A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Promotional illustration depicting the cover art for eight of 10 Buena Vista Home Entertainment's 2019 "Multi-Screen Edition" Star Wars Blu-ray/Digital Copy sets. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Hello, everybody, and welcome once again to another installment of Bloggin' On , my blog-within-a-blog where I step out of my reviewer/political commentator role and just talk about...stuff. It's Sunday, December 8, and there are only 17 (or 16, depending on how you view December 24) shopping days till Christmas. (For what it's worth, I'm good as far as that goes; I finished my Christmas shopping last week.) Right now it's early afternoon in my corner of Florida. I have not ventured outside today, but according to my weather app, the temperature is a mild 79℉ (26℃) under sunny skies. This is the warmest it's been here for a few days, and if I were the outdoorsy sort I would be out walking or, at the very least, sitting o

The cover art for the 2019 Multi-Screen Edition Blu-ray release of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is based on a classic poster from 1983. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On September 22, 2019, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm  released all 10 existing live-action films in the Star Wars film franchise, almost three months before Star Wars -Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker' s premiere on December 20. Though both wholly-owned subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company have issued home media releases of Star Wars films and television shows produced in 2015 and after, this is the first time they have dropped both the Classic and Prequel Trilogies on physical media since George Lucas retired in 2012 and sold Lucasfilm to Disney. Publicity photo of nine Star Wars Multi-Screen Blu-ray/Digital Copy home media sets. Note that Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is not shown, but the two Anthology films ( Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A

The packaging for the 2019 "Multi-Screen"  re-issue of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back  blends elements of Roger Kastel's classic 1980 "Gone With the Wind"-style poster art with new elements depicting iconic characters and vehicles from Irvin Kershner's classic follow-on to Star Wars: A New Hope. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On September 22, 2019, in anticipation of the December 20 premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) re-issued the existing Star Wars Saga and Anthology films on Blu-ray. This re-release features all-new cover art loosely based on poster art from the 1970s, '80s, '90s, 2000s, and the current Disney/Lucasfilm era. It's also dubbed the "Multi-Screen" Edition because each Blu-ray package comes with both the physical Blu-ray disc (BD) and a code for the Movies Anywhere/iTunes/Google Play/Vudu digital copy.  Publi

A publicity illustration depicting the new covers of the 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment Re-Issues of the Star Wars films on Blu-ray. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Hello, everybody. Welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On, my blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View, which is where I write posts that are neither reviews nor commentary on today's crazy and often depressing political scene. It's Thursday (What, already?), and here in my corner of Florida, it's already early evening. Right now it's already getting dark, and it's chilly! The temperature outside is 62℉ (16℃) under mostly clear skies, and the sun's already beneath the western horizon, so it's dark and nippy - and it's going to get nippier  because the low tonight is expected to go down to 45℉ (7℃). As the old Meredith Wilson song says, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." And apparently, it's beginnin

© 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)   On September 22, three months before the theatrical premiere of Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, Buena Vista Home Entertainment reissued the Blu-ray editions of all of the 10 live-action Star Wars feature films released by both 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney Motion Pictures since May 1977.  This re-issue, the first since The Walt Disney Company acquired 20th Century Fox earlier in 2019, includes all of the Skywalker Saga films, as well as Lucasfilm's Star Wars Anthology entries, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story.  Promotional photo showing the new packaging for the "Multi-Screen" 2019 re-issue. Note that The Force Awakens Blu-ray is placed with the Prequel Trilogy, and that the two Star Wars Story standalone films are not pictured. ©2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) In the video trade, this re-issue is dubbed the Multi-Screen ed

Aspiring Republican candidate for Ilhan Omar's District Five (Minnesota) Congressional seat, Danielle Stella, in a Bloomington Police Department mug shot. (Photo Credit: Bloomington PD) Ever since Donald John Trump won the Presidential election in November of 2016, a wide assortment of white nationalists, Islamophobes, bigots, and neo-fascist candidates has crawled out of America's darkest corners and declared their candidacies for political office at the local, state, and federal levels. Many of these Trump-coattail candidates never get splashy headlines unless they are openly supportive of far-right groups like the American Nazi Party, such as Chicago's Arthur Jones, who (per reports by CBS News ), has declared his intention to challenge Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski in the upcoming 2020 general election cycle: Self-avowed Nazi and Holocaust denier Arthur Jones is making another bid for Congress, two years after getting 26% of the vote in his failed bid a

Image by David Mark (Pixabay) Hi, there, Constant Reader! Welcome to yet another edition (and my 400th blog post for 2019) of Bloggin' On, the virtual space on A Certain Point of View  in which I step out of my usual personas of media product reviewer and/or occasional political commentator. Well, it's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2019, the fifth observance of the holiday that I spend with other folks instead of my immediate (or even extended) family. Mom died in the summer of 2015, five months before the holiday season of that year. I cut all relations with my older half-sister as a result of long-standing resentments that had been building for decades, but especially after Mom and I discovered what she had in mind for the "after-Mom-died" phase in both our lives, so I have not observed any holidays with my closest blood relation since the Fourth of July of '15. And most of my surviving cousins on both sides of my family live in Colombia, so I can'