A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2016 MGM-UA, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment; 007 logo and related James Bond Tradeworks © 1962, 2015 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation On September 20, 2016, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and MGM released The James Bond Collection, a 24-disc Blu-ray box set which collects all of the EON/Danjaq James Bond films now in existence. Starting with 1962's Dr. No and continuing on to 2015's Spectre, this collection allows fans of Ian Fleming's famous creation, British Secret Service Agent 007, aka "Bond...James Bond" to bring home all of his various missions as recreated by six actors, many writer-director teams, and spanning over 50 years of globe-trotting spying, romancing, and using his "license to kill" in Her Majesty's Secret Service. (As of March 2019, this box set contains all of the Bond films to date; presently, director Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame is working on the untitled film known as  Bond

© 2016 MGM-UA, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment; 007 logo and related James Bond Tradeworks © 1962, 2015 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation  Well, gang , it's Sunday afternoon here in my nook of Florida, and the weather outside is nice and spring-like. It's 77 degrees Fahrenheit, and the skies above are mostly cloudy. Perfect day for lazing about with a good book and a cool drink! I was going to write a review of my latest Blu-ray find, The James Bond Collection, a 2016 box set from MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment that has all of the existing official James Bond films, starting with 1962's Dr. No  and ending with 2015's Spectre. That's 24 feature films in one set, which for me is a record-setting purchase, at least when sheer number of movies is concerned. (Cost-wise it was on par with buying the 2011 Star Wars: The Complete Saga;  I paid $86.60 - $79.96 plus Florida sales taxes - for the James Bond Blu-ray set, which is pretty mu

Why are so many Trump supporters acting like the Mueller investigation ending is a victory and proof of Trump’s innocence; when the findings of the report have yet to be made public, and any actions against Trump have not been decided yet? There are several reasons why I believe that many Trump supporters are either literally or figuratively high-fiving themselves in the belief that the President is innocent of collusion after yesterday’s news that Robert Mueller finished his investigation and that a report was handed over to the Justice Department per the rules established for such an inquiry. Obviously, the main reason is that most Trump supporters do not believe that “their” President has done anything wrong, period. To them, he is the Chosen One who will build the wall on the southern border, “make America great again,” and even though he has flaws up the yazoo, “God chose him to lead our country to undo the damage that that Muslim ‘fake President’ Obummer did over eight yea

When Yoda says 'there is another Skywalker' in Return of the Jedi, is he referring to Rey from the Force Awakens? No. Going strictly by what we see in  Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,  it is obvious that Yoda is  not  referring to Rey from  Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Yoda’s last words to Luke before crossing over to the other side of the Force are: “There is…another…Sky…walk…er.” In the  very next scene,  which is what writers sometimes call an “exposition dump,” we find out who  the other  is: LUKE I can't kill my own father. BEN Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope. LUKE Yoda spoke of another. BEN The other he spoke of is your twin sister. LUKE But I have no sister. BEN Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason

Photo Credit and © 2017 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  On September 1, 2017 , Hasbro released a "wave" of nine six-inch Black Series Star Wars action figures that included several characters as seen in the then-upcoming Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, as well as a few re-issues ( AT-AT Driver, Snowtrooper, and Kylo Ren ) from The Empire Strikes Back and The Force Awakens. This collection consists of: #49: Maz Kanata #50: Elite Praetorian Guard #51:  Finn (First Order Disguise) #52: General Leia Organa #53: Captain Poe Dameron #31: AT-AT Driver #35: Snowtrooper #45: Kylo Ren These figures were released in various regions of the U.S. as part of Lucasfilm's International Force Friday II event; however, I acquired two figures from this consignment (#49 Maz Kanata and #51 Finn (First Order Disguise) only recently as part of my birthday present from my sweetheart.  Both of these figures portray characters that were introduced in 2015'

Why does it seem that Disney is ignoring the prequel trilogy of Star Wars? Who says that the Walt Disney Company, or, more correctly,  Disney-owned  Lucasfilm, is ignoring the  Star Wars  Prequels? Obviously, in the internal chronology of the films, from an in-universe point of view, the fall of the Republic, the rise of the Empire, and the Great Jedi Purge are almost half-a-century away in the past. Many billions of people in thousands of systems that were born after the Battle of Endor and its immediate aftermath have no memory of Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn, Count Dooku, or even Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and many of the adults who were young kids and/or teens during the Dark Times know of the last days of the Republic through biased filters depending which side (Rebel Alliance, Empire, or neutral) they were on during the Galactic Civil War. If anything, the people living in the galaxy in the Sequel Era focus more on the events of the Galactic Civil War, except of cours

Can you believe that Donald Trump said on television "I gave him (John McCain) the kind of funeral that he wanted,” but “didn’t get a thank you?” Of course, I believe it. This is, after all, Donald Trump we are talking about, is it not? The Donald is a combative, spiteful person. He has a habit of putting his sights on an individual - like the late Sen. McCain - or a group (such as the Central Park Five or immigrants from Central America) and vilifying them. In the case of Sen. McCain, the animus began when Trump declared his candidacy for President as a Republican in 2015, which McCain was opposed to. The feud, which Trump personalized as much as possible. escalated when he said he did not admire military people who “got caught,” (an allusion to McCain’s five and a half years-long stint as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War). He’s not a hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured. -  Donald Trump, July 2015. Trump, of c

Han Solo (from Solo: A Star Wars Story ). Photo Credit: Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) In April of 2018 , a month before Lucasfilm's Solo: A Star Wars Story premiered in theaters, Hasbro officially released Star Wars Black Series: Han Solo as part of one of its "waves" of action figure assortments. This figure represents the first sculpt of the young Han Solo as portrayed on film by Alden Ehrenreich; Hasbro has made at least one more variant ( Han Solo - Mimban ) in his Imperial infantry gear, but this one depicts everyone's favorite Corellian orphan-turned-scoundrel as he appears in the latter half of Solo: A Star Wars Story.   Han Solo reinvents himself after leaving behind his old life. Now, Solo is growing increasingly comfortable traveling with law-benders and scoundrels. - Hasbro character description Although Solo: A Star Wars Story was not successful at the box office, it's still part of the overall Star Wars canon. and Han - no matter if h

Photo Credit: Hasbro, Inc. Packaging design ©2018 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) When I began to collect Star Wars action figures in 1978, I decided that I would not try to be a "completist" and stick to the small 3.75-inch scale figures that were all the rage when Kenner introduced them early that year. Even at the age of 15, I suspected that I'd never be able to afford every collectible Kenner produced, let alone every collectible made by all of the other licensees that belatedly jumped on board the Star Wars bandwagon in the late 1970s and early '80s. I couldn't afford it all, and even if I could, where would I store it? Over the years, my collection grew from two action figures (R2-D2 and C-3PO) and one vehicle (Luke's Landspeeder) to several hundred figures and at least 15 vehicles, most of them in the aforementioned 3.75-inch scale collections made by Kenner Toys and its eventual parent company and successor, Hasbro. And as toymaking tec

Are the rumors that Disney is buying Captain Marvel tickets and there being many empty theaters showing Captain Marvel true? Absolutely not. Those rumors, are just that: rumors. Malicious rumors, dumb rumors, and definitely childish rumors. Let’s look at the numbers, shall we? Per  Box Office Mojo:  In 10 days since its release,  Captain Marvel  has earned  $264,884,063  in the United States alone (as of yesterday, anyway). That’s a bit more than  Star Wars  took in its year-long run in 1977–78,  without adjusting for inflation.  ($220 million, more or less, in 1977 dollars). There’s no way on Earth that a studio, even one as ginormous as Buena Vista (the distributor for everything Disney), is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying tickets to its own product. Seriously. The film cost between $152–175 million to  make:  do you really believe that Disney investors are going to get a nice payoff if the film’s costs ballooned to some $400 million because the s