A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

As a fan of classical-styled film scores, I've developed an affinity for the works of various composers who work mostly in this genre. Topmost among these artists is, of course, John Williams, but as moviegoers and music lovers know, there are other composers who enhance the moving images we see on those theater screens with their compositions. I first became aware of the late James Horner when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kha n premiered in June of 1982. Director Nicholas Meyer, anxious to give his entry in the Star Trek franchise its own identity apart from the less-than-acclaimed first motion picture, commissioned the young Horner to write a score that evoked the nautical traditions Meyer wanted to infuse into his vision of Starfleet and the starship Enterprise . He asked for, and got, music that calls to mind seagoing sailing frigates and the age of Horatio Hornblower, albeit with a 23rd Century backdrop of dueling starships. Considering Horner's penchant for composing sco

Cover art by Drew Struzan. (C) 1996 Varese Sarabande Records and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) In 1996, Lucasfilm gathered several authors, artists, and representatives from Hasbro and other licensees to discuss a huge multimedia project that was, in short, everything but the full-fledged filmed version of a Star Wars movie. To kick this ambitious campaign, writer Steve Perry was hired to write an original novel for Bantam Spectra that would be the core of the project called Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. The novel. Photo Credit: www.mycomicshop.com. (C) 1996 Bantam Spectra and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) The novel would be a stand-alone Expanded Universe novel, the first of the Bantam Spectra series to depict event between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jed i. All the other products, ranging from Hasbro's Kenner action figures to Nintendo 64 cartridges, would use Perry's novel as a starting point and expand the story, sticking to the essentials of the centra

Cover art by Nicolas Delort (C) 2018 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  On July 10, 2018, Philadelphia-based Quirk Books published Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Jedi the Last: Star Wars the Eighth, a literary mashup of writer-director Rian Johnson’s Star Wars – Episode VIII: The Last Jedi and the works of William Shakespeare. The Force,   The Force, My kingdom for the Force! ­– from the dust jacket blurb, Jedi the Last Once again, the geeky, witty, and talented author of the William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series takes readers on a delightful journey to the space-fantasy universe created 41 years ago by writer-director George Lucas – with a twist that is in turn radical and logical. He takes a 21 st Century film – The Last Jedi – and presents it as an Elizabethan age stage production from the quill of the Bard of Avon, rendered in authentic iambic pentameter and, in the case of Yoda’s famously inverted dialogue, haikus. Is this a lightsaber which I see befo

(C) 2010 Simon & Schuster  Long, long ago, at an early age so far back in my timeline that I can’t exactly remember, I decided that I would become a writer someday. Sure, like most boys in my peer group, I had dreams of pursuing other, more traditionally “manly” careers. At various times in my childhood I dreamed of becoming an astronaut, a pilot, a soldier, a Marine, and – at one point – even President of the United States. But reality – in the shape of a physical disability – flattened most of those naively unrealistic career dreams as surely as an African elephant will squash a ripe tomato. Luckily, I fell in love with the written word early in life; family lore has it that my maternal grandmother Ines taught me how to read – using ABC blocks – before I was two years old. (Mom used to tell a story – perhaps apocryphal – about how she and my father returned to Miami after their last trip to Paris and my grandmother proudly showed them the unlikely spectacle of a to

Operation Market, the airborne element of Market-Garden. Official British Army photo.  On May 17, 2018, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, published the UK edition of Antony Beevor’s Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. In this eighth work about the Second World War, the award-winning writer and historian turns his sights on one of the War’s most controversial battles – Operation Market-Garden. Outside of the professional military world – especially in the airborne community – Operation Market-Garden was better-known in Great Britain than in the U.S. until the summer of 1974. That’s when Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far was published and gave U.S. readers their first real look at the Allies’ ill-fated attempt to drop 35,000 paratroopers behind the German front lines in Nazi-occupied Holland to capture a series of bridges “with thunderclap surprise” and allow elements of the British Second Army to drive up a single highway, grab a bridgehead over the Lower Rhin

(C) 2007 Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Florentine Films On September 11, 2007, Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s Legacy label published a soundtrack album titled Songs Without Words: Classical Music from The War: A Ken Burns Film.   This 10-track recording was one of four Legacy records that were made as musical tie-ins to Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s seven-part documentary about the American experience during the Second World War. The other three recordings from The War’s soundtrack produced and released by Legacy are: The War: A Ken Burns Film – The Soundtrack Sentimental Journey: Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film I’m Beginning to See the Light: Dance Hits from the Second World War – The War: A Ken Burns Film Legacy offered all four discs in a deluxe box set and as separate offerings; each album had a specific focus, both thematically and musically speaking, though in general terms Sentimental Journey and I’m Beginning to See the Light emp

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company) It is February 1998. 33-year-old Jim Garraty is a respected history professor and bestselling author who lives in New York City. Popular with both students and readers, Jim seems to have it all. Fame, a nice apartment in Manhattan, and a reputation as one of the best World War II historians in the U.S. But when he gets a cryptic email from his best friend from high school, Jim is forced to relive his past - and a trip to his home town of Miami reopens old wounds he thought had healed long ago. Q.: How - or why - did you choose your characters' names? Did you go through a phone book and choose names at random or did you name Jim, Marty, and Mark after people you know? A.: Jim Garraty - or as Stephen King would put it, my I-guy - was, in every iteration of the story (from a CRW-2001 assignment to finished product), Jim Garraty. I'm not sure why I chose James/Jim/Jimmy as his first name; I just knew that