A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Today is September 11, 2019. It is the 18th Anniversary of al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on the United States of America in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, PA (the site where United 93 crashed when its passengers, aware of the other attacks by three hijacked airliners against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, fought back against the al Qaeda hijackers and forced the plane to crash before it reached its intended target, which was either the White House or the Capitol in Washington, DC.) Over 3,000 Americans, as well as the 19 hijackers, were killed in the worst terrorist incident in U.S. history. September 11 is a date that will, like 12/7/1941, live in infamy. The attacks were masterminded by Osama bin Laden and other radical adherents of Islam. They were carried out by young men who were radicalized into believing the tenets of a religion that some "imams" and "religious thinkers" have twisted into something that most Muslims do n

By AJ+ - AJ+ web, Public Domain Why do young people in the US read and watch AJ+ media and not realize it is propaganda for Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and other Qatar funded radical extremist groups? Let me ask you a question, with all due respect: Why do so many white males who identify as Christian and adhere to Republican/conservative political beliefs ask questions such as this one and use “Prager U” videos from YouTube as “proof’ of anything? First, I seriously doubt that great numbers of Americans (young, middle-aged, or old) watch or read Al-Jazeera English or any of its associated English language content, including AJ+, on cable TV or online. Some people might, after all, do so, either because (a) Al-Jazeera actually has more actual news-related content than its U.S.-based counterparts (including WarnerMedia’s CNN and “New Fox”-owned Fox News Channel) or (b) they are not narrow-minded and want a different perspective on the news and opinions that shape our lives. As even fo

Marvel Special Edition #3 Featuring Star Wars  collected issues 1-6 of the official Star Wars comics adaptation. Cover art by Ernie Chan. © 1977 Marvel Comics and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation Is Star Wars part of the Marvel Universe? No. The  Star Wars  franchise (including films, animated and live-action TV series, and novels) properly belongs to Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company founded in 1971 by George Lucas, who ran it until October 2012. That’s when he sold Lucasfilm and all of its intellectual property to The Walt Disney Company for $2.2 billion in cash and $1.855 billion in stock. Marvel Comics, which itself is now also owned by The Walt Disney Company, has had a long relationship with  Star Wars,  starting as early as 1976. Back then, the comics publisher was one of the first companies to show interest in Lucas’s space-fantasy film set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Marvel artist Howard Chaykin created the very first  Star Wars  teaser poster

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year 1958, which is where parts of  11/22/63 

On Quora, Eitan Krokowski asks: Why weren’t Auschwitz and the other concentration camps bombed by the Allies during WWII? My reply: There are several reasons why the Anglo-American Allies did not use the Eighth Army Air Force or British Bomber Command to bomb German extermination camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka during World War II. First, there was a great deal of skepticism among military and political leaders in Washington and London when European Jews began reporting on what the Germans were doing in Poland and the Soviet Union. A few American publications, including LIFE magazine, had published several illustrated articles about the plight of Poland’s Jewish population under Nazi occupation, but most newspapers of the day (the  New York Times  included) tended to publish “atrocity” stories in the back pages. (Editors, reporters, and publishers of the day still remembered the often-false or wildly exaggerated stories of German atrocities in France and Belgium durin

© 1996, 2019 New Fox How will the Disney/Fox merger affect Fox News? The Walt Disney Company/21st Century Fox merger has not affected Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel or the over-the-air Fox Broadcasting Company. Before Murdoch and 21st Century Fox’s shareholders agreed to the deal, both of these assets were spun-off into a newly-created entity called “New Fox.” The Walt Disney Company already owns ABC, so it had no need to purchase the Fox TV network. Murdoch, on his part, is more interested in keeping Fox News Channel in his media empire, since being a mover and shaker in the conservative movement is far more important to him than being a provider of entertainment to the masses. (And considering how unpopular Fox News Channel is outside its conservative fanbase, I don’t think Disney's Alan Horn and Bob Iger wanted  that  hot potato anyway.) So, if you’re a regular watcher of Fox News Channel and were worried that its programming would morph into something that is no

Cover art: Early concept painting of Darth Vader facing off against "Deak Starkiller" by Ralph McQuarrie. © 2013 Henry N. Abrams (Abrams Books) and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On October 15, 2013, New York City-based Abrams Books (a subsidiary of France's La Martinière Groupe) published Star Wars Art: Concept, a 176-page hardcover volume dedicated to concept paintings created by Lucasfilm's artists for various Star Wars projects, including films, TV shows, and video games such as The Force Unleashed and the canceled Star Wars 1313.  In the tradition of Star Wars Art: Posters and Abrams ComicArts' Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series – Volume One, this coffee table art book is heavy on art (125 illustrations) that was used in the pre-production stage of many Lucasfilm Star Wars presentations, including the first six films, the animated segment of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special,  and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  Art for the Nelvana/Lucasf

Harrison Ford starred in two Jack Ryan films. © 1992 Paramount Pictures On Quora, member Maya Lachman asks: Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat? My reply: If you’re talking about Tom Clancy’s iconic character John Patrick Ryan, Sr., he is depicted in the novels as being Republican, especially in most of the books that follow 1991’s  The Sum of All Fears. In the early Jack Ryan novels ( The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Cardinal, Clear and Present Danger,  and  The Sum of All Fears ), Ryan works his way up the ranks in the Central Intelligence Agency, starting out as a recently-recruited analyst and rising all the way to Deputy Director (Intelligence), or DDI. During his time at CIA, Ryan doesn’t have much to say about politics (except in the context of U.S.-Soviet relations, in which case he is obviously a Cold War Republican), but his pre-CIA resume includes a stint as a Marine Corps lieutenant, a successful stockbroker who, despite

Cover Photo Credit: © Kristian Schuller (Mutter), Kristin Pulito (Williams) ℗ 2019 Deutsche Grammophon (a division of Universal Music Group)  On Friday, August 30, Deutsche Grammophon, a Berlin-based division of Universal Music Group, released Across the Stars: Anne-Sophie Mutter - John Williams, a collection of a dozen film themes composed by John Williams and performed by German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles.  Although at first glance this offering from the famed classical music label Deutsche Grammophon is simply another collection of "John Williams covers," it marks the first professional collaboration between the dean of contemporary film music and Germany's violin superstar, even though they've been friends for years. (Mutter was once married to the late composer and conductor Andre Previn, a colleague and friend of Maestro Williams from the days when Previn worked in Hollywood as a composer of fi

Well, Labor Day 2019 is upon us, and as much of America prepares for this last day of a long holiday weekend, I'm keeping an eye on Hurricane Dorian. Not that I think that the monster-sized Category 4 storm is going to come ashore anywhere near me and wreak havoc in my neighborhood; the atmospheric conditions, the steering currents, and the Coriolis effect are all working so that Dorian will skirt along Florida's east coast and either go north to the Carolinas or veer northeast and go out to sea while the outer bands nick the East Coast. Me...I'm hoping for the latter; I've been through several hurricanes already and I would not wish them on anyone. Right now, the chances that Dorian will barrel westward into Palm Beach, Martin, and St. Lucie Counties and then batter its way to the Gulf Coast are next to nil. According to my Weather app, Dorian's eye is almost due east of West Palm Beach, but it's moving so slowly (1 mph) that almost anyone could outwalk

Today is Sunday, September 1, 2019. As I write this, it's hot, muggy, and cloudy in my corner of the world. And as Hurricane Dorian churns toward the northern Bahamas as a monster Category Five storm, we Floridians are keeping a wary watch. Most of the forecast tracks are predicting that Dorian will head west for a bit, then turn north and stay just off Florida's East Coast as it makes its destructive way toward Georgia and the Carolinas. I wish I could say for sure that my area is totally out of the woods; I know that my former hometown of Miami is probably not going to be affected because Dorian's eye is already almost parallel to northern Broward/southern Palm Beach Counties. But if the storm doesn't turn to the north within the next 24-36 hours, its outer bands will affect Central Florida and maybe even the Tampa Bay area in some way. Per the National Hurricane Center's 11 AM advisory: SUMMARY OF 1100 AM EDT...1500 UTC...INFORMATION ------------------

On Quora, Mike Austin asks: Where in the Star Wars timeline does The Mandalorian TV show take place? My reply: Jon Favreau’s  The Mandalorian  is set between the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the First Order, during the New Republic era. Or, in franchise terms, it takes place between  Return of the Jedi  and  Resistance/Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Per the show's official description:  After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.. It’s not set at any time where we can see a young Han Solo, Chewbacca, or any of the major characters seen in the feature films.

Today is Saturday, August 31, 2019, and this is what's on my mind today: First, I'm keeping an eye on the progress of Hurricane Dorian, the fourth named storm of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season and the first truly major threat to the East Coast of the U.S. As of this afternoon, Dorian is a Category Four hurricane and on its way to becoming a Category Five storm. Per the National Hurricane Center in Miami: ZCZC MIATCPAT5 ALL TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM Hurricane Dorian Intermediate Advisory Number 29A BULLETIN NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL       AL052019 200 PM EDT Sat Aug 31 2019 ...SEVERE HURRICANE DORIAN CONTINUES HEADING FOR THE NORTHWESTERN BAHAMAS WITH LIFE-THREATENING STORM SURGE AND DEVASTATING WINDS... LOCATION...26.1N 73.9W SUMMARY OF 200 PM EDT...1800 UTC...INFORMATION ---------------------------------------------- MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...150 MPH...240 KM/H ABOUT 205 MI...325 KM E OF GREAT ABACO IN THE BAHAMAS ABOUT 385 MI...625 KM E OF