilians" may have been aimed at Syrian dictator Bashir Assad's military forces. But the real target was the credulity of the American public and the mainstream media as the unpopular President tries to deflect attention from investigations into Russia's alleged interference with the 2016 election - and his campaign's possible collusion with Moscow. According to CNN.com, the April 6 missile strike against " the airbase that was home to the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks" was ordered by the President to, as Mr. Trump said, " to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." Per the official version of why Mr. Trump ordered the TLAM strikes last week, the President was shocked by media f

(C) 2016 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. Jacket design by Scott Biel On November 15, 2016, Del Rey Books, an imprint of Random House, published Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel. Written by James Luceno ( Star Wars: Cloak of Deception and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader ), this 352-page book is the exciting prequel to director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm's first film of its stand-alone Star Wars Anthology series.  Released a month before the theatrical debut of Edwards' film and Alexander Freed's novelization (also published by Del Rey), Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel tells how Galen Erso, a brilliant research scientist, is recruited by his friend, Lt. Cmdr. Orson Krennic, to work on Celestial Power, a top secret project for the Galactic Republic.  It is a time of turmoil in the galaxy. As the Clone Wars flare up across thousands of planetary systems, Erso, a polymath with a special interest in the mysterious and po

There are plenty of books about modern warfare based on “first-hand” sources, oral histories, field notes, and official records written pretty much in the same style as Cornelius Ryan’s  The Longest Day. For instance, Ryan wrote what you might call a sequel to  The Longest Day,  1966’s  The Last Battle.  That book delves into the “race” to capture Berlin in the spring of 1945. There were plans to make a film adaptation of  The Last Battle,  but they were canceled before production began. Ryan also wrote another sequel to  The Last Battle  titled  A Bridge Too Far.  The third book in an unofficial “World War II Trilogy,” it tells the story of Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ failed attempt to obtain a bridgehead over the Rhine in September 1944. Like  The Longest Day,  it was made into one of those “all-star cast” spectacular war films. I think it’s better than  TLD,  but it wasn’t a big hit in the States when it was in theaters in 1977. For more recent conflicts, I r

I think the main reason for so many remakes and “reboots” is simple: economics. The movie industry - or “Hollywood” - is not an altruistic community of artists who seek to entertain and/or enlighten us  just for the sake of it.  It’s a business, and its primary goal is to make a profit by producing a product that is intended to entertain or enlighten us, the consumers. The artists themselves may have some artistic impulse to create, of course, but “Hollywood” really means  the studios,  which are run by business people. Superman: The Movie  is a classic….did it need a reboot? Now, studio executives are extremely risk-adverse when it comes to making movies. Financing a film project is almost like gambling; the suits at 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal, and Sony don’t have a money-printing machine in their basements, so they prefer to play it safe and go with tried-and-true concepts instead of taking a leap of faith and financing an original script based on an ori

(C) 1983, 2004 WGBH Boston The Series On Tuesday, October 4, 1983, PBS stations across the U.S. aired Roots of a War (1945-1953) , the first of 13 parts of Vietnam: A Television History. Co-produced by WGBH, Boston's PBS station, with Britain's Central Independent Television/UK and France's Antenne-2 in association with  LRE Productions, this documentary miniseries was an in-depth look at America's "lost crusade" in Vietnam, starting with France's failed attempt to reassert its colonial authority after World War II and ending with America's withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the North Vietnamese capture of Saigon, South Vietnam's capital. The series - as the New York Times' reviewer wrote in 1983 - was "a landmark of television journalism" because it attempted to " tell us what things were, not what we might have liked them to be."  The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal called it "an extraordinary film