A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1992 Penguin Books  Pros: Fascinating study of one of the most famous - and toughest - World War II battles. Cons: None. On August 7, 1942, eight months to the day after Japan's "dastardly attack" on Pearl Harbor and barely eight weeks after the Battle of Midway ended a 6-month-long string of defeats for the Allies in the Pacific, elements of the First Marine Division, supported by the largest U.S. fleet yet assembled, came ashore on the beaches of Guadalcanal and two nearby islands in a barely opposed initial landing. Their mission: to capture an airfield (which the Marines named Henderson Field, in honor of Maj. Lofton Henderson, who had died at Midway) that, if left in Japanese hands, could have helped cut the lifeline between Australia and the United States. The initial success of the landings, however, was followed by some of the fiercest land, air, and naval battles of the Pacific War. Japanese and American naval forces struggled ince

Pros:  None Cons:  Awful screenplay, historical inaccuracies abound, laughable performances, tepid directing. On December 16, 1944, elements of three German armies -- 14 infantry and five panzer divisions in all -- attacked part of the American First Army along an 80-mile front along Germany's border with Belgium and Luxembourg. The sudden and unexpected counteroffensive hit the Americans in an area the Allies thought would be a nice, quiet sector for combat-weary divisions to rest and refit while green divisions fresh from the States could be acclimated to life on the line: the dark and deep forests of the Ardennes. Planned and ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, this massive onslaught was launched with one objective in mind: penetrate the American lines, pass through the "impassable" Ardennes Forest, cross the Meuse River, and capture the vital port of Antwerp. At the very least, the Allied supply situation would deteriorate enough to slow the Anglo-American

Author’s Note: This is the original review of Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith that I wrote on May 19, 2005…the day the film premiered on wide release. I wrote it for Epinions as soon as I got home. As a result, it captures the emotions I felt on that day and my initial impressions about what at the time was the final Star Wars movie. The “title crawl” I came up with, obviously, is not the one from the actual film. I could, of course, have looked up the text from the movie’s crawl and replicated it here, but I wanted to present my review as I wrote it on that day. Pros:  Stronger-than-usual Prequel narrative; exciting action sequences; great score Cons:  Padme and Anakin storyline weaker than expected. And you, young Skywalker, we will watch your career with great interest. -- Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Someday I'll be the most powerful Jedi ever! I promise you. I will even learn to stop

Pros:  Good cast.  Nice special effects. Nifty (if derivative) action tale. Cons:  Not the American "Das Boot."  Some weakly-written scenes. Clichés. A long time ago, back in the 1970s and when Mom was a loyal subscriber to  Reader's Digest Condensed Books,  I read the abridged version of British novelist Douglas Reeman's  His Majesty's U-Boat,  the American edition's title of  Go In and Sink! Because we gave away most of our Condensed Books volumes before our last move and also due to the passage of time, I only have very dim memories of Reeman's novel, which focused on a German U-boat which is captured intact by the Royal Navy and then used against the Axis in the Battle of the Atlantic. Though purely fictional, Reeman's 1975 novel seems to have been based on several real-life incidents involving British personnel and German submarines, some of which resulted in major intelligence coups for the Allied war effort in the years before Amer

Pros:  Seven new segments and The Sorcerer's Apprentice, nice mix of music Cons:  Would one host have been better than many? Jury is still out on that one In the late 1930s, Walt Disney and his team of animators decided to revive interest in Mickey Mouse - whose popularity was being eroded by his fellow Disney stable mate Donald Duck - by featuring the beloved rodent in a fully animated version of the Goethe-Dukas fantasy  The Sorcerer's Apprentice . Envisioned originally as a stand-alone "upgrade" of the then-popular "Silly Symphonies" shorts, this project grew in ambition and scale once the eminent conductor Leopold Stokowski got involved (he volunteered his services as conductor for  The Sorcerer's Apprentice ); from one relatively short (nine minutes or so) cartoon to a feature-length animated film featuring eight different visual interpretations of classical music pieces from at least three different eras: Baroque, Romantic and Moder

(C) 2010 Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Pros:  Three hard-to-find Star Wars comics series by Dark Horse; great writing; nice art Cons:  Shadows of the Empire has been edited somewhat. In 1996, one year before the 20th Anniversary of Star Wars ' theatrical premiere and almost three years prior to the release of Episode I: The Phantom Menace , Lucasfilm Limited commissioned a huge multimedia project titled Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire . With Steve Perry's hardcover novel of the same title at its core, Shadows of the Empire was Lucasfilm's "everything-but-the-movie" bid to tell the untold story of what happened between 1980's Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and 1983's  Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. In Shadows of the Empire, Luke Skywalker is still reeling from the duel with Darth Vader on Bespin, where he lost his right hand to the Dark Lord's lightsaber and was told that his mentors Ben Ken

(C) 1996 HighBridge Audio and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Tatooine Haunts Cast  See-Threepio (C-3PO): Anthony Daniels Luke Skywalker: Joshua Fardon Darth Vader: Brock Peters Emperor Palpatine: Paul Hecht Bib Fortuna: David Dukes Jabba the Hutt: Edward (Ed) Asner Ninedenine (9D9) Yeardley Smith Arica (Mara Jade):Samantha Bennett Oola (actor not listed) Boussh (Leia): Ann Sachs Han Solo: Perry King Narrator: Ken Hiller  Sound/FX Roles Artoo-Detoo (R2-D2) Gamorrean #1 Gamorrean #2 Max Rebo's Band Salacious Crumb: Ian Gomez Power Droid Rancor Chewbacca Reviewer's Note: All quoted material is from the 1996 book Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - The National Public Radio Dramatization.  This edition contains Brian Daley's complete radio play, which differs slightly from the version of the Radio Drama which aired on National Public Radio in 1996 and the original 1990s HighBridge Audio cassette and compact disc editions. The version in Daley'