A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

What are your thoughts on Trump tweeting that four liberal congresswomen should go home to the countries from which they came when three of them were born in the US? Frankly, I am not surprised in the slightest. Donald Trump has a long history of saying insensitive, degrading, racist, and xenophobic remarks about people of color and foreigners who are not from mostly-white European countries. In an August 2016 Time magazine story, readers were reminded of how then-Candidate Trump expressed his views about Mexicans: Donald Trump  kicked off his presidential bid  more than a year ago with harsh words for Mexico. “They are not our friend, believe me,” he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants:  “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He’s also not shy about his feelings about American citizens whose skin tone is darker than his own orange-tanned epidermis. During the 2016 Presidential campaign, then-Cand

Well, so now I have two writing credits on my Internet Movie Database page. (Here it is...my modest IMDb.com reference page: Alex Diaz-Granados: Writer ) Last week, my actor-director friend Juan Carlos Hernandez finished post-production on Clown 345, a short comedy film about a young clown (Anthony Fernandez) and his attempt to tell a joke to his parents (Adria K. Hernandez and Juan Carlos Hernandez). It was written mostly by Juan; I was asked to write the "bridge" between Acts One and Three, which had mostly been filmed by the time I came on board the project. Clown 345 is now complete and "live" on YouTube, so Popcorn Skies Productions, my friend Juan's New York City-based production company, has listed it on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), complete with a cast and crew list. For my modest contribution, I earned my second credit as a screenwriter for a produced work in my career. My first one, of course, was for A Simple Ad, an original screenp

© 2018 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Six years ago, Pawtucket, RI-based Hasbro introduced its ongoing Black Series of licensed Star Wars- related action figures, vehicles, games, and other toys and collectibles that celebrate the characters and situations from Lucasfilm's space-fantasy saga set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Although the Black Series has followed Kenner and Hasbro's 41-year-old tradition of producing the 3.75-inch action figures that revolutionized movie-based merchandise for kids and adult collectors alike back in 1978, it also introduced larger and more detailed 6-inch scale action figures that feature more articulation points, accurate detailing, and photorealistic sculpts that make them resemble their onscreen counterparts more closely than ever. Since 2017, I've acquired a modest number of these larger figures. I don't plan to go out and collect them all; I don't have unlimited amounts of either display/s

Did General George S. Patton retire from the military? No. George S. Patton, Jr. was still on active duty as commander of the U.S. Fifteenth Army in Germany at the time of his death on December 21, 1945, in a military hospital in Heidelberg. Patton had been only recently reassigned from the Third Army, which at the time was part of the U.S. occupation forces in western Germany. He was relieved from his most famous command on October 7, 1945; one week later, he assumed command of the Fifteenth Army, which by then was only a small establishment of military researchers and clerks charged with recording recent military history based on after-action reports and interviews with Allied and Axis military personnel and civilians. At first, Patton tried to put a positive spin on his new assignment; at one point he claimed he was thrilled because he had been enthralled with military history since he was seven years old. In reality, though, Patton was restless and soon lost interest in

Apollo 11 mission insignia. I was six years old when American astronauts landed on the Moon half a century ago.  Earlier this week, I watched director Todd Douglas Miller's 2019 documentary Apollo 11, a 93-minute "direct cinema" account of the first Apollo Project manned mission to land on the Moon. I thought it was a good way to begin commemorating the 50th Anniversary of one of the most significant human achievements in history, even though in some ways it left me feeling more than a little sad. Fifty years ago today, Apollo 11 was still four days away from its liftoff. American astronauts had orbited the Moon twice already by then; Apollo 8 was the first manned flight to orbit the Moon in December of 1968, while Apollo 10 (May 18-26, 1969) was a dress rehearsal in which the Command Service Module and the Lunar Module flew with three astronauts in the F mission that tested the equipment and maneuvers necessary for a successful lunar landing. But the G mission (the

On March 1, 2019, Neon (the production company that distributed 2017's I, Tonya ) and Universal Pictures released Apollo 11, Todd Douglas Miller's documentary about the first manned lunar landing. Produced by CNN Films and Statement Pictures, the documentary focuses on the eight-day period between July 16 and 24, 1969, with a few "flashback" sequences tracking the careers of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins via montages of black-and-white and color still photos provided by the astronauts and their families. Miller, who also edited and produced Apollo 11, eschews the conventions of most documentary films by not using a mix of "present day" interviews, voiceover narration, or dramatic recreation of events. Instead, Miller and his team use a technique called "direct cinema," relying exclusively on archival material from the National Air and Space Administration (NASA), which consists of a mix of 16mm, 35mm, and newly r