A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Early poster design (based on a classic poster from Gone With the Wind ) for The Empire Strikes Back. Art by Ralph McQuarrie. © 1980 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Who wrote The Empire Strikes Back? Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back  was written by three individuals: George Lucas, Leigh Brackett, and Lawrence Kasdan. George Lucas wrote the basic story treatment and created the new character of Yoda, although  his  version was different from what we see in the finished film. However, Lucas wanted to focus more on producing the movie and believed that his weakest skill was writing, so he decided to hire someone else to write the actual screenplay. Eventually, Lucas settled on novelist and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who had written several successful science fiction novels and short stories, as well as scripts for  Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep,  and  The Long Goodbye.  She turned in the first draft of her screenplay to Lucasfilm, but even though it was based on his st

On Quora, James H. Jenkins asks: Shep Smith is gone from Fox News. Does this mean the network is only thinking about ratings generated from the opinion shows? Was he an ethical journalist? My answer: Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel was  never  intended to be a newsgathering organization, despite its name and the inclusion of broadcast journalists such as Sheppard Smith and Chris Wallace in its stable of talent. FNC has always been, first and foremost, a propaganda machine designed to help the Republican Party and the conservative movement by promoting right-wing viewpoints and attacking the opposition, whether it’s the Democratic Party and its members or liberals in general. Fox News  needs  a token handful of real journalists on the staff, mostly behind-the-scenes but also in front of the camera, to keep up the fiction that it is merely a conservative counterweight to the allegedly “dominated-by-evil-liberals” mainstream media and compete with  The Washington Post, The N

Main Menu screen from Strategic Command: WWII: World at War. © 2018 Fury Software/Slitherine Ltd.  Well, Dear Reader, it's Saturday, October 12, 2019; it's Columbus Day in Spain (which celebrates the occasion as "Dia de la Raza") and Latin America, while here it is a warm and humid early autumn Saturday. In my little corner of Florida, the current temperature is 82℉ under partly sunny skies; with the humidity levels at 66%, the feels-like temperature outside is 85℉. I was going to watch my new Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Blu-ray today, but the gaming bug bit me sometime before noon. I don't play video games on my PC often; I love writing more than I care for gaming, but as the old saw goes, "All work and no play makes Jack...er, Alex...a dull boy."  And after looking at my small selection of PC games, I decided to try my luck at Strategic Command: WWII: World at War.  The war begins! Actual gameplay screenshot from my first session of Strategic

Typical anti-Obama political illustration. Graphic Credit: The People's Cube On Quora, Jeff Reno asks: Has there ever been a time in history when a U.S. President has been treated with less respect by the opposition party? My reply:  If you are a Trump supporter (and I’m willing to bet that you are), I’d like to remind you that Donald J. Trump is not the first President that has been treated with scorn, dislike, and even disrespect. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to state that all 45 Presidents in U.S. history, including George Washington, have been targets of derision, insults, rumors, or accusations of wrongdoing. The political rivalry between the early Republicans (the original name of the Democratic Party) and Federalists was intense, and adherents of both parties often insulted the leadership of “the other side,” using vivid and vitriolic language that would make the Russian troll farm contractors sigh with envy. The first three Presidential Elections (1788, 1

© 2019 TWDC What are the most obvious signs from their movies that Disney is out to make money? Why are you asking such a silly question about The Walt Disney Company in general and specifically its Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio division? Is there a valid reason for this, or are you jumping on the “let’s bash Disney because it’s a huge corporation” bandwagon? First of all, The Walt Disney Company was not created just to create “art” or provide entertainment just for the sake of making audiences happy. It was founded. in part, because Walt Disney was an artist who wanted to share his talents as an animator with the world, but it was also set up as a business enterprise. It wasn’t created to make art for art’s sake. Second, “Disney” exists to give its shareholders a return for their investments. When you buy stock in any business, you’re not merely getting a pretty piece of paper with the company logo; you’re purchasing a stake in that company’s future. Thus, if you o

Oh, God! (1977) Directed by: Carl Reiner Written by: Larry Gelbart, based on the novel by Avery Corman Starring: George Burns, John Denver, Teri Garr, Donald Pleasence, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Dinah Shore, Carl Reiner, Mario Machado, William Daniels, Titos Vandis, Barnard Hughes God: The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. Before that, I think you have to go back to the Red Sea. On October 7, 1977, Warner Bros. Pictures released director Carl Reiner's Oh, God!, a delightful and unexpectedly touching comedy starring George Burns as God and singer John Denver as a befuddled assistant supermarket manager chosen by the Almighty to deliver His message to a troubled, even skeptical humanity. Adapted by Larry Gelbart from Avery Corman's eponymous 1971 novel, Oh, God! is, as the late Roger Ebert wrote in his contemporary review, a " sly, civilized, quietly funny speculation on what might happen if God endeavored to present himself in the flesh yet once

© 2002 Buena Vista Home Entertainment On Quora, David Postle from Australia asks: Why doesn't Disney release a DVD of the 1948 film So Dear to My Heart? I replied:  Um…. You mean,  this  DVD doesn’t exist? © 2003 Buena Vista Home Entertainment There are, in fact, at least two, perhaps even three, DVD editions of  So Dear to My Heart,  a 1948 film produced by Walt Disney and directed by Hamilton Luske and Harold D. Schuster. A bookend - of sorts - to  Song of the South  (it uses the same techniques of mixing live-action cinematography and animation), it earned Bobby Driscoll a special Academy Award for best “juvenile performance” and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song (“Lavender Blue”) Walt Disney, through its home video division Buena Vista Home Entertainment. released  So Dear to My Heart  on DVD a decade ago, and it’s also viewable on Amazon’s Prime Video service.