A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Inning 6: The National Pastime  (1940-1950) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns In Europe, in the Pacific, on the homefront, both African-Americans and whites fight to make the world safe for democracy. When the war ends, Major League Baseball becomes, in fact, what it has always claimed to be: the national pastime. But, at the beginning of the decade, Jackie Robinson's debut is still some years away. Meanwhile, Joe DiMaggio sets a consecutive game-hitting streak that still stands. Ted Williams becomes the last man to hit .400. The once-lowly Brooklyn Dodgers win their first pennant. And World War II takes so much talent from the majors that the St. Louis Browns win a pennant.  24 years ago, fans of Major League Baseball in the U.S. and elsewhere were in a funk. For much of the late summer and early fall, a strike had frozen the 1994 baseball season as the players' union and MLB team owners grappled over - what else - salary caps and revenue sharing. After a

Cover art by Ernie Chan. (C) 1978 Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox Film Corp.  Photo Credit: Wookieepedia I was 15 years old and still getting used to living in a new townhouse in a still-new development called East Wind Lake Village in unincorporated Dade County when I first saw a copy of Marvel Comics' Marvel Special Edition #3: Featuring Star Wars. Even 40 years later, I can recall with startling clarity walking into the neighborhood's Top Banana - a convenience store owned and operated by Miami-based Farm Stores, a company famous for its drive-thru convenience stores. This particular Top Banana was only a few blocks away from the new townhouse, and every so often Mom would ask me to walk there to buy a gallon of milk or a pint of Farm Stores ice cream. Like many convenience stores, the Top Banana at the Blue Grotto shopping plaza had a large magazine display stand next to the cashier station, and in addition to the usual mix of issues of Time, People, TV Guide, and

Cover of the paperback edition of Six Frigates.   (C) 2008 W.W. Norton & Company On October 17, 2006, W.W. Norton & Company published Ian W. Toll's Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. In its 500+ pages, Toll (a former political speechwriter and financial analyst) tells the incredible story of the founding of the United States Navy during the Presidential tenures of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Set in the tumultuous early years of the Republic, Six Frigates follows the events and personalities that led to the appropriation, construction, and eventual deployment of the Navy's first post-Revolutionary War frigates: USS United States, USS Constellation, USS Constitution, USS Chesapeake, USS Congress, and USS President.  Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders―particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams―debated fierc

On September 15, 1996, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The People,  the first of eight episodes of director Stephen Ives' The West, a documentary about the United States' westward expansion and its effects on the history and culture of various peoples, including Americans, Native Americans, Spanish, French, Mexicans, and African Americans. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan, The West  was executive produced by Ken Burns and produced under the aegis of Burns' Florentine Films and Ives' own Insignia Films production company. The West was narrated by actor Peter Coyote, who would later provide narration for later documentaries by Ken Burns, including The National Parks: America's Best Idea, Prohibition, and The Vietnam War.  Presented by Ken Burns and directed by Stephen Ives, this 12-hour film chronicles the epic saga of America's most vast and turbulent region, beginning before European settlement and continuing into the 20th Century.

(C) 2018 CBS Studios/Paramount Home Media Distribution On November 13, Paramount Home Media Distribution released Star Trek: Discovery - Season One, a four-disc Blu-ray set of the newest television series in the Star Trek franchise. Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery is the seventh television series set in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s and the first new show to premiere since the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. Although it was co-created by Kurtzman, one of the writers of 2009's Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: Discovery is not set in the Kelvin timeline in which the current feature films are set. Rather, the new show's setting is the Prime timeline seen in all the other television series. Like Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, but its tale takes place a decade before the five-year mission of Capt. James T. Kirk

Jurassic World (2015) Written by: Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver Story by: Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa  Based on Characters Created by  Michael Crichton Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio,  Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Irrfan Khan On June 12, 2015 (two weeks after its world premiere at Paris' Le Grande Rex theater), Universal Pictures' Jurassic World hit U.S. theaters in wide release. Directed by Colin Trevorrow under the aegis of executive producer Steven Spielberg, Jurassic World revived the long-dormant franchise after a protracted development that lasted over a decade. Set 22 years after the events in Spielberg's 1993 adaptation of the late Michael Crichton's science fiction novel Jurassic Park, the movie is the first installment of a planned Jurassic World trilogy. Two decades after the disaster at John Hammond's Jurassic Park theme park, a new park created by Simon Mars

Cover art by Larry Rostant (C) 2015 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On March 3, 2015, Del Rey Books, the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Random House, published the hardcover edition of Kevin Hearne's Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi. Set shortly after the events of the 1977 movie Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, Hearne's story focuses on the early adventures of a young Luke Skywalker in the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin and his decision to join the Rebel Alliance. Originally planned - in 2012 - as the third and final volume in an Expanded Universe (EU) trilogy titled Empire and Rebellion , it became a standalone canonical novel (one of four such works) after The Walt Disney Company-owned Lucasfilm and its Story Group declared that the EU was being relegated to "Legends" status and that all of the post-2014 novels would be part of the Star Wars canon. This means that Heir to the Jedi (the title is a tip of the hat to Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: Heir