THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/07/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 23

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Topics:
	 Windycon XXVIII (announcement)
	 An Overlooked Example (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 National Testing and Research Center of the Consumers
		 Union (part 2) (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 ABCD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Windycon XXVIII

The Fan Guests of Honor at Windycon XXVIII (November 8-10, 2002)
will be Mark and Evelyn Leeper.  See http://www.windycon.org for
more details.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: An Overlooked Example (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

A few issues back I was saying that science fiction might get more
into "Alternate Physics" where the basic constants are modified.
Ken Howard (the club member, not the actor who played Jefferson in
1776) points out that on the fringes of this idea are the Mr.
Tompkins stories of George Gamow.  These are a little closer to
scientific explanations than actual adventures in an alternate
physical universe.  But they are stories with characters a little
better fleshed out than A, B, and C.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: National Testing and Research Center of the Consumers
Union (part 2) (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Last week I was talking about our visit to those guardians of
good advice for the pocketbook, the Consumers Union.  I wish to
remind people that though I poke a little fun at what these
people do, they do have my undying respect.  They do a function
that I  consider very useful.  These are the people who know what
has to be done to test things like popcorn.  How would you test
grape jelly?  If you were testing grape jelly, what would you
test?  Who knows?  Try coming up with ten tests for grape jelly.
It isn't easy, is it?  But I digress.  I was talking about their
business meeting.

There was a man getting up announcing the results of the raffle
and talking about fundraising.  I might add (because they did
not) that a raffle is probably not a good investment for the
consumer, unless you consider the cause to justify it.  But they
probably figure that a raffle is a "painless" way to raise money.
Financially pressured organizations are all much the same.  They
may not know what is best, but I do.  It is going to be Bingo
Night at the Consumer's Union.

Our host, James Guest, (or was our guest James Host?) talked
about how CU reacted to September 11.  They had all this food
they had tested they could give to WTC rescue.  Well, probably
the most thoroughly tested food people did not want.  The stuff
that they use in the dishwasher tests I guess they just throw
out.  I hope so, anyway.

Guest talked about how they are making a new structure for
changing environment.  They were shortening test cycles.  They
wanted to be sure they could get up-to-date test results.  They
were working on reports that could be downloaded to a Palm Pilot.
They said they had been hurt by the slow economy and fall of the
stock market.  This was starting to sound like being at work.
The next you will hear about is that they will be "strategizing
their priorities," "implementing their visioning while
facilitating empowerment," and "concentrating on the global
market to optimize their core objectives."  In other words, they
will have massive layoffs.

They did have massive lawsuits, it was reported.  They had been
testing Sport Utility Vehicles and they reported this one
unacceptable because it tipped over.  The manufacturer turned
around and sued them.  Some people may WANT an SUV that turns
over.  It may be a valuable feature.  Anyway, an SUV manufacturer
decided to draw more attention to their lousy design by suing the
CU for bearing the bad news.  I mean it is not like anyone is
going to believe that the Consumers Union went into the test
prejudiced.  If you think CU is biased, you would not be reading
their magazine in the first place.  Still, American auto
manufacturers accuse CU of being prejudiced in favor of the
Japanese.  They just had a Japanese auto manufacturer accuse them
of being prejudiced in favor of American companies.  Both make
about as much sense.  Apparently they have a very good record of
winning these lawsuits.  As they say about the suits against
them, "the truth is a strong defense."  I think the auto
companies may be suing them only as a nod of the head to
acknowledge the bad report and to be able to tell their
stockholders that they did protest the bad news with massive
lawsuits.

Next came the question-and-answer period.  Why is it that when
there is a question and answer period, nobody has any questions,
but lots of people have speeches they want to make and
suggestions for the magazine?  The first speaker wanted more
coverage on prescription drug plans.  The next person complained
that there was too much information on high-cost cars like BMW
and Lexus: how bad can a car like that be, he asked, just to be
asking a question.  Even if audience members want to make a
statement, shouldn't they be forced phrase it like a question?
Isn't it easy enough to make every statement they want to make a
question?  Wouldn't this at least slow them down?  Where is Alex
Trebek when you need him?

The panel of experts explained that there is a real strategy to
testing.  They tested high-end cars to know what features,
particularly safety features, are available and which they should
expect should become available in the lower end cars.  Also,
there are a whole bunch of staff members who want to get their
hands on a Lexus.  But not for the reason you might think.  It is
their version of how they can be implementing their visioning
while facilitating empowerment.

Next week I will return to the fun guys at the Consumers Union.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: ABCD

CAPSULE: A second-generation (Asian) Indian brother and sister,
each about ready to marry, find that their Indian culture affects
how they see other people and how they make choices about whom to
marry.  Meanwhile, their mother has a hard time not managing their
decisions as she would have in India.  This film is mostly in
familiar territory, but writer and director Krutin Patel saves the
film from being too Hollywoodish.  The main characters are
confused and frequently not very likable.  The view of Indian
culture in America will be appealing, particularly to those less
familiar with it.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

The title is meaningful in the Indian community.  ABCD stands for
"American-Born Confused Desi."  An ABCD is a Desi (pronounced
"day-SHE", an Asian Indian) born in the US and torn between the
customs of India and those of the US.  ABCD is the story of Nina
(played by Sheetal Sheth) and Raj (Faran Tahir), a sister and
brother, who work in Manhattan, just an hour's drive and half a
world away from their gently manipulative mother Anju (Madhur
Jaffrey), living in Old Bridge, New Jersey.  Nina is attractive
and outgoing.  She is a sassy version of the Amy Irving character
in CROSSING DELANCY.  She wants no part of being an Indian,
preferring the sexually promiscuous modern life of an American.
Just now she has dumped one boy friend for thinking of her as
Indian and has rediscovered Sam (Rex Young), a lover of eighteen
months earlier.  Anju would like to fix her up with Ashok, a much
more traditional Indian who was a barely-remembered childhood
friend.  To Nina, Ashok represents everything she is rebelling
against.

Much closer to his mother is Raj, who sits for hours talking to
Anju in her porch swing.  Raj is a talented executive in an
accounting firm.  He works with a college friend.  In another
familiar plotline, Raj is very good with accounting and out-
performs his friend, but his friend, who looks less foreign, seems
to be getting all the breaks from upper management.  Meanwhile Raj
has been engaged two years to a talented Indian woman Tejal
(Adriane Forlana Erdos), but cannot bring himself to set a date to
marry her.

ABCD was made two years ago when writer director Krutin Patel was
just 33.  He takes some of the standard approaches to showing us
the Indian culture in America.  Primarily he seduces the viewer
with appealing photography of Indian food.  [Following the film my
wife and I changed our plans and had dinner in the same Indian
neighborhood where Anju probably would have shopped.]  We also see
an Indian wedding with its very different look from what one
character calls the "stuffy" look of a church wedding.  A short
sequence shows us a classical Indian dance by Tejal.  A positive
touch is that Patel does not over-romanticize his characters.  The
natural inclination is to expect both siblings to be drawn closer
to their culture and find happiness in being Indian.  Patel knows
enough to resist such a pat approach.  Rather than give us easy
answers, Patel chooses not to give answers at all.  The film
unfolds realistically enough that it could have been based on real
people that Patel knew.  His characters are three-dimensional and
in no way heroes.  At times Raj is not very likable usually Nina
is not.  The question of assimilation or of retaining the mother
culture, whatever the mother culture happens to be, is a familiar
one.  But if it is a familiar question, at least the view will be
applicable to viewers far beyond the Indian community and people
of many different ethnic backgrounds should see themselves in
Patel's looking glass.

While the situations and some of the style of ABCD are familiar,
Patel is able to find truth and believability in his characters.
I rate this film a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4
to +4 scale.  ABCD should not be confused with AMERICAN DESI, a
film released earlier this year.  If the name Jaffrey is familiar,
Madhur Jaffrey, who plays the mother, is the former wife of
familiar Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Insanity: a perfectly rational adjustment to the
            insane world.
                                           --R. D. Laing

--
Evelyn C. Leeper
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
"Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses--
for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out
with it..."  --Herman Melville

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/30/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 22

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Millennium Philcon Report (URL)
	 National Testing and Research Center of the Consumers
		 Union (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Millennium Philcon Report

My Millennium Philcon (Worldcon) report (including three panel
write-ups by Mark) is available at
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/milphil.htm [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: National Testing and Research Center of the Consumers Union
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I have been a longtime subscriber to Consumer Reports, the
magazine that tests various consumer products and reports the
results.  Few appliances do I buy without seeing what the
Consumers Union has to say.

Evelyn noticed that they were going to have a business meeting for
members followed by a tour of their testing labs.  The location of
the labs was not too far away, in Yonkers, New York so we decided
to try it.  So bright and early on Saturday morning, October 20,
we set out for Yonkers, New York.

They gave instructions in the issue as to how to get to their
labs.  Now this is where the rubber meets the road, literally and
figuratively.  These guys are experts on the human use of tools
and a set of driving instructions are a tool, right?

The instructions were in part a set of short phrases that should
have been given in a list, but were compacted into a single
sentence without being set off by commas, giving rise to a sort of
run-on sentence that was difficult to read, particularly under the
conditions of driving a car where snap decisions have to be made
"snappedly", to coin a phrase, in the interest of the safety of
their readers.  I can understand why they made such a decision to
save space, but they should have given us user-tested
instructions.

As we arrived we pulled into the parking lot.  I noticed there
were a large number of Toyotas in the lot.  Toyota is, of course,
a car with an extremely good repair record in their magazine.  I
would expect that there would be some, but I was surprised by how
many there were.  If you have seen Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, imagine
it as if he had made THE TOYOTAS instead, and that is what the lot
looked like.  I guess employees and subscribers do believe what
they read in the reports.  We parked our Toyota somewhat away from
the others just in case they WERE intending to turn on humans.

As we got out of the card there were lot monitors who handed us
safety rules.  Apparently they were on heightened alert since the
September 11 attacks.  Photographic ID was required for entrance.
My understanding is that 49 states actually do require a picture
of the person on drivers licenses so photographic IDs are rarely a
problem.  The one state that has it only as an option, and makes
you pay for the privilege of a picture on your license, is New
Jersey where photography is considered to be a passing fad.  The
result is that Jersey-ites are the largest sub-category of
Americans who get nervous when told that photo-ID is required.
And let me tell you, it is not a good idea to start sweating when
someone asks you for a photo-ID.  That is why I have to fly with
my passport hanging around my neck, even for domestic flights.
Well the security people let us by with just a driver's license,
but not before we had to return to the car for Evelyn to put her
purse in the trunk.  No purses.

Walking in, they have on the walls pictures of spectacular results
of testing.  War correspondents like to display pictures of enemy
planes diving on them to show their courage in the line of duty.
Consumer Reports people do much the same thing, but they have
photos of things like stove fires, exploding tea-kettles, toys
that we could be dropping on the enemy in Afghanistan, that sort
of thing.  They have display cases with steam irons that have been
through major meltdowns.  That is the sort of decoration they
like.  "See, we told you they were dangerous!!!"

We walked to their auditorium.  Actually it was their lunch room
which serves double duty as an auditorium.  I am sure that is the
sort of touch that appeals to them.  On the way you see yourself
walking on floorboard that are numbered.  They must have been
testing something.  When the test is done, what are they going to
do, rip up the floorboards and replace them?  Maybe it is just a
floor wax.  "Ajax Floor Wax lasted twice as long but had a nasty
tendency to explode when tread upon by visitors to the labs."

Walking into the auditorium there was a heating urn for coffee.
Curiously, they do not have six brands of coffee.  There was only
one, and they didn't tell you what it was.  I assume they give you
a good brand, though I am not a coffee drinker so would not be
able to judge.  The room was decorated with large mounted posters
of, what else, covers of Consumer Reports Magazine.  Even this
turned out to be useful.  I saw an older issue that had
information on National Parks and decided to go home and dig out
the article.

I was impressed to see that before the presentation they followed
their own philosophy and tested all the microphones.  Science
fiction conventions I go to frequently do not.  They did not,
however, test the name plates in front of each of the positions at
the table.  Once people were in the seats these tags were
impossible to read from most of the audience.  Their use could
have been a little better consumer tested.  They were probably
visible only from the roped off seats.  They had a section of the
best seats roped off with a ribbon.  These seats were for board
members, senior staffers, special visitors, and lifetime members.
I guess that even is consumerism there is an aristocracy.

Next week I will talk about the actual meeting.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of
            false confidence.
                                           --Jules Feiffer

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/23/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 21

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Scheduling
	 Some thoughts on Robert Wise (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE (film review by
		 Mark R. Leeper)
	 AMELIE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC:  Scheduling (announcement)

The issue is going out early for three reasons, in increasing order
of importance.

Firstly people wanted to get the review of HARRY POTTER AND THE
SORCERER'S STONE.  Secondly, people who were going away for the
weekend would not be able to get the issue on Friday.  Thirdly,
*we* were going away for the weekend and would not be around to
send the issue out on Friday.  In the near future we may move the
publication date from Friday to Tuesday to better mesh with the
fact that films are released on Friday and we want to get you the
reviews as soon as possible.  [-mrl]


===================================================================

TOPIC:  Some thoughts on Robert Wise (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

On the radio they were interviewing Robert Wise on the occasion of
the release of a directors' cut of his film STAR TREK: THE MOTION
PICTURE.  I like Robert Wise, but I am not really happy that he is
getting involved with this whole new gambit in films, the
releasing of special editions and directors' cuts.  When I go to
see a film I expect to see the definitive version of that film.  I
don't want to be told later that if I really want to know the
film, the version I saw will not do it for me.  If the producers
want to give me a free upgrade on a film, let me see it again so I
can see what the filmmakers think is the revised correct version,
that is one thing.  But saying that they disavow the version I saw
and paid for and I have to pay another ticket admission to see the
REAL version is an absurdity.  Filmmakers like Lucas, Spielberg,
and Ridley Scott have been milking their films this way.  I think
it is breaking faith with the audience.  Now Robert Wise is
joining the act.

I have always considered Wise one of the good guys in Hollywood.
But I have only recently come to realize that he is not very well
liked.  Part of the problem is his dispute with Orson Welles.
Welles had a long history of differences with the company bosses
at RKO Studios.  He had made things clear from early on in his
relation to RKO that he would be sure they would exercise no
control over him.  If the producers visited the set to see Welles
working, he would stop work and have the crew throw a baseball
around until the producers left the set.  Welles's first film,
CITIZEN KANE, embroiled RKO in a conflict that became the feud
between Welles and the powerful William Randolph Hearst.  The
Hearst papers refused to carry ads for RKO films.  So RKO ended up
getting burnt for their faith in Welles.  Later Welles had filmed
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS for RKO and in the middle of editing
went to South America at what he said was the suggestion of the
government to look at the possibility of making a documentary
there.  RKO, who needed to release the film for financial reasons,
got fed up and ordered Robert Wise to finish the editing and give
them a film they could release.  Wise followed orders, doing his
best to make it a film that Welles would have wanted.  But, of
course, Welles was furious.  He never forgave Wise and neither did
a large piece of the film industry who sided with Welles.  The
truth is that Orson Welles was an extremely talented man, but, as
he really admitted in interviews late in his life, he had also
been something of a jerk who ended up hurting other people nearly
as badly as he destroyed his own career.  But to this day there
are still a lot of people who will claim that Robert Wise is just
a hack director in spite of his really impressive portfolio of
films.   With a very wide variety of films, his filmography
includes DESTINATION GOBI, TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN, RUN SILENT RUN
DEEP, I WANT TO LIVE!, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, WEST SIDE STORY, THE
HAUNTING, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, SAND PEBBLES, and THE ANDROMEDIA
STRAIN.

Wise has made respected war films, science fiction, musicals, and
crime films.  Included among the films he has directed is THE DAY
THE EARTH STOOD STILL, which a lot of fans still consider the
finest science fiction film ever made.  I like the film, but I
think that is badly overrating it.  Visually it is a really good
film.  Gort is probably the most impressive-looking screen robot
of any film.  Who would have expected putting a man in a rubber
suit would look this impressive and futuristic?  But I believe all
of the trappings of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL are impressive.
I object only to the basic idea of the film.  That strikes me as
fairly hypocritical.  The alien Klaatu comes to earth like an
angry parent saying "if this fighting doesn't stop we're gonna
knock some heads together."  It isn't his fault.  They give the
job over peacekeeping over to robots like Gort and now it is out
of their hands.  He tells us essentially, "You can keep fighting.
The choice is yours.  But if you do this big Bozo of a robot is
going to bust up your world into pieces so small that you could
put them in spaghetti sauce."  I guess there are a lot of fans who
respond well to that sort of logic.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE (film review by
Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: A child persecuted by his foster parents discovers he is
a great and powerful wizard.  J. K. Rowling's fantasy (not just)
for children comes to the screen in a very faithful 150-minute
(not just for children) version.  This is a family film that
usually manages to be more intelligent than most adult films this
year.  It is proof that a film adaptation can be faithful and
still be entertaining.  Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)

Let me get out of the way a couple of objections I went to the
film fully knowing I would have.  First, I hate this title, dumbed
down as it is for American audiences.  The original title of the
book was "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" not "Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."  "The Philosophers' Stone" was
an object sought in medieval alchemy.  It was a hypothetical
substance with mystical properties like changing base metals into
gold.  When the book was brought to America there was the
assumption that Americans would find the title too esoteric so
with one word change they could turn it into something from
Dungeons and Dragons.  The film has the original title in Britain.
Since said stone is only what Hitchcock would call "a McGuffin," I
suppose this is only a minor complaint, but I wanted to get it
out.  I also lightly lament the filming of this book that has
gotten so many children to read and use their imaginations.  It
will now no longer be read by children (or adults).  Instead
children will for the most part hold the book in their hands and
use the words to replay the film in their minds.  That is not
their fault, but it is inevitable.  Of course being fair it may
also get them to read the other Potter book and that will still
require imagination and reading skills.  And it is probably a plus
for the film that it is so accurate an adaptation.  The film
really is, for the most part, the book made visible.

The story, as every kid in my neck of the woods knows, is about a
maltreated child.  He is sort of a male Cinderella or Cosette.
When he was a baby he was given to his aunt and uncle to raise.
In this family he is used like a labor-saving device, but with not
as much concern for his welfare.  On or about his 11th birthday, a
mysterious letter arrives for him, in spite of the best efforts of
his foster parents to keep it from him.  It tells him it is time
for him to learn wizardry at Hogwart's, a magical school of
sorcery.  He also discovers in the dark world of magic he is
already something of a hero.  And so begins his first year at
Hogwart's.  Hogwart's is an education to the viewer not just in
what wizardry school is like, but also in the English boarding
school tradition that once was and some places continues to be.
Students are put into competing "houses" that try to outdo each
other in behavior and excellence.  As these things seem to go in
stories, Harry's two best friends are people he meets on the train
on the way to Hogwart's.

Screenwriter Steve Kloves (who also wrote last year's WONDER BOYS)
adapted Rowling's book accurately and with pretty much the right
feel.  This is one film that shows magical sights on the screen
but still lets the book drive the story instead of letting the
special effects do it.  There are lots of ideas, some expanded,
and many only hinted at, some that children will understand and
others they will grow into.  The wide screen holds a magnifying
glass to the book, showing flaws as well as wonders.  For example,
Harry has only just arrived at the school and he is given a
position on his house's sports team.  It would be severely
understating matters to say his position is the most important on
the team.  The rules are contrived by Rowling to make Harry a hero
and the other players almost superfluous.  It is as if the rules
of basketball were altered so that there was also a side game of
thumb-wrestling for a hundred bonus points.  Toward the end of the
film there is another such contrivance with a different
competition.  Of course, Harry and his friends being heroes is
much of the point.  Rowling and actor Daniel Radcliffe conspire to
give Harry very little real personality so that any reader or
viewer can easily project himself or herself into the space.
Hence the viewer becomes the hero.  Where Harry does have
personality, it is much more that of an adult than a child.  Harry
is always polite to his elders and absolutely fair and loyal to
his friends in just exactly the way that most children his age are
not.  While the style of the book is flawless, and impressively
well translated to the screen, the storyline is a little haggard.
As mentioned, events are contrived to make Harry the hero.  As he
tries to solve the school's mystery, clues seem to just drop into
his lap.  As a running gag, many clues are simply told to him by
the hugely indiscreet gamekeeper Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane looking
like The Ghost of Christmas Past).  Meanwhile Harry and friends
have to hold off an extremely nasty student who takes an early
dislike to Harry.  Most of these plot elements are cliche.

Visually the film is just about all you could hope for.  There are
only a few obvious fluffs.  We have some gnomes with long spindly
fingers, but when they grasp objects in their fingers they always
use the next-to-last joint on the fingers.  There are some places
where the CGI effects are little obvious.  A boy falling from a
building looks like a computer image.  There is a "Christmas
Carol" feel to the look of the hidden magic shops.  This is mostly
a matter of interpretation by production designer Stuart Craig,
but it fits the book.  Hogwart's is fantabulous as the anti-
sinister sinister boarding school with its huge vaulted ceilings,
its drifting staircases, and its fog-shrouded forest.  And flying
in everywhere are not the hackneyed bats, but owls who lend the
place atmosphere and double as the wizardry world's messenger
service.

Many of the support roles went to well-established actors.  Of
these definitely the most fun are Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman.
Rickman does not have a whole lot of breadth in the roles he
takes, but he plays his one petulant personality to the hilt.  Ian
Hart from LIAM has a small role as a stuttering don.  Surprisingly
high billing for surprisingly little work goes to John Cleese.
John Hurt has a small throwaway role.

People tend to ask me if films I review will be appropriate for
their children.  I must report that toward the end when the magic
gets fast, furious, and a little sinister the four-year-old near
me was frightened to tears.  She was also a bit frightened of
Fluffy, a near relation to Cerberus.  Some of even the older
children were squirming at the some point in the two and a half
hours.  But I suspect most of the audience will be back next year
for HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (which begins shooting
November 19, rushed so as not to let Daniel Radcliffe get too old
for the role).  I'll give this one an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a
high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: AMELIE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who made the fascinating DELICATESSEN
and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, tells a somewhat more down-to-earth
story in much the same whimsical style.  Amelie is a lonely woman
with very funny fantasies who decides one day to work behind the
scenes to make the world better for the people around her in the
Montmartre section of Paris.  While the film is undeniably a
light-hearted souffle of fun, it benefits greatly from the actual
timing of its release in a somewhat somber moment of history.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10),  low +2 (-4 to +4)

There are some tremendous comic moments in AMELIE but the basic
plot is a spiritual cousin to films like HOME ALONE.  Indeed one
can easily see this film as it would be made in the US, but it
would have a ten-year-old in the lead working these same wonders.
Amelie works out intricate plots that never backfire to help
people, to make love matches between people she knows, and to
punish the nasty people she sees every day.  After a very strange
upbringing Amelie lives by herself, working at a local cafe.  (She
is the beauty in the bistro.)  One day a very strange chain of
events starting with her hearing of Princess Diana's death leads
her to do an incognito good deed that makes one person very happy.
She is so pleased that she decides to make anonymous and
needlessly complex good deeds her secret life's work.  She makes
various elaborate and strange plans to help the strange people she
sees in her day-to-day life.  In spite of the intricacy, they
plans mostly seem to work exactly as she expects.  In the script,
co-authored by Jeunet, the plans have nothing to do with the
strange style of story-telling but the satisfaction of seeing her
social engineering successes combined with the quirky fantasy
sequences does seem to be an audience-pleaser.  In any event this
film has won viewer awards at the Edinburgh and Toronto
International Film Festivals.  If the storyline is a little bland
and makes heroic a woman who is something of a meddler and a
manipulator, at least the style is a lot of fun along the way.

In the role of Amelie, Audrey Tautou runs a short gamut from
charming to unctuous.  Dominique Pinon, the short actor with Jean-
Paul Belmondo looks, has become almost a Jean-Pierre Jeunet
trademark and is present in a subsidiary role as a lonely man who
is pulled into Amelie's machinations.

Jeunet's style is sudden and frequently very funny fantasy and
humorously knotted plotlines.  This is the first time he has
applied that approach to a story that is not intrinsically a
fantasy.  The result is certainly not as great as some critics are
finding it, but it is a film that does what it does about as well
as it could be done.  Jeunet seems to be saying that we each can
improve the world if we only will take an interest, but it makes
an interesting pairing with a story like Jane Austen's EMMA (or
its updating, CLUELESS) where the same sort of activity is put in
a much less favorable light.  AMELIE is, however, perfectly timed
for the unexpectedly somber mood of the public at the time of its
release in this country.  I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

I am not sure I would have liked this film dubbed rather than
subtitled, but it does show up some drawbacks subtitling films.
While it has the standard problem that white subtitles become
unreadable on a white background, it has a much more important
problem.  This is a film that frequently uses short staccato
editing, often with pieces that require reading.  One needs to
watch the main part of the picture to catch what is happening and
the bottom of the screen to read the words.  The subtitles are, of
course, intentionally placed at the bottom of the picture to be
away from where the main action is.  One frequently finds that he
has missed to action reading the subtitle or missed the subtitle
watching the action.

John Landis fans take note.  In what may or may not be a tribute,
this film works into the dialog the one-time Landis signature
phrase, "See you next Wednesday."  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Psychoanalysis makes quite simple people feel they're
            complex.
                                           --S. N. Behrman

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/16/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 20

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Follow-up on last week's editorial (comments by
		 Mark R. Leeper)
	 THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Follow-up on last week's editorial (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)

More or less as I expected, there was a lot of mail about last
week's editorial.  There are people who thought (and I would say
misread) my editorial to interpret it that I was defending
McCarthyism and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.  I thought that I
held back from actually doing that, but I said that I was leaving
open a path where I might end up having to defend one or the
other if my current quandary was not resolved.  It is possible
that I was trying to say too much in too few words.

There are really two different ways of looking at issues.  One is
to look at issues one at a time and deciding them one at a time.
This way each issue gets a lot of personal attention.  That can
be good.  It also can be bad.  It gives one flexibility and
perhaps a feeling that one has decided each issue strictly on the
basis of its own merits.  The problem is that one is very much
tempted to decide each issue on the basis of self-interest.  One
can come away feeling that one has judged each issue, but that is
not really what has happened.  Instead on each issue one has
decided selfishly.  I have been told by someone that if the
government makes it possible for you to cheat on your income
taxes and does not check up on you, you really have a
responsibility to do so.  After all it is not really fair for you
to have to follow the rules if other people are able to
circumvent them.  In truth this guy wanted to cheat on his income
taxes and at the same time wanted to at least be able to claim
that he was living up to the highest principles.  This same
person complained bitterly that the company we both worked for
was not treating him fairly and, in fact, was cheating him.  I
wanted to tell him that if he made it possible for the company to
be unfair to him, the company had a responsibility to do so.  I
am sure that he would have come back with a rationalization that
that sort of cheating was immoral.  The truth is that while he
wanted to claim that he had principles, in fact he wanted to make
decisions in self-interest.

Now, of course, the other approach is to a set of rules about
what is moral and what is not that is independent of any specific
individual cases.  You can call these what you want.  They can be
principles or when the society sets them up they are called laws.
In an editorial a while back I said that rights are a form of
laborsaving device, so are principles and laws.  A parked in
front of B's driveway.  A feels that government should let him
put his car in any empty.  B thinks he should be able to get his
car onto the street.  It you operate purely pragmatically you
have some deciding to do.  One could consider the two arguments
and choose whom one agrees with.  If B is being a real pain and
presenting his argument with profanity and racial epithets and A
is being very polite and well-ordered, one would be tempted to
certainly consider A's argument and perhaps even decide he is in
the right.  It certainly would require some consideration.  The
law is a laborsaving device to determine that A is actually wrong
and B is actually right.  One of the risks of having laws,
principles, etc. is that occasionally they mean you have to agree
with someone you do not want to agree with.  Occasionally you
have to let the Nazi party march in Skokie.

One problem is that usually personal principles are understood
intuitively, but rarely set down in fixed legalese.  What I was
saying last we with that intuitively I would like to think my
principles would defend the press that in large numbers
criticized McKinney's opportunism in trying to embarrass and
attack the United States and Israel.  I would also like to think
my principles would condemn the press who would gang up on
outspoken liberal dissenters in the 1950s.  But unifying those
two principles is not easy.  I have been taught to believe that
in the 1950s the press was wrong to gang up on liberal dissenters
who openly opposed their government's policies.  It is
fascinating how many of the same people defend so similar an
action by the press today without first resolving the
inconsistency.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: The Coen Brothers give us a crisp and well-filmed noir-
ish thriller.  A quiet, second-chair barber tries blackmail to get
to a better life and sets in motion a chain of weird events.  It
is a 40s crime film 55 years late and right on time.  Rating: 8 (0
to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)

"You know what you are?  You're an enthusiast."  The words come
late in THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE.  They are spoken by teenage
pianist Birdy Abundas (played by Scarlett Johansson) to Ed Crane
(Billy-Bob Thornton).  The words are as startling as a splash of
ice water on a hot summer day.  Enthusiasm is just about the last
thing we would expect anyone would see in Ed.  Ed is a man with
little obvious emotion.  Life is what happens to Ed, a thing he
just rides, rather than something he actively lives and
participates in.  When Ed enters a room with three other people in
it, he makes it approximately three people in the room.  Ed is in
a loveless marriage to Doris (Coen Brothers regular Frances
McDormand) that just sort of happened to him.  Ed is in a
monotonous and vaguely irritating job as the assistant in his
brother-in-law's barber shop.  The job also just sort of happened
to him.

Ed is a quiet man whose passive face hides an intense desperation.
He cannot stand that his brother-in-law talks constantly all day
long.  Ed knows his wife is having an affair with her boss (James
Gandolfini in a role not too different from Tony Soprano on
television) but, like the job in the barbershop, there is nothing
much that can be done to improve circumstances.  Ed sees nothing
in his future but years of more quiet desperation.  Then a
customer tells Ed about a new opportunity.  For $10,000 Ed can get
into the new field of dry cleaning.  But Ed doesn't have $10,000.
Perhaps he can cash in on his wife's infidelity.  Ed decides to
blackmail his wife's boss.  This starts a complex chain of events.
The script by Joel and Ethan Coen is complex with plenty of loose
ends that will be tied up by the end of the film.  The pacing of
the film is as slow and deliberate as Ed is himself.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is filmed in crisp black and white in the
styles of 1940s crime films, just slightly exaggerated.  In the
best film noir traditions the camera plays with light and shadow.
In one scene a defense lawyer is show standing in the light from
the window so shadow on the upper part of his face forms a nearly
perfect image of an executioner's mask.

We see Billy-Bob Thornton looking as normal as I can ever remember
seeing him.  That is the key to his role and to the title of the
film.  He is a man you could pass on the street and never even
notice or remember you had seen him.  A 1940s film would have put
someone like a Fred McMurray or perhaps a Jose Ferrer into a role
like this.  These are actors who in spite of themselves would have
added some panache to the role and panache is just what the Coen
brothers were trying to avoid.  Thornton plays the role as a man
as burned out and stale as the cigarette that dangles from his
lips.  He is as easy to ignore as the ash on the barbershop floor.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is a little slow and listless, but it is
a great film to watch and in the end the script is as clever as we
would expect from the Coen Brothers.  I rate the film an 8 on the
0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
                                     --Francois de la Rochefoucauld

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/09/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 19

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 McCarthy on the Right and McKinney on the Left (comments
		 by Mark R. Leeper)
	 MONSTERS, INC. (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Films about Filmmakers from the Toronto International Film
		 Festival (film reviews of I'M GOING HOME [JE
		 RENTRE A LA MAISON], QUITTING, LE PORNOGRAPHE,
		 and THE ROAD by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC:  McCarthy on the Right and McKinney on the Left (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)

I want to present a moral issue here.  It is one that is troubling
me a great deal.  But to get to the issue I have to tell you a
story first.  And you may have to read the whole thing to figure
out where I am going with this.

The terrorist attack of September 11 hit New York City in a lot of
different ways, and not the least of which was financially.
People from all over the country and the world made generous
donations to New York City to help get it back on its feet.  One
of the donations was to the tune of ten million dollars and came
from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.  To the newspapers
this looked like a story too good to miss.  After all, Saudi
Arabia was the country that had spawned Osama bin Laden.  It is a
Moslem country.  For a prince of that country to be contributing
help repair the damage sounded like big news.

So the papers got a prepared statement from bin Talal.  And what
did he tell them?  This attack had been commensurate and a
reasonable reaction to America's support of Israel.  He also said,
"At times like this one, we must address some of the issues that
led to such a criminal attack.  I believe the government of the
United States of America should re-examine its policies in the
Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the
Palestinian cause.... Our Palestinian brethren continue to be
slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the
other cheek."  It is like Saudi Arabia with its totalitarian
controlled press and its hatreds has a more balanced view.  It was
relatively clear that bin Talal had bought and paid for a public
forum for his point of view and had purchased it fairly cheaply as
these things go.  Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made it even cheaper by
correctly returning to bin Talal his check.  New York City was
just not that desperate for the money.  (Side note: The Arab press
took Giuliani to task, claiming he was a Jewish homosexual.  Also
"He hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father, so
as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph Hitler.
This is why he prefers to shorten it to Rudy.'")

Representative Cynthia McKinney of Georgia watched this incident
and decided to try to weigh in and make some political gain from
it.  She attacked Israel, American policy toward Israel, and
American race relations.  She said, "I believe I can guide your
generosity to help improve the state of Black America and build
better lives."  She told him "...sections of the Voting Rights Act
will soon expire, and quite frankly, after crippling Court
decisions, there is not much left of affirmative action to mend."
Curiously, she did not explain to him what voting rights and
affirmative action are and probably did not think about the fact
that bin Talal's country never thinks about such niceties.  In any
case because this was an open letter its content was probably less
intended for him than for citizens of her own country.

As might be expected columnists across the country have read her
open letter and have been rightly anxious to inform her that
someone trying to make political grist from this situation may
have been shorted a few IQ points.  Her response is that all the
people disagreeing with her is denying her her right of free
speech.  She says, "I have been attacked for speaking....  I
believe that when it comes to major foreign policy issues, many
prefer to have black people seen and not heard."

Well, the obvious reaction is to say that everybody is allowed
free speech, including her critics.  She may have been a jerk, but
nobody is telling her that she does not have a right to be a jerk.
But anyone who read her open letter has a right to react to it,
even openly.  If she is complaining that that people are
criticizing her for what she said in an open letter, it is no less
idiotic than what she said in the open letter itself.  She has a
right to express herself and say what she likes and people have
every right to disagree with her.  My gut feeling is that she is
in the wrong.

It is true; however, that this whole incident has some eerie
echoes of what happened during the McCarthy era.  Then also people
had the right to say what they liked on either side of the
political spectrum, albeit at their own risk.  And then as now
their risk included being held up to ridicule by the public and by
columnists.  In those days one such columnist was pro-government
writer Westbrook Pegler whose barbed prose could and frequently
did skewer some left wing writer.  And then as now careers might
be crushed by being so skewered by self-styled guardians of well
being like Pegler.  But Pegler had the right to say what he wanted
short of libel, (though he often went beyond that point).  People
in the press are going after one person for speaking her mind just
like they did in the 50s.

While my natural sympathies are against McCarthyists, they are
also against McKinney.  But I see the two situations as very
analogous and the major difference is that fifty years later I am
on the other side.  I would love to have a better reason for the
inconsistency of my viewpoint.  Somehow I am getting more empathy
for McCarthy on the right and McKinney on the left.  And I do not
like being on the side of either of them.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: MONSTERS, INC. (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: MONSTERS, INC., won't get many top ten film nominations,
but it won't get many thumbs down votes either.  MONSTERS, INC.,
is cute, likable, and a lot of fun.  The company of the title puts
monsters in children's closets to turn their screams to the energy
to power their land.  But monsters are more afraid of children
than vice versa.  Pixar animated films gets better and better.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

While the quality of films from the majors in Hollywood seem to be
hitting a slump as bad as the stock market's, the field of the
animated feature film seems to be an exception.  Animation is
getting better and the stories are even occasionally keeping up.
There are three major sources of major animated.  There is Disney
Enterprises who invented the animated feature; there is Pixar, who
do three-dimensional computer animation and release their films
through Disney; and there is Dreamworks, a Johnny-come-lately who
picked up the digital technology very quickly.  Each has its own
style specialty.  Disney most frequently mangles some classic
story or tells their own story but in the same silly style.  Pixar
tells sentimental stories aimed at children but so well done that
all ages can appreciate them.  It is too early to tell if
Dreamworks will stay in the field and have an identifiable style,
but certainly their SHREK seems to indicate they may be the wild,
irreverent parallel to Disney that Warner Brothers short animated
films were in the 1940s and 1950s.  Each three sources should be
commended for bucking the tide of most of the majors and almost
reliably turning out quality entertainment.

Pixar's MONSTERS, INC., is not a memorable film but it is a
pleasant way to spend an afternoon.  Parents will enjoy it as much
as the kids do.  In this modernized fairy tale monsters live in a
world parallel to that of children and enter our world to scare
us.  One twist: so as not to scare the kiddos, the monsters are
really more scared of us than we are of them.  Every monster knows
that just the touch of a human child can kill a monster.  Having
monsters from the closet scaring little children is just a matter
of business.  The monsters realize that nobody has more energy
than children do, so they power their world on the screams of
children.  The world's power company is called Monsters, Inc.
(which I guess is like us naming our power company Humans, Inc.).
Their slogan is "We scare because we care."  The best of the
scarers is James "Sully" Sullivan (voiced by John Goodman), a big
fellow whose "wild thing" looks belie a pleasant and sympathetic
nature.  His best buddy is a walking eyeball by the name of Mike
Wazowski (Billy Crystal).  He is Sully's trainer but has a
hankering to try his skills though he is not nearly as good at
scaring children.  One day this neat setup starts to go awry when
a little girl, a sweet confection of a child nicknamed Boo,
crosses the border to the world of the monsters.

The script by Andrew Stanton and Dan Gerson is full of in-jokes,
some in further than others.  Few fans of fantasy film will not
get the reference to Harryhausen's.  (One guy who may not have
gotten it is Billy Crystal who said the name as if it were "Harry
Hausen.")  The script has some obvious logic gaps that should have
been mended.  The little girl, supposedly toxic to monsters,
touches Sully frequently without his giving it much thought.  At
one point Boo is given a suit to wear which she does through a big
portion of the film.  She seems much too adept at taking the suit
off and putting it back on for a girl of her age.  The writing,
which starts clever and original toward the beginning, falls back
on cliches toward the end including a long time-filling chase and
a theme of corporate irresponsibility.  This is really a theme
that has been used to death in other films and it seems an
atypical lapse in imagination in what otherwise is a clever
script.

Not all of the problems the film has are its own fault.  Like many
films this film has unfortunate echoes of very recent American
history.  For years the monsters have worried about the
possibility of the contamination from a human child entering their
world.  Now it has happened and they try to ignore it and continue
their business while monsters in decontamination suits try to
clean up the problem.

Pixar's animation processes get better with each film they do.
Sully really looks like he is covered in real fur and there is
real expression in his face.  His face seems more expressive than,
for example, the faces of the apes in this year's PLANET OF THE
APES, in spite of being wholly computer-generated.  In the case of
one of the monsters we even see expression in multiple eyes like a
spider has and surprisingly it works.  Pixar may treading on what
might be dangerous ground here.  Filmgoers got irritated at Steven
Spielberg because he made them feel sorry for what was really a
piece of plastic in E.T.  Here people are feeling empathy for what
is further from reality, just a set of ones and zeroes stored in a
computer.  It is not a problem for the film, but I am a little
surprised that being so accomplished in dimensional animation,
they did the opening credits in flat animation.  It just does not
seem like their style.

Pixar's style is the constant flow of ideas and jokes in the
margins of the film.  This film has what must be hundreds of
little film references and ideas packed around the main story.
Film allusions are probably just to numerous for the viewer to
catch even most of them.  In the world of monsters, even the
grills of cars look fierce.  There are fun references to films
from POLTERGEIST to THE RIGHT STUFF.  There is an explanation for
the existence of folklore monsters in our world like the Nessie
and Bigfoot.  This is a funny and imaginative film.  It rates a 7
on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

Included with the film is an animated short, "For the Birds."  It
is amusing, but is too simple and short to take the place of a
cartoon.  It is really just a sketch.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Films about Filmmakers from the Toronto International Film
Festival (film comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Like anyone else, I suppose, filmmakers like to talk about
themselves and people in their profession.  This year the Toronto
Film Festival had several films about how filmmakers fit into
society.  These are four foreign-language films involving actors
or directors and their personal or professional lives.  Two are
from France, one from China, and one is from Kazakhstan.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: I'M GOING HOME (JE RENTRE A LA MAISON) (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This French/Portuguese film is a nearly plotless
character portrait.  An aging but highly respected actor loses his
wife, his daughter, and his life's compass.  Piece by piece his
life starts to unravel.  This is a textured but nearly plotless
portrait of a man going from being highly honored to losing it
all.  The title is French for I'M GOING HOME.  Rating: 4 (0 to
10), 0 (-4 to +4)

Gilbert Valance (played by Michel Piccoli) is one of the titans of
the French stage and screen.  His name on a production lends it an
air of respectability.  He has had a long run, but it is coming to
an end.  The professional world can be fairly pitiless to those
who can no longer produce.  JE RENTRE A LA MAISON is nearly
plotless.  It simply follows Valance through his daily life as his
star fades.

The film begins with a fifteen minute or so quote from Ionesco's
EXIT THE KING.  We see a little of what goes on behind the scenes,
but mostly we just see the actors on the stage.  Manoel de
Oliviera who wrote and directed is in no hurry.  This is not a
film of plot but of feel.  Oliveira is painting a portrait of a
man at the end of his career.  The irony is that the man he is
showing is about 20 years the junior of the 92-year-old Oliveira.
Oliveira has to be one of the very oldest film directors working.

Valance completes his performance only to learn that a tragic
automobile accident has killed three of the five members of his
family.  Remaining alive is only his grandson.  Momentum carries
him on, but age drags him down.  We see him interacting with his
fans, buying a pair of shoes, and spiritlessly pursuing his life.
His agent tries to sell him on other jobs, some well beneath his
talents and dignity.  The parts are supporting and subsidiary
roles.  His agent is more anxious to keep him working than to get
him appropriate parts.  Eventually he gets a role in a film
production of James Joyce's ULYSSES in spite of the fact that he
has no Irish accent.  He is wrong for the role and we see how it
wears on him.  All the while we see him slowly break down.

Here Oliveira directs great French actor Michel Piccoli.  The
pacing is slow since the film is doing little but show us the life
of the main character most of the screen time.  We spend at least
two minutes just watching an aerial view of Paris.  The film is in
French, though some segments are in English including ones near
the end where the main character acts in a production in English,
the director of which is played, incidentally, by John Malkovich.

This is not a story with a beginning, middle, and an end.
Instead it is a 90-minute description of the situation a great old
actor faces at the end of his career.  I rate it a 4 on the 0 to
10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: QUITTING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: From China, a country noted for downbeat films, comes a
true story of one mentally disturbed boy, a former movie star, who
ruined and terrorized his family until he was institutionalized
and reeducated.  All of the major characters play themselves.  We
see both the point of view of the main character and other members
of his family.  The film is a real indictment of a system in which
eldest sons are spoiled and indulged to ridiculous lengths.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

Communist governments are usually dedicated to the principle that
utilitarianism is more important than their people's traditions.
The West generally puts this tendency in an unfavorable light.
There are, however, some customs that the Chinese people
themselves carry to extremes.  One seems to be the spoiling of the
eldest son who will be expected to carry on the family line.  In
QUITTING we see what power this custom gives an eldest son whether
he deserves it or not.  However, we also see the heady and
corrupting influence that the infusion of Western culture has had
on China.

QUITTING is the true story of Jia Hongsheng.  In the early 90s he
was a noted film and TV actor, but he destroyed his career with
drugs.  Early in the film he is living with his younger sister and
his parents come to live in the same apartment.  From the moment
his parents arrive Jia treats them in the nastiest manner.  He
seems to have no interest in their opinion of him at all.  He
orders them around and insists that they spend their little money
on luxuries for him and repays them with nastiness.  Rather than
work, he spends his time in his room listening over and over to
cassettes of the Beatles.  He is drunk with Western culture.  And
any Western culture is new to him.  We see him and his friends
dancing to "Oh My Darling Clementine" as if it is the latest Top
100 song.

The film jumps around in time telling of relationships with
temporary friends whom he grows to dislike.  Without apology he
spends his parents' money on drugs.  He announces that he is
really the son of John Lennon.  The final straw is when he crosses
the last taboo and hits his father.  His parents report him to the
police and the first step is taken toward his recovery.  It is
unusual for Chinese movies to talk about current-day problems in
China, though this film is really more a warning about foreign
influences.  The first hour is a thoroughly unpleasant experience.
Eventually when the government puts him on the road to recovery
there seems to be hope creeping in.

Any film from so different a culture will have unintended messages
for Western viewers.  The "nice apartment" where Hongsheng lives
looks a bit like a concrete monstrosity to us.  Zhang Yang directs
a screenplay he co-wrote.  Nearly all the important characters
play themselves.  Frequently they play in painful scenes they
lived just a few years earlier.  Yang laments that while his film
is full of references to Western music, including Beatles songs,
none could actually be heard in his film.  The price of using
Beatles songs is far beyond the budget of Chinese filmmakers.
Film excerpts are apparently easier and we see Hongsheng watching
TAXI DRIVER with posters in his room.

Deep down this film is pro-government and anti-Western culture.
While watchable, it is not one of the best films to come from
China.  I give it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4
to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: LE PORNOGRAPHE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: An examination of a pornographic film director toward the
end of his life.  On one level he is much like any other film
director.  But as we look closer his relationships seem to
dissolve we see how his work has in subtle ways sabotaged his
family relationships.  We also see his attitude toward his unusual
profession.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

Jacques Laurent (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud) was a director with
a lot of talent but went into making pornographic films.  There he
was successful and made a name for himself by attempting some
artistry.  He retired from the profession in 1984 to a comfortable
life.

Now, however, he is finding that his money is running out and he
has to go back to work, again in the field of pornographic film
making, the only place he can find work.  He tells himself that
pornography is just a business.  But he finds that the fact that
the films he works on are pornographic puts a strain on his
marriage and especially on his relationship with his son.  In some
ways his son has taken moral authority from the father.  The child
is father to the man.

At the same time Laurent's artistic pretensions put him in
conflict with the people with whom he is working.  Laurent would
like to create a masterpiece.  He wants the film to show not just
sex but also love.  He wants to work his own soft fantasies into
the film while the producers of the film want it to be no more
than a quick moneymaker.  Laurent has problems even watching his
actors perform sex acts for the camera.  He detests the business,
but feels that pornography is all that he does really well.
Laurent's age shows more and more as the story progresses.  He
begins acting eccentrically.  He sees a woman, a stranger, and
begins following her through the street, even sneaking into her
apartment.  The film climaxes in a very strange, but very
revealing interview with a reporter to whom he opens up in ways
both peculiar and enlightening.

Bertrand Bonello, both writer and director, shows us the texture
of Laurent's world in Paris, his life, and how he goes about the
creative process of making the film.  The theme of a respected
artist losing the esteem of his peers makes this film an
interesting pairing with JE RENTRE A LA MAISON which also played
at this year's Toronto Film Festival.  In other ways this film is
comparable to BOOGIE NIGHTS.

For the explicit sex scenes--ones that will very likely be trimmed
if this film is released in the United States--Bonello had to use
real pornography stars.  There is some irony that they would be
playing in the same film as the respected Jean-Pierre Leaud,
considered to be a major actor in France.  I rate the film a 6 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE ROAD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: A philandering Kazakhstan filmmaker must leave his modern
city and return to the rural countryside of his youth in order to
visit his ailing mother.  Along the way we see the world his
country has given him and the world he has made for himself.  This
film is a co-production of France, Japan, Kazakhstan, and the
Netherlands.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)

The same film in different countries will send different messages
and be a valuable viewing experience for different reasons.  Not
many Americans have much idea of what life is like in modern
Kazakhstan.  Are they just nomadic tribesmen?  Do they have modern
cities?  Ask most Americans and they would not know.  This film
follows a Kazak filmmaker in a journey to visit his ailing mother
and the film delves into his mind and his family problems, but for
an American viewer the film also is educational.  It is a view of
Kazakhstan as it is today.

The film follows Amir, a filmmaker in a major city of Kazakhstan.
Amir dreams of being highly respected in a position that does not
seem to get much respect in his country.  Amir is married with a
child, but he still has an eye for attractive women.  His wife
clearly knows that he is attracted to other women and it creates
tension.  He is a man who is more boy than man and lives life
without much thought for the consequences that may come crashing
down on him like the rock held by a troglodyte figure he uses to
decorate his bedroom.

Amir gets a message that his mother is ill.  He must go to visit
her.  This will mean a day-long drive from the city to the
countryside where Amir grew up.

As Amir drives he thinks about his work and about his life.  He
replays several times in his mind a scene in an upcoming film,
rearranging it and trying variations.  He thinks over a conflict
about a sex scene he has put in a recent film.  He wistfully
remembers a scene from his youth.

As Amir drives we see a subjective view through his windshield.
With him we see a transition from a modern city to a more
primitive countryside.  His son who watches Kung Fu movies and
wears a Michael Jordan T-shirt would have no place in the region
where his mother lives with its rural architecture and folk
customs.  The people he knew from his youth remain friends, but it
is clear there is resentment of him and his fancy Peugeot.

Director Darezhan Omirbaev's style is operatic and slow.  As the
film opens we see Amir in sleep and just dwell on him for several
beats.  We trace his morning routine.  At time the progress is
slow.  Other times the film is rich in insights.

THE ROAD shows us its character's outer landscape and his inner
landscape.  I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4
to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...



            All my life, affection has been showered upon me, and
            every forward step I have made has been taken in spite
            of it.
                                           --George Bernard Shaw

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/02/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 18

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 That Sad Time of Year (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Near Earth Experiences (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Fantasy and Horror from the Toronto International Film
		 Festival (film reviews of LE PACTE DES LOUPS,
		 THE BUNKER, EXTERMINATING ANGEL, and BUNUEL
		 AND KING SOLOMON'S TABLE by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC:  That Sad Time of Year (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Well, I guess Halloween is over for another year.  It is always a
little sad and melancholy when the Halloween season ends and the
Christmas season with its forced joy is bearing down on you.  Make
Halloween not just one day, but let it live in your heart all year
round.  Dwell on the gruesome.  Read obituary pages.  Be familiar
with the symptoms and course of plague, anthrax, and ebola.
Fondle venomous spiders and snakes.  Pick forest mushrooms and
give them as gifts.  Don't just know cancer's warning signs, but
practice them.  Paint your fingernails black.  Do whatever you
can.  Let's not let that Halloween spirit die.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Near Earth Experiences (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Last week I was talking about how I think that science fiction is
not producing as much of the idea stuff the way it did three
decades ago.  At one point one of its major functions was to play
with ideas generated by science and look at the implications of
those ideas.  A lot seems to be really fantasy in style, a lot is
social comment, a lot is war stories, and far too much is in
series.  But what I really bemoan is the lack of stories based on
recent findings in science.

In a sense you would think that the science fiction would almost
fall out of the science just as alternate histories should fall
out of the study of history.  In studying history there is little
point of learning that Napolean lost at Waterloo if you do not
look at what would have happened if he had won and how history is
different.  There may be a little more reason to learn the speed
of light for practical reasons, but the very phenomena should
suggest stories.  The physics student might likely also consider
how things would be different if the speed of light were a
different constant.  Books that look at basic changes to the
physics of our universe are John E. Stith's REDSHIFT RENDEZVOUS
and Alan Lightman's EINSTEIN'S DREAMS.  The first looks at the
subject of what would happen if some universal fundamental
constant were different, the latter looks at several.

The subject of fundamental constants is particularly on my mind
because of the news over the summer that the fine-structure
constant, which defines the strength of the interaction of light
and matter, might be better called the "fine-structure current
value."  Its value, which was the same wherever we see it, appears
to be a tiny amount different for very distant objects.  The
reason the number appears different may be because the objects
that exhibit the number are so old or because they are so distant
that perhaps that region of the universe has a different constant.
In any case the number has not changed very much if it really has
changed at all.  It is thought to have increased by about one
tenth of one percent of one percent.  That is not very much, but
when you are talking about something assumed to be a constant, it
is very much indeed.

Explaining exactly what the fine structure constant represents is
beyond the scope of this article and perhaps even that of my
understanding.  But it comes out of the interaction of light and
matter and measures the strength of that interaction and seems to
be very close to 1/137 (without any units) both before and after.
(Well I said it had not changed much.)

A major problem in studying this phenomenon is one of our vantage
point.  It is that we are so immobile in space and time, and
always will be.  Hence any measurements we might have are
extremely constrained.  That is one of the problems with physics.
In physics you are very restricted in the length of time you can
observe a phenomenon and are very restricted with the vantage
point.  If light traveling multi-parsec distances undergoes a red
shift proportional to the distance traveled would we ever realize
it?  Probably not.  We use the fact that it is fixed to make other
measurement.  Nothing guarantees that the frequency of light says
fixed.  Not as long as we can only observe in the relatively tiny
distances we will ever be able to travel.  At least I do not
believe we could tell.  If different parts of the universe had
different speeds for photons in gently undulating waves would we
notice?  Suppose that around Sirius light travels around 1.001C.
Maybe at Canus Major the speed is .99999C.  Could we ever tell
this was true?  Probably we would misattribute the difference to
motion.

But given our limited vantage point in space and in time, who is
to say what things we consider physical constants really are
constants through space and time?  How might the nature of energy
and matter be different if we could really see the universe end-
to-end and forward and backward in time rather than just look at
it through a peephole?  Will we ever be able to do that?  As Henry
asks at the end of THE LION IN WINTER, "What do you think are the
chances?"  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Fantasy and Horror from the Toronto International Film
Festival (film comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I previously did a piece on films of the supernatural at the TIFF.
The subject matter has some overlap with this week's selection of
films, but it was just the best way to break things down.  This
week I will discuss two delightful comedies, one made by Spanish
filmmaker Luis Bunuel and one featuring him as the main character.
Surprisingly enjoyable is Luis Bunuel's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL.
It sounds kind of bleak, but it really is a film of the same mold
as GROUNDHOG DAY.  BUNUEL AND KING SOLOMON'S TABLE is a
unique film from Spain that mixes comedy and a fascinating trio of
heroes.  Less delightful are two horror films, one from Britain,
one from France.  LE PACTE DES LOUPS has already been released in
France and has done very well in their domestic box-office.  THE
BUNKER is a very dour film about Nazis fighting the supernatural.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: LE PACTE DES LOUPS (THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF)  (film
review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: A strange and fearsome beast is preying on the peasants
of the Gevaudan region of France.  This is an extremely
frustrating film that tries very hard to create a 1760s period
feel and then scuttles it with anachronistic fighting techniques
and 20th Century attitudes and values.  Mostly this is just a
recombination of familiar elements.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4
to +4)

For a long time starting in the 1970s popular filmmakers were
avoiding making films set in historical periods.  The belief was
apparently that people were not being taught history as well in
schools and that the big money demographic as far as film
audiences were concerned, that is teenage boys, did not know much
about and hence could not identify with historical periods.  I
think someone must have realized that most teenage boys do not
know that much about Middle Earth either and that is not going to
get in the way of LORD OF THE RINGS.  So several adventure films
will be coming out soon set in historical periods.  The problem is
filmmakers realize that teenage boys still do not know much about
those periods so while the films may use the periods as exotic
settings, the films being set in these earlier times are not
necessarily historically accurate.  A prime example is Christophe
Gans's LE PACTE DES LOUPS which does a terrific job of recreating
the look of 1760s France and then adds martial arts, what looks
like wire-enhanced acrobatics, and characters with 21st century
values.

Some twenty-five years before the French Revolution, which would
bring upheaval to all of the country, a beast has come to the
rural Gevaudan region of France.  Over the course of three years
it has killed one hundred women and children.  To clear things up
Louis XV sends Fronsac, an ex-military naturalist.  With Fronsac
comes his faithful American Indian equal Mani, a great kickboxer
and a noble savage who happens to follow Fronsac around.  From the
beginning of his visit Fronsac and Mani are embroiled in local
conflicts.  Fronsac has his own ideas about the nature of this
strange creature that has killed so many.

The trailer tries to present the impression this is a film in the
vein of THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.  Perhaps that done with this
level of production values could have been a fresh and effective
film.  In fact, it is more like a warmed-over Sherlock Holmes
story done with some panache, but not enough to make it worth
while.  Initially the script generates some wonder at the nature
of this strange beast but the writing soon proves to be a real
disappointment.  The hero has 20th century thinking and values in
spite of the 18th century look.  The fight scenes do not help much
either.  The digital effects and what appears to be wirework do
not help.  Fights are unrealistically staged with gangs of
attackers conveniently coming on conveniently one at a time.

Director Christophe Gans shares writing credits with Stephane
Cabel.  The editing is by David Wu who also edited THE BRIDE WITH
WHITE HAIR, giving the viewer some idea what to expect from the
fight scenes.  The film may be edited down from the 142-minute
version playing at film festivals, which might be a bit long for
subject matter.

There is the germ of a good idea here, but in the writing all
sorts of commercial compromises were made to dumb the film down to
make it play better with wider audiences.  This is a film that
looks a whole lot better than it sounds.  My advice to American
viewers: just enjoy the art design and do not bother reading the
subtitles.  I give this film a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on
the -4 to +4 scale.

One side note: in the beginning of the film JAWS we see a woman
attacked near a buoy.  We do not see what is attacking her but she
seems two or three times to be tugged back and forth like she is
getting away and being pulled back.  She is flopped around like a
rag doll.  I was never sure what the shark was supposed to be
doing that would create this back-and-forth motion.  That scene is
imitated on dry land toward the beginning of this film and that
motion makes less sense on dry land.  In neither film when you see
the creature is that movement repeated.  It just does not seem
that motion would result from the attack.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE BUNKER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This horror film set in a Nazi bunker.  In the closing
days of World War II, German troops hide in a defensive bunker as
the Americans advance on their position.  But some supernatural
threat may be worse than the enemy.  The film offers more mayhem
than suspense and does not really work beyond the "something scary
in the dark" level.  Rating: 3 (0 to 10), -1 (-4 to +4)

I once observed that it was wrong to tell ethnic or gender jokes,
but that it was a shame since some of them actually are funny.  So
there should be a way to sanitize the jokes without losing the
humor.  The way to do that I suggested was to change them all to
"bigot" jokes.  I mean use the jokes to make fun of bigots.
Nobody, I said, is going to go out of his way to defend bigotry.
There are few categories of people that nobody defends.  Nazis are
one.  People may complain about a violent and bloody gore-fest
horror film if the victims are American teenagers.  But nobody
feels to bad if eldritch forces vent their hostility on Nazis.  It
almost to be a form of justice.  That is what THE BUNKER does.  It
does not develop its characters; it does not have any message
beyond "don't be a Nazi"; it portrays no emotions beyond hatred,
fear, and paranoia.  The plot is just a mechanism to put Nazis in
a confined space and have supernatural forces and their own fear
kill them.

In the late days of the war in Europe a detachment of German
soldiers have found a bunker deep in the German forest.  A few
Germans are already holding the bunker, but they seem more like
"the walking wounded," burned out by their experiences.  The
Americans are moving on this location, so the German soldiers must
decide if they must hold the bunker and the tunnels underneath,
dug by slave labor, or if they should use them to escape.  But
escape in the tunnels may not be such a good idea.  There seems to
be some sort of supernatural force in the dark.  If the current
events did not scare them enough, there is the stormy weather and
the dankness of the surroundings and the locals' ghost stories
about this part of the forest.  And of course their fears are
justified soon in the best tradition of haunted haus films.

Unless you count bodies, the pace of the film is rather slow.  THE
BUNKER is heavy on atmosphere but weak on real plot.  Clive
Dawson's screenplay under Rob Green's direction should have been
better able to use the premise of the characters being Nazis.
Considering the horrors of Germany in the Second World War the
problems faced by the Germans are tame compared to the horrors
they inflicted on others.  Even Rod Serling used the premise to
better effect multiple times in Twilight Zone episodes.

I suppose this film is better than a film with a stalker with a
hook or a knife going after teenagers.  But perhaps what makes THE
BUNKER a disappointment is that it does have decent production
values in the service of what is basically just grind 'em up plot
with plenty of gunfire but without a whole lot of characterization
beyond the uniforms.  In fact, the uniforms make it harder to keep
the characters straight.  It would be hard enough to identify with
these characters if the viewer liked them.  I found myself rooting
for the supernatural whatsis.

Atmosphere is added by making even the fully lit scenes seem dim.
With some care taken for the visual values THE BUNKER still fails
to have much in the way of new ideas or even suspense.  I have
seen positive comments about this film, but THE BUNKER seems to be
a prime example of a film that is full of sound and fury but which
signifies nothing.  I rate it 3 on the 0 to 10 scale and a -1 on
the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: EXTERMINATING ANGEL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This is Luis Bunuel's strange and humorous attack on the
upper classes in Mexico.  After a dinner party the guests find a
strange force will not let then leave.  Instead their refined ways
are deconstructed.  This is a weird but likable fantasy.  Rating:
7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

It is going to be a marvelous party.  All of the upper crust in
town is invited.  In the host's house the servants are working
overtime to prepare.  Well, not all of them are preparing.  Some
just want to walk out of the house.  They are not sure why they
feel compelled to leave, but they are willing even to lose their
jobs just to get out of the house.

The marvelous guests arrive and have charming witty conversation.
The party is so nice that they cannot bring themselves to leave.
Soon it is clear something out of the ordinary is going on.
People now want to leave, but cannot bring themselves to cross the
threshold.  Hours turn into days and food and water are running
out.  Still the guests are compelled by force or forces unknown to
stay and continue the party.  Soon sickness and death will follow
if they cannot leave.

Luis Bunuel's films are noted for their bizarre twists on reality.
This 1956 low-budget, black-and-white fantasy from Mexico takes a
nasty bite out of the upper class.  While it was filmed in Mexico,
there is little visual clue of its country of origin.  It could
take place any big city of America or Europe.  The conflicts
Bunuel is commenting on are those of class and not nations.  He
deconstructs the upper classes of society and tests them under
stress in ways they could not be tested in the real world.

It is interesting to see the mechanics by which the sinister
barrier seems to work.  The characters see themselves as trapped
and even are dying as a result. On one level they want to leave.
Still, physically they cannot force themselves to make the exit.
It is almost as if they have become addicted to being in the house
as if it were a drug they abhor but are physically unable to give
up.  Perhaps this was even intended to be a metaphor for drug
addiction, which would be similarly destructive.  Eventually the
victims degenerate into barbaric behaviors for their habit.
Meanwhile people outside want to get in, but they are tied up with
the official bureaucracy.  The local government, with concern for
safety matters is controlling entrance.  The simple action of
stepping across a threshold is seemingly forever forestalled.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, if made today, might be considered a
light comic fantasy on the level of a GROUNDHOG DAY.  For its time
is was a startlingly different classic from a great experimental
director.  I would give it a rating of 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and
a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  It was shown at the Toronto
International Film Festival as a companion piece to BUNUEL AND
KING SOLOMON'S TABLE.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: BUNUEL AND KING SOLOMON'S TABLE (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: In the 1930s Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, and Federico
Garcia Lorca join forces and have an Indiana-Jones-style adventure
looking for one of the great (non-existent) treasures of history.
The feel is a little like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.  But the pace
is slower.  There are some sly comic touches.  The film was made
for the 100th anniversary of Bunuel's birth in the year 2000.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)

The story is told in flashback as an elderly Luis Bunuel remembers
his adventures with his friends and plans to film them.  In the
years just prior to the Spanish Civil War three internationally
respected artists: Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, and Federico Garcia
Lorca have a wild film serial adventure looking for a mythical
artifact that allows one to look into time.  The table is given a
history that would make the Maltese Falcon green with envy.  With
a bizarre sense of fun co-writer and director Carlos Saura throws
in anachronisms, jokes about the making of the film itself, film
references, and a beautiful sense of elegant photography.  The
story is told in flashback as Bunuel's reminiscences.  The present
time flows into the 1930s and passersby seem to know about films
Bunuel would make in the future and about the making of this very
film.  Meanwhile we are treated to the comical repartee of three
slightly mad geniuses as they go on their madcap quest through
mystical Toledo, Spain, with its strange dark rooms and corridors,
fighting mysterious foes, and seeing incredible sights.  Some of
the visual ideas have a ring of Monty Python; some are state-of-
the-art visual effects.  While a few of the images lack sufficient
imagination, others are delightful and some astonish.  Set design
is by the remarkable Jose Hernandez.  The score, featuring a
flamenco motif, is by Roque Banos.

Saura has filled the film with interesting images, but he has a
pacing problem.  Basically, the story bogs down in the middle act
and does not progress for a good long time.  The film shown at the
Toronto International Film Festival at 9 AM on September 10.  That
is just 24 hours before the terrorist attacks.  This coincidental
incident put its secret religious spy networks into a wholly
unintended and unfortunate context.  Some slightly anti-Semitic
comments take on a much more serious aspect in retrospect.

This is a fresh and exciting fantasy film.  I give it a 7 on the 0
to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Admiration, noun. Our polite recognition of another's
	    resemblance to ourselves.
					   --Ambrose Bierce

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/26/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 17

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Quotes from Toronto (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Series SF (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 FROM HELL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Asian War Epics from the Toronto International Film
		 Festival (film reviews of ASOKA, BANG RAJAN:
		 THE VILLAGE WARRIORS, and MUSA--THE WARRIOR by
                 Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Quotes from Toronto (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

A special feature from the Toronto International Film Festival
this issue.  These are actual lines overheard from other people
waiting for films.

"When I eat at McDonalds I get the shakes."

and

"You make fun of a guy's nipple ring, all of a sudden you aren't
invited to the wedding."

[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Series SF (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

We recently were in the little town of Bucksport, Maine and having
a little time to kill we dropped into the bookstore on their main
street.  In the science fiction section we should have known what
to expect, but were still a little disappointed.  Everything we
saw was part of a series or a spin-off of a movie or something of
the sort.  Now this is really a little odd.  If you look at the
mainstream section there are almost no series.  The state of
general fiction is like the state of science fiction in the
Sixties.  I hasten to add this is a good thing.  In mainstream
fiction authors have an idea and write a novel.  There are very
few series.  If the novel is popular, they may write another novel
but it usually will not have the same characters or premise.  And
the novels are frequently about 350 pages.  In science fiction we
get too much of the same thing over and over.  We get Star Trek
book after Star Trek book after Star Trek book.  If that is not
too much of the same thing we also get newer wider books, books
two inches thick from authors like Robert Jordan.  Good writers
are succinct, but modern science fiction and fantasy writers are
paid by the length and you can tell.  It is not that the other
sorts of books are not available.  They are.  But you have to go
to the bigger bookstores to find them.  Even there the better
stuff is being choked out by Star Wars novels and the Terry
Pratchett stories.

The common wisdom of science fiction fans is that this sorry state
is the fault of publishers who only want to publish safe bet
novels.  Science fiction conventions love to have panels talking
about what is going wrong.  Of the triad of writers, publishers,
and readers, publishers are the least well represented at the
conventions so usually publishers get the blame at these panels.
I am sure that when writers and publishers get together in
conference, it is the readers who become the villains.

My (rhetorical) question today is why is the same problem not
happening with mainstream fiction?  I think I have an answer.
What is happening may be the result of literary movements in
science fiction.  In the 40s more than the 50s, and the 50s more
than the 60s, and the 60s more than the 70s, science fiction was a
fun genre.  It was a literature of ideas.  The free play of
concepts was the attraction of most science fiction.  Starting
about 1970 or so science fiction writers got a lot more into
literary style.  Thomas Disch coined the phrase "the tyranny of
ideas."  He asked, "Why do science fiction writers feel they have
to write about ideas?"  My answer, then as now, was that they
don't.  They can write about kidney disease if they like, but who
is going to want to read it?  Many writers, especially those under
the narcissistic banner of "the new wave" borrowed, I believe,
from French cinema, decided they should be writing books that were
literary experiments.  Science fiction novels should be elevating.

Suddenly it was quite possible for a teenage fan to buy a science
fiction novel and to just not be able to understand what it was
all about.  Reading science fiction frequently became like an
exercise from English class.  To a number of fans this was good
news.  They wanted their books to be more challenging to read.
Unfortunately this sort of reader was really in a small minority.
A large proportion of the readers want to buy novels that will
play with their imagination about the universe, not about literary
style.  These were book by writers like Van Vogt, Simak, Asimov,
Wyndham, Del Rey, de Camp, Clarke, and perhaps above all Heinlein.

While some writers were becoming more literary, others decided
they wanted to use science fiction as a social force.  Novels came
along with strong social messages.  These messages were all very
good ones (well, usually) but they were as much fun as sitting in
church and listening to sermons.  A lot of the youth audience was
lost.  Science fiction in the 1970s and 1980s was a lot more
serious and literary than science fiction in the 1940s and 1950s,
but it was not nearly as much fun.  In the later years it was
harder to pick up a science fiction novel at random and know it
would be a pleasurable experience.

The publishers took a look at McDonalds and the money they were
making by turning out a dependable product time after time after
time.  Every time you buy a McDonalds hamburger it will be an
enjoyable experience a lot like the last time you bought a
McDonalds hamburger.  It will not be a great experience, but you
know ahead of time what you are getting.  If you buy a Star Trek
novel you know you will understand the universe in which the story
is set.  You know the writing will be in plain prose.  Publishers
have found that if they want to sell books they have to guarantee
that the reader will understand what is going on the book.  They
have to link into previous reasonably happy science fiction
experiences.

What we are really seeing is something of a polarization of
science fiction.  Where most of what was being written was kinda
fun and kinda good, now you have a lot of obviously edifying but
not so much fun authors (in my opinion) like Gene Wolfe, Samuel
Delaney, John Crowley, David Zindell.  But where the real money
is, the teenage reader, the books are obviously in clearly
recognizable packages.  At twnety feet you can probably recognize
a Terry Pratchett book, a Star Trek book, and a Star Wars book.
You can recognize a Robert Jordan book just from its heft.  These
are what sell the best, and these are what you find in bookstores
like the one in Bucksport, Maine.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: FROM HELL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: The Jack the Ripper story is back in the public eye with
a new film directed by the Hughes Brothers.  The story is
stylishly told and the telling is fairly accurate except for the
needless adding of supernatural elements.  In spite of being based
on a graphic novel, the film is nearly a remake of 1979's MURDER BY
DECREE.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

Most people know the name Jack the Ripper, the killer who murdered
five prostitutes in London's East End in 1888.  It is a little
hard to account for what made Jack the Ripper the most famous
serial killer of his type of all time.  Certainly his nickname
helped to capture the public's imagination.  The area of London's
East End also adds some romance to the story, though as this new
version of the story points out, the East End was more squalid
than romantic in 1888.  Also it happened in England.  Somehow,
perhaps because of the presence of the media, what happens in
Britain or the US becomes much more of a world event than what
happens in, say, the Botswana or Indonesia.  In any event the Jack
the Ripper case has become mythic around the world.  The Ripper
murders have been the subject of several films.  As retellings of
the events of the case go, FROM HELL is one of the more accurate.
The most obvious deviation from facts of the case history is to
take one of the major figures in the investigation, Inspector
Frederick George Abberline and cross him with Sax Rohmer's "Dream
Detective."  Under the influence of opium he receives psychic
messages in the form of images relevant to the crime.  The real
Abberline would probably not have been amused.

London's East End in 1888 already seems like a corner of hell for
the prostitutes like Mary Kelly (played by Heather Graham) who ply
their sad trade in the streets and alleys.  There is hardly enough
profit in their work to feed themselves.  Making matters worse
gangs of thugs shake them down for the little money they do make
on threat of being cut with sharp knives.  And now someone else
really is carving up prostitutes in a series of killings the
papers call "the Ripper murders."  Inspector Frederick George
Abberline (Johnny Depp) is investigating the crimes but does not
inspire much confidence in the likes of Mary Kelly.  And the fact
he gets most of his best clues from opium dreams and absinthe
laced with laudanum does not inspire his superiors either.
Abberline investigates with the help of Police Sergeant Peter
Godley (Robbie Coltrane) whose combination of disdain for his
habits and concern for Abberline is one of the best things about
FROM HELL.

In this very dark view of late 19th century London Jack the
Ripper's cruelty would almost be a redundancy, but he rises above
it as the most vicious force of all.  Certainly London is a most
threatening landscape.  It seems to be composed of victims and
predators, the latter mostly all with sharp knives.  We even have
contemporary John Merrick, the famous Elephant Man, thrown into
the story.

The production is film on a very large set that apparently was
built in the Czech Republic.  Peter Deming, who also filmed EVIL
DEAD II and recently MULHOLLAND DRIVE, kept the scenery and
photography dark to match the tone.  The film intentionally dwells
on unpleasant images and increasingly more gore.  The disagreeable
images however do not extend to the female lead who seems
unrealistically intact considering the lifestyle she has led as an
East End prostitute.  That makes her the one actor who is
incongruous in a role and it probably because the female lead had
to be made appealing to the audience.  She is almost as out of
place as the horrible song over the end credits.  The latter is
jarringly badly chosen.

Part of where this version falls down is in its presentation of
the Ripper Case as a puzzle.  I am told that in the graphic novel
by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell on which the film is based that
the reader knows from the start who the killer really is.  The
Hughes brothers (MENACE II SOCIETY) have not taken that approach
but intended to leave it as a mystery until the last part of the
film.  This was not very well done and the real killer is not well
concealed.  Speaking for myself from the moment of presenting the
character who would who would in fact be the Ripper, that was who
I fully expected it would be.  Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias's
script while good and professional in some other ways is
amateurish at making the story a real puzzle.

Another problem is that there is too much that is familiar in FROM
HELL, even given that it is based on a real case.  This story is
made of factual and fictional elements.  Not only almost all of
the factual but also many of the fictional elements seem present
in a previous film MURDER BY DECREE, which pitted Sherlock Holmes
against Jack the Ripper.  In that film Holmes used the help of a
psychic who sees the murders in his dreams much as Abberline does.
Many of the same clues are mentioned in each film.  Many of the
same clues go unmentioned in each film.  It is almost certainly
true that MURDER BY DECREE was much of the inspiration for the
graphic novel on which FROM HELL was based.

FROM HELL is effective as a macabre history, as a horror story,
and a little less so as a mystery.  It dependence on the
supernatural, however, unnecessarily spoils the credibility of
carefully achieved accuracy.  I rate it an 7 on the 0 to 10 scale
and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Asian War Epics From The Toronto International Film
Festival (film comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I have to admit having a special fondness for historical action
and adventure films.  Second only to films of the fantastic, are
films of historical periods and armies facing each other.  I guess
I probably like them both for some of the same reasons, the escape
into a world of action and adventure.  But be it LAWRENCE OF
ARABIA, THE WAR LORD, GETTYSBURG, CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER, or
whatever, there is something fascinating about seeing other people
fight.  And since I was brought up on Western history, it is of
particular interest to see war films from Asia so that there is
the novelty of seeing a different culture at war.  This year's
TIFF offered three epics: ASOKA from India, BANG RAJAN: THE LEGEND
OF THE VILLAGE WARRIORS from Thailand, and MUSA--THE WARRIOR from
South Korea.

ASOKA

CAPSULE: Fanciful retelling of the story of Asoka, the Emperor who
conquered India and then spread Buddhism.  This film has unusually
rich production values for a Hindi film and tells his life as a
love story between two young people.  The real content of the film
is the fictionalized romance and any historical detail is little
more than a plot complication.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

Who was Asoka?  Americans may be vaguely aware that the name Asoka
(or Ashoka) is venerated by Indians.  (In the US it seems to be a
common name for Indian restaurants.)  Asoka is for India
approximately what King Arthur was for Britain.  He was the third
emperor in the Maurya (Peacock) Dynasty.  His grandfather,
Chandragupta Maurya, was the first great conqueror in the
subcontinent since Alexander the great and unified much of the
area we now think of as Northern India.  He left his son Bindusara
to rule after him.  When Bindusara, in turn, was dying his son
Asoka murdered all rival princes but Asoka's brother.  This bit of
barbarity did not sit well with the people and it was four years
before Asoka was allowed to ascend the throne and become King of
Magadha.  After eight years of rule, he began his campaign of
extending his empire by warring on the neighboring kingdom of
Kalinga.

Asoka nearly finished the job of conquest of by spreading his
empire to all of the subcontinent, as well as parts of
Afghanistan, the Himalayas, Nepal, Kashmir, and the Swat Valley.
But to hold power he had to change his image.  Once he had
conquered he won support by cultivating a character of
righteousness and promulgating Buddhism, though little is known if
he himself actually even adopted the religion.  However, while he
formerly was known as Asoka the Fierce (Chandashoka) he now became
Asoka the Righteous (Dharmashoka).  He tried to be a ruler that
the people would want, working for civil improvement.  Asoka set
up systems of communication, provided trees along roads to comfort
travelers.  He provided medical facilities for men and animals,
and championed religious tolerance.  His edicts, carved in stone
throughout the empire, became the most lasting reminder of his
reign.  In fact though he ruled roughly from 272 to 242 B.C., his
legend was not written until the second century A.D.  The Greek
historians never mention him and even the Brahman's do not mention
him, but he is a Buddhist legend.  It has been pointed out that
more people remember his name than those of Caesar or Charlemagne.

Sadly, much of this is incidental to the film.  The telling of the
story of Asoka is as fanciful and has as little relation to real
history as the film CAMELOT.  Instead, the film ASOKA becomes in
large part a (temporarily) tragic love story.  The film begins
with Asoka (Shah Rukh Khan), a young prince, being given a sword
that is as much a demon as it is a sword.  He is told he will be
great and goes to claim that heritage.  He finds it is all too
easy to use his sword in palace intrigues.  As a result he chooses
for himself a sort of voluntary exile and what Australians would
call a walkabout.

While on his sojourn he happens to see and instantly fall in love
with a dancing princess.  She is Kaurwaki (Kareena Kapoor).  He
also makes friends with a Buddhist holy man who plants the seeds
of Asoka's later historic transformation to Buddhism.  As he
travels we see his tempestuous nature that will lead him to become
the fierce conqueror.  Both transformations wait until late into
the 150-minute film.

Santosh Sivan who directs and co-wrote the film gives the film a
very nicely polished or frequently even a lush sumptuous look.
Until recently Asian films have not seemed to go in a big way for
spectacular large-scale battle scenes.  Now Chinese and Indian
filmmakers are recognizing that they can stage historical
spectacle more economically than their Hollywood counterparts.
Sivan takes a while but does give us some big battle scenes.  The
film opens more with a flare of fantasy in a style reminiscent
perhaps of a Sinbad film.  The music is by Anu Malik, whose songs
do not really help the period feel, but are quite pleasant.  I
rate ASOKA a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4
scale.

Americans without much experience with Indian films should expect
some stylistic differences.  Acting is occasionally overdone by
American standards.  That is just the art form.  Music is a very
integral part of Indian films, much more than American films.  A
friend liked the film but expressed some frustration that the
action would stop inappropriately for what appeared to be embedded
music videos, sometimes with music and dancing that seemed very
wrong for the period.  This too is really part of the art form.
Think of it as seasoning added to the meat of the story.  In fact
as a nice souvenir the songs of almost any major film are
available in Indian music stores and even groceries on audio
cassettes for only two or three dollars.  It is a real bargain.
Much of the music easily becomes very likable.

BANG RAJAN: THE LEGEND OF THE VILLAGE WARRIORS

CAPSULE: This is a Thai film commemorating a heroic village who
resisted the Burmese armies invading Siam in 1765.  The style of
the film is crude but promising.  As international historical
films go, this seems like a low-budget epic that somehow does not
grab the imagination quite like a Kurosawa might, but still has
well-executed moments.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)

In the mid-18th century certain provinces of Burma resisted the
central government.  These provinces needed outside support and
got much of their support from the neighboring country of Siam
(now Thailand).  When a new ruler of Burma came to power his first
priority was to subdue rebellious provinces and his second was to
punish Siam for supporting the revolt.  In 1765 he sent two armies
into Siam to capture the capital, Ayudhaya.  The two armies were
intended to converge on the capital, but only one arrived.  One
army was held up by the resistance of a single tenacious Siamese
village, Bang Rajan.  This village has become legendary in
Thailand as sort of a Siamese Alamo.  This film is the story of
the Bang Rajan resistance.

In the film the village knows the Burmese are approaching and
chooses Taen as their leader against the Burmese.  The village
also asks Chan, a non-villager, to help.  Chan is a cagey veteran
fighter who lives in the local woods.  Chan's strength of spirit
and his resolve seems to be symbolized by an unusual huge mustache
that looks like the horns of a water buffalo.  Chan brings with
him to the fight a group of fighters and trains the village how to
fight.  The village asks Ayudhaya for assistance to fight off the
enemy in the form of cannons, but Ayudhaya offers no help so the
villagers have to forge their own weapons.  Meanwhile the village
grows as neighbors join Bang Rajan for protection and to fight.
But will they be able to overcome the formidable Burmese forces?

This is a historical war film but it is very differently in style
from a RAN or KAGEMUSHA.  Akira Kurosawa, in his films, makes the
most of military regalia, armor, weapons, and local architecture.
Thanit Jitnukul, who directed BANG RAJAN, cannot make his films as
picturesque and hence cannot create the same sort of feel.  His
heroes are simple villagers.  Chan fights in open shirt and
loincloth.  Typical weapons are arrows, axes, and machetes.  The
battle strategy is something like "each man must run at the enemy
and kill as many as possible."  Somehow it is harder to make these
crude forest battles look as impressive as Japanese or Korean Clan
Wars or horseback battles of kingdoms in India.  Also the film
style is much cruder.  At least twice in the fighting mud is
splashed on the camera lens.  Most filmmakers would have edited
that part out.  The music by Chatchai Pongprapaphan is, however,
powerful and exciting.  The production cost $1.3M, which I am told
is the cost of four typical Thai films, but in Thailand it has
grossed the most of any domestic film ever.  That is partially
fueled by current tensions on the Burma-Thailand border.  In fact
this film is considered to be part of the provocation for those
tensions.

The story of Bang Rajan Village is known to every school child in
Thailand.  Tanit Jitnukul directs and co-authors this new film,
bringing the story to an international audience.  I rate it a 6 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

MUSA--THE WARRIOR

CAPSULE: In 1375 a delegation of Korean diplomats traveling in
China are caught between the warring Mings and Yuans and have to
fight their way to safety in this Anabasis-like tale.  Along the
way they pick up and must defend a Chinese princess.  A lot of
action but not a strong plot.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to
+4)

Following the success of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, more
attention is being given to Asian historical epics, particularly
those with a lot of fighting.  This has been a niche market since
Akira Kurosawa's YOJIMBO and SANJURO, but it is as respectable and
popular today as it has ever been.  South Korea is attempting to
get into that market with a respectable historical action film,
MUSA--THE WARRIOR.

In 1375 the Yuan Dynasty of China has recently fallen.  The Ming
have taken their place.  But in the out-lands the Ming and Yuan
still battle each other.  The envoy of the Ming to Korea was
murdered prior to the events of this story and Korean delegation
has been sent to China in an effort to mollify the Mings.  That
delegation disappeared from history.  MUSA--THE WARRIOR is a
fictional story of what may have happened to that mission.

In the film the group is let into a trap by the Mings.  They are
disarmed and accused of treachery against the ruling Mings.  Their
punishment is to be abandoned in the middle of a remote desert
ruled by Yuan troops and left for dead.  The Koreans decide they
have to fight their way back to Korea.  As the Korean diplomats
are killed in battle or by the trek, a determined leader, Choi
Jung, decides that the men must be pushed, but he will get them
back to Korea.  Without mercy he drives the remaining men through
the desert on their way toward Korea and safety.  Among the
Koreans is the dying Lee Jee-Hun.  He frees his powerful slave
Yoh-Sol, but the other Koreans still treat him and consider him as
a slave in spite of his prowess as a fighter.  The adventures they
have along the way are very typical for this sort of film.  A
troop of Yuans have captured the beautiful Ming princess PuYong.
Yoh-Sol, a master of the spear, rescues the princess and in so
doing makes an enemy of the Yuans.  (Do princesses in carts ever
get where they were intended to go?)  The story follows the
attempts of the Koreans to make their way back home surrounded by
enemies.

The martial arts here seem relatively untainted by fakery.  There
is no wirework.  For some reason, the director (Kim Sung-su who
also wrote the screenplay) shows many of the fight scenes at eight
or perhaps twelve frames per second.  Why this convention is
becoming popular, I am not sure.  I first noticed it in GLADIATOR
but it seems more distraction than anything else.  There seem to
be many battles and repeated scenes of people getting arrows
through the head or neck.  At 154 minutes, this is a longish film.
I rate the film a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4
to +4 scale. My interpretation of the title was that Musa would be
some character's name.  However, there is no character named Musa
anywhere in the film.  I now suspect that Musa may be Korean for
"warrior."  [-mrl]

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Democracy is a process by which the people are free
            to choose the man who will get the blame.
                                           -- Laurence J. Peter

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/19/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 16

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Contributions
	 Parallel Footprints (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 IRON MONKEY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
	 More Films from the Toronto International Film Festival
		 (film reviews of WAKING LIFE, WHO IS CLETIS TOUT?,
		 and LAST ORDERS)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Contributions

When we (Mark and Evelyn) left Avaya/Lucent, we had to find new
homes for the books in the science fiction club library.  The
fiction books (about a thousand) were donated to the Holmdel
Public Library and the Monmouth County library system.  The
reference books were donated to the Science Fiction & Fantasy
Writers of America (SFWA) Medical Fund Auction.  At Worldcon,
the Contento index to anthologies brought $65.  The two-volume
Tuck encyclopedia was held over for a future auction.

The fund is used to help pay medical expenses for authors who
have no medical insurance.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Parallel Footprints (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I want to talk today about footprints.  In specific I want to talk
about dinosaur footprints.  When it comes to fossils of dinosaurs,
footprints definitely have in most people's minds a secondary
status.  What people like to see is fossilized bone.  That at
least looks like it was a part of the dinosaur (even if it really
was not).  They want to see some piece of the dinosaur itself to
spark their imagination.  Just knowing a dinosaur walked here and
the shape of its foot seems less exciting than finding some big
bone that will allow us to marvel at the size.

The fact remains that some very interesting information can be
gleaned from dinosaur footprints.  You can judge how fast a
dinosaur ran by looking at the length of his stride.  Once you
know that you can also judge how much energy the beast had.  Once
you have that knowledge you have a much better idea whether is was
a slow-moving, cold-blooded creature or a fast-moving, warm-
blooded animal.  But the single most amazing thing I remember ever
hearing about dinosaurs has recently come from dinosaur
footprints.

The following is quoted from the article "Social Behavior in
Dinosaurs" by Lynne M. Clos.  "The Triassic rocks on Mt. Tom, near
Holyoke, Massachusetts preserve 28 parallel trackways made by
tridactyl bipeds. The likelihood of this many parallel trails
occurring randomly is minuscule, and the rare trails which do not
follow the trend preclude the possibility of a restricted
corridor."

Think about what that is saying.  They found 28 sets of parallel
tracks.  That seems to mean the tracks were all made at the same
time by 28 of a species walking in a line, shoulder to shoulder.
At a panel at the recent World Science Fiction Convention a
paleontologist said they even wheeled around a turn.  The ones
toward the outside walking further and faster to maintain the
line.  One place one of them missed his footing and fell out of
line knocking two others out of line.  They got back in line.
This is pretty amazing behavior.

Why would they do that?  Why would dinosaurs walk abreast?  Well
they probably were something like hadrosaurs.  Those were
duckbilled dinosaurs.  Individually they did not have a whole lot
of defense mechanisms.  They did not have sharp horns or sharp
teeth or spikes.  They could probably scratch a little, but that
was about all.  One hadrosaur was pretty much meat on the hoof for
any passing predator.

On the other hand a predator would have to think twice about
attacking a line of 28 hadrosaurs.  It is a really good defensive
strategy.  They could put the weak and the young toward the center
where they were the best protected.  There are some really good
reasons why they would walk abreast.  There is only one reason why
they would not.  To walk abreast like that requires organization
and intelligence.  We are talking about a bunch of reptiles here.
When do humans walk 28 abreast?  Prehistoric man did not do that
that we know of.  The ancient Egyptians may have walked 28 abreast
under certain circumstances.  The adjective that comes to mind is
"military."  Humans did it only when they thought about it and
realized it had tactical advantages.  Perhaps that is over-
anthropomorphizing them.  But it is a posture that demonstrates
organization and intelligence.  Clos calls it herding, but it
sounds to me to be too organized for simple herding.  Cows herd
but they don't do it in formation.  Birds, the descendants of
dinosaurs, may fly in formation but for each bird it is only to
take advantage of the air currents that the bird ahead is making.
There is nothing like that in the case of walking dinosaur.  No
contemporary animal I know (except humans) walks in formation.
The finding of parallel footprints raises the intelligence level
of prehistoric reptile above the level of any current animals and,
in fact, above prehistoric man.  If they had the reasoning power
to walk in formation for defensive purposes, or for whatever
purposes occurred to them, what other pieces of reasoning were
they capable of that did not make it into the fossil record?
[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: IRON MONKEY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: IRON MONKEY is a movie that is easier to like than to
respect.  It has a plot that could easily have been a Zorro
episode but is reframed as Chinese martial arts.  There is lots of
action but if you are old enough to read the subtitles, you have
probably seen much of the plot before. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4
to +4)

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON was the most successful foreign-
language film ever released in the United States.  It combined a
story of some sophistication with some historical spectacle and
more than a little martial arts action including some incredibly
graceful wirework.  While the market for martial arts films is
still hot other distributors want to cash in.  Action films like
THE MUSKETEER are throwing in wirework in places where it does not
belong.  One previously released film featuring martial arts on
and off a wire has gotten a new lease on life.  The film is IRON
MONKEY.  It is a nice polished production from Tsui Hark, who
produced the CHINESE GHOST STORY films and WICKED CITY.
Superficially it looks like it is in the same class as CROUCHING
TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.  It has the acrobatics and the elegant
photography.  But it lacks the plot subtlety.  In fact, the
plotting bears no small resemblance to an episode from the
adventures of that American hero from old California, El Zorro.

In IRON MONKEY, a corrupt governor rules a village and oppresses
the innocent peasants forcing high taxes on them.  The governor
needs to tax the peasants mercilessly to support his expensive and
selfish life style including gourmet food for himself and his nine
beautiful wives.  The one thorn in the governor's side, beside his
comically inept captain of the guards, is a masked bandit who, in
classic tradition, steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
Wherever there is injustice, Iron Monkey seems to know it and is
there to flip into action and clobber evildoers with ultra-perfect
kung fu style.  Nobody knows that Iron Monkey is in reality the
timid-seeming village doctor and the Monkey's sidekick is the
doctor's beautiful assistant.  Iron Monkey is put into danger when
another medical man comes to the village with a son.  In addition
to the healing arts, they are also secretly expert in the martial
arts.  They can cure or clobber.  They seem to be good, but their
loyalties give the impression of being with the evil governor.

The screenplay, a product of four credited writers, has more than
a few plot holes and contrivances.  A character only has to claim
to be oppressed, truthfully or not, and immediately the Iron
Monkey comes to her aid.  In one case a woman only utters the
words and the Monkey is there.  To give the film a one-up on other
martial arts films even the Shao-Lin monks whose heroic virtue is
lauded in so many martial arts films have been turned to the dark
side by this evil governor.

Visually the film has a few problems.  The virtuosity of the
martial artists is clearly excellent, but too often they rely
rather obviously on wires to create an impressive appearance.
Another frequent but too obvious effect is to run the film
backwards.  Both of these effects are extremely detectable.
Wooden poles and pillars when struck like with a karate kick seem
to break in perfectly smooth saw cuts.  One more visual problem in
a different vein: Orchid, the Iron Monkey's assistant, can dress
as a man and even wear a fake mustache, but it still is hard to
believe the evil governor is fooled.

Director Woo-ping Yuen loses no opportunity to show off Chinese
dishes.  The governor is fond of shark fin soup.  The guards like
Dim Sum.  (Is this an anachronism?)  And Orchid likes to make
piquant meat dishes.  They seem to have people as adept in the
kitchen arts as others are in the martial arts.

If distributors are looking for a way to capture the fire of
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, they will probably have to make
new film.  IRON MONKEY just is not in the same class.  It is,
however, just about right for a Saturday matinee.  I rate it a 6
on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.  FYI: A
credit at the end says "Remembering Kevin Bartnof."  Who is that?
Kevin Bartnof died June 30, 2001, at the age of 43.  He had been a
foley artist (meaning he provided basic sound effects like
footsteps, doors closing, etc.) on major films like THE ABYSS,
SCHINDLER'S LIST, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and THE PERFECT STORM.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: More Films from the Toronto International Film Festival

As you may have noticed from previous weeks the films I am writing
about are all on a single theme.  I have broken the films I saw at
the TIFF into categories.  After I grouped films into categories
there were three films left over and I could not find a whole lot
to group them.  So I just had a grab-bag sort of collection.  I am
trying to publish the reviews before any of the films in that
category is released.  The first of the collection of three
miscellaneous films to be released is WAKING LIFE.  I think that
is being released this weekend.  So, here then are the films that
did not fit in with any other group.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: WAKING LIFE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: The first digital video animated film is an account of a
man going through his dreams listening to people talk about
dreams, dream states, and the nature of time and reality.  Some of
the speakers are philosophical, some highly speculative, and some
incoherent.  The undulating animation is at times irritating,
worse than hand-held cameras, but few films so revel in ideas.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

Not only is it rare to find a feature film like WAKING LIFE
itself, it is rare to find a feature film that is even plays in
stylistic fields this far from the norm.  First what is the film
about?  An unnamed character played by Wiley Wiggins talks to
people about the relationship and duality of dreams and waking
life.  Richard Linklater filmed with a hand-held camera Wiggins
and some people who talked to him and gave their views of reality.
The visual images were transferred to computer where animators
superimposed animation over Linklater's filmed images in a
technique like rotoscoping.  So we just have animated films of
Wiggins talking to many and various people about the nature of
dreams.  The film is little more than that.  Wiggins does little
of the talking.  He just listens with a "Wow!  Cosmic, Man!"
expression on his animated face.

The film is a symphony of ideas the viewer may not be able to hum
later.  The point is not assimilating all the ideas on one
viewing; it is to immerse the viewer in the flood of ideas.  I do
not believe that any of the people shown in the film are in any
way considered expert, but each has philosophy of sorts.  The
ideas are concepts of life, death, and time.  They are views of
dream and reality.  The ideas just interplay as we as an audience
in Wiggins's dream go from one person to the next.  We hear some
old chestnuts like that time is an illusion.  And probably no
matter who you are you hear some ideas that are new to you.

At some point one must discuss the artistic decision to animate
this film and to use the style of animation that was used.  I
think that the style that is used is near right, but on some level
it sabotages the effort.  It certainly gives the film the right
dreamlike quality.  Linklater himself says that he is going for
the feeling of being on drugs and made the film for people on
drugs.  If so I think he is also showing us a little of the
downside.  The images give motion where it is not needed.  At time
the scenery seems to undulate on dry land as if it were on an
ocean.  There it distracts rather than enhances.  Other places the
animation comments on the discussion, illustrating an idea here or
there or playfully turning the speakers into billows of clouds.
Linklater had the animation assignments broken down by character
and not by scene, an approach the better animation studios use
now.  That way stylistic differences become part of the character
rather than errors and inconsistencies.  It eliminates the need
for the director to police the style to maintain consistency.
Rather than the new very realistic animation styles this film
falls back on an easier impressionist approach.  But the people
are still recognizably the same people with the essence of their
expression still there in simplified form.

To tell too much of the ideas discussed would be a little like
revealing the jokes in a comedy.  One moment the person speaking
will be talking about the philosophy of Kierkegaard, the next the
subject will have gone to out of body experiences.  One person
will be talking about different concepts of life and the physical
universe; the next will be as concrete as giving ways to recognize
dreams.

The film was written as well as directed by Linklater though it
would be interesting to find how much of what he wrote was
transcription of conversation and how much was contributed by the
speakers.  One would be tempted to believe these are all
interviews with real people presented verbatim but for a scene of
actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, possibly playing their
characters from Linklater's BEFORE SUNRISE, also entering into the
discussion.  It is not at all obvious what it means to say the
screenplay is by Richard Linklater.  I would rate the film a 7 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: WHO IS CLETIS TOUT? (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This is (intended to be) a romantic comedy of an escaped
convict mistaken for a man wanted dead by gangsters.  Chris Ver
Wiel has several good ideas, but overall the film is very slight
and never really involves the viewer.  The characters are thin and
the writing is generally weak.  A few chuckles do not make WHO IS
CLETUS TOUT? worth seeing.  Rating: 5 (0 to 10), high 0 (-4 to +4)

This is the second film by Chris Ver Wiel and the fourth he has
written.  It seems to have gotten a quality production including
actors like Christian Slater, Richard Dreyfus, and Tim Allen, but
it still feels like a student production.  The opening credits
make this look like they expect it to be a madcap comedy, but
somehow the timing is off.  Instead of being offbeat it might
better be described as out of kilter.

A mob kill named Critical Jim (played by a miscast Tim Allen) is
holding the man he thinks is Cletis Tout.  He does not know that
Tout is actually dead and the man he is holding is actually Trevor
Finch (Christian Slater).  Finch is an escaped convict and a
forger who has taken the name of a dead man in the hope it would
keep him out of trouble.  It did not work.  Critical Jim likes old
movies (excessively) so Finch tells his story to Jim as if it were
an old movie.  I will not go into detail into the plot, but it
involves a botched robbery, an escape from a chain gang, a chase
after stolen diamonds, and a plan to break into prison.

Chris Ver Wiel wrote and directed and while the Toronto Film
Festival program book calls him a first time director, this is
actually the second film he has directed.  The film has the feel
of being pieces of ideas fitted together.  There is a little too
much violence for a light comedy.  You have actors each doing his
own thing and their performances not really working together.
Richard Dreyfus is mellow playing an older con with an interest in
stage magic, but when his magic comes into the plot it is in
unbelievable ways.  Portia de Rossi plays a sort of hardened woman
and love interest, but she has no chemistry with Slater.  The
characters are thin and not well developed.  RuPaul is thrown in
as a drag queen, but then not really used. People do things that
they never would do in real life and the film does nothing to help
us suspend our disbelief.  The whole film seems more like an
exercise in seeing if the writer has enough ideas tumbled together
to total to a feature length film.  They fall just a bit short.

The music by Randy Edelman is sufficiently bouncy. But Slater does
not carry the film and Portia de Rossi is not very interesting as
either a crook or a love interest.  This film aimed at being a
FOUL PLAY sort of film, but it never finds its pacing.  I give it
a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: LAST ORDERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Four close friends travel a day-long odyssey to scatter
the ashes of a recently deceased fifth friend.  As they travel
they think about the past and their relationship to the their
friend.  An excellent cast bring Graham Swift's novel to the
screen written and directed by Fred Schepisi.  This is a moving
look at the meaning of death.  Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to
+4)

In some ways film is more real than reality.  After seeing an
imaginary person on the screen for two hours one frequently can
have more of a feeling for that person than someone you met in
real life two hours before.  Perhaps it is because a good director
can show you more sides of a person and more of that person's
personality that you could see in that person's presence in a much
longer interval.

Early in LAST ORDERS you meet Ray, Vic, and Lenny (played by Bob
Hoskins, Tom Courtney, and David Hemmings).  They are three old
blokes hanging around a pub and drinking and remembering their
recently dead friend Jack (played by Michael Caine and J. J. Field
depending on how far back is the flashback).  As we soon find out
Jack has been cremated and his ashes are in the container the
three are toasting.  Jack's last trip will be that day.  He will
go to Margate, the resort area where he and his wife Amy
honeymooned.  There his friends will scatter his ashes into the
sea.

The three men and Jacks son set out in a car for Margate, each
talking about and thinking about the past.  Amy is not joining
them because she is visiting her mentally retarded daughter whom
Jack had rejected and who is in a home.  Amy is played by Helen
Mirren who previously has played so many glamorous roles.  This is
a remarkably unglamorous role for her.  So the men drive, talk,
and argue.  Through flashbacks we see their memories.  Some are
about the recent past and Jack's financial worries with a failing
butcher shop.  More often they go back to World War II.  Younger
actors are used for those much earlier times and do reasonable
impressions of the older versions of themselves.  These are people
who remember well because they have not much to show for those
times but memories.  This is a film about relationships and
endings.  The writing by Schepisi, based on the novel by Graham
Swift, is both delicate and sad.  Underscoring it is Paul
Grabowsky's melancholy score.

I rate it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4
scale.  [A personal note: As we were sitting at the Toronto
International Film Festival waiting for this film to start at 9:30
AM someone in the row ahead of us told us that a plane had crashed
into the World Trade Center.  I remembered that it had happened
during World War II with the Empire State Building, I thought
trying to picture the WTC with a hole in its side.  It was a
disaster, but it seemed also a bit of a novelty.  I would be
curious to see the films.  It did not enter my mind that the
incident could have been intentional.  When the film was over it
was announced that Schepisi would had canceled the question and
answer session due to "the events of the morning."  This must have
been a serious plane crash.  As I exited I heard that a second
plane had also hit the WTC.  That was when I knew the world had
changed.  I suspect each person in that audience that day will
think of the incidents of that day whenever they think of this
film.]  [-mrl]

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Democracy is a process by which the people are free
            to choose the man who will get the blame.
                                           -- Laurence J. Peter

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/12/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 15

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Topics:
	 Bad Sportsmanship (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Crime Films at the Toronto International Film Festival
		 (film review of HEIST, MULHOLLAND DRIVE,
		 NINE QUEENS, SILENT PARTNER, MR. IN-BETWEEN by
		 Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Bad Sportsmanship (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

In the movie BRAZIL there has been a terrorist bombing.  They show
some crusty expert being interviewed on television and being asked
what is behind the bombings.  He sagely responds "bad
sportsmanship."  It sounded funny at the time.  What is behind our
terrorism?  What is behind Muslim rage?  To try to explain it in a
few paragraphs is a fool's errand.  This is assuming even I
understand it, which I do not claim to do fully.  But let me take
a crack at my belief as to what it is all about.

Today Islam is the world's fastest growing religion.  But in a
broader sense it has declined a great deal.  There was a time when
Islam was by any objective standards the leading civilization on
the planet.  For about a millennium it had constantly grown and
outgrew all other civilization.  European civilization was small
by comparison and it was making inroads even there.  In
southwestern Europe their territory went as far north as parts of
France.  With a good deal of justification they saw themselves as
the center of truth and enlightenment.  And they still saw
themselves as surrounded by infidels and barbarians and it was
their duty to bring to the non-Islamic world the enlightenment
that they had and that Allah wanted for all.

Even then they saw as their chief challenging power Christian
Europe who also had a creed that wanted to conquer the world and
convert everybody.  It was inevitable that these two civilizations
would clash and when it happened it would be violent.  And of
course it was and that conflict continues.

Flash forward to the present.  European civilization, now also
including the United States, has greater power.  Islam still holds
many countries, but not a whole lot of power.  And even in the
countries it holds European ideas are taking hold.  Throughout the
Middle East people wear Levis, drink Coca-Cola, and watch American
movies and TV.  Islam has lost a huge piece of the territory it
once held.  Even in the countries that it holds Islam has lost
political control of its destiny.  More and more its decisions
have to be tempered with consideration of what the West thinks.
And even in their own homes Western ideas are creeping in.  The
Koran tells them that women should have very little control of
their destinies and must remain dominated by males.  This is very
important in the Koran.  Islam sanctions polygamy and the use of
concubines.  But American television which is so popular tells
their children that women are the equal and frequently even
smarter than men.  When America fought in the Middle East they
showed on the world television positive images of independent
women in military clothing doing the fighting.  This was a
powerful and to them threatening contrast to the Islamic message.

The great corrupting force, in the eyes of their clerics and as a
result their people, is the US.  The US is the Great Satan.  It is
not because they have such different values.  Europe has nudity on
commercial television and a much freer view of acceptable morals.
The United States is by comparison staid and morally conservative.
The proportions of atheists and agnostics are much lower in the US
than in Europe.  But the United States has economic power.  If the
message is more conservative than Europe's would be, the medium is
a lot more powerful.  The United States has the power to complain
about human rights in Islamic countries and even to interfere in
their politics.  America supports Israel, a country of infidels,
right here in the midst of Moslem countries.  Their goal is to re-
conquer all the lands they have lost and here in the center of
their territory is a country of infidels.  It is hole in the
Moslem world like the hole in the ozone layer.  Israel embraces
Western values and Western culture including Women's Liberation
and the country is economically successful much beyond the levels
of its Islamic neighbors.  The more the neighbors see people
prospering in spite of not following the Koran's teachings, the
more they struggle to remove it from their sight.  They want to
see Israel fail and if the natural forces of Allah are not doing
the job they will give them a push.  But so far even with their
help the great Allah seems powerless.  This enrages them.

All of this makes Moslems feel ineffective.  They are in a
competition and losing the game.  Americans by in large do not buy
their products, watch their programs, and Americans have much more
leverage about what happens in Moslem countries than Moslem
countries have in the US.  So what do they want to do?  They want
to slap America in the face.  The face of America is the Manhattan
skyline.  It has little to do with the real conflict.  They are
playing the game and are losing the game.  That frustrates them.
So what do they do?  They go beyond the usually accepted rules and
hit their opponent.  It is venting a rage like when one hockey
player hits another with his stick.  So the crusty expert in
BRAZIL had some truth.  Though it is a lot more serious there
really is something in the terrorism that is akin to what the
crusty old gent would call "bad sportsmanship."  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Crime Films at the Toronto International Film Festival

This week we take a look at crime and gangster films that are soon
to be released.  I cannot help but notice that the name of David
Mamet shows up several times in these reviews.  His is probably
the most respected name in crime film these days and certainly his
films are the standard by with others are measured.  This is both
for their gritty realism and his style of dialog.  Appropriately
enough we begin with a film written and directed by Mamet.

HEIST

CAPSULE: This is one of David Mamet's best.  It is a razor-sharp
crime film.  Gene Hackman stars as a very smart robber pulled into
one final heist for a crime lord played by Danny DeVito.  Clever
robbery plans and double crosses stud the plot.  And the Mamet
dialog is great even if the Mamet stagy acting is not always so
hot.  Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)

One never quite knows what one is going to get with a Mamet film.
His AMERICAN BUFFALO is a set-bound piece that has very little
plot.  Sometimes he will tell a story that really moves.  HEIST is
Mamet doing his most entertaining work.  Unlike his THE SPANISH
PRISONER, there are no lapses in credibility.  HEIST is probably
the best Mamet thriller since HOUSE OF GAMES.  It is the kind of
plot with which you are never sure who will double-cross whom, and
frequently it is Mamet double-crossing the viewer.  Watching the
film's team getting around security the viewer is frequently
asking himself either "what the heck are they doing?" or "why
didn't anybody think of that before?"

Appropriately enough HEIST opens with a very clever jewelry store
job.  It is so clever that one wonders if Mamet really thinks up
all these ideas himself or if he has help from professional
magician and con expert Ricky Jay, now a regular actor in Mamet
films.  This is a robbery that works like a well-oiled machine.
There is just one problem and it is enough to get Joe Moore
(played by Gene Hackman) filmed on a security camera.  Now Joe has
to get out of the business.  It was coming time anyway.  Joe's
team including Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo), Fran Moor (Rebecca
Pidgeon), and Pinky Pincus (Ricky Jay) is going to split up and go
separate ways.  But crime boss Bergman (Danny DeVito) is pulling
the strings and he says that Joe and his people have to manage one
more robbery.  And he has to take along a young kid, the short-
fused Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell).  Immediately it is obvious that
there is more going on than meets the eye.

Much of what distinguishes HEIST is Mamet's dialog.  Remarkably it
serves a double purpose.  The robbery team sounds at once very
professional and at the same time it has Mamet's special feel for
dialog.  Hackman has lines like "Everybody needs money.  That's
why they call it money."  Mamet's timing is perfect in the
direction but terrible in the production.  The plot is
coincidentally a lot like the plot of the recent THE SCORE, which
is, in fact, a very similar story.  Both are good films, perhaps
for some of the same reasons.  But at least on a high level they
are much the same story.  The other problem with the timing of
HEIST is that it involves airport security and clever ways to get
around them.  I saw the film at the Toronto International Film
Festival on September 12, 2001.  That made the subject matter just
a little too timely.  My understanding is that the release will be
delayed.

My biggest problem with the film is that Rebecca Pidgeon's acting
at times seems very poor.  It is some kind of Mamet trademark I do
not understand to have women talk without inflection, as if they
are just reading the words for the first time.  It is an
irritation and distracts us from what is otherwise a very good
thriller.  It is one I rate an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high
+2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

MULHOLLAND DRIVE

CAPSULE: David Lynch writes and directs a different sort of movie
for him.  This is a mystery with a very tricky set of plot twists.
I interpret this film as an attempt to taunt and play with the
genre and its fans.  This is a film that has people getting
together to discuss what it all means when it is over.  Still
overall I cannot recommend the film.  Rating: 4 (0 to 10), low 0
(-4 to +4) Heavy Spoiler: This review will not reveal any plot
twists but will be followed by a spoiler section that will discuss
the subtle point of the film and the idea of the film is not
obvious until the end.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE did very well at the Cannes Film Festival.  As
you can see from the rating it did not do very well from me at the
Toronto International Film Festival.  It may not be clear to the
viewer why I am so negative on this film for most of the running
time.  In fact it is an interesting mystery story told on the
backdrop of the Hollywood film industry.  Toward the end of the
film I think everything that has been built falls apart.  The film
was to be a pilot for a TV series but writer and director David
Lynch did not sell his TV pilot and I think he decided that he
wanted to do something else with it.  Something else is what he
did.

The film opens with a woman (played by Laura Harring) about to be
killed in a car when a car crash saves her life.  She crawls away
from the accident with a concussion and finds herself a bungalow
with an unlocked door to sleep.  Meanwhile young vivacious Betty
(Naomi Watts) arrives in Hollywood from Canada.  She wants to
build a career as an actress.  Betty is a little surprised to find
a woman sleeping in the borrowed bungalow.  She does not know who
the woman is.  She is even more surprised when the woman awakes
and does not herself know who she is.  They fix on a name Rita for
her, but are not sure if this right or not.

Meanwhile local director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) has problems
of his own.  He is trying to cast one actress for his new film and
is getting pressure from the producers and from crime figures to
cast someone else, Cammie Rhodes (Melissa George).  These two
threads are joined by a third one in which there is a strange and
comic murder that goes terribly wrong.  There is also a strange
character called The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery) adding to the
confusion.

In what was probably intended for the television pilot the film
opens with a great vibrancy showing dancing 60s style under the
credits.  A lot of MULHOLLAND DRIVE starts out fun.  Lynch wants
you to know he could make an enjoyable stylish film.  He just
chooses not to.  As with any David Lynch film there is strange
material added for little reason.  There are no earthworms, but
there are some decidedly strange David Lynch touches.  The film is
a little long for the subject matter.  Toward the end it gets into
some heavier violence and sex scenes, clearly not intended for the
TV pilot.

Unfortunately some of the most important comments to make about
this film would be spoilers.  I will not mention them in the main
body of the review but I give MULHOLLAND DRIVE a 4 on the 0 to 10
scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE Spoiler Warning.  I have rated this film fairly
low.  You should read this only after seeing the film or deciding
that you will not see the film.

David Lynch is in large part a dark satirist.  Most of his work is
done in familiar genres but in some way shows their underside.  In
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I think he is having a laugh at the expense of
the crime film genre.  What he does with this film is (Are you
sure you want to read this?) playing off the audience expectations
that there will be a simple explanation for what is going on.  The
first 80% of the film he tells a simple multi-thread crime story
with clues sprinkled throughout.  Then suddenly at the end he
turns the story on its ear with a large number of clues that
appear that they should add up to something.  The audience
expectation is that they will add up.  But he has given clues that
are self-contradictory.  Lynch wants the audience to argue about
what they have seen afterward and come up with theories.  In fact,
the pointers are noticeably contradictory and until I hear a
better explanation, I think Lynch is merely playing a joke.

There is a visual curiosity that was popular in the sixties.  Mad
Magazine called it a Poiuyt.  Other sources called it a Tri-
pronged U-bar.  Look at small portions of it and makes sense.
Look at the whole figure and it does not.  This film is, in my
estimation, the cinematic equivalent of a Tri-pronged U-bar.
[-mrl]

NINE QUEENS

CAPSULE: An Argentinean film very much in the mold of HOUSE OF
GAMES.  An experienced con man takes a younger one under his wing
and involves him in a plot involving a valuable block of stamps
and a complex game of double-crosses.  A little clever plotting
and a lot that is familiar, particularly from David Mamet.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)

Perhaps this film should be called an homage.  It certainly is a
film very much in the spirit of David Mamet's HOUSE OF GAMES.  Two
con men meet when the younger, Juan (played by Gaston Pauls) gets
himself into trouble and the more experienced Marcos (Ricardo
Darin) bails him out.  Marcos offers friendship and a one-day
course in the short con.  He shows a restaurant con to give the
illusion of having paid for his meal with a large bill.  But then
he suggests that Juan help him on a bigger con.  The two will get
their hands on a near perfect forgery of a plate of valuable rare
postage stamps.  Soon the viewer is not sure who is doing what to
whom.  Complicating matters is Valeria, Marco's successful sister
who is less than pleased with her brother's occupation.

NINE QUEENS was written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky of
Argentina.  This is his first time as director.  He has created a
sufficiently twisty plot, though the plot and situation is far
from original.  It is a diverting enough puzzle when watching it
and thinking of possibilities.  This is not a film that leaves one
with a lot to think about but it is diverting.  I rate it a 6 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

SILENT PARTNER

CAPSULE: This is a film from Australia with overtones of David
Mamet and of OF MICE AND MEN.  Two lowlifes get a chance to groom
a greyhound for racing for a gangster.  They want to parlay this
into a stab at the good life.  SILENT PARTNER is basically a two-
character play adapted to the screen.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high
+1 (-4 to +4)

SILENT PARTNER is a two-person play adapted to the screen with
virtually no dialog from anyone but John and Bill (played David
Field and Syd Brisbane).  They are two lowlifes with dreams who
live mostly on borrowed money and spend it on beer and the
occasional bet at the dog track.  Through thick accents and
drunken talk we follow them as they have a shot at the big time.
A shady kingpin, Alex Silver, sees them at the racetrack and
decides to use them in a scheme involving dog racing.  Silver
wants John and Bill to buy a greyhound, care for her, and race her
locally.  He will give them the money to tend the dog in return
for 70% of the dog's winnings.  The drunken pair name the dog
"Silent Partner" after Silver's role in the deal.  Bill develops a
genuine affection for the dog.  Bill's outings training the dog
are some of the few scenes where we see him sober and we see John
sober in even fewer, yet Bill lets John run the show and allows
himself to become almost a silent partner.  John never doubts he
has what it takes to swim with the sharks.  Through the alcohol
haze John thinks he is smart and worldly, though frequently his
skill seems limited to knowing whom he can hit up for one of the
ever decreasing loans.  The two have little social life without
each other and it rarely is at anyplace but bars, the track, the
squalid filthy house, and the occasional peep show.  People like
John and Bill are unusual subjects for film, thank goodness.

The timing of the dialog is a little too perfect to be believed as
the two talk with nearly perfect timing.  The Daniel Keene's
dialog, based on his own play, is unnaturally perfect, much as
David Mamet might craft it.  Mamet might also approve of the
underbelly society and grimy settings.  Director Alkinos
Tsilimidos filmed SILENT PARTNER almost linearly to create more
natural emotions from his actors, but he kept crew ignorant of the
script to aid in spontaneity.  The film was shot for an amazing
$7000 US.

Technically, the film is probably a comedy but it is not the kind
of comedy that generates laughter.  More frequently it is just an
exercise in bitter irony.  The songs by Paul Kelly are, like the
dialog, a little too perfect.  In some cases the songs give away
plot that is coming.  Americans will likely have some problems
picking up the entire dialog.  That can be a problem since
Silver's plan is never clearly explained.

SILENT PARTNER is a bitter black comedy delivered in a thick
inebriated Australian accent.  I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale
and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

MR. IN-BETWEEN

CAPSULE: Beautifully filmed, this is perhaps the best English
gangster film since THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY.  It is sharp as a
stiletto, entirely etched in tones of blue and black.  A hit man
gets involved in the lives of an old friend and his wife.  Rating:
8 (0 to 10), low +3 (-4 to +4)

This is the best British gangster film since THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY.
Jon Bennet (played by Andrew Howard) is an extremely good
assassin.  As such he is probably an evil man but it does not
worry him.  He has become an unquestioning weapon.  He is in the
employ of a kingpin (David Calder) far more evil than he is.  But
even assassins have innocent pasts.  He runs into an old from
school days and he is married to a mutual girl friend from school.
Complicating matters is that they live near where he had a recent
job and their young daughter may have seen him at the crime.

A big piece of what makes this film work is the depiction of the
kingpin.  Calder is a familiar actor in Britain, though not
frequently seen in the US.  He was seen in THE WORLD IS NOT
ENOUGH.  Here he creates one of the best screen villains in recent
years.  He is at once seductive and repellent like a beautiful
venomous snake.  His lair is underground, apparently in a sewer,
where he lives like the king of sewer rats.  It is the kingpin who
pulls the strings that will control Bennet's life.

Paul Sarossy who directs spent most of his career as a
cinematographer and like the kingpin's lair, he has molded images
of class and style out of the darkness.  By using semi-darkness
and letting the colors of deep blue and black dominate every scene
he makes the film visually as ominous as anything in this nether
world.  This is a world that is cold and unfriendly.

Sorossy creates a world of violence much more by what we hear than
what we see.  This is a film with a great deal of physical
violence occurring just out of reach.  We see very little but we
hear a great deal more and we imagine more than that.

The screenplay is by Peter Waddington based on the novel by Neil
Cross, but it is Sarossy's film all the way.  It creates indelible
images of evil.  I rate it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +3
on the -4 to +4 scale.  (I do hope they do not use the tagline
"Don't mess with Mr. In-between.")  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...

	 A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that
	 faith does not prove anything.
                                           -- Friedrich Nietzsche

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/05/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 14

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Crisis of Faith (Comments by Mark R. Leeper)
	 Wartime Films at the Toronto International Film Festival
 		 (Film reviews of ENIGMA, TO END AL WARS,
		 TAKING SIDES, and FOCUS by Mark R. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Crisis of Faith (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I consider myself to be fairly liberal and also more libertarian than
not.  I am a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
But I have to say that I also consider myself a pragmatist and there are
times that I do stray from the purist adherence to those beliefs.  I
have crises of faith with a few of the supposedly liberal stands.
People who follow my editorials know that I have some problems with some
of the extreme actions and extreme opinions some people have in the name
of feminism.  This week I want to talk about a couple of others.

In general I am against any form of killing for any purpose except
survival.  I do not believe in hunting for any purpose except to
preserve ones life.  I believe in hunting is all right for food and in
very cold climates hunting for fur.  I think that beyond those two
purposes, there is no such thing as a moral right to bear arms.  In
general the National Rifle Association should consider me an opponent.
I certainly oppose them.  But I also oppose the stand of the ACLU on gun
ownership.  More accurately they agree with my viewpoint on gun control
and I am paying them to oppose me.  It is like having a dentist
recommend a brand of rich candy bar.

The ACLU has a position to defend Constitutional rights and some of the
ones they defend are much more tenuously connected to the Constitution
than the right to bear arms in well-ordered militias.  I think that the
Founding Fathers did not foresee what problems the second amendment
would cause.  Nevertheless the ACLU should be as protective of the
second amendment as they are of the other nine.  I still support gun
control, but I while I do that I would like to think the ACLU is looking
out for the Bill of Rights in case I go too far.  But I do not have a
lot of confidence in the consistency of their viewpoint.

The other issue, and another one where I would differ from the ACLU's
viewpoint, is racial and ethnic profiling.  For a couple of years now we
have heard a great deal about police who racially profile motorists.  I
admit on the surface it sounds like a bad thing.  But all along deep
inside I know I don't know.  That will probably infuriate some people,
but hear me out.  I can see circumstances in which racial or ethnic or
gender profiling makes sense.  Let's take an extreme case.  Suppose the
police are looking for a rapist and the victim can not identify the
rapist.  Should they be detaining equal numbers of men and women?  After
all very few men are rapists.  But still you are 100% (or very nearly
100%) sure the person you are looking for will appear to be a man.

Let us look at an example in which it is not so sure?  There currently
is a hunt on for terrorists.  I am almost certain that profiling is
going on and people who get special attention are Muslims of Middle
Eastern origin.  Do all terrorists fit this mold?  Certainly not.  There
are terrorists who are anarchists.  There are some who are just
unbalanced.  Are most Muslims of Middle Eastern origin dangerous
terrorists?  No, only a very tiny percentage.  Is there a correlation
between terrorists and Muslims of Middle Eastern origin?  You better
believe there is one.  Pick a terrorist threatening the United States
and the odds are really good that he or she is a Muslim of Middle
Eastern origin.  There are certainly more than you would find by pure
chance.  And the reasons are obvious.  So the investigators are giving
special attention to Muslims of Middle Eastern origin.  Is that fair?
Under the current circumstances I would say it is.  It is never a good
thing when the innocent are inconvenienced, but the alternative is
worse.  It is one of the prices people pay in society.

So what about the police giving "special attention" to motorists of a
particular ethnic background?  It superficially seems wrong.  But
whether there is a correlation with the actual perpetrators or not, I
don't know.  And if the police only racially profile that will certainly
skew the results since only people who fit the profile will be accused.
It is easy to see that racial or ethnic profiling could be misused and
give rise to great injustices.  It could easily be misused.  Perhaps it
is being misused and abused.  But its accusers are stating without proof
that it definitely is being abused.  It is not intrinsically wrong,
however easy it would be to abuse.  Accusers have the burden of proof
that it is being abused.  I think ethnic profiling in looking for
terrorists is valid.  But leave it to the professionals.  Don't try it
at home, kiddies.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Wartime Films at the Toronto International Film Festival
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper)

While we now attend each year the Toronto International Film
Festival, certainly this will be the one that will be best
remembered.  Essentially this was the one where the US went to
war.  There was inevitably a lot of introspection by everybody,
certainly every US citizen, on what would be the effects on people
of this new kind of war in which we suddenly found ourselves.
Several of the films focused on the reaction and behavior of
people in the war between fascism and democracy that was the
greatest event of the last century.  Films that fit into this
category were ENIGMA, TO END ALL WARS, TAKING SIDES, and FOCUS.

ENIGMA

CAPSULE: Dark and complex espionage thriller based on the Robert
Harris novel.  March 1943 the British lose their former ability to
decode German messages to their submarine fleet.  They must either
get it back or lose an important shipping convoy.  An intelligent
thriller perhaps a little too reserved to be thrilling.  Rating: 7
(0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)

For thirty years after the end of the World War II Britain's most
secret weapon remained secret.  Like the US had done with the
Manhattan Project, Britain had put many of their best minds onto
their own scientific wartime project.  What they found could well
have saved the war for Britain.  At minimum it shortened the war
by at least two years by negating the Germans' most effective
weapon, the U-boat.  The Germans communicated with their men in
the field (or in this case the sea) with an incredibly complex
code called Enigma.  The code was encrypted and decrypted with a
device of mechanical and electronic components that created an
unimaginably large number of possibilities that has to be
considered in decoding the message.

The mathematics necessary for decoding Enigma was considered to be
orders of magnitude beyond what any country could accomplish, even
if the closely guarded Enigma boxes fell into the hands of the
enemy.  What the Germans did not know was that an Enigma box had
fallen into allied hands and teams of puzzle solvers and
mathematicians were recruited for the purpose cracking the code.

The team was installed at Bletchley Park under the direction of
Alan Turing.  For the first time rudimentary electronic computers
were used to search for and test solutions.  By July of 1941 the
work had already borne fruit and supply convoys from America were
saved from submarine wolf packs.  It typically took two days to
decode a message, but for many of the messages that was short
enough time.

Then in February 1942 the code changed.  It was still Enigma, but
a new order of complexity had been added.  The code could not be
solved.  At the same time the strategy of the submarine packs
changed.  The Germans could not know how great a setback it was.
By December the Allied shipping losses had quadrupled.  It took
ten months to recover the old capabilities and the Battle of the
Atlantic again turned in favor of the Allies.  And so it remained.

All this is history.  It is history filmmakers have not made much
usage of, though code breaking was an important part of World War
II.  The film U-571 told the fictional story of Americans
capturing an Enigma box and set it much later than the British
actually did.  The film MIDWAY tells a little about the Americans
efforts at code breaking.  Robert Harris wrote the novel ENIGMA, a
mystery story set in and around the Bletchley Park project.  Tom
Stoppard has adapted the novel into a screenplay and Michael Apted
directs.

The premise is that in March 1943, the Germans changed the code
again.  The British have just four days to break the modified code
before an important convoy from New York will be entering waters
that may have German U-boats.  Without knowledge of where the U-
boats are there is no way to avoid these waters.  With nary a
mention of Alan Turing in the screenplay, sullen mathematician Tom
Jericho (played by Dougray Scott) who had left the Bletchley Park
project has been brought back onto the project.  He had been
instrumental in breaking the code the last time, but had since
suffered a nervous breakdown.  That breakdown was brought on by
being rejected by lovely co-worker Claire (Saffron Burrows).  She
was a fellow project member with whom Tom had fallen in love.  Now
there is evidence that Claire intentionally broke project security
and perhaps was spying for the Germans.  Tom has a double problem
of resolving the new German code and looking for the now missing
Claire.  Helping him is Claire's swatty and bookish housemate
Hester Wallace (Kate Winslett).  Making life even more difficult
is sinister and polished intelligence operator Wigram (played
nicely by Jeremy Northam).

Tom Stoppard's adaptation is better than one might have expected
retaining some reasonable explanation of the history and the
mathematical issues involved without obvious expository lumps,
though by the end of the film some technical problems are going by
too fast to comprehend.  Perhaps in deference to Apted the script
has some feminist touches that I do not remember from the book.
It also has one gratuitous car chase.  John Barry has provided a
score that is by turns lush and ominous.

An interesting chapter in history could have made for a better
thriller, but as it stands it is reasonably exciting if reserved.
I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4
scale.

People interested in the efforts to break the Enigma can find a
lot of intriguing material at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/decoding/.  This is information to
accompany the excellent episode of Nova "Decoding Nazi Secrets."
Included is a transcript of that broadcast.

TO END ALL WARS

CAPSULE: This is a harrowing look at a rarely dramatized chapter
of WWII, life in a Japanese prison camp. TO END ALL WARS is a
moving film about the struggle of prisoners to retain their
humanity and their dignity.  The somewhat religious interpretation
may not be to everyone's taste.  Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to
+4)

More than any other people the Japanese seem capable of acting
with one goal and not letting any other consideration get in their
way.  This may be a holdover from the code of Bushido when loyalty
to ones master was the only law.  During World War II, of course,
the one goal was winning the war.  This led them to do some very
inhuman things in pursuit of that goal.  When the Japanese had
captured prisoners, they were very much treated in whatever way
would be optimum for achieving the one goal.  Minimum resources
were to be spent in maintaining prisoners in keeping with maximal
positive output.  While the Germans, not known for their kindness
in those days, had a 6% mortality rate among captured prisoners of
war, the mortality rate of Japanese prisoners of war was 27%.  The
best thing for the war effort was working prisoners nearly to
death on the Thailand to Burma railroad.  That railroad was needed
if Japan was to attack India as it planned to do.  The best thing
for the effort was not to waste much food on the prisoners so
short and amazingly wretched food was the order of the day.  And
just being in the jungle without proper medical aid took its toll.

In the public mind Japan has never been held as accountable for
war atrocities as was Germany.  Filmmakers have been reticent to
tell the story, perhaps for fear of offending the Japanese.  There
are comparatively few films about the Japanese POW camps.
Certainly there was David Lean's THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
There were some low-budget British exploitation films and that was
about it.  Then there were TV series "A Town Like Alice" and
"Tenko."  Lest the experience be forgotten we have a new film TO
END ALL WARS directed by David Cunningham and written by Brian
Godawa.  It is based on the account of Ernest Gordan who survived
the horror of that World War II prison camp and went on to become
for 26 years the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University.  The
film while realistic shows the conditions in the camp as being
considerably more brutal and sadistic than BRIDGE ON THE RIVER
KWAI portrayed them.

The story opens with six or so soldiers being marched into the
prison camp only to be immediately placed in front of a firing
squad.  It turns out to be a grim joke, one of many that the
sadistic Japanese play to amuse themselves.  Beating and torture
are commonplace events.  Men already imprisoned tell the new
arrivals to enjoy the last of their health; it will not last long
with parasites and disease almost inevitable.  However, unlike as
in KWAI, the prisoners want to avoid going to the hospital, called
by the prisoners the Death House.

So goes a war within a war with the prisoners trying to maintain
their humanity and with the Japanese trying to make them
interchangeable and highly expendable cogs in a rail-laying
machine.  This is more than just a battle of who will win the war
but a battle of ideologies.  The Japanese believe that the
individual is nothing, that conformity to group's norms is all
that gives a life meaning.  Conformity is purpose.  Before the
film is over there will be some surprising revelations about the
character of the prisoners and the character of those running the
camp.  If this story showed nothing but sadism from the Japanese
it would be one kind of story.  If the British (with one American,
by the way) and the Japanese learned to respect each other it
would be another kind of story.  It is neither.  It is a stirring
and believable account of camp life.

The color has been distorted in the film to give a washed out
yellow.  This serves a double purpose for Cunningham.  It gives an
effect of Technicolor film that has been left in heat.  It also
creates a distancing effect.  The only touch that seems a little
out of place is the use of Gaelic music.

This is a powerful and philosophical view of the prison camp
experience.  I rate it a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4
to +4 scale.

TAKING SIDES

CAPSULE: This is a film that avoids easy answers.  Wilhelm
Furtwangler, then the world's greatest orchestra conductor stayed
in Germany and cooperated with the Nazis.  What were his views;
was he a war criminal or a secret resistance fighter?  How much
did he know about crimes against humanity?  The US government
investigated him after the war and this film is a dramatization of
that investigation.  Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)

In my opinion one of the best films of the last few years is
Istvan Szabo's SUNSHINE, a film that covers the fortunes of a
Jewish Hungarian family under the reigns of three different
regimes, Hungarian aristocrats, Nazis, and Communists.  Szabo's
follow-up film, a German production, is much more limited in
scope.  It is about the post-war investigation of who criminally
supported the Nazis and who opposed them.  Ronald Harwood's
screenplay ambiguously looks at the investigation of a great
classical music conductor who stayed on in Germany when the Nazis
took power and became the most popular conductor of the Third
Reich.

Maj. Steve Arnold (played by Harvey Keitel) has been assigned by
his superiors to investigate Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellan
Skarsgard), perhaps Europe's greatest classical music conductor.
When other artists fled Germany, Furtwangler remained behind and
conducted for the Hitler and his henchmen.  After the war is over
Arnold assigned to interview Furtwangler and members of his
orchestra and if appropriate to prosecute him for war crimes.  He
secretly is told by his commanding officer to find Furtwangler
guilty.  From there we follow him and learn a little about Arnold
and something about Furtwangler and his orchestra.  As he
interviews members of the wartime orchestra Arnold starts noticing
odd peculiarities that may or may not point to a conspiracy
against his investigation.  There is a certain sameness to the
responses that he is getting.  Perhaps any cooperation he is
getting has been in some ways managed.  If so, perhaps he can
never come to the truth.

In large part the film is about mind games that Arnold uses to
manipulate his interviewees and especially Furtwangler.  Where the
script has problems is that in the end it is so ambiguous.  It has
no obvious resolution and not much of a final act.  When it is
over whether anything has been established is open to
interpretation.  Perhaps that is better than so many films that
make it all to obvious what the audience should believe, but it is
like watching a murder mystery and never finding out who the
killer is.  We are given clues to something but they are never
tied up.  In the end we just know more about both Arnold and
Furtwangler.

The film is basically a stage play.  The visual is not very
important.  Corners are cut visually including touches like
filling windows with photographs to avoid having to shoot on
location.  As with a stage play, what this film centers on the
dialog, and that is intriguing.  I rate the film an 8 on the 0 to
10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [There is one piece
of sloppiness few people but me would notice.  At one point we
clearly see Arnold's desk calendar say "Jan 16 Tues."  A quick
mental calculation told me that combination could occur in 1945
and then not again until 1951.  The events had to take place in
1946 or 1947.  A possible date could be obtained from any World
Almanac.]

FOCUS

CAPSULE: In the late years of World War II a man sees anti-Semitic
influences moving into his neighborhood but wants to remain
neutral.  As neutrality become more and more difficult he
struggles with his conscience.  Neil Slavin directs this
adaptation of a novel by Arthur Miller.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2
(-4 to +4)

FOCUS is a story of an anti-Semitic movement during the years of
World War II, but it does not take place in Europe, but in the US.
Kendrew Lascelles wrote the film based on Arthur Miller's 1945
novel FOCUS.  It is the story of Fascism creeping into a middle-
class neighborhood.

Lawrence Newman (played by William H. Macy) lives with his mother.
He works in a prosperous Manhattan company interviewing new
applicants.  He interviews people applying for jobs and generally
makes sure the company hires only the "right type," good gentiles.
One of the people he turns down is non-Jewish Gertrude Hart (Laura
Dern) who nonetheless looks too Jewish to be put in a visible
position.

Lawrence happens to witnesses a tough-guy neighbor beat up a
woman.  But he does not want to make trouble in the neighborhood
by going to the police.  Another neighbor Fred (the intimidating
Meat Loaf Aday) seems to be on a personal campaign to chase out of
the neighborhood the corner news dealer, a Jew (David Paymer), to
move out of the neighborhood.  When Lawrence gets new glasses,
glasses that accidentally make him look Jewish; suddenly he gets a
new view of his street and especially neighbor Fred who is
inviting "Americanist" organizers into the neighborhood.  Lawrence
tries desperately to hold onto his neutrality in the Jew-baiting
in spite of the dictates of his conscience.

For his first feature film commercial producer Neal Slavin has
chosen a particularly timely theme, that of a slow but insidious
spreading prejudice and fascism.  The targeting of ethnic groups
for particular hatreds is especially timely.  Particularly
chilling is that Fred so anxious to introduce the same fascism
that was currently engulfing Europe.

Slavin symbolizes the cycle of evil with the image of merry-go-
round accompanied by ominous music.  The film's one less than
subtle touch is the big billboard at the end of the infiltrated
street proclaiming "There's no way like the American way."

It is interesting that two of Arthur Miller's novels were adapted
at the same time.  Like FOCUS, Amos Gitai's EDEN also was shown at
the Toronto International Film Festival.  Both are about people
caught up in evil circumstances and having to take a stand.
However, FOCUS is by far the better of the two.  I rate it a 7 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...

      In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
                                           --Friedrich Nietzsche

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/28/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 13

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Ed Felt (Comment)
	 Amazon (Comments)
	 Movie Trailers--Millennium Philcon (Film comment)
	 Romantic Comedies from the Toronto International Film
		 Festival (Film reviews of SERENDIPITY, MONSOON
		 WEDDING, KISSING JESSICA STEIN, THE ART OF WOO,
		 and JALLA! JALLA!)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Ed Felt (Comment)

Back when I joined the System 75 Project at Bell Labs one of the
people I worked with was Ed Felt.  Ed was very much a nice guy.  He
was formerly of IBM.  That was where he picked up the habit, I
suppose.  The Labs were pretty casual but he always had a
starched-looking shirt and a tie.

You could always ask him a question and he would take the time to
give you a clear answer.  Ed always had a cheerful disposition.
I cannot say I knew Ed really well.  He was something of a friend.
Ed wrote an e-mail query tool that I used very effectively for
about ten years.  It sort of became my secret weapon and
compensated for my bad memory.  People would ask me questions and
Ed's tool would find me the old piece of email with the answer.
They would be amazed at the information I could produce and it was
really because I had Ed's tool.

I don't know if he was into scouting, but if he were he probably
would have gone to Eagle Scout.  He just seemed that kind of
clean-cut idealist.  If something needed to get done he was there
and had it done a few days early.  He lived in the next town over
and he mentioned once or twice seeing Evelyn and me out driving.
He probably lived something like a mile or two away.

When he made Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and got a
private office, I moved into Ed's old seat.  A few years ago Ed
left Bell Labs.  I went to his going away lunch and then I don't
think I ever saw him again.  Now that I think about it we did
exchange email on how to fine-tune his query tool.

I found out today that Ed died recently.  It was the morning of
September 11th.  A plane he was in piled into a mountain in
Pennsylvania.  A group of people on the plane had taken back
control of the plane from some terrorists.  The passengers gave up
their hope of survival so that other people would be safe.  Ed was
on the plane.  Was Ed one of the passengers who took the plane
back?  I guess we will never know.  Do I think it was something
Ed Felt might have done?  Yeah.  He was the type.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Ready.  Aim.  Fire.  (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Over the last few years I have gotten a large number of pieces of
electronic chain mail.  You know the kind of thing.  One claims
there is a gang murdering people who flash their headlights at
them.  Another says there is a new and dangerous computer virus.
Some want to save my soul.  They all say to take this piece of
mail and forward it to other people.  So essentially the message
itself is a computer virus because by using well-meaning people it
is replicated and sent to more and more people.  The amazing thing
is that every single one has had a message that should not have
been sent.  I guess for valid messages people have other channels.
Some are intended just to scare people like spooky stories around
an electronic campfire.  Others may be well-intentioned but
misinformed.  One warned about the excesses of the Taliban but
then had an electronic petition.  Electronic petitions are useless
because anybody can sign a thousand names they get from the web.
If you get a piece of mail asking to be sent to other people, even
without reading it you can be pretty sure that whoever composed it
and whoever sent it to you and everybody in between is being
simply ignorant.

The most recent chain letter is an effort to get people to boycott
Amazon, the Internet book dealer.  What is Amazon's offense?
There is a web page for the Intifada.  On the web page at one
point it said, "You can buy books about the Intifada and Palestine
from Amazon.com.  All profits from the referral will go to
developing Intifada.com."  At first glance that looks pretty
shocking.  Amazon is doing business with the Intifada.  Let me be
the first to inform you that there were American companies that
did business with the September 11th terrorists.  Did they have
dinner the night before?  Somebody probably sold them that dinner.
If they rented rooms to sleep in some American probably made money
off of terrorism.  Did these people know they were dealing with
terrorists?  Almost certainly they do not.  Could Amazon have been
funding the Intifada page innocently without knowing whom they
were dealing with?  They not only could have been innocent, they
almost certainly were.

Here is the deal.  Amazon has an automated scheme for paying
commission for customer referrals.  People who want to use the
system log onto Amazon and register a name and address where
proceeds should be sent.  In return they get a code number.  They
then set up a link from their web page to Amazon and embed that
number as part of the URL.  The number and name and address are
automatically placed into a table at Amazon's end.  The whole
process of setting up an existing web page to make money from
Amazon takes about five minutes.  They do no checking to be sure
the name and address belong to someone good and wholesome and
having the right political beliefs.  How could they?  The chain
mail starts out "This was sent to me by our Nashville Hadassah
President. For those of you not familiar with Hadassah it's a
Jewish women's charity organization."  The authors of the chain
letter use Hadassah's name to lend credence.  Ironically a quick
check with a search engine tells me out that another organization
with a moneymaking Amazon link is the Central Pacific Coast Region
of Hadassah.  Amazon is not discriminating in favor of Arab
organizations nor is it discriminating against them.  And, in
fact, they have turned off the commission agreement with the
Intifada.  Still they are being criticized apparently for not
shutting it off before it started.

I have no respect whatsoever for the Intifada, but boycotting the
innocent Amazon is not going to do any good.  It will only
demonstrate to the world that we are lashing out in blind anger at
anybody within range regardless of guilt or innocence.  The
approach is one of "Ready.  Fire.  Aim."

This situation will remind some people of the case of Dr. Samuel
Mudd.  Mudd was the doctor who, awakened at 4 AM, set the broken
leg of a man he did not recognize.  The man was John Wilkes Booth
who the previous evening had murdered Abraham Lincoln.  In the
hysteria after the murder the law struck out at him because he
merely had been convenient to the criminal.  Mudd spent nearly
four years imprisoned in the Dry Tortugas before he received not
exoneration but a pardon.  In times of public hysteria there is a
danger that we will lash out with more anger than reason.

The country is obviously angry because of what happened September
11th.  We should be.  Striking out at Amazon because they happened
to be convenient in some very minor way to the Intifada is not
going to help anyone.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Movie Trailers--Millennium Philcon (film comment by Mark
R. Leeper)

The World Science Fiction Convention's annual presentation of
upcoming films has devolved into a presentation that is mostly
just a string of trailers for the films.  It is really tough to
tell how good films are from the trailers.  I have become cynical
about the films shown in these presentations.  And while I was
absolutely right about some films such as BLAIR WITCH PROJECT 2, I
would be less than honest if I did not say that at least two
excellent films when previewed looked like they would not be worth
seeing.  GATTACA, the best science fiction film of the 1990s
looked from the trailer like a bad made-for-TV distopia.  REQUIEM
FOR A DREAM, which previewed like an incoherent mess, was a very
fine film also.  This report is doubly removed from reality since
it is based on the trailers and not the films themselves and
further it is only my impressions from the trailers.
  Two positive trends are noted.  First overall the films look
better this year than they have in previous years.  A lot of these
films I have some interest in seeing.  The second not entirely
unrelated trend is that while the film industry used to shy away
from films set in historical eras under the assumption that
schools were not doing a good job in teaching history.  This year
there seem to be four or five historical films.  I hope they do
well.

Now to my comments on the trailers.

1. PLUTO NASH stars Eddie Murphy in a comedy crime film set on
what appears to be the moon.  The idea, if that is the idea, has
been done before as a nearly missing film, MOON ZERO TWO.  That
was not a great film, but this does not look a whole lot better.
It look not so much like a space movie starring Eddie Murphy as an
Eddie Murphy movie set in space.

2. ROLLERBALL is a remake of Norman Jewison's film based on a
story by William Harrison.  The original film mixed sports,
violence, a view of the future, and introspection.  The latter two
are not obvious in the trailer of the new film.  It has some
familiar actors including Jean Reno.  I am not fond of sports
films, but it deserves a chance.

3. SHALLOW HAL is a trailer I have already seen in the theaters.
Jack Black plays the main character.  The plot is the story of a
man who wants to date only beautiful women.  Under hypnosis he is
made to believe that even unattractive women are attractive.  He
falls for a grossly fat woman whom he sees as Gweneth Paltrow.
The trailer has scenes that shows how fat the woman is, then we
see it from the main character's eyes and it is Gweneth Paltrow
who is making the huge splash in the pool.  The film looks like a
compendium of tasteless fat jokes simply being filmed with
Paltrow.  Curiously in a film industry that likes to use younger
stars, an older man, perhaps older than would be dating, is cast
as the disagreeable lead.  Why insult the ticket-buying
demographic?  That is the bad news.  The good news is that showing
surprisingly more taste than the filmmakers did the audience booed
the film.  Perhaps mean-spirited, poorly written comedies are
losing favor.  I hope this film is not as bad as the trailer makes
it look, but there is little reason for hope.

4. Recently we saw a fairly interesting update of an old low
budget William Castle horror film, THE HOUSE ON THE HAUNTED HILL.
That formula continues with the creaky classic 13 GHOSTS.
F. Murray Abraham dies leaving a strange futuristic haunted house
to some younger (presumably) relatives.  If you have to remake an
existing film, this is the way to do it.  I cannot believe anyone
has much fondness for the original.  The first version was really
just an exploitation film to show another use of red and green
cellophane.  You had a ghost viewer so you could see or not see
the ghosts.  Of course that is the kind of film that should be
remade, not a CASABLANCA that so many people love.

5. AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE seems to be a stylish film set in the
late 19th century.  It is hard to tell a lot from the trailer, but
a film that works so hard to create the period probably will show
care in other aspects.

6. HEARTS IN ATLANTIS stars Anthony Hopkins in a Stephen King
story with a light tinge of fantasy.  Hopkins appears to be a
psychic who comes to live in a boarding house and forms a
relationship with a young boy.  Hard to say, but the film appears
to take place at least a few years in the past.  Word from film
critic Dan Kimmel is that Hopkins is better than the rest of the
film, though in my experience Kimmel tends to be less fond of
sentiment than I am.  [Previewed at Toronto: Not too bad a film.]

7. The next trailer seems to be telling the story of a young man
in early 19th Century France.  The dialog calls him Edmund Dantes
and I let out an involuntary "Ah" of approval.  The man is treated
grossly unjustly and thrown into prison over circumstantial
evidence.  Of course he will spend years in prison only to escape,
find a fabulous fortune, and seeking revenge return to France as
his alter-ego THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO.  The Alexander Dumas
classic was due for a remake.  It has been done for TV, but I do
not know of a theatrical version since the old Robert Donat
version.  This version seems to play up his sword skills to add
some visual excitement.  This one I am looking forward to.

8. MONSTERS, INC is a Pixar animated film whose trailer is already
in theaters.  There is a good reason monsters hide under the bed.
They are as afraid of humans as humans are of them.  Monsters have
there own world and one day a little girl crosses over.  The film
looks charming.  Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and James Coburn
lend their voices.

9. BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF looks like a very intriguing French
horror film set in the 18th century.  The countryside is up in
arms about some sort of wolf-like monster making life difficult
for the local populace.  It may resolve to a werewolf film or may
be something better.  [Previewed at Toronto; familiar story, good
period look sabotaged by anachronistic martial arts and 20th
Century political attitudes.  Disappointing in the long run.]

10. "Smallville", while it was not made clear here, is a TV
series, not a film.  It is about a humanoid from outer space sent
to Earth by spaceship as a child.  The boy, Clark Kent, is growing
up not knowing who he really is and keeping to himself the fact he
seems to be acquiring special powers including indestructibility.
A lot of his problems are ones that any teenager might have.  Some
are unique to him.  At least in the trailer there is no mention of
the future we know he will have.  (Nod, nod.  Wink, wink.)  It
does sound like it will have more human values, perhaps like
Buffy.

11. Next was a small piece on a theatrical film network film based
on POWERPUFF GIRLS, the TV series on the Cartoon Network.  It does
not look like very good animation.

12. Another Alexander Dumas story is THE MUSKETEER.  This is an
adaptation of the frequently film adapted THE THREE MUSKETEERS.
The period seems almost stylishly recreated but the photography is
dark.  Perhaps inspired by CROUCHING TIGER, the athletic seem to
be assisted by an excess of not very believable wirework.
Probably not very good.  [By now it has been released and has
gotten very, very bad reviews.]

13. THE SCORPIOM KING is the origin of the character we saw in THE
MUMMY RETURNS.  Not a lot can be told from the trailer, but the
style seems to be borrowed from CONAN THE BARBARIAN.  That could
be worse.  The character certainly did not look that good in THE
MUMMY RETURNS.  Still the audience seemed unimpressed by the
trailer and hissing was heard.

14. The audience was much more pleased by the trailer for BC.  We
could not tell a lot about the movie, but what we saw was a
sequence featuring a squirrel on an ice field trying to bury an
acorn and causing himself a great deal of trouble in the process.
The film is done in 3D animation.  Whether BC is from the comic
strip "Hey, BC" or if it is just some other story set in
prehistoric times is not clear.

15. FROM HELL stars Heather Graham and Johnny Depp.  The style
seems similar to that of SLEEPY HOLLOW.  This film takes place in
London and is the story of a detective tracking Jack the Ripper.
It is said to have an authentic recreation of the original murder
sites.  Stage sets were made on a scale unmatched since the Golden
Years of Hollywood.  It also claims to be a new way of looking at
the Jack the Ripper case.

16. In THE ONE with something like 123 counts of murder, a killer
(played by Jet Li) goes from one parallel universe to the next (as
in the TV show  "Sliders") killing people.  Our universe's version
of this person (also played by Jet Li) decides to stop him.  Again
the action is enhanced and made less believable with an excess of
wirework.  Delroy Lindo co-stars.

17. This coming attraction is a teaser showing a bank robbery
filmed to reasonable action film standards.  The robbers escape by
helicopter.  As the helicopter weaves its way among buildings
suddenly it stops still in air.  Then it seems to be bouncing
around in air.  It has been caught in a giant spider web.  Cut to
the title SPIDERMAN.  We see one side of the head of Spiderman
with a big dewy green eye.  Now did Spiderman figure their route,
get ahead of them and spin his web in time to catch them?  Did I
miss something?  Was he also bitten by a radioactive version of
The Flash?  People were making a big fuss over this, but it does
not look that good.

18. HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCEROR'S STONE looks like it has nice
art and production design.  It features actors like Maggie Smith
and John Hurt.  It looks like it recreates the look of a British
boarding school very nicely.  You can tell that a lot of care is
going into the production.  Chris Columbus will direct.

19. As the capper of the previews is a trailer for Peter Jackson's
production of J. R. R. Tolkein's THE LORD OF THE RINGS.  This
looks like a beautiful production up to some of the best artwork
that has been used to illustrate the classic fantasy.  Jackson
will do the trilogy as three films.

The trailers were followed by a question and answer period with
presenter Jeff Walker.  The following are among the facts gleaned.
These should be regarded as strong rumors:
-- MATRIX 2 will be released soon.
-- 2001 and E.T. will get re-releases.  E.T. will be in a special
enhanced edition.
-- A title has been announced for the next STAR WARS film.  It
will be STAR WARS 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES.
-- A live action SCOOBY DOO film is coming.
-- A new SUPERMAN is under development
-- A FANTASTIC FOUR film is in the works
-- An Elfquest film is being developed
-- X-MEN 2 is being made with new mutants.  The world needs some
more new mutants, I guess.
-- PERN, a TV series based on the Anne McCaffrey novels, was in
the works but the plug was pulled by Warner Brothers TV and is
looking for new venue.
-- QUEEN OF THE DAMNED by Anne Rice is coming.
-- A HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY MOVIE is tied up since author
Douglas Adams died.  [-mrl]


===================================================================

TOPIC: Romantic Comedies from the Toronto International Film
Festival (Film reviews by Mark R. Leeper)

The Toronto Festival is a ten-day event.  This year the halfway
point was the morning of September 11.  The events of that morning
caused a sort of re-evaluation of what we had already seen and it
certainly cast a sort of pall over what we were about to see.
Every film after that point that a filmmaker presented--about half
the films are presented by the people who made them--was described
as somehow tied into the political situation.  Mira Nair presented
the first film we saw after the attack, MONSOON WEDDING.  She said
she was glad that for these times she had made a life-affirming
film.  Whether it was a particularly good film or a particularly
bad film for the time is hard to judge.  But particularly for
comedies the mood you are in when you see them is all-important.
Romantic comedies in particular are going to be hard to
appreciate.  These films were all seen after the events but for
KISSING JESSICA STEIN.  That film may be particularly hard hit
since it takes place in Manhattan and apparently many of the
external shot showed the World Trade Center in the distance.  It
should be noted that MONSOON WEDDING was voted in second or third
place as the most popular film of the entire festival.

SERENDIPITY

CAPSULE: Familiar-feeling romantic comedy from director Peter
Chelsom.  Two people meet, like each other, and leave to fate if
they should meet again.  Years later each decides they should be
together and start searching for each other with very standard
sorts of results.  Fluffy and a lot like things you have seen
before.  Rating: 5 (0 to 10), low +1 (-4 to +4)

A few years ago there was a light romantic comedy called THE NIGHT
WE NEVER MET.  The point of that film was that two people whom the
viewer knows are fated to find each other keep missing each other
by inches.  SERENDIPITY is a reworking of that idea.  It is a
story of Fate working overtime to have its two main characters
meet.  Each time the dramatic tension is greater and each time it
is another near miss.

In a prolog Jonathan Trager (played by John Cusack) and Sara
Thomas (the attractive Kate Beckinsale of PEARL HARBOR) meet in
Bloomingdales when each wants to buy the same pair of gloves.
There is immediate attraction, but each goes his own way.  Then
the two come together again.  Is it fate that is bringing them
together?  Sara suggests they test it.  She writes her name and
address in a book, Jonathan writes his name on the back of a five-
dollar bill.  Sara sells the book Jonathan spends the bill.  Will
fate bring them back together?  Flash forward a few years and both
are making plans to be married but neither is totally happy with
his intended.  Each remembers the one that got away.  Each decides
to give fate another chance.

Marc Klein's screenplay gives us a pleasurable and amusing froth
of a romantic comedy, if a little too predictable and undemanding
to plot.  It is easy enough to come up with any number of
situations in which people just barely miss each other.  That
builds a tension of sorts, but the audience has strong
expectations how it will all turn out.  The viewer knows fate
rules the lives of the characters since in this case the hand of
fate is Marc Klein.

Few of the attempts at style or humor work.  Eugene Levy plays
officious clerk who is more irritating than funny.  Worse to
create a romantic effect director Peter Chelsom has not just music
but songs on the music track.  Notable is a cameo role for Buck
Henry.  There are also several opportunities to fit in the ever-
popular New York City landmarks.

This is a lighthearted and frivolous romantic comedy that will not
have a lot of appeal beyond audiences specifically looking that
sort of film.  In other words, though it is a cliche, this is a
film for people who like this sort of thing.  I rate it a 5 on the
0 to 10 scale and a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

MONSOON WEDDING

CAPSULE: The Verma family is having a wedding and all the
relatives will come for the multi-day festivities.  Mira Nair's
film is pleasant enough with a little human drama, a few family
secrets, some sadness and some happiness.  You have seen it all
before, but perhaps not from India.  The photography is colorful
and the music is very agreeable.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4
to +4)

Mira Nair previously directed SALAAM BOMBAY and MISSISSIPPI
MASALA.  Her newest film, written by Sabrina Dhawan, is very
similar to previous films like BETSY'S WEDDING but it is set in
New Delhi.  A wealthy family is having a wedding.  An Indian
wedding is a multi-day affair as much a family reunion as a
nuptial.  Even more than in the US, it is an excuse for a lavish
and extravagant family get-together.  The film shows us what the
family does together and at the same time follows several family
members' individual story lines.  Aditi Verma is marrying Hemant,
an Indian engineer working in the US.  She had previously had a
relationship with Vikram, her supervisor.  Latit, her father
(played by Naseeruddin Shah), is juggling many problems, not the
least of which is worrying about the caterer has hired PK Dubey.
Dubey is a rather eccentric man with a taste for eating the
marigolds he uses for decoration.  Even Dubey will soon be
romantically entangled when he becomes interested in Alice, one of
the family servants.  Several family members arrive giving rise to
several plotlines involving sex, family secrets, or both.  There
are heartbreaks and there are people falling in love.  Some of the
subjects covered are probably near taboo for Indian films.

Western audiences will appreciate a look at unfamiliar Indian
customs like women painting their hands with henna.  On the other
hand it was not clear (to me at least) if scenes like the family
singing together are typical of Indian culture or if they are a
convention of Indian musical films.  This seems a particularly
Westernized family with the father wearing American designer
sweaters and the family speaking mostly English.  The latter will,
however, help with an international release.

Sabrina Dhawan's screenplay is vibrant with witty dialog.  We have
seen films with plotting very much like this, but the Indian
setting makes a great deal of difference.  Director Mira Nair
calls the film an affirmation of life.  I rate it a 7 on the 0 to
10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

KISSING JESSICA STEIN

CAPSULE: The plot is familiar but the writing is usually fresh,
funny, and at times moving.  Why can't Jessica find a nice guy?
Is it because she is seeing a nice, and smart, girl?  Heather
Juergensen and Jennifer Westfeldt wrote and star in the film based
on their own play chronicling the ups and downs of a straight
woman who meets the bisexual Ms. Right.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1
(-4 to +4)

This is in many ways a fairly prosaic romantic comedy made only
slightly less familiar by involving a straight woman who falls
into a lesbian relationship.  Many of the touches and certainly
most of the plot twists are things we have seen before.  Jessica
Stein (played by Jennifer Westfeldt) is a self-assured, successful
young woman in the New York publishing trade.  The one hole in her
lifestyle is her dysfunctional love life.  Jessica is having a
really hard time meeting the right man.  Her mother (Tovah
Feldshuh) is hoping she will meet the right Jewish guy.  She goes
from dating one man to the next and they are all losers in one way
or another and generally not Jessica's intellectual equal.  Then
she reads a personals ad quoting Rainer Maria Rilke.  Whoever
placed this ad clearly has a brain.  Unfortunately it is a woman
seeking another woman, not at all what Jessica has in mind.  Just
curious to meet the woman who would place such an ad Jessica
agrees to meet Helen Cooper (Heather Juergensen) with predictable
results.

The screenplay is written by the two lead actresses based on their
play "Lipschtick."  As new writers they bring some fresh new
writing to the film but for the rest they rely on cliche we have
seen too frequently before.  To show the losers that Jessica has
been dating they have a montage of dates' faces, each saying
something stupid.  I saw that for the first time in SHE'S GOTTA
HAVE IT, but certainly not the last time.  Men in small roles in
the film are frequently stupid and the contemporary equivalents of
Stepin Fetchit.  On the other hand an office friend, Hannah Levine
(not listed in any credits I can find) adds some real life to the
film.  She seems to be a graduate of the Thelma Ritter School of
Acting.  Frequently the writing is fresh as when Jessica is naive
about the mechanics of lesbian sex and Helen has to explain it.

Charles Herman-Wurmfeld directs.  This is not an outstanding film,
but certainly parts of it work very well.  I rate it a 6 on the 0
to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

THE ART OF WOO

CAPSULE: This is an attempt at writing a modern fairy tale.
Alyssa Wong is a successful art expert who has to decide if she
wants to marry for money or for love.  The story calls for a woman
with Audrey Hepburn charm and Sook-Yin Lee does not fill the bill.
The film is contrived and dissatisfying.  Rating:  3 (0 to 10), -1
(-4 to +4)

THE ART OF WOO attempts to be one of those films like BREAKFAST AT
TIFFANY'S in which the audience is rooting for some sweet,
vulnerable, irresistible woman to work out her problems and to
find happiness.  The problem is that Helen Lee who writes and
directs seems to have written Alessa Woo (played by Sook-Yin Lee)
as neither sweet nor vulnerable and she is quite resistible.

Alessa is a young woman who happens to be a brilliant art dealer
in the Toronto art scene.  This is some sort of alternate world
art scene where people pay tens of thousands of dollars for
paintings by talented beginners and dealers in these paintings fly
back and forth to places like Switzerland.  One of the most
knowledgeable of the art dealers is Alessa.  She also happens to
be the center of adulation of her friends and every party has
suitors camped outside her window.

Next door to Alessa moves struggling genius artist and Native
American Ben Crowchild (Adam Beach).  He sees that behind the
facade that there is really a sad little girl within Alessa who
really will not be happy with the rich art collector she is
dating.  Ben gets emotionally involved with Alessa.  (As Alessa so
delicately puts it, "We were bosom buddies, now we're fuck
buddies.")  But Alessa will have to decide whether she wants love
with Ben or wealth with her rich suitor.

The real problem with the film seems to be Helen Lee's inability
to decide what she wants to be saying.  She undercuts nearly
everything she wants us to believe about Alessa.  Alessa is
looking for financial security but she makes decisions about large
sums of money for her clients.  This appears to be a high profile
and well-paid job.  We are supposed to care about Alessa's
feelings, but she coldly refuses to visit her own ailing father.
Alessa cannot be portrayed as sweet and vulnerable if at an art
auction she turns into OUR MAN FLINT.

This is a charmless romantic comedy that bets everything it has on
the appeal of its main character and comes up double-zero.  I rate
it a 3 on the 0 to 10 scale and a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

JALLA! JALLA!

CAPSULE: This super-light situation comedy from Sweden tells the
story of two close friends with romantic problems.  The script
involves formerly taboo subjects like erotic toys and sexual
enhancers but otherwise the writing is not a lot different from
what is shown free on television.  The characters are paper-thin
and the interesting ideas purely non-existent.  This is a
decrement-life-by-90-minutes card.  Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to
+4)

JALLA! JALLA! is basically an exuberant TV situation comedy
written instead for the wide screen.  It tells the story of two
park custodians and the problems they are finding on the path to
true love.  The film is set in Sweden where Roro and Mans (Fares
Fares and Torkel Petersson) are custodians at a public park.  Roro
is from a tightly knit Lebanese family who control him very
closely, Mans is a Swede from a much more liberal background.
They spend most of the day in the bushes at their park, cleaning
up after dogs.  Roro and Mans each have girlfriends, but each has
a problem.  Roro (nicknamed "Jalla") is having family problems.
It seems that his family wants to arrange a marriage between him
and a nice Lebanese woman, Yasmin (Laleh Pourkarim), but he is
already in love with Lisa (Tuva Novotny).  Yasmin likes Roro, but
does not want to get married either.  Mans on the other hand has
been having a problem of sexual impotence.  The two friends worry
about their problems and discuss the problems with each other.
Mans thinks the answer to his problem is to purchase sexual
enhancers.  The one catch is that he is too shy to go in and buy
them.  Roro and Yasmin decide to give themselves some time by
telling the families that they want to marry each other, but then
plan to break up before the wedding.  Not too surprisingly neither
finds that his idea works out the way he quite expected.

The plot turns in several places are contrived.  One knows fairly
quickly that if things are going to work our happily for everybody
certain plot contrivances have to happen.  Lebanese-born Josef
Fares who wrote and directed is perhaps a better director than he
is a writer.  When things start to get slow, he just adds throws
in another story.  For example halfway into the film Mans
innocently antagonizes some local toughs and a long chase is added
to the film.  Characterization is a little better with Roro than
it is with Mans who does not seem to have a whole lot more
personality beyond fear for losing a biological function.  We do
see some of Roro's family life and his concerns.  That may be
because Roro's background is a lot like that of the director.

While the story was entertaining, I did not feel that I got
anything worthwhile from the film.  It was just a way to pass
about an hour and a half in my life.  One does not have to go to
the movies to see entertainment like this.  I rate it a 4 on the 0
to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...

      Bores bore each other too, but it never seems to teach
      them anything.
                                           --Don Marquis

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/21/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 12

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 MT VOID Schedule
	 Oscilloscopes (Letter to the editor)
	 Hugo Winners
	 Lying to Ourselves (Comments)
	 The Supernatural at the Toronto International Film Festival
		 (Film reviews of HEARTS IN ATLANTIS,
		 THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, and PULSE)

===================================================================

TOPIC: MT VOID Schedule

The MT VOID is dated (internally) every Friday, but since we have
no scheduling software available, you may receive it a few days
early or a few days late, and the date of the email may match
neither the internal date nor the date you receive it.  Also
because of this, issues may not include the latest topical news.
(For example, the Hugos and this week's editorial are both a few
days old.)  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Oscilloscopes (Letter to the editor by Bill Higgins)

I got a piece of mail from Bill Higgins responding to my article
about HDTV.  He says, "Me, I can't get used to color oscilloscopes.
They just look weird."  To which my response was "Wait until you
see the new High Definition Oscilloscopes with surroundsound.
It's like being right there on the F(t)=0 line for all the action."

===================================================================

TOPIC: Hugo Winners

For work from 2000:
Best Novel - HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (JK Rowling)
Best Novella - "The Ultimate Earth" (Jack Williamson)
Best Novelette - "Millenium Babies" (Kristine Katherine Rusch)
Best Short Story - "Different Kind of Darkness" (Dave Langford)
Best Related Book - GREETINGS FROM EARTH (Bob Eggleton)
Best Dramatic Presentation - CRUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
Best Professional Editor - Gardner Dozois
Best Professional Artist - Bob Eggleton
Best Semiprozine - Locus
Best Fanzine - File 770
Best Fan Writer - Dave Langford
Best Fan Artist - Teddy Harvia
John W. Campbell Award - Kristine Smith

For work from 1950 (Retro-Hugos):
Best Novel - FARMER IN THE SKY (Robert A. Heinlein)
Best Novella - "The Man Who Sold the Moon" (Robert A. Heinlein)
Best Novelette - "The Little Black Bag" (C. M. Kornbluth)
Best Short Story - "Coming Attraction" (Fritz Leiber)
Best Related Book - (dropped from ballot)
Best Dramatic Presentation - DESTINATION MOON
Best Professional Editor - John W. Campbell, Jr.
Best Professional Artist - Frank Kelly Freas
Best Semiprozine - (dropped from ballot)
Best Fanzine - Science Fiction Newsletter
Best Fan Writer - Bob Silverberg
Best Fan Artist - Jack Gaughan

===================================================================

TOPIC:  Lying to Ourselves (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I had not originally planned to talk about terrorism this issue.
I figured everybody else is talking about it and you needed an
escape.  But then I was listening to the radio and heard somebody
saying something ridiculous and I was off and running in spite of
myself.  Be warned some of this article may be hard to read.

Someone said it again on the radio today.  The terrorists wanted
to strike at the very heart of our freedom.  The radio said we
should fly flags to show our love of our freedom and that way the
attack will be a failure.  That is a very moving thought.  It is,
I admit, a source of inspiration for many of my fellow citizens.
It also is a lie.  What is worse I think most people really know
it is a lie and are taking refuge in it because it feels good to
do so.  Flying flags makes us feel we are doing something.  The
terrorists who planned this crime do not care one way or another
about our concept of freedom.  And they certainly do not care if
we fly flags or not.  If we say freedom is what the attack was all
about it is only so we can say that it failed.  But by any
measure, it was nothing like a failure.

In fact, by any reasonable standards the September 11 operation
was the most successful terrorist attack in history.  Being honest
with ourselves it even was in some senses a very clever idea.
Terrorists had tried before to damage the World Trade Center.
With a powerful fertilizer bomb they did only a modest amount of
damage.  This approach was more intelligent.  All it required was
the price of some plane tickets, a few knives, and a few people
willing to die for their religion, all readily available materials
in the Middle East.  They carefully chose planes fueled for long
flights but taking off near their objective so they would have a
maximum of unused fuel.  Knowing the planes were hijacked our
natural inclination would be to get other planes out of their way
to help them reach their objective.  That was playing right into
their hands.  They did not need much training.  The hard tasks of
flying a plane are the take-offs and landings.  Piloting a plane
in flight is little harder than driving a car.  This was a
relatively simple, inexpensive operation.  And as a result they
literally brought the towers down.  They killed thousands of
people, cost many billions of dollars, and gave our economy a big
push downward.  The whole operation was deadly, elegant, and
somewhat simple.  As much as I abhor what they did, there is some
part of me that admires how cleverly the problem was solved.
Anyone who calls the action a failure is lying to himself.

So what was the attack about if not about our concept of freedom?
It was about power and hatred.  They used to say that the Golden
Rule was whoever has the gold makes the rules.  America has a lot
of financial power in the Middle East and it has its own opinions.
Our opinions do not agree with those of the terrorists.  We are
perceived as having a lot of power to enforce our point of view,
the terrorists have a lot less.  They want to show the kind of
power they have so we will respect them more.  That was what they
wanted to do and that was what they did.  Even if hurting us does
not change our policies- -and whether it will or not remains to be
seen--it felt good to them to do it and see us shaken from our
self-confidence and our complacency.  That is exactly what they
did see.  It probably felt pretty good to them.  It certainly did
not feel like a failure.

It also apparently felt good to all the Palestinians who
celebrated seeing Americans hurt.  You probably have heard that a
newsman filmed the massive celebration of the success of the
attack, but the film was not broadcast because of death threats
from the Palestinian Authority.  [See
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001125]  What do the
Palestinians have to do with it?  Palestinians are a big part of
the Middle East equation.   These are people who enjoy their
hatreds.  For many, hatred is the only thing they have in
abundance.  It is taught in the schools.  The hatred industry is
the only growth employer.  And it will take anyone who applies.
We have to admit to ourselves that the enemy is widespread and
international and that they really do hate us.  We have to be
prepared for a much bigger struggle than we are expecting.  For
years we have ignored the monumental hatreds in the Middle East,
the hatreds intentionally passed from one generation to the next.
We have told ourselves we were dealing with rational, reasonable
people.  We thought talking would solve the problems.  If that did
not work there were always plans like land for peace.  Now the
monster is too strong, he is angry, he has too many heads to be
easily stopped.

I think what we have to recognize is that we have a clever and
dangerous enemy.  Their unconventional military power may be the
equal of our stronger but more conventional force.  We have to
learn how to fight this enemy.  And the first step is to stop
lying to ourselves.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: The Supernatural at the Toronto International Film Festival
(Film reviews by Mark R. Leeper of HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, THE DEVIL'S
BACKBONE, and PULSE)

With this issue I will begin coverage of the films I saw at the
Toronto International Film Festival.  Over a ten-day period I saw
forty-two films, some of which will play at your local theaters,
some will play only at art houses, some will be available only on
video, and probably some will get no release at all.  I intend to
review all forty-two films.  Those films that will play in
theaters, I will make every effort to review before their release
to provide the reader my viewpoint.

Just to add a little organization to the presentation I will,
where possible, group the films in categories and review an entire
category at a time.  HEARTS IN ATLANTIS is due for release and
falls into my supernatural category.  In my review of PULSE, I
also mention CURE by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  CURE is getting an overdue
art house release.  This weekend it will be playing at The
Screening Room.

The festival, which has few entries that can really be called
horror films, featured films from two of today's best horror
directors, one Mexican, one Japanese.  Not a bad choice for the
few horror films they chose to show.

HEARTS IN ATLANTIS

CAPSULE: In 1960 an eleven-year-old forms a friendship with an
elderly man who boards at his house.  Scott Hicks directs with a
great deal of period feel.  Anthony Hopkins stars as the
mysterious Ted Brautigan.  The story is told sentimentally and
well until the script or perhaps the story falters in the final
reel.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)

Stephen King made his reputation on writing horror and that still
seems to be the major portion of his output.  These days, however,
the films made from his horror stories are definitely of secondary
quality to those that do not have  strong fantasy content.  King
is better when he concentrates on human drama than on the
supernatural.  This film based on only one part of his novel
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS basically ignores most, though not all, of the
fantasy elements of the book.

Robert Garfield (played by David Morse) is a photographer
returning to the neighborhood where he grew up.  He is visiting
the funeral of a childhood friend.  He asks about Carol Gerber,
the girl who was the other close friend, only to discover that she
had recently passed away.  Robert thinks back to 1960 when he was
eleven.  Bobby (played just a little too maturely by Anton
Yelchin) lived with his widowed mother.  Then boarder Ted
Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins) comes to live with the Garfields.
Though his mother takes an immediate dislike to him, for Bobby the
boarder opens up new worlds.  Ted turns Bobby onto the world of
literature and forever changes Bobby's outlook on the world.

Bobby and Ted's relationship is made difficult by Bobby's mother
(Hope Davis), a woman who makes all the wrong decisions in her own
life and blames the result on others.  She has poisoned Bobby's
mind against his dead father suspects the worst of Ted.  Bobby's
mother is right about Ted in at least one regard.  There is
something not normal about the recluse.  He seems to have psychic
powers that tell him things about the future.  And Ted is on the
run from men who know about those powers and want to use them.
The book's fantasy element is much reduced in the William Goldman
(MARATHON MAN, THE PRINCESS BRIDE) adaptation of one section of
the book by Stephen King.  Scott Hicks who directed SHINE and SNOW
FALLING ON CEDARS directs here.  In general his style is nostalgic
and romanticized, though he somewhat unimaginatively creates a lot
of the mood by playing the popular music of the 1960 period.  Also
though the cars we see seem a bit old for the setting.  Goldman's
or King's view of the "good kids" is a little too Simon Pure and
cliched as he follows them down railroad tracks and swimming at
the local water hole, slaking their thirsts with the carton of
milk they brought along.  Nobody I remember was that good a kid.
Once he has lulled us into this idyllic view of 1960 the
introduction of some nasty violence in the latter part of the film
comes as something of a shock.

HEARTS IN ATLANTIS is a Castle Rock Entertainment production.
They do the best adaptations of Stephen King, including the now
classic THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.  HEARTS IN ATLANTIS is a cut
below that film, but still a good production.  I rate it 7 on the
0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE

CAPSULE: During the Spanish Civil War young Carlos is sent to a
dreary orphanage complete with an unexploded bomb in the
courtyard, a murder mystery, and a restless spirit.  His life may
depend on his learning the secret of the phantom.  This is a
stylish ghost story and murder mystery, though the emphasis is on
the murder mystery.  The writer and director is the incomparable
Guillermo del Toro.  Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)

The Golden Age of the Mexican horror film was during the 1950s and
1960s.  During this period the Mexican film industry turned out
horror films with more enthusiasm than budget or quality.
Featured in the films were vampires, werewolves, Aztec mummies,
and professional wrestlers.  The latter were usually heroes.  They
may not have gotten theatrical release in this country but the
films would occasionally be pressed into service for late night
horror film programs.  Beyond that they were not much seen in the
US.  The supply died in the late 1960s and for a long time there
were no horror films from Mexico.  In 1993 a quality Mexican
horror film, CRONOS, directed by Guillermo del Toro, was released.
It was good enough that it played here mostly in art houses.  In
1997 del Toro released another film, MIMIC.  Both are atmospheric
and visually remarkable films.  THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE is the third
from del Toro, a stylish ghost story set in a boarding school near
end of the Spanish Civil War.

The film opens with a bomb bay opening and a bomb being dropped.
The bomb falls in a schoolyard, but does not explode.  To this
same school is brought Carlos (played by Fernando Tielve), a new
student.  Almost immediately on arrival Carlos sees a ghostly
presence in a doorway and the sight will shape his life at the
school.  Carlos has a hard time adapting to the new school and
winning the friendship of the other students.  Bigger children
bully him and the teachers unfairly discipline him.  But more
unusual and more disturbing is that he continues to see the
ghostly presence.  At night he will see a shadow of the specter by
his bed.  He soon finds out the ghost is called by the other
children "the one who sighs."  The ghost might be Santi is a
fellow student who disappeared and was thought to be murdered.
The students are all terrified of Santi, but Carlos a bit less
than the others are.  For this reason Santi seems more willing to
appear to him.  Carlos learns about the school staff through
little clandestine nighttime spying trips.  He learns particularly
about Professor Casares (Federico Luppi of CRONOS), his wife
Carmen (Marisa Paredes), and the handyman, the handsome Jacinto
(Eduardo Noriega).

THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE is only partially a ghost story.  It part it
is a standard boarding school story with horrors coming as much
from the school bully as from the ghost.  Eventually Carlos will
have to find how it was that Santi became a ghost.  The script of
this film was del Toro's school thesis.  Taking place in wartime
and with a killer in the story, one might think the film could
easily enough horror without a ghost.  Even if all the elements
are not necessary for the story, they are fit together in a very
nice way.  Del Toro has a beautiful eye for color and landscape.
So in spite of the fact that some of the horror effects not
particularly unique and the ghost is not frightening  for long,
the sheer beauty of the film's production make this a pleasure to
watch.  Del Toro keeps the digital work to a minimum and when he
uses it, he uses it well.  This is not the original film that
CRONOS was, but it does work.

Sadly Mexican horror died in the late 1960s before it could really
get going.  Guillermo del Toro has brought about a minor rebirth
and is the only director keeping it alive.  But he is just about
the best Mexico has ever had and is one of the best horror
directors making films today.  I rate the Mexican/Spanish
production THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a
high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

PULSE

CAPSULE: The director of CURE brings a weird and very complex
concept to the screen.  One viewing will not be enough to
understand fully the premise of PULSE.  The idea is something
about ghosts and the Internet.  The film has an amazing
apocalyptic style.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

Perhaps the most disturbing (and disturbed?) filmmaker in the
world is Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  His films all seem to have one style,
bleak.  The worlds he creates are terrifying and cold.  Little
known in the US to date, his films deliver the kind of horror that
so many of our filmmakers promise and are unable to deliver.  Most
of his ideas are fresh and at the same time morbid.  His 1998 film
CURE, with one of his niftiest ideas, is just now getting a sadly
limited release in the US and hopefully enough people will see it
that his name will soon be one to conjure with.  CURE is probably
his classic.  Last year he released SEANCE, a remake of SEANCE ON
A WET AFTERNOON.  That was perhaps a miscalculation inserting
supernatural elements into a non-supernatural story.  PULSE is
Kurosawa back on form.

Taguchi, a young computer expert, is late with his delivery of
some important software.  Two co-workers go to his apartment and
find it a dismal dark affair in spite of his computer equipment.
Taguchi, acting very strangely, lets his friends look for the
missing software.  Meanwhile he slips behind a plastic curtain.
When he fails to respond to calls his friends follow him behind
the curtain and discover he has hanged himself.  If that was not
horror enough the body seems to disappear leaving just a strange
dark mildew-like spot on the wall.  Taguchi's computer seems to
have been infected with some kind of computer virus.  People whose
computer gets the virus seem superficially to die via suicide.
But they are not entirely dead.  Their spirits seem to remain
present somehow in the real world and on the Internet.  People who
get the computer virus are asked if they want to see a ghost.  If
they say yes, they seem to be able to see real time images of the
spirits still nearby somehow.  The computer shows them impossible
images of ghosts in their own rooms as seen from cameras that do
not exist.  This is all somehow connected to heaven and hell
somehow filling up and overflowing "like a computer disk."
Instead the dead seem to be staying on earth and inhabiting
computer viruses.  There is some sort of passage between worlds
having something to do with doors marked with red tape and strange
electronic disturbances on computers.  Leave it to Kurosawa to
find a new kind of death.

This is a film that has more weird ideas piled together than
LIFEFORCE and somehow Kurosawa makes the film all work.  It may
not totally convey his message of isolation and its parallels to
death, but whatever it does convey is nightmarish.  Kurosawa, who
directs his own screenplay, ties his story into the real world
with some familiar and accurate computer discussion.  Frequently
the plot is advanced with character hunches being assumed to be
fact.  His plotting is frequently hard to follow and always very
strange.

Junichiro Hayashi, the cinematographer who recently has been doing
all of Kurosawa's films, creates a dark, cold, and gloomy tone.
Images are obscured by semi-lighting or are behind plastic
curtain.  Scenes are not milked for their horror the way American
exploitation films might.  People are shot with guns but there is
little if any blood in evidence.  Seeing black silhouettes on
computer screens is not immediately scary.  Kurosawa is not going
for and easy visual shock, but a deeper metaphysical dread.

Of any horror filmmaker in the world, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is the one
to watch.  I rate this metaphysical look at isolation a 7 on the 0
to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...

      There is something about a home aquarium which sets my
      teeth on edge the moment I see it.  Why anyone would want
      to live with a small container of stagnant water
      populated by a half-dead guppy is beyond me.
                                           - S. J. Perelman

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/14/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 11

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 HDTV (comments)
	 BODIES IN A BOOKSHOP (book review)

===================================================================

TOPIC: HDTV (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

THAT ITCHY, SWEATY PALM FEELING? IT'S HDTV.  So blares an ad in a
magazine for a store that specializes in electronics.  Of course
the ad  is hyping High Definition Television.  It is reaching out
to anybody who  gets really excited about advances like HDTV.
But I have to admit that  though I am really into movies, I am
not all that excited about the  advent of HDTV.  I do not get
sweaty palms thinking about it.  But why  am I not excited?

Let us just take another look at that name, "high-definition
television."  You have the adjective "high-definition" and a noun
"television." It is really just an enhancement on television.
Consumer  television came along in the late forties and early
fifties.  We are  just passing the half-century mark for the
introduction of devices to  bring pictures that move into the
home.  Go back another half century  and you are to the point
that a reasonable technology for creating  moving pictures had
come along was first taking hold.  Now that was an  innovation
that justifiably gave people itchy, sweaty palms!

There are some that say that the motion picture was really the
completion of an art that goes back to cave paintings.  Certainly
early  in representational art the artist became dissatisfied
that his  paintings were fixed in time and what he saw in the
real world moved.   In a sense all still painting is a lie, or at
the very least  unrealistic.  When Rembrandt painted a person he
wanted to capture that  person on canvas.  But he had to remind
the person to keep still and not  move.  To get a realistic
portrait of the person the subject had to  behave unrealistically
still.  Modern photographers still have the  problem.  They pose
people and then tell them not to move.  People and  things in the
real world move and change.  They have motion.  But oil  cannot
move on canvas so the painting is a misrepresentation.

It took until the early 1900s for there to be a viable technology
to put  motion into art.  And the very earliest commercial films
did not even  have a story.  They were just pictures of things
the photographer saw in  the world around with that super-special
new added feature, movement.   Note we still use the words
"movie," "motion picture," and "cinema"  [from the same root as
"kinetic" or "moving"].  This is true in spite of  the fact that
we are a long way past the point that promoters of this  summer's
blockbusters want to emphasize is that they ACTUALLY MOVE and
are not just still pictures.  This was pretty exciting stuff a
century  ago.

Fifty years later was another watershed in communication of
moving  visuals.  Again itchy sweaty palms were in order.  You
could bring a  picture with motion, if not a motion picture,
right into your home.  The  difference was a lot like the
difference it made when computers could be  brought into the home
and just ordinary people could own them.

Now 50 years later we are moving into the era of HDTV.  Another
big leap  forward? Hardly.  As the name indicates HDTV is a
refinement on  television.  The problem is that you reach a point
of diminishing  returns with what new technology buys you.  HDTV
is a big investment and  it brings you a better picture than VHS
and even a somewhat better  picture than DVDs give you.  HDTV is
a medium for the person who says  the glass is 3% empty, not 97%
full.  HDTV will moderately improve the  experience of seeing a
noisy special effects movie like ARMAGEDDON.  It  is not clear it
offers any real advantage at all in seeing a great film  like
TWELVE ANGRY MEN.  In that film the value is in the dialog and
the  acting.  It was a story originally written for the tiny,
black and white  TV screen and that is about all it requires.
HDTV may be a medium for  someone who enjoys a film like
ARMAGEDDON, but it will do little for the  fan of TWELVE ANGRY
MEN who does not need to hear Jack Klugman in eight  channel
stereo or to see a crystal clear image of Jack Warden's face.

HDTV is a refinement on existing technology.  TV has come a long
way  since the 1950s.  The picture is color, a lot clearer, and
the shape of  the picture is less dictated by the shape of the
vacuum tube.  But if  there is an improvement somewhere out there
of the magnitude of the  invention of the motion picture or of
television, I am missing it.   Perhaps technology has slowed, or
perhaps it really is out there I am  just not recognizing it.
Perhaps innovations fusing the motion picture  with the Internet
will eventually have a big influence.  But I think  that fifty
and a hundred years ago there were a lot of people who were
excited about changes in the representation of motion in art.
Today the  next sweaty palm experience is running behind
schedule.   [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: BODIES IN A BOOKSHOP by R. T. Campbell (Dover, 1984
(c 1946), trade paperback, $3.95, 178pp) (a book review by Evelyn
C. Leeper):

Let me just quote the first paragraph
"I don't know what came over me.  It wasn't as if there were not
enough books in the house to begin with.  There were books on the
floor, books on the beds--and in the beds if one wasn't careful.
Only that morning I had removed three volumes of Curtis from my
room.  How they came to be there I would not know.  There seems
to be a plot between the old man, Professor John Stubbs, and his
housekeeper, Mrs. Farley, to dump anything they like in my room.
So far as I am concerned this is fine.  I like books.  But I have
books enough enough and mess enough of my own."

Then two paragraphs later:

"Having made up my mind that I wanted the life of Robert Boyle I
started going round all the bookshops I could find.  This was
fine, but I kept running into others books I wanted.  I spent the
devil of a lot of money.  I said to myself that it didn't really
matter very much if I failed to get the 'Life of Boyle,' I had
gathered enough to keep me reading for at least a fortnight."

(Okay, only a fortnight's worth of reading on a book trip is a
bit light.)

Anyway, the narrator finds two dead bodies in a bookshop off
Tottenham Court Road,  His off-hand comments would seem to
indicate that this is not the first time he has stumbled onto
deceased persons, though Dover doesn't indicate any earlier books
in a series.  The deaths--murders, of course--are all tied up
with the London used booksellers, trafficking in stolen rare
books and in high-quality pornography.

It is all vaguely reminiscent of THE CLUB DUMAS crossed with
84, CHARING CROSS ROAD, and if all this doesn't get you to want to
read it, nothing else I can say would help.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...

	 Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
                                           --Mark Twain

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/07/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 10

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Topics:
	 THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (comments)
	 THE DEEP END (film review)

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

With the release of PEARL HARBOR an Internet radio program played
music from a lot of different films that treated the Japanese
attack on December 7, 1941, beginning the Second World War for a
country that was unaware that it had already been going on for
27 months.  (In fact, really the war's most significant blow to
the German Western Front had already been struck by Britain,
though virtually nobody, least of all the Germans, knew it at
the time.  Or am I being enigmatic?)  But we were talking in
this article about the Pacific War.

In any case, the 1980 film THE FINAL COUNTDOWN has always seemed
a little strange to me.  In the first place, I do not remember
there being a countdown anywhere in the film, final or
otherwise.  The film is  really just a dressed up version of a
"Twilight Zone" episode.  (Not that that is a surprise.  For
five seasons "Twilight Zone" churned out an idea a week.  Some
were just ghastly, but some were pretty good ideas and a lot of
the fantasy films that came out after those five seasons show
the influence of "Twilight Zone."  CARNIVAL OF SOULS is a very
effective horror film, but it is made of elements taken from
"Twilight  Zone" episodes, particularly "The Hitchhiker." I am
told that Spielberg paid royalties to Richard Matheson because
he openly borrowed part of the plot of POLTERGEIST from the
"Twilight Zone" episode "Little Girl Lost" where a little girl
has to be retrieved after falling into another dimensional
universe.)  The "Twilight Zone" episode "The 7th Is Made Up  of
Phantoms" has a tank crew getting lost in time and finding
themselves at the Little Bighorn.  This is the idea that was
recycled for THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, though there it was an
aircraft carrier that found itself at Pearl Harbor just prior to
the Japanese attack.  (Time travel fiction seems to think that
the laws of physics seem to have some particular interest in
important events of American and occasionally European history.
Nobody ever gets dropped in the middle of an empty plain
someplace with nothing much of interest happening within 2000
miles.  Nobody ever gets dropped in the middle of even a Chinese
war, much less an ant war.  Anyway, THE FINAL COUNTDOWN has the
USS Nimitz dropped just off Pearl Harbor just before the
Japanese attack.  While the commander discovers he cannot stay
around for the actual attack, he can take on some of the
vanguard of the Japanese planes headed for the raid.

What does Captain Yelland (played by Kirk Douglas) discover? Sure
enough modern planes are really good at taking out 1941 Japanese
bombers.  Apparently this film and their victory has become a
point of pride with the real United States Navy.  They have
taken John Scott's score for THE  FINAL COUNTDOWN and use it in
Navy recruiting films.  This strikes me as a little odd since it
is a commonly known truism of military history that countries are
always preparing to be ready to fight their previous wars.  As
we entered World War II we were really very ready to fight World
War I.  They are always ready to fight war in a way that would
have been state of the art the last time they fought.  It is
great that the Navy is so proud of the message that they are all
set to fight World War II again and this time we could
decisively beat the Japanese.  This may not be such a thing to
be proud of.  The film shows us valiantly beating 1940s Japanese
planes with 1970s American planes.  Actually, unless my memory
is failing me, I think we did decisively beat the Japanese and we
did it using 1940s weapons.  I am pretty sure that some
government policy says that we fight wars using contemporarily
available weapons exclusively.  I guess someone thinks that is a
real triumph or there would not have been a film made about it.

Perhaps this discussion would not be complete without mentioning
the  classic written story along the lines of modern in previous
is "A Hawk Among Sparrows" by Dean McLaughlin.  In this story a
modern fighter pilot finds himself and his plane back in World
War I fighting biplanes.  He discovers much to his chagrin that
while the biplanes cannot do a lot to hurt him, he cannot do
much to hurt the biplanes.  Heat-seeking  missiles need to seek a
lot of heat.  The motorized box kites that were the planes of
World War I just do not generate much heat and are safe from
modern missiles.  It is impossible without stalling out to slow
down a modern fighter enough so that it can even engage a
biplane.   However, ...  Well, it is a good story.  Places where
it can be found are listed:

--Analog Magazine, July 1968
--ANALOG 8, edited by John W. Campbell
--HAWK AMONG SPARROWS, chosen by Dean McLaughlin
--WAR AND PEACE (ANTHOLOGY #6), edited by Stanley Schmidt

[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE DEEP END (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: Tilda Swinton stars as a mother who tries to hide the
     death of her son's male lover and in the process gets herself
     involved in a web of blackmail and deceit.  Swinton gives a
     very good performance, but her character is more like a cork
     in water buffeted by the force of those around her than a
     person who takes action.  The film is tense but not entirely
     satisfying.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

For any thriller to work fully there are two real requirements.
The viewer has to have some emotional investment in the
characters, particularly the main character, and the characters
have to make choices that will affect the outcome of the story.
If we do not care what happens to the main character we might as
well be watching pieces on a chessboard.  If the people in the
story do not make judgments and choices then they might as well be
on a thrill ride at an amusement park following its inevitable
track.  They just ride through the various dangers they face.  In
THE DEEP END we are given reason to empathize with Margaret Hall
(played by Tilda Swinton), but after the first half-hour or so she
is mostly doing just what she has to do.  While other characters
are complex and at times do the unexpected, once we know Margaret
well enough to care for her, we also know the choices that she
will make.  And by never doing anything unexpected she loses much
of her interest value.  The film is almost a morality tale.
Having made a bad choice at the beginning, this long chain of
events is what she has earned for herself.

Margaret Hall lives with her family in an idyllic existence in a
nice house on Lake Tahoe.  Her son Beau (Jonathan Tucker) is a
promising music student making applications to various colleges.
Margaret's one wish is to protect Beau from the clutches of a male
lover whom she is sure just wants to use her son.  After a
clandestine assignation between the two Margaret finds the lover
dead.  Without telling anyone she decides to hide the body so her
son will not be implicated in the investigation.  This leaves her
prey to blackmail and a horrific chain of events.

Swinton is known mostly for roles of women who have foregone
anything like a "normal" lifestyle.  Somehow her unusual, almost
albino, looks lead to unusual roles.  In ORLANDO she plays her
best known role, an immortal who at one point for no obvious
reason spontaneously changes gender from male to female.
Frequently she plays women of power.  It is a little odd seeing
her play a housewife who at least starts out somewhat typical.  Of
course not long into the movie she is juggling her life as a
housewife with her secret life dealing with blackmailers.  The man
who has contacted her for hush money also shows sides to his
personality we would not expect.

This is the second screen adaptation of the 1947 novel THE BLANK
WALL by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding.  The first was the 1949 film THE
RECKLESS MOMENT with James Mason and Joan Bennett directed by Max
Ophuls.  Ophuls chose to use actors who would be familiar to
audiences, hence making it a glossier production.  The team of
Scott McGehee and David Siegal who have been writing and directing
thrillers since 1993's SUTURE.  Here again they wrote and
directed.  They chose to use generally less familiar actors than
the previous version.  Only Swinton and character actor Peter
Donat were even vaguely familiar to me.

THE DEEP END is a well-acted story of a woman who makes one
mistake and then faces some fairly harrowing consequences.  I rate
it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...

	 When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport;
	 when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
                                           --George Bernard Shaw

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/31/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 9

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 MT VOID Schedule
	 Apology for Punning (comments)
	 Animal Rights (comments)
	 GHOSTS OF MARS (film review)
	 JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK (film review)
	 CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION (film review)

===================================================================

TOPIC: MT VOID Schedule

Due to various commitments, this MT VOID is being sent out a day
early.  Next week's will be four days early (Monday), and the
following week's will be three days late (another Monday).  The
regular schedule will resume the week after that.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Apology for Punning (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I have to apologize for the pun last week.  I had an article about
Atlantis that ended "Put them together and what do you get?
Bimini bomb in a bull!!!"  I have to apologize.  That was really
bad.  In fact, it was abominable.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Animal Rights (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I am continuing a discussion of animal rights.

Most of us treat other people at least with cordiality, but as a
whole do not treat animals very well. America has championed--or
perhaps paid lip service at least to--Human Rights but have much
lower standards of consideration for animals. Popular causes among
animal advocates seem to be raising chickens and calves in
barbaric and tortuous conditions for the more efficient production
of meat. But I see almost every day examples that the activists
just have not gotten to yet but probably should eventually. That
is no negative reflection on the activists who have to start
somewhere.

Most of us are justifiably irate when we hear of under slavery
husbands and wives separated for their masters' profit. Most of us
would think little of an incident where mated wolves were
separated. This in spite of the fact that wolves mate for life and
have on the whole a much better record of fidelity and as far as
we can tell love in mating than humans do.

Only a cursory look at the way animals are treated in our society
shows a routine indifference to their pain and suffering. Not all
animals if this true of, but in far greater proportions than we
want to admit. And the arguments used to defend this behavior are
identical to ones that once were used to defend inhumane behavior
against other humans.

Probably the most reviled philosopher in the world is Peter
Singer. There are few writers who seem more outrageous when quoted
out of context. People take lines out of his writings and perhaps
conclusions to some of his arguments and use them to damn him. Yet
from an admittedly small initial sample he seems constitutionally
unable to write an argument that is not well reasoned or that when
examined does not have a ring of truth to it. His detractors do
not seem to find faults in his reasoning, only in the conclusions.
As a mathematician I feel that is the wrong approach. If you
cannot find a problem in the reasoning, you cannot decide the
conclusion is false, just because you do not like it.

A lot of what Singer says sounds really bad to many people if
taken out of context and yet if I read his actual arguments I can
always at least sympathize with his point of view and almost
always agree with them. On the other hand the arguments of his
detractors seem less well reasoned, are frequently false, and
almost always seem at base motivated by self-interest.

An example can be found at
http://slate.msn.com/dialogues/01-06-11/dialogues.asp?iMsg=1
[Follow the links for all four parts.]  Here he debates the issue
with Richard Posner, a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
7th Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law
School.

Posner is cordial and polite, but his arguments in the end come
down to issues of self-interest rather than morality. He begins by
saying that he agrees that human life is not infinitely more
valuable than animal life, but when asked about numbers he still
feels that a human life is more valuable than any number of
animals.

Posner says we are accustomed to giving preference to humans and
that is what our intuition tells us to do. He might have said
"whites" instead of "humans" and the argument would be immediately
obvious to be bred of bigotry. I think it still is bred of
prejudice, albeit one acceptable in our times.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: GHOSTS OF MARS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: In 2176 on the planet Mars police taking into custody
     an accused murderer face the title menace.  There is a lot of
     fighting and not a whole lot of story otherwise.  John
     Carpenter reprises so many ideas from his previous films,
     especially ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, that the new film comes off
     as his homage to himself.  Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4).

John Carpenter apparently believes that action scenes in which
people fight something horrible are the same as horror scenes.
For a writer and director of horror films, supposedly an expert on
horror, it is a very bad mistake to make.  GHOSTS OF MARS is
called a horror movie, but it is more just a drawn out fight
between humans and a surprisingly low-powered alien menace.  In
addition if anybody but John Carpenter had made GHOSTS OF MARS,
Carpenter would have grounds to sue.  This film is just chock full
of pieces taken from ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, THE THING, and PRINCE
OF DARKNESS.  It is, in fact, surprising that Carpenter managed to
fit so many pieces of his previous work into this film in such an
admittedly novel way.  But that still does not make for a really
good science fiction experience.

GHOSTS OF MARS takes place in the year 2176.  Mars has been mostly
terraformed so that humans can walk on the surface without
breathing gear (which is good for the film's budget).  It is never
mentioned, but the gravity on Mars has been increased somehow to
earth-normal, again making it easier to film.  Society has changed
a bit by that time, but it has advanced surprisingly little.
Apparently the culture has changed so that women are much more in
positions of control.  And from Carpenter's view, women have
really made a mess of things.  Society has stagnated under female
control so that beyond some minor technological advances society
has changed less in 175 years than we might expect it to change in
ten.

The basic plot of GHOSTS OF MARS has much in common with that of
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 except that Precinct 9 (yes, Precinct 9)
has been replaced by a somewhat tacky looking rundown Martian
mining colony.  Instead of having the criminal "Napolean" Wilson,
this film has the criminal "Desolation" Williams.  Instead of
facing hoodlums with automatic weapons the police face, well,
ghosts of Mars.  Because the ghosts are somewhat alien in nature
they should behave in some alien manner, but they essentially
behave as human savages, in another lapse of imagination.  The
story is told in flashback, flashback within flashback, and
flashback within flashback within flashback.

GHOSTS OF MARS takes place entirely at night and is filmed almost
entirely in tones of red, yellow, and black.  Carpenter manages to
give us a powerful opening scene, showing a mining train rushing
through the Martian night to the sound of music with a heavy beat.
Sadly what follows is not really up to the buildup.  The terror he
creates looks a little too much like fugitive wannabes from the
rock band Kiss.  His idea of building suspense is having a bunch
of sudden jump scenes that sucker the viewer into thinking
something scary is happening and then prove to be just something
boring.  These are standard haunted house film shock effects that
require no great talent to give the audience.  Somewhat newer but
also unimpressive are the CGI digital decapitations in some of the
fights.

Within a short stretch of time we have seen the release of MISSION
TO MARS, RED PLANET, and GHOSTS OF MARS.  After MISSION TO MARS
was panned by too many reviewers it looks better and better and
better as time goes by.  I rate GHOSTS OF MARS a 4 on the 0 to 10
scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.

Following the movie I showed my wife, who liked GHOSTS OF MARS
moderately more than I did, Carpenter's classic ASSAULT ON
PRECINCT 13.  Her comment is that it was seeing the same film
twice.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK (a film review by Mark
R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: The running gag pair of characters from all of Kevin
     Smith's films gets their own movie.  The gags are sporadically
     funny.  It is more than occasionally funny for teens who are
     fond of scatological humor and anti-gay jokes.  The plot is
     weak and  the leads are not a particularly funny comic team.
     The little inside jokes and digs at other entertainment and
     particularly at Kevin Smith films are the best features of the
     film.  Sadly for me they were just not funny enough to make the
     film worth watching.  This feels like the high school skit that
     that the principal would not let the kids do on talent night.
     (And it turns out he had very good reasons.)  Rating: 4
     (0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)

A film needs a plot.  It needs characters for empathy value.  It
needs a story and an emotional center.  If a film is just a chain
of jokes it can only be so good and any entertainment value will
succeed or fail based on how funny the jokes are.  Kevin Smith has
now made two satisfying films, CLERKS and CHASING AMY.  With DOGMA
he tried to make a philosophical religious comedy and mixed with a
madcap romp.  Peter Cook and Dudley Moore did that very
successfully with their BEDAZZLED.  But getting the combination to
work is very hard to do right and Kevin Smith's fecal monsters in
DOGMA were not the way to do it.  His remaining two films,
MALLRATS and his new JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK are aimed
squarely at a teenage audience.  JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is
a compendium of gay jokes, penis jokes, flatulence jokes, film
pastiches, and in-jokes.  How funny the jokes are will be a
subjective call.  For me, the vast majority of the jokes were just
not very funny.  There was not enough cleverness or variety.  It
is funny at most once or twice to accuse someone of being gay.
Penis jokes work only so many times.

Showing up as minor characters in every Kevin Smith film Jay and
Silent Bob were a clever pair of human running gags.  They were
sort of the modern equivalents of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford,
the comic duo who showed up satirizing the English middle class in
several good British post-war films including DEAD OF NIGHT, THE
LADY VANISHES, and PASSPORT TO PIMLICO.  Jay and Silent Bob were
originally supposedly typical Generation X stoners.  As the series
wore on they had larger and larger parts.  In JAY AND SILENT BOB
STRIKE BACK they are the leads.

Jay and Silent Bob (played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) are
chased away from the front of the convenience store where they
were dealing drugs in CLERKS.  This leaves them at loose ends.
They are not sure what would be worthwhile to do with their lives
when they hear that a comic book with characters visually modeled
on them will be adapted into a movie.  They decide to devote their
lives to wrecking the movie or getting some of that big movie
industry cash.  So it is off to Hollywood to shake down the movie
company and having adventures along the way.  The film is mostly
about their adventures on the road and when they get to Hollywood

The problem with this comedy team is that neither really pulls his
weight to make the film funny.  Silent Bob, being silent, can only
contribute to the comedy by reacting with that very expressive
face of his.  This makes his piece of the comedy even less than a
straight man like a Dean Martin or Bud Abbott would have.  Jay has
to be the comic.  He could carry the load for both if he were
extremely inventive.  The problem is that he is not sufficiently
funny.  He is too bland to be the comic half and his lines just do
not show any comic flair.  So Jay and Silent Bob are a long way
from being a successful comic team.  Their starring roles and the
low humor make this a comedy for those young at mind and for
people who can laugh at gags they have seen before--sometimes just
minutes before.

Like DOGMA before it, but definitely not like CHASING AMY, this
film feels more like an amateurish skit than a real movie.
Certainly neither the plot nor the characters are at all
involving.  They are excuses for gags, many of which still fall
flat.  It is DOGMA without any of the humorous theological
content.  The film does not offer much to an adult audience.  I
rate it 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION (a film review by Mark
R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: This film is more interesting for its nostalgia value
     than for actual story values.  That value is certainly better
     than any comic value it might have.  Woody Allen writes,
     directs, and stars in a whimsical B film of a style that was
     popular in the year it is set, 1940.  Allen's humor just is not
     as funny as it used to be.  This is better than some of his
     recent efforts, but that is not saying much.  Rating:
     4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4).

As far as I am concerned Woody Allen, once one of our finest
filmmakers, has not made a really satisfying film since his
excellent CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.  CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION is
his best effort in recent times.  At least he is not obviously
trying to write about his life, as he was in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY.
There are not missing scenes, as there were in SWEET AND LOWDOWN.
He does get the feel of the genre of film he is resurrecting,
unlike EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU.  Here he tells a whole story and
it feels right (mostly).  The one problem is that it is not a
really good story.  It has plot holes and the plot might very well
have been used for a 1930s or 1940s B picture.  It probably would
not have had a lurid, pulpish title like CURSE OF THE JADE
SCORPION.  In filmdom those titles were pretty much confined to
the serials at that time.  And this film is in color, albeit
sepia-tinged, and is a little more explicit about sex than one of
those films would have been.  But those exceptions aside this
might well have been a film that might have starred Lee Tracy and
nestled at the bottom of a double bill right under a big Warner
Brothers studio film.  If that was what Allen was trying to
recreate, that does not make this a particularly ambitious film,
but it probably achieves those ambitions.  Even the comedy is up
to the standards of that sort of film.

C.W. Briggs (Woody Allen) is a super-hot-shot investigator for the
North Coast Insurance Company.  (Does the U.S. have a north
coast?)  He gets all the big cases and breaks them with lightning
speed with the aid of his network of skid row informants.  He has
just broken a tough case of a stolen Picasso.  Everybody in the
office is agog but for the insurance company's executive
efficiency expert Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt).  Fitz, as she
is called, has absolutely no use for smug, self-obsessed,
egotistical Briggs, and Briggs has no use for the officious Fitz
who can match him insult for insult in battles of double
entendres.  One night the two go with a group to see a nightclub
hypnotist, Voltan (David Ogden Stiers).  When called up to the
stage neither thinks that Voltan can put them under.  He does and
temporarily makes them love each other.  He also leaves them with
post-hypnotic suggestion that makes them his slave when he uses
the right code word (a la THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE).  He has plans
of his own for them.

This is, of course, not Allen's first outing into nostalgia for
the world of the popular culture of his youth.  His most
successful film along these lines would probably be RADIO DAYS.
There he showed how the entertainment world and his own real world
interacted and fed each other.  There is no such attempt here.
His script is pure pastiche.  His humor is more than a little
strained and for me at least was just not funny.  At one point he
tells police that he cannot talk to them because he has a chorus
girl in his bedroom.  An instant later he tells them he has to get
back to his nurse.  When they remind him that he just said she was
a chorus girl, flustered he says it is a chorus girl who does a
little nursing.  The line is very Woody Allen, but it is not at
all clever or funny.  The film is just full of predictable twists
and gags that do not quite amuse.

In this film Allen is looking a little tired and bedraggled.  He
continues to cast himself as the romantic lead in his films.  The
heart wants what the heart wants, and the heart no longer yearns
to see him get a woman twenty-eight years his junior.  It seemed
only recently that Helen Hunt was in several films released at the
same time.  Now she is content to be in just Allen's film. Allen,
like Robert Altman, is in the enviable position that he can put a
familiar face in just about every major role.  This film has Dan
Aykroyd, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers and Charlize Theron.
One can tell from the beginning that this is a Woody Allen film.
Every Allen film these days starts with a jazz score and white on
black credits.

CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION is whimsical, but it is empty and
rarely elicits a laugh.  I give it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a
0 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


	 I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the
	 time.
                                           --Nietzsche

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/24/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 8

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Sir Fred Hoyle (obituary)
	 Atlantis (comments)
	 Animal Rights (comments)
	 MIDNIGHT ROBBER (book review)
	 Quote of the Week

===================================================================

TOPIC: Sir Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle, physicist, astronomer, and science fiction author, died
August 21 at the age of 86.  Best known in astronomy for naming
the Big Bang and for being completely opposed to it (supporting
instead the Steady State theory), he was also the author of such
books as THE BLACK CLOUD and A FOR ANDROMEDA.  He later wrote
several novels in collaboration with his son Geoffrey.  The London
Times has a full obituary at
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,60-2001291637,00.html
[-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Atlantis (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

We were watching a documentary from the History Channel about the
legends of Atlantis and modern day investigations to try to
uncover the truth.  What is the basis of the references to this
lost culture?  There seem to be a lot of extent clues, but they
all pull in different directions.  Supposedly the lost
civilization had very powerful forces, but they were unleashed
against themselves explosively in just a very short time.  One day
the culture was there, the next it was gone.  The Atlanteans are
associated with the Minoan civilization.  The ultimate force of
the Minoans is associated with the symbol of the bull.  The bull
symbolizes their ultimate destructive force.  Add to this the
archeological finds made on the island of Bimini that seem
associated with the Atlantis culture.  These all seem like
separate and unrelated clues, but they are all parts of the same
puzzle.  There is a certain inexorable logic to all of this.
There are a lot of separate pieces.  But they need not all be
separate.  They all fit together to make a larger whole that
explains the Atlantis legends more clearly.  Put them together and
what have you got?  Bimini bomb in a bull!!!

===================================================================

TOPIC: Animal Rights (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

Perhaps the most hated philosopher in the world today is
Australian-born Peter Singer, currently of Princeton University.
One of the issues on which he has received a lot of criticism is
his championing of reasonable treatment of animals and his belief
than animals deserve some of the same protections under the law as
humans.  Here is my take on this issue.

Everybody has a circle of people very close to them that they have
protected.  Most people have loved and protected their families.
That instinct is probably a matter of pure biological necessity.
Humans have always protected people within their circle and
treated living things outside the circle far less mercifully.  We
slaughter cows for food to feed our families.  I suppose that in
primitive times our circles of consideration and protection were
not much larger than our own families.  However, to get along in
society we have had to extend the circles to include more people.
Today, for most people, protecting our own families at the expense
of our communities is considered anti-social behavior.  Different
people have had different sized circles of protection.  In the
pre-Civil War South it was quite acceptable to not let into your
circle of fair play anyone not of the same race.  Even in TO KILL
A MOCKINGBIRD, set, I believe, in the 1930s, not only are some
people incensed that a white lawyer would defend a black man.
Significantly they are even angrier that a black man might feel
pity for a white woman.  In our day the greatest degree of
struggle is still at the racial and religious level, getting
people to treat people of other races and religions without
barbarity.  But Peter Singer is a leading voice in extending the
circle to cover some animals also.

Perhaps umbrella would be a better metaphor than circle since an
open umbrella is really highest at the center and falls off toward
its outer rim.  That is how this protection works.  Nobody really
expects that someone should treat a stranger as well as he would
treat his own family.  Even so in our society most people would
look negatively on someone who would say that it would be
reasonable to let ten Germans die to save one member of his own
family.  HOWEVER, most people would be much more open about saying
that it is fair to let ten gorillas die to save one human.  In
fact I suspect most people would say it would be acceptable to let
the entire species of gorilla die to save one human life.

In this age the umbrella of consideration has expanded to the
boundaries of our species for most people, but then falls off
precipitously.  We accept there is value to the life of a Kenyan,
a Frenchman, or a Thai that is somehow comparable to the value of
a family member.  There would be at least social disapproval to
someone letting ten Thai people die to save a family member,
though I am not sure there are not a lot of people who if it had
to be decided on those terms would choose the life of their family
member.  But few people would be willing to say there is any
number of gorillas could balance off the value of a life of a
loved one.  The criteria should be the degree of self- awareness,
the capacity to feel pain, and the degree of determination to
avoid pain and continue living.  And I think that is what Singer
has been arguing.  I have to agree with Singer that if a human
irretrievably loses the ability to feel pain and to be aware of
himself, he has little to lose by death.  His life is less
valuable than that of a healthy gorilla in the wild.  I do not
believe the human life is intrinsically of more value just because
it is human regardless of how far that life is made useless.  This
seems to me to be just what Singer is saying.

I will continue this discussion next week.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: MIDNIGHT ROBBER by Nalo Hopkinson (copyright 2000, Aspect
Science Fiction, $13.95 Trade  Paperback, 329 pp, ISBN
0-446-67560-1) (a book review by Joe Karpierz):

I'm not quite sure what to make of Nalo Hopkinson's MIDNIGHT
ROBBER.  Much has been made of the style in which the novel has
been written.  Hopkinson wrote it in Creole/Carribean style,
which makes for a difficult read at times.  But since the idea
was not just to throw the language in, but make the culture an
integral part of the story, it made for an interesting read at the
same time that it was difficult to get through.

The story begins on the planet of Toussaint, which has obviously
been settled by people of Caribbean descent.  At the same time
there is a mirror planet, New Half Way Tree, which serves as a
prison/exile planet for those who commit heinous crimes.
Additionally, each native of the planet is plugged into a network
of sort by having some nanotechnology implanted at birth - they
are "connected", if you will.  Exile to New Half Way Tree gets
you disconnected, a very disconcerting thing, to be sure.

But I get ahead of myself.

Antonio is the local mayor, an unscrupulous power hungry man.
His wife is unfaithful to him, and he knows it.  It's Carnival
time, and Antonio challenges his wife's latest lover to a duel.
He commissions a mild poison that is supposed to weaken his
opponent, but instead it kills him.  Antonio is banished to New
Half Way Tree, and takes his daughter Tan Tan with him.  The mode
of transport is a transdimensional gizmo, near as I can tell, and
they arrive on New Half Way Tree disconnected, alone, and with
nothing.

They are befriended by Chichibud, one of the locals who resembles
a creature from the lore of Toussaint.  Chichibud takes them to
the nearest human settlement, wherein Antonio reverts to his old
ways.  And worse.

The remainder of the novel tells the story of Tan Tan and how she
adapts and becomes part of the culture and lore of New Half Way
Tree.  It is at times a fascinating story, as the natives have
some surprises up their collective sleeves.  It is at times a
frustrating story, as the reader trips over the language used to
tell the story.

But ultimately, it was unsatisfying.  The story really didn't go
anywhere in the end.  It seemed like a small part of a larger
story about Tan Tan, maybe just the beginning.  Or maybe it was
just that it seemed like it was looking at a part of her life
without really resolving anything.  To me, a good novel needs a
decent climax, a sort of topping to the rest of it.  This one
didn't have it.  This is one novel that I wouldn't have read if
it wasn't a Hugo nominee.

********

So you might guess that I was unsatisfied with the Hugo nominees
that I read this year.  You'd be right.  I read four of the five,
and I probably would have only read three of them if I had known
ahead of time that THE SKY ROAD was part of a larger series.  I
also didn't read the George R. R. Martin novel--yet another book
in yet another series.  I feel this was the weakest field in
many, many years.  So, how did I vote the four?  Here's how:

  1) CALCULATING GOD
  2) MIDNIGHT ROBBER
  3) THE SKY ROAD
  4) HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

Two things stand out:

  1) I thought CALCULATING GOD was weaker than most Sawyer novels,
but it was definitely the best of this bunch.
  2) I think I should have voted No Award number 1, and left the
rest blank!

Until next time...  [-jak]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


	 Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human
	 egotism.
                                           --William James

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/17/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 7

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Mathematical Science Fiction (comments)
	 THE OTHERS (film review)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Mathematical Science Fiction

Last week I talked about mathematics and why it has such an
appeal. This was not what I had planned to run this week, but it
this week's article goes well with that one. I am preparing for a
related panel at this year's Worldcon. When I found out I was
going to be on a panel discussing mathematical science fiction I
had that moment of panic. I have loved mathematics since I was an
early teen, and science fiction since I was about six, but I have
no special knowledge about the convergence of the two. As long as
I have to think out the subject, I might as well share my thought
with the VOID readers

Mathematics is a subject that most science fiction avoids, or when
it does use it gets it wrong. For example, I was always a little
galled when comic books and now film make the chronic mistake of
using the word "dimension" when what they mean is "parallel
universe." It is only a small rearrangement of the universe as we
know it to say there is another universe parallel to ours. I am
not even sure what it would mean to say there is another dimension
with a different set of people living in it.

As I grew up I savored TV science fiction that dealt with
mathematical ideas more for their rarity than their quality.
TWILIGHT ZONE had one episode, an adaptation of Richard Matheson's
"Little Girl Lost," in which a little girl had rolled over in bed
and fallen into an intersecting (hence not quite parallel)
universe. Two OUTER LIMITS episodes dealt with intersecting
universes, "The Borderland" and "The Production and Decay of
Strange Particles."

I know of five anthologies of mathematical stories. These are all
anthologies of stories about mathematics, and containing science
fiction stories. I do not guarantee every story is science
fiction.

1953--SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES IN DIMENSION, edited by Groff
Conklin. Any 1950s collection of science fiction edited by Groff
Conklin is going to be a great book to read. Add to it
mathematical subject matter and you have a real find.
Unfortunately it is mostly time travel and/or alternate universe
stories. It could have more diversity.

1958--FANTASIA MATHEMATICA, edited by Clifton Fadiman. This is a
mix of science fiction, poetry, and essays on a mathematical
theme.and is *the classic* anthology of mathematical science
fiction. Nobody talks about mathematical science fiction without
mentioning it. Seen today the stories may be a little simplistic,
but everything is fun. Fadiman gives everything a playful
approach.

1962--THE MATHEMATICAL MAGPIE, edited by Clifton Fadiman. Fadiman
followed up his classic anthology with a second joyous helping.
Again it is mostly stories (many of which are science fiction)
with essays and poetry mixed in. It is just slightly less of a
classic than FANTASIA MATHEMATICA.

1987--THE MATHENAUTS, edited by Rudy Rucker. Rucker gets a good
six sentences into the book before mentioning the two Fadiman
anthologies. His book is all science fiction stories. Basically it
is a collection of the best mathematics science fiction stories
from the intervening quarter century. It is not as playful as the
Fadiman books, but it has the goods.

1999--IMAGINARY NUMBERS, edited by William Frucht. This is
apparently much closer to the spirit of the Fadiman anthologies
with a collection of stories, poems, and essays.

While I am listing related books with mathematical science
fiction, I should point out that there is a classic fiction work
of science fiction with several authors following up on it. In
1884 Edwin A. Abbott published FLATLAND: A ROMANCE OF MANY
DIMENSIONS. This rather unique book envisioned a two-dimensional
world encountering our world of three dimensions. In the process
it tells by analogy what it would be like for us to become aware
of a world of four dimensions. There have been several follow-up
stories by other authors. Three of book length have been
SPHERELAND (1965) by Dionys Burger, PLANIVERSE (1984) by A. K.
Dewdney, and FLATTERLAND (2001) by Ian Stewart. Rudy Rucker's
anthology MATHENAUTS contains his own short story "Message Found
in a Copy of FLATLAND."

In addition to the above, among the most popular mathematical
science fiction works I know of are:
  -- PI, a film by Darren Aronofsky
  -- "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov
  -- FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov (mostly just for the invention of
     psychohistory)
  -- "Nine Billion Names Of God" by Arthur C. Clarke
  -- "And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert Heinlein
  -- "Convergent Series" by Larry Niven
  -- CONTACT by Carl Sagan (ideas in the book that did not make it
     to the movie)
  -- CRYPTONOMICON by Neal Stephenson
  -- GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift (Island of Laputa)
  -- "The Plattner Story" by H. G. Wells

[-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE OTHERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: This is a ghost story with surprises, atmosphere,
     and authentic gooseflesh.  Nicole Kidman stars as an
     over-protective, neurotic mother in a house that must be
     kept dark to protect the children.  The Channel Islands
     make for a perfect dismal setting for a suspenseful
     well-written ghost story.  The film was written, directed,
     and even scored by Chilean-born Alejandro Amenabar.
     Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4).  This review written
     with intent avoiding spoilers; in general it is recommended
     that the viewer avoid reading too much about the film before
     seeing it.

It is difficult to think of something new to do with a ghost
story.  Just creating atmosphere is really not enough.  Once the
ghosts start throwing things around and doing physical damage, as
they did in POLTERGEIST, a ghost story no longer is a ghost story
as much as it is a monster movie.  On the other hand just leaving
around clues that something from beyond is around, maybe the
sound of a woman crying or bloody footprints on the carpet, very
quickly becomes tiresome.  Even some of the best ghost stories
diversify.  They function as a ghost story and something else.
Frequently it is a ghost story and a simple murder mystery as was
done with THE UNINVITED, THE CHANGELING, and THE LADY IN WHITE.
WHAT LIES BENEATH was a ghost story that turned into a murder
mystery that turned into a stalker movie.  (And none of them was
very good.)  Some of the best just mix character portraits with
ghost story.  THE INNOCENTS and the original THE HAUNTING do
that nicely.  Into the latter category comes THE OTHERS.  This is
a very good ghost story with some very tricky things going on.
Watching it I think I must have come up with about eight
different theories to explain what I was seeing.  In the end I
gave myself about one-third credit for having solved part of the
puzzle.

It is late 1945 and Grace (played by Nicole Kidman) lives on one
of the Channel Islands that the Germans occupied during the war
that so recently ended.  On this island good weather is just a
thick gray cloud cover, but sometimes the fog is so thick it
seeps into the house and seemingly into Grace's soul.  Grace
lives in a brooding mansion with her two children, both allergic
to light.   The Germans cut off the electricity and, partially
for the sake of the children, Grace never restored it.

To protect the children from light, Grace has very strict rules
about keeping all but very faint light out of rooms.  This is a
house that has befriended the darkness and shuns the light.
These inflexible rules have to be explained in detail to the
newly arrived hired help.  The old hired help just disappeared
one day not long ago.  Adding to the mystery is that one of the
children has been hearing a crying boy at night.  That is just
the set-up for this story written as well as directed and
musically scored by Alejandro Amenabar.  And the story he has
created is tightly written.  Amenabar leaves a lot of details to
be explained in this puzzle of a script and every mystery is
explained by the denouement.

This is a film that in large part is built around the Kidman
performance.  From the beginning she plays it as an authoritarian
with many idiosyncratic rules of how to run her house.  Meanwhile
she traumatizes her children with her matter-of-fact, hellfire-
and-brimstone religious interpretations.  Amenabar has her made
up to look very much the way Alfred Hitchcock would have made up
Grace Kelly, whom she even seems to resemble in this film.

This is a film sculpted from darkness.  Interior shots are nearly
almost always half-dark, obscuring part of the picture.  The
lighting frequently gives the effect of being solely from
candles.   Exteriors are little brighter with figures receding
into the thick fog.  The visuals and the story line remain half-
hidden and enigmatic to the viewer.  The characters are uniformly
dressed in dark colors or in black.

THE OTHERS is a stylistically well-controlled and effective ghost
story.  It relies on mood rather than special effects and
succeeds admirably.  I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2
on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


	 Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain
	 randomness.
                                           --Fran Lebowitz

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/10/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 6

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
         The Appeal of Mathematics
         Correction

===================================================================

TOPIC: The Appeal of Mathematics (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

I am finding myself with a little more spare time than I have had
until recently and I am thinking of going back and studying
mathematics.  For years I have promised myself if I had time I
would do some math.  Not that I expect to discover anything new
or earn money by doing mathematics or improve the world.  It just
seems to me that working with mathematics is the natural thing to
do.  There is little in life that is so worthwhile.  I do not
think I have ever put on paper why I feel the way I do about
mathematics.

When I was in high school I loved mathematics and was somewhat
puzzled that more people did not just love mathematics.
Mathematics was this thing to play with that was always there.  I
thought that they had somehow missed the point of mathematics and
that if they saw it, they could not resist it any more than I
could.  Later Rubik's Cube became a craze.  It is basically a
plastic embodiment of a complex problem in group theory.  I
remember little kids on the street having fun working on what
they did not realize was a problem in advanced algebra.  Today I
know a little more about the world.  I can understand why some
people do not love mathematics or at least think they do not love
it, but I still think it is all because they have missed the
point.

To me there is almost nothing more basic and elemental than
mathematics.  Imagine if you will a universe that has no matter
in it.  It is a total vacuum.  But even in this universe
mathematical logic still must be true.  If "A is false or B is
true", and if "A is true" then it follows B must be true, even in
this empty universe.

Add just one particle to the universe and arithmetic kicks in.
The particle is in a place or not.  You have zero and one.  From
those you have all the integers.

To this space add another particle.  The two particles have to
interact.  They either attract or repel.  They start moving in
mathematical courses around each other.  Calculus kicks in if you
want to describe their motion.

Add one more particle and you have the three-body problem whose
mathematics is so complex it is not fully understood.  But if it
ever comes to be understood, it will be understood in the
language of mathematics.

Mathematics is so basic because the particles would be matter,
and matter loves mathematics.  Matter obeys the laws of
mathematics.  Perhaps there is a God who can override the laws of
mathematics and make matter obey His laws.  There may or may not
be such a God.  But if there is one, He has to intervene to stop
matter from obeying the laws of mathematics.  When He stops
intervening matter faithfully goes back to obeying mathematics.
Matter may, if forced, obey God.  It is the mathematics that the
matter loves and returns to if it is free to.  And matter's love
song to mathematics has a name.  It is what we call "physics."
The study of physics is a search for the mathematics that matter
has chosen to obey.

There are those who believe that the world of mathematics is
coldly rational.  Nothing could be further from the truth.
Mathematics is the one realm where some form of magic really
exists and works.  Does that sound like an overstatement?  Hold
your judgment for a moment.  Let me explain what I mean.

In the time of Shakespeare it was thought that the world was
filled with beautiful spirits that mortals could not see.  One
could conjure to do magic.  The conjurer could make a little
incantation and then see the magic done but could not see the
spirits who were fulfilling the conjurer's wishes.  If he could
he would be beguiled by the beauty of the spirits.

That or something very like that can actually happen with
mathematics.  At one point I wanted to write an equation that
would just graph as the points (1,0) and (-1,0).  Easily done.  A
curve that just graphs as (1,0) is (((X-1)^2)+(Y^2))=0. A curve
that graphs as (-1,0) is (((X+1)^2)+(Y^2))=0. A curve that graphs
as just the two points is (((X-1)^2)+(Y^2))*(((X+1)^2)+(Y^2))=0.
Like the conjurer I had made a minor spell and got the desired
effect.  I had created an equation that did what I wanted.  But I
asked myself what kind of a curve was doing this.  I graphed in
three dimensions the curve (((X-1)^2)+(Y^2))*(((X+1)^2)+(Y^2))=Z.
When Z=0 this was my original equation.  What I got was something
that looked sort of like a parabola rotated around its axis of
symmetry.  But at where we would expect the point it breaks into
two points.  It really was a beautiful shape.  It touched the
plane Z=0 at just the two points I had requested.  My little
incantation had created this beautiful curve whose only purpose
for existence was to touch the two points I had requested in the
plane.

To do most science these days you need expensive equipment.  You
do not have too many physicists who can afford to go off and work
by themselves.  And it is pretty tough for a loner to go off and
do physics or chemistry by himself.  What does the mathematician
need?  He needs paper and a pencil.

People have noted about me the manic behavior that I always seem
to have a pencil or pen.  It is less obvious, but I also always
carry paper with me.  Why? I hate to be bored.  As long as I knew
mathematics, I never had to be bored.  I could always pull out
paper and do a little mathematical fooling around.  It is like
having a Rubik's Cube in my pocket, but it was a much more
interesting and diverse puzzle.  For ten or so years after I got
out of school I did a lot of mathematics in my spare time.  Later
I did less since there was nobody to discuss it with.  Now with
more time, I want to go back to do more mathematics.  It is the
most fundamental study of all.

And that I what I see in mathematics.  [-mrl]


===================================================================

TOPIC: Correction (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

Last issue I was looking at the AFI top ten list and said that
only two had nudity and one had sex.  I did not list THE GRADUATE
in either category.  That was a true statement.  But if one applies
the same standards, neither really did CLEOPATRA, the film on which
I was commenting.  THE GRADUATE probably was on as much a sexual
theme as CLEOPATRA.  It seems to me that the sex was not the reason
people were seeing the film; it was more a film of protest.  But it
is a fine line of distinction and that should be acknowledged.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the
            Gospels in praise of intelligence.
                                           -- Bertrand Russell

If you receive this and you have *NOT* been receiving the
MT VOID via this mailing list (every Friday for the last
five weeks), please let me know.

It is suspected that there may be a problem with excessively
long routings.  This is being sent from yahoo.com instead
of from my home system, which should make the path shorter.

If you have been receiving it, please do not reply, as it
will just confuse me. :-)

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/03/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 5

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

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Topics:
	 Poul Anderson
	 Salacious Spectacle in Sinema (comments)
	 THE PLANET OF THE APES (film review)

===================================================================

TOPIC:  Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson died 31 July 2001 at the age of 74.  In a 1997
interview with LOCUS, Anderson said he would most like to be
remembered for his novels TAU ZERO, A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST, THE BOAT
OF A MILLION YEARS, THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS, THE ENEMY STARS
and BRAIN WAVE.  During his career, Anderson won seven Hugos and
three Nebulas, and is nominated for a Retro-Hugo this year.

In lieu of flowers, donations are requested to the SFWA Emergency
Medical Fund c/o Chuck Rothman, SFWA Treasurer, 1436 Altamount
Ave., PMB 292, Schenectady, PA 12303-2977.

[Thanks to Paul Chisholm for this information.]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Salacious Spectacle in Sinema (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

I was watching a history of the 20th Century Fox Studios on AMC.
They had a detailed retelling of the debacle over CLEOPATRA.  MGM
had recently shown that big historical epics could bring in big
bucks with BEN HUR and Fox wanted to make their own BEN HUR.  This
was how the CLEOPATRA project came about and it nearly bankrupted
the studio.

What bothered me about the account is that somehow I thought the
CLEOPATRA just seems like it could not match BEN HUR.  But I was
not sure why I thought that.  It had the history.  In fact if the
truth be known the history in BEN HUR is rather shaky.  The
history in CLEOPATRA is almost right out of the history books,
even down to small incidents.  I am not sure the Queen of the Nile
was in Rome when Caesar was assassinated, but the incident of the
carpet, the murder of Pompey that angered Caesar, the battles,
were all pretty close to what did happen.  Somehow though I did
not feel that CLEOPATRA was as worthy a subject as BEN HUR and
that audiences would not respect the film.  I have more respect
for the "Tale of the Christ" than I have for CLEOPATRA and I am
Jewish.  How could it fail?  It combined spectacle and sex.  What
better combination could they have?  Then it struck me that what
BEN HUR offered was spectacle without sex.  Sex sells, no doubt
about that.  But for a film to be a really big, respected film it
almost seems like it has to be a film you could take home to
Mother.  People may enjoy sex in films at night, but they don't
respect them in the morning.  This got me to wonder how many of
the AFI's top films had sex.  How many had nudity?  Currently the
AFI's top ten best films are

           1.  CITIZEN KANE
           2.  CASABLANCA
           3.  THE GODFATHER
           4.  GONE WITH THE WIND
           5.  LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
           6.  THE WIZARD OF OZ
           7.  THE GRADUATE
           8.  ON THE WATERFRONT
           9.  SCHINDLER'S LIST
           10. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

Two of them have sex scenes.  THE GODFATHER has a quick one at the
party at the beginning.  SCHINDLER'S LIST has a sex scene also.
How many have nudity?  Well, that is a trick question.  Only
SCHINDLER'S LIST had nudity and it was not in the sex scene.  It
definitely is not in a context that is sexy.  Again, I am Jewish.
If you are stimulated by the nudity in SCHINDLER'S LIST I don't
want to hear about it.

AFI's Top 100 list is at http://www.afionline.org/100movies/ and
looking down the list the first film that I find that has any
seriously salacious content is #27.  That is BONNIE AND CLYDE.
And there is not one film on the list that really seems to use sex
to attract an audience beyond maybe putting Marilyn Monroe in a
low-cut dress.  Maybe there will be a steamy scene with a sultry
Scarlett O'Hara.  I think people like a little sexual spice in a
film, but if it is there they feel manipulated.  People do not
like the feeling that a filmmaker has artificially influenced
them.  I think that is the reason many people feel a certain
enmity for the films of Steven Spielberg.  They may feel the
effect that the director is trying to create, but they are not
happy that they are affected in spite of themselves.  [-mrl]


===================================================================

TOPIC: THE PLANET OF THE APES (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: The much anticipated re-adaptation of the Pierre
     Boulle novel comes to the screen as  a dark and a little
     dreary film with lots of chases and fighting, but very little
     intelligence.  Visually  there is much to like about this
     version, but the approach is to take an adventure after the
     style of  GULLIVER'S TRAVELS and treat it as an action film.
     That makes it a film without much center.   Rating: 4
     (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)

Pierre Boulle, author of THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, wrote
PLANET OF THE APES  (a.k.a. MONKEY PLANET), the novel, as a
social satire.  It reads a lot like a fifth book of  GULLIVER'S
TRAVELS.  Humans discover a planet in which the roles of apes and
humans have  been reversed, not unlike the roles of horses and
humans on Jonathan Swift's island of the  Houyhnhnms.  The novel
moves somewhat slowly to create some suspense in revealing all
the  things most film fans know to be true about the nature of
the planet.  It seems to me there is also a  statement about
human cruelty to animals, but perhaps I was just looking for
that.

When Rod Serling adapted the novel into a film released in 1968,
he added a number of Serling  touches, familiar from episodes of
THE TWILIGHT ZONE and changed the ending to make it  more
Serling-ish.  The final irony of the original version has become
film history.  Without it there  could never have been a "Planet
of the Apes" film series.  I can surmise only that Serling ran
into  serious script problems in how to handle the tricky
question of language.  In the book the apes had  their own
language and the human eventually learned that language.  That
could have been done in  the film, but that would have required
the entire film to be subtitled for the non-ape-speaking.
Serling avoided this by having the apes speak English and, of
course, there is some justification  for that by the end of the
film.  Justifying why the apes spoke English may have even been
the  inspiration for his surprise ending.  But Serling never
tackles the all-important question of why a  supposedly
intelligent human never shows any curiosity or even surprise that
the apes speak his  own language, a language they had no
opportunity to ever hear.  Few viewers questioned this  serious
plot hole, however, and the film has become well respected in
cinema history.  Partial  credit at least should go to Jerry
Goldsmith whose extremely inventive score is one of Goldsmith's
best if not his best.

When the film's success called for sequels, the filmmakers turned
up the violence and they added  well-intentioned, though not very
subtle, political messages about what was happening in the
United States of the 1960s and 1970s.  While the first film had a
little shooting of guns and what  was there seemed a little half-
hearted, by the second film, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE  APES,
there was a good deal more violence and from that point on the
series had a lot of violence  and chases.  The series concluded
with BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES in 1973.   Now director
Tim Burton tries his hand at adapting the original book again.

For those who thought that the 1968 version was not very faithful
to the book, Burton's new  version is even less faithful.  First,
he does not really reverse the roles of the humans and the apes.
He has them both be intelligent, articulate races battling for a
dominance of the planet currently in  the hands, uh, make that
paws, of the apes.  That could be a good story too, but it is not
PLANET  OF THE APES.  As with the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE films and so
many other cinematic  homages to the third quarter of the last
century, the title makes promises that the filmmakers have  no
intention of honoring.

In 2029 Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg, not this world's most
expressive actor) works on a space  station increasing the
intelligence and usefulness of apes.  Then a convenient time
storm sweeps  him up WIZARD-OF-OZ-fashion and drops him on an
alien planet.  (Yes, he survives this storm,  but then no storm
is perfect.)  He quickly finds, not greatly to any surprise he
shows, that on this  planet apes rule and humans drool, but
everybody talks.  And the language they talk is Earth- English.
Apparently it does not even occur to Leo that there is a mystery
that needs to be  explained about that.  The fact it does not
occur to Leo and apparently didn't occur to Tim Burton  either is
the heart of the real horror of this film.  Both just assumed
that if apes were going to talk  the language they would speak
would be English.  In any case having one talking race dominating
another makes this not a look at human-animal relationships and
more one of the master-slave  relationships.  Outside of Sudan
and a few other countries this is a less relevant topic.

Leo is captured to be used as a slave but also is discovered by
Ari, played by Helena Bonham  Carter.  Ari is an attractive ape
with close ties to high political power.  She is bent on making
the  world a better place.  Perhaps in a previous draft of the
script she was called Hil-Ari.  In any case  with makeup that
stifles her usual pout, Carter is just about as attractive as she
has ever been in a  film.  She may want to consider this to
become her standard look from this point forward.

It is not long before Leo escapes with some human and only a
couple of sympathetic apes.  This is  a further abandonment of
the source material.  The chase severely limits the interplay of
ape and  human and the examination of each's place in this
reversed society, each important in the book.   We cannot see how
the society works because most of the screentime society has
broken down.   We see the humans either separated from the apes
or fighting them.  Burton chooses visceral  thrills over cerebral
ones at almost every turn.  This is a miscalculation, as
characters so lacking in  empathy value are difficult ones to
place much emotional investment in.  They are basically chess
pieces and the viewer has little reason to root for them to win.
The 1968 script had little subtlety,  with lines like "I never
met an ape I didn't like," but at least we cared for what
happened to Taylor,  the main character.  Most of what this film
has to offer is in the visuals.

The visual work is spotty but generally nicely done except that
so much of the film takes place in  the night or in fog.  This
tends to limit close looks at the makeup.  In general it seems
much  improved from 1968.  The makeup team is led by Rick Baker
instead of John Chambers, who did  it for the 1968 version. In
1968 Chambers makeup was a jaw-dropper. It was realistic enough
to  almost be believable but flexible enough to show emotion.
Chambers is good, but if anyone had a  chance to best him it
would have to be Baker.  Today audiences have higher
expectations; Baker's  visualization is really an improvement.
These visuals work nicely.  What does not work is the  wire-
assisted leaps some of the apes make.  They look like they were
inspired by the physics- defying leaps of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN
DRAGON.  Apes spring incredible distances.   Some of the best
scenes are apes running into battle looking like they have ape
posture, but when  they start flying through the air the effect
is lost.  One final visual problem is that the film  frequently
shows its budget in what should be spectacular battle scenes the
camera shows us only  a small group of people close-up.

Since the days of Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff few actors have
crossed over to stardom in a role  that required heavy make-up.
The one actor who has a shot is Paul Giamatti.  It is not that
his  lines are so good, most are silly jokes.  But he delivers
them very well.  He was always a  watchable actor, but has not
yet made stardom.  As the ape-trader Limbo he over-emotes to
overcome his ape make-up, but does it very well.  In doing so he
makes himself the most  interesting thing on the screen.  He is
probably the best thing in the film and conjures up memories  of
Peter Ustinov's performance in SPARTACUS.

As an in-joke there are several lines in the script borrowed from
the 1968 film and an old ape  played by Charleton Heston becomes
an allusion to the first film by itself.  Danny Elfman's score
has a nice primitive feel, but Jerry Goldsmith's 1968 tour de
force score is a real classic. That  score and the whole film
will be remembered when the 2001 film is forgotten.  I rate the
remake 4  on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            The most costly of all follies is to believe
            passionately in the palpably not true. It is the
            chief occupation of mankind.
                                           -- H.L. Mencken

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/27/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 4

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Cheesecake (comments)
	 THE HUMAN VAPOR (a film review)
	 THE SKY ROAD (a book review)

===================================================================

TOPIC:  Cheesecake

There are words and phrases that get misused in our society
because they are so powerful.  This is language to conjure with.
Words like "genocide" and "racism" often get applied to situations
where the speaker or writer wants to make a point and chooses to
exaggerate.  We have been sensitized that when words like these
are used.  Someone uses them and we listen up and take notice,
just the effect the speaker or writer is hoping for.  I would like
to add to this list of words that get wrongly overused the phrase
"New York Style Cheesecake."   These are words with a sacred
meaning and not everybody who uses them really thinks about the
implications.

Everybody has a certain image of New York Style Cheesecake.  It is
sort of sacred.  With the possible exception of Miami Style
Cheesecake it is the best thing you can say about cheesecake.
There are other places in the country and indeed the world where
you can get decent cheesecake.  And not everybody who makes
cheesecake in Miami or New York really does it right. But these
two cities are the homes of the great cheesecake makers.  What
Shaolin was to martial arts, New York and Miami are to cheesecake
making.

Not only are the great cheesecake makers located in these two
cities, the great cheesecake connoisseurs are in these cities
also.  Not everybody who eats cheesecake really understands
cheesecake.  Yes, of course even in these two cities there are
people do who think that putting pineapple pie filling on top of a
cheesecake or mixing chocolate into cheesecake is a "pretty good
idea."  But there are a lot of people in these cities who know
better.  It is like putting chocolate frosting on Beluga Caviar.

The worship of cheesecake is, I suppose, a sort of religion and
New York and Miami are the Mecca and Medina of that religion.  I
guess the biggest difference between cheesecake fandom and a
religion is that you can convert to other religions and people do,
but cheesecake lovers tend to be cheesecake lovers for life.
Religions have a history of comparative tolerance for people of
other faiths, but cheesecake lovers have never shown a propensity
for tolerance for someone who would put lemon custard on
cheesecake.  And it must be admitted the truth is that someone who
would mix chocolate into real cheesecake or put lemon custard or
pineapple on the top deserves no tolerance.

New York Cheesecake is this stuff made with cream cheese,
cholesterol-filled eggs, and sugar.  There is absolutely no
concession to health.  This is a dessert for people who have not
been cowed into submission by the medical authorities.  This is
the dessert for people who like living on the edge. Its fans are
people who know not the meaning of fear.  If you want to turn it
into a healthy food, I don’t know, take a multi-vitamin with it.
Cheesecake is true hedonism without apologies.

This morning I saw on my box of Weetabix a recipe for "’New York
Style Cheesecake’ made with Weetabix."  Think about it.  "’New
York Style Cheesecake’ made with Weetabix."  The phrase is at best
an oxymoron and more likely an abomination.  I can picture some
benighted soul being misinformed by the Weetabix box, meeting a
real New York style cheesecake baker at work and (breaking in when
the angels are between songs) asking him "But where is the
Weetabix?"  Gag me with a Baby Watson Cheesecake.

I recently saw an ad for Cheesecake City in Berkeley, California.
It claims to have the best cheesecake in the country.  Let me be
fair.  I would love to live in California.  Overall Californians
have some of the best things in the world.  But after living in
California I can tell you that California cheesecake is like
California squirrels.  They look like perfectly good squirrels,
particularly if you grew up in California and do not know the
difference.  But a New Englander knows better.  California
squirrels are OK, but they just do not have the magnificent fluffy
tails that East Coast squirrels have.  East Coast squirrels are
the best tails I have seen anywhere.  And I suspect the same goes
for East Coast cheesecake. I would expect the Berkeley has
perfectly good cheesecake, but a good New York cheesecake baker
has nothing to worry about.  Oh, Cheesecake City also lists in
their ads New York Style Cheesecake with fruit on top.  That is
heresy.  Also Super Fudge Chunk Cheesecake.  The mind boggles.  I
guess some people cannot take the pleasure of real New York
Cheesecake at its full strength and have to dilute it with
chocolate fudge.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE HUMAN VAPOR (American version 1964) (re-edited from
GASU NINGEN DAIICHIGO (1960)) (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: Toho Films of Japan made this story of a man who
     could change from solid to gas and back.  While the English-
     language version is hard to find and badly edited, it is a
     more accomplished story than some of Toho's later and better-
     known films.  It makes for a decidedly offbeat science fiction
     film.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)  This review
     contains plot spoilers.

Toho Films, probably the premier film company of Japan, is
probably best known for their Godzilla films and some of the
finest Samurai films.  In the late 1950s they produced at least
four science fiction films on the subject of humans who could
change their physical properties.  For some reason they are each
also crime films in addition to being on a science fiction theme.
They made a film in 1954 called THE TRANSPARENT MAN, but it is
very hard to find in this country.  Humans turn into a sentient
viscous fluid in THE H MAN.  THE SECRET OF THE TELEGIAN features a
man who can transform himself into electronic impulses and
transmit himself where he wants to go, not unlike the later
British film THE PROJECTED MAN.  The man in THE HUMAN VAPOR, their
fourth film, has the power to go back and forth into a state like
water vapor.  He can make himself invisible, he can fit through
small spaces and he can ride the wind.

While THE HUMAN VAPOR did get a 1964 release in the United States
on a double feature with another very different Japanese science
fiction film, GORATH, it is almost unknown in this country.  It
also is a film that is about themes that most American mass
audiences cannot appreciate.  A large part of the motivation of
the main character is his desire support a famous classical dancer
and to help her to reach perfection in her art.  Americans
understand lust as a motive, or love, but it is very hard for us
to accept that someone can respect an art like classical dance to
such an extent that it becomes his primary motivation.  I have
always interpreted the story of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA that the
Phantom is not physically attracted to Christine Daae but instead
believes through her he can potentially create a perfect operatic
voice.  This is just not a theme that Americans seem to
appreciate, but it is easy to believe that the Japanese would
accept this motivation more easily.

Perhaps another reason this film is not frequently shown is the
fact it is Japanese with a title almost suggesting it is about
people vaporized by a nuclear explosion, making THE HUMAN VAPOR
further seem like it will be an unpleasant film to watch.  However
the American edition does more to make the film unpleasant than
anything in the plot.  In any case THE HUMAN VAPOR was poorly
dubbed, poorly edited, and poorly distributed.  For most American
fans of Japanese science fiction films it was unavailable or
showed up very rarely on late movies.

In addition the film has been crudely re-edited for American
audiences. The Japanese editing is far superior.  The plot of the
Japanese version has the police facing some crimes that are
baffling to them and to the audience.  Slowly they track down the
culprit who has the strange ability to turn into a gas and return
to human form.  The American version begins by telling the secret
to the audience, robbing the film of much of its suspense.  It
also appears the Japanese version lavishes much more footage on
the Japanese dance sequences.  These are very transparently
chopped down for American consumption.  The American editor has
done everything possible to dumb-down what looks like a fine and
subtle film for an American audience.

In the American editing, the film begins with Mizuno (played by
Yoshio Tsuchiya) granting an interview with a newspaper.  It is
clear he knows that this meeting is a trap for the police to catch
him, but he has no fear of the police and he wants to tell his
story.  He then tells how he became the Human Vapor in flashback.
He had originally been a test pilot or astronaut, but was washed
out for health reasons.  Embittered, instead he takes a job as a
librarian.  A mysterious scientist, Dr. Sano (Fuyuki Murakami),
seeks him out wanting to use him as the subject of an experiment.
Sano lies about the purpose of the experiment, and Mizuno agrees
to participate without question.  Mizuno is locked in a chamber
and appears to be reduced to a coma.  When he awakes he finds he
has "become the Human Vapor," a man who can at will turn his body
into a gas and return it to its solid form.  He discovers Sano has
performed the experiment several times, but that he was the first
test subject who has lived.  In a rage Mizuno kills Sano.

Mizuno turns to a life of crime, robbing banks.  However, he
announces the crimes ahead of time, in order to save lives.  He
clearly has no fear that the police can stop him.  If someone does
try to stop him he can use his powers to make himself invisible,
he can escape from the bank through any tiny hole, and he can
float into the sky and ride the winds.  This makes him almost
impossible to kill.  The police track stolen money to a famous
classical dancer Fujichiyo Kasuga (Kaoru Yachigusa) and her
instructor (the miserable looking Somesho Matsumoto).  Police
detective Okamoto (Tatsuya Mihashi), who has been leading the
investigation of the mysterious crime wave, discovers that Mizuno
has been supporting Fujichiyo.  Okamoto uses her as bait for a
trap to catch Mizuno.

The special effects are minimal by modern standards, using mostly
animation and/or smoke to show the presence of the vapor man.  He
will appear as a suit of clothing with smoke rising from it.  It
is not clear that smoke could hold up a suit of clothing, but it
looks good on the screen.  Throughout the 1950s Toho science
fiction had used more intelligence than money to create their
special effects.  The American version threw out the Japanese
musical score for the film and instead uses pieces of Paul
Sawtell's score for THE FLY (1958).  Veteran actor James Hong dubs
Mizuno.

THE HUMAN VAPOR can hardly be considered a classic of science
fiction, but it certainly has its rewards and is worth seeking
out.  I would rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on
the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC:  THE SKY ROAD, by Ken MacLeod (TOR, 1999, $24.95 HC, 291pp,
ISBN 0-312-87335-2), a book review by Joe Karpierz

Finally, something that Evelyn Leeper and I agree on.  You see,
Evelyn  and I absolutely do not have the same taste in sf novels.
We agreed on  that over breakfast one morning at Worldcon last
year.  And more  evidence was presented a few weeks back when
Evelyn stated that her  choice for the Hugo for Best Novel this
year was HARRY POTTER AND THE  GOBLET OF FIRE, which I panned in
my last review.

In that same article, Evelyn, as I remember, stated she couldn't
get  through THE SKY ROAD by Ken MacLeod.  At about that time I
had just  begun THE SKY ROAD (yes, it took me *that* long to read
it, and more  time than in should have to get around to writing
the book review), and  I thought to myself, "here we go again -
this novel is really starting  out great."  I found it engaging,
and I really didn't see where it was  going.  I was anxious to
get to the end.

It didn't go anywhere.

The story follows two different characters on two different
fronts.  The  first is Clovis, an historian working in the
spaceship construction  yard.  It will be the first ship to be
launched in decades.  The second  is Myra Godwin, the Deliverer,
the woman who apparently brought the  world, more or less, to the
state it's in.  That state is total  disarray.  The political
landscape looks different from today's.   Technology is in the
hands of the tinkers, whom you and I would call  engineers.  They
know all the secrets, and are looked upon with  distrust.  The
United States has been broken apart into several regions  (near
as I can tell, anyway), and the rest of the world is messed up
too, although I gather that Great Britain is still roughly intact
(although I suppose that makes sense because MacLeod is from
Scotland).

I'm going to step back for a minute and say that I think I've
come into  the latest book in a series.  If I am, the first thing
that says to me  is that I'm completely uninformed these days,
and the second thing that  says is that I feel cheated that I
have to have read another book in the  series to appreciate this
one.

Anyway, Clovis meets Merrial, a tinker who wants to take
advantage of  his historical knowledge and university connections
to try to find out  the dirty secrets of the Deliverer (and in
the meantime, convert him to  tinkerism, as it were).  Myra is
the head of a dying political state,  which is beset by economic
problems and political unrest.

Did I mention there was a spaceship involved?  What about the
spaceship???? It really has a small role in this novel, and that
ticked  me off, too.  If this is the first spaceship to fly since
the time of  the Possession (that's our time, folks, because we
have a lot of  possessions), why aren't we focusing more on it?

There's a military artificial intelligence involved, by the way,
and it  has its own plans for what's going to happen, but those
plans certainly  aren't revealed in this book, which is another
reason I believe that I  got stuck in the middle of a series.

And for some reason, MacLeod felt compelled to turn back the
clock on  everything that we've learned about some bad habits
that a great deal of  humanity had: smoking, drinking, etc.  As a
matter of fact, he goes out  of the way to say that the
physicians of the day had said that indeed it  was healthy to do
all that stuff.

I wish I could go on to summarize, at least at a high level,
what  happened in the novel.  But I can't, mostly because I found
myself so  disinterested in it that I really didn't care to pay
that much  attention, I guess.  The characters were
uninteresting, the story  uncompelling, and the sfnal bits, like
the AI, life extensions, etc.,  did nothing to enhance the story
within the context of this particular  novel.

Anyway, as if you couldn't tell, I didn't like it.  Maybe in the
context  of the rest of the novels in the series (if there is a
series) it's a  good story, but on its own it fails.  [-jak]

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.
                                           -- Ambrose Bierce

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/20/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 3

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
	 Science and Science Fiction (URL)
	 The Tyranny of Books (comments)
	 FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (a film review)
	 JURASSIC PARK III (a film review)
	 THE SCORE (a film review)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Science and Science Fiction (URL)

If you are interested in an article about how science mimics
science fiction, the June 30th issue of Science News discusses the
possibilities of power suits with nods to Heinlein's STARSHIP
TROOPERS, the film ALIENS, and the comic book character IRON MAN.
If you don't subscribe you can get a copy at
http://www.sciencenews.org/20010630/bob8.asp. [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: The Tyranny of Books (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

I think we have to take a look at how technology is spoiling our
very existence.  Technology and time seem to destroy all of the
great arts.  And I can tell you when it started to happen.  I
think it was the printing press that did us all in.  There was a
time when we could appreciate great works of art like the Iliad.
Nowadays who really listens to the Iliad any more?  Nobody.  And
I’ll tell you why.  It’s that damn printing press.

When the Iliad was first told, that was really something.  People
used to wait for weeks, looking forward to hearing it presented.
And what a show it was.  The poet would sing it and play the lyre.
You never got tired of it because it was different every time.
Different singers would tell it differently, stressing this aspect
or that.  You could really feel you were taking a voyage on that
wine-dark sea.  The story really lived for you.  Then what
happened?  That German guy found a way to take a press and squash
this living thing onto a piece of paper like a bug.  Now anybody
can get it smashed onto paper and read it any time.  But what have
they got?  Is there lyre music to go along with the story?  No!
Can the teller read his audience and tailor the telling to the
audience?  NO!  Are there even any differences from one telling to
the repeat?  No way, Jose!

But it just takes one printing press to make hundreds, or
thousands of copies.  The power of big money just lets the presses
roll.  And there are always chuckleheads who are willing to shell
out good money for this printed abomination.  And they get what
they deserve, a lifeless thing on paper.

Look what books are doing to family values.  When the poet came to
retell the story of the Iliad, whole families got together to hear
it.  It was something the family could do together, to enjoy
together.  Now as soon as dinner is over you have the kids going
off to read some book by themselves.  They are in their own little
world, cut off from everybody else.  Parents these days are lucky
if they even remember what their children look like.  And who
knows what they are reading?  Who knows what ideas are being put
in their heads?  Oh, we all know that parents should monitor what
books their children are reading, but how many really do?  Let me
tell you, some of the things written in these books shouldn’t be
shown to a dog, much less an impressionable child.

Now I want you to try a little experiment.  Take your favorite
book, if you have one.  Take a funny passage and cut out an "r".
Take a sad passage and cut out an "r".  Don’t worry about damaging
the book.  You cannot damage so worthless a thing; you can only
make it harder to read.  Now mix up those two letters "r".  Which
was which?  You can’t tell can you?  Your book was printed with
movable type.  On the printing press it may even be the same piece
of metal that printed those two letters "r".  I can tell you if a
singer sang you the story he would not pronounce those two letters
exactly alike.  But the two letters were put on the paper by a
dead piece of metal.  Probably it was a piece of lead.  The stupid
senseless piece of metal does not know that one of these portions
is so sad and the other is joyously happy.  It just knows how to
stamp one letter "r" just like every other letter it has ever
stamped it its whole, long, senseless life.

And what about plays?  It is just such a small part of a play that
is what the actors say.  There are a hundred different ways to say
a line, but they all write the same way on paper.  Try saying
"Hello" as if to your lover.  Try saying "Hello" as if to your
worst enemy.  Try saying "Hello" as if to your boss.  They are
almost three different words.  I say almost because once they are
applied to paper they are all identical.  "Hello" is "Hello" is
"Hello."  That is how the printing press treats them.  But you and
I know they are almost entirely different.

The venerated Plato did not trust his great arguments to be put on
paper.  What if someone reading them had a question?  What if they
wanted to counter argue?  They have not a chance.  Try arguing
with a piece of paper.  Try arguing with a book.  And these
pitiful readers think they are in contact with the great Plato by
reading these dead skins, these books.

And still these printing presses roll on and on and on.  As long
as there is money to be made promising to sell wisdom and instead
giving people these dead paper things.  And the people who profit
from them do not care a bit about how they are affecting the
world.  It is all merely a question of profit.  The people who
spend their time not seeing the real world but engrossed in these
lifeless paper things, reading these books, they are almost
degenerates.  They have lost their humanity and what a poor thing
they are selling out for!  I guess we have to get used to
technology taking everything of value from our lives, sucking it
dry for profit, and spitting it out in these lifeless things, this
printed form.  The genie is out of the bottle and there is no way
to stop it now.  But we don’t have to like it.

"Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the
body." - Ecclesiastes 12:12


===================================================================

TOPIC: FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (a film review by Mark
R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: This very dark sci-fi fantasy is magnificent visually
     but it has a nearly incoherent plot.  FINAL FANTASY is a
     Japanese-American co-production entirely animated but with a
     very real three-dimensional look and with very real-looking
     characters.  In the year 2065 aliens that appear to us as
     translucent images, but still very deadly creatures, have
     invaded Earth.  Saving the Earth requires resorting to
     semi-mystical means to understand and halt the enemy.  If this
     film had been done in live-action the scenes more spectacular
     than those of BLADERUNNER would have been hailed as a triumph.
     Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

The art of the animated film continues to evolve before our eyes
at an incredible rate.  It seems that one animated film after
another is released and advances the art of animation.  I
personally was very impressed with the visual images created in
TITAN A.E.  But there are images in FINAL FANTASY that go well
beyond the power of that film’s animation.  The one problem is
that if I applaud this film it will have to be mostly on the
imagination of the concepts and on the visuals.  I don’t think the
story was a very good one.  And the uncertain terms in which I say
that are intentional.  The telling of the story and the
explanation of what is going on lies somewhere in the range
between terse and incoherent.  I frequently had no idea what was
happening in the plot, thought FINAL FANTASY was never failed to
be an enjoyable film to watch.

The greatest part of what was remarkable about the film was the
animation work.  The entire film is done in a three-dimensional
technique.  Every single image is as three-dimensional as a live
action film.  Of course, I am afraid one could always distinguish
the images from real live action.  And that is (intentionally)
praising the animation with faint criticism.  The computer-
generated images were almost photographic.  And what images they
were!  There were planet-scapes and futuristic battlefields.
There were alien monsters of towering height.  There were things
that cannot be described; they have to be seen.

The story opens in 2065, with the Earth already mostly destroyed
and conquered by a diaphanous life form from space.  Well, not
just one diaphanous life form, but a whole class of gossamer life
forms.  There are things that are insect-like and things that look
like floating dragons.  It is like a whole planet of creatures are
cooperating and taking part in the invasion.  Why?  Dr. Sid
(voiced by Donald Sutherland) and his protege Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-
Na) want to find out.  The creatures seem to burrow into the
ground then attack with deadly potency.  Humans have reacted by
retreating to force-field protected cities.  A guard of power-
suited soldiers protects these cities and what is left of the
human race.  Dr. Sid believes in the Gaia theory that planets are
like a living organism with self-protection mechanisms.  Perhaps
they can be triggered to protect the planet.  But Sid and Aki have
to act fast.  Aki’s body has been invaded by one form of the
aliens’ essence.  AIDS-like it will prove deadly if the nature of
the aliens is not better understood soon.  Hironobu Sakaguchi, who
is connected with the Final Fantasy video games wrote the story
for this film as well as directed and acted as executive producer.
Jeff Vintar and Al Reinert wrote the screenplay.
Generally in an animated film of this sort, I complain that any
starving actor could have gotten a good job doing the voice of an
animated character.  It usually seems wasteful and useless to give
these voice roles to established and successful actors.  In this
film it really did serve a purpose.  The animation technique makes
the characters realistic and even gives them some marvelous facial
expression, but it leaves them seeming cold and without much
personality.  That makes it hard to keep straight who is who.  One
thing that helped was that I found it easy to track four of the
characters because they spoke with voices I immediately
recognized.  Those were Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Donald
Sutherland, and James Woods.  I probably should have recognized
the voice of Ving Rhames, but did not.  The main character is
played by Ming-Na best known for her roles in THE JOY LUCK CLUB
and in the various Disney productions in which she plays the
Chinese historic figure Mulan.  What is a little disconcerting is
not that the voices are familiar, but that the faces do not
resemble those of the actors.  Dr. Sid may have unmistakably
sounded like Donald Sutherland, but he looked very different.  I
kept expecting to see Dr. Sid with the Sutherland face.

This film from Square Pictures (whose logo is a rectangle) is
animated to be just one step from live action.  The viewer may
come away not understanding the story or the future Earth on which
is it set, but he will have seen some marvelous images set to the
tune of some really terrible music.  I rate the film a 6 on the 0
to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: JURASSIC PARK III (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: A short punchy action sequel to the two dinosaur
     films made by Steven Spielberg.  Joe Johnston directs a
     straightforward story of an excursion back to the island of the
     dinosaurs.  It lets us see some new dinosaurs (is that an
     oxymoron?) and gives us a nice and generally reasonably
     written adventure.  The film is neither ambitious nor
     pretentious.  I had a good time.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2
     (-4 to +4)

Here goes my credibility.  This is a film on which I expect to be
in a minority.  I liked the third JURASSIC PARK film.  I even
liked the second JURASSIC PARK film.  In a lot of ways JURASSIC
PARK: THE LOST WORLD was a creative three-way braiding together of
Michael Crichton's novel THE LOST WORLD, Arthur Conan Doyle's
novel THE LOST WORLD, and the classic silent film version of the
Doyle.  JP2 was an adventure, as Doyle said, "for the boy who's
half man or the man who's half boy."  That is what all the
JURASSIC PARK films are.  Expecting them to give the viewer
insights into the human condition is like expecting your car to
vacuum your house.  The classic adventure films like GUNGA DIN or
KING SOLOMON'S MINES had under-written characters also.

JURASSIC PARK III is an all out adventure on an island inhabited
by dinosaurs.  The characters are a little more complex than they
at first appear to be, and even that is a little more complex than
I was expecting.  Some of the characters who start out looking
stupid and useless prove to be neither as the film proceeds.  That
degree of complexity combined with those very realistic looking
dinosaur effects is just about as much as I require.  I feel I got
my money's worth.

The story opens with Eric (played by Trevor Morgan) and friend
parasailing near the forbidden island of Isla Sorna off Costa
Rica. This was the research island where the dinosaurs were
created for the now defunct Jurassic Park.  They hope, no doubt,
to get a look at the island's dinosaurs from a safe height.  The
height is safe, but driving the boat in the water is not.  The two
soon find themselves in trouble and have to ditch their parasail
onto the island where they do indeed get a better look at the
dinosaurs than they had intended.

Flash to the United States and someone is offering to fund
paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) in his research if he will
go and fly over Isla Sorna and act as a guide.  He has said that
no force on earth or heaven could get him back near real
dinosaurs.  But again money convinces him to drop what he is doing
and go.  Doing the convincing is a wealthy and eccentric couple
(William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) who has been just about everywhere
else in the world and wants the adventure of seeing real
dinosaurs.  They too plan to see the island from a safe height
Grant is relieved to learn.  He will fly over this island at a
safe altitude just this once.  Right.  Guess what happens next?

JP3 probably functions better as a sequel than JP2.  First it has
Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) back rather than the
much less appealing Ian Malcolm.  Sattler has a much smaller part
in JP3, but is still present to tie this story to the first.
Curiously each film seems to arrange to have a signature scene
with characters holding on to some large metal object that is
about to fall some great distance.

One thing that does not quite fit with the earlier films is just
as Grant discovers that raptors may be able to talk to each other,
suddenly they seem to be doing it all the time.  They did not
appear to be conversing in the previous films.  Of course, these
raptors look a little different also, so perhaps they are a
different related species.  Not only are they more intelligent
than in the past films, they are also more sympathetic.  In this
story they are not just killing machines, they have reasonable
motives for what they do beyond nutrition.  This time around they
may be a little too anthropomorphized.

Each new film in the series introduces us to some new dinosaurs,
of course.  In this film a major threat is from a spinosaurus, not
as common or as popularly known as a Tyrannosaurus, but larger and
presumably more nasty.  It has a crocodile's head and the body
that looks like a dimetrodon walking upright.

Perhaps as an economy measure or just to create a mood the visual
effects team frequently obscures our view of the dinosaurs.
Sometimes they just move too fast to see.  Occasionally darkness
or fog obscures our vision.  A few times we get unconvincing matte
shot, particularly of the laboratory.  But there is less money on
the screen in terms of dinosaur effects than in the two previous
films.  The musical score by Don Davis borrows heavily from John
Williams's score for the first film.  Joe Johnston, who directs,
already has to his credit two very good films I recommend THE
ROCKETEER and OCTOBER SKY.  A team including Alexander Payne and
Jim Taylor known for ELECTION writes the screenplay.  The film
they have made is a long way from great cinema, but it still is
fun.  If you get a thrill from seeing what look very much like
live dinosaurs alive today, the film is for you.  I rate it a 7 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE  SCORE (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: This is a 1950s or 1960s style heist film, set in the
     present.  Robert DeNiro stars as a risk-adverse safecracker
     who wants to retire form crime but takes one last job at the
     request of a personal friend (played by Marlon Brando).  Edward
     Norton plays a hotshot young sharpster who is also in on the
     crime.  The plot is mostly straightforward suspense with little
     nonsense.  Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

I am sure I must have seen almost the identical plot before.  This
is a heist film made for an adult audience who probably wanted a
crime film like they had seen in theaters when they were teens.
There are no superhuman acrobats taking nosedives off of buildings
like in ENTRAPMENT.  There is no rock score.  There are no ballet-
like martial arts.  This is just a basic heist film with a decent
and distinctly credible and un-flashy script.

Nick (played by Robert DeNiro) is a safecracker who has managed to
be successful by never taking risks.  If a job is not a safe bet
(pun intended), he backs out.  Sometimes even the safe bets turn
out not to be so safe.  When one job very nearly goes wrong Nick
is unnerved enough to decide that it is Nature telling him that it
is time to get out of the game.  He returns to his home in
Montreal where he owns a jazz club, and decides to manage it full
time.  He proposes to his girl friend Diane (Angela Bassett).  She
has one condition.  He must stay retired from crime.  But before
the deal can be cemented, Max, a Montreal kingpin and personal
friend, has one last supposedly easy job for Nick.  Nick wants no
part particularly because the heist will be right in his hometown
of Montreal.  More and more details seem to complicate the job.
Nick’s partner in the crime is to be a smart, but uncontrollable
young crook, Jack (Edward Norton).  Jack treats a locked front
door like a welcome mat, even at his associates’ homes.  The young
crook is a know-it-all who seems good at everything he does but at
avoiding rubbing people the wrong way.  Together they plan to
steal a priceless historic artifact from the Montreal Customs
House.

The script by Kario Salem, Lem Dobbs, and Scott Marshall Smith
works like an episode of the old "Mission Impossible" television
series.  We see pieces of the heist being put together, last
minute changes, and things that go wrong, much like a good episode
of "Mission Impossible."  This team might not be bad choices to
write scripts for the Tom Cruise "Mission Impossible" films.  The
complications are, however no more and no fewer than are needed to
make the story believable.  The telling is cold and noirish, which
is just what it is supposed to be.  Director Frank Oz, the voices
of Yoda and Miss Piggy proves surprisingly good at directing a
serious crime film.

THE SCORE has a more than adequate cast with little flashy or
scene-stealing acting.  Edward Norton probably has the flashiest
role and even that is low-key by today’s standards.  He plays what
is nearly a double role.  Jack pretends to be a brain damage
victim to be hired for a job in the Customs House.  One nice (?)
character I have not mentioned is Stephen (Jamie Harrold).
Stephen is a master hacker who lives in his mother’s basement in a
house with a lot of screaming in both directions.  He seems like
the last person the risk adverse Nick would want to depend upon.

The film itself remains low-key up until the time of the climactic
heist.  Then the pace really picks up.  Before that the plot even
stops twice for jazz interludes.  Though Oz never lets the music
steal time from the story the way Woody Allen does in SWEET AND
LOWDOWN.  On the subject of music, the score of THE SCORE is by
Howard Shore.  It adds tension to the suspense scenes, but never
seems to have much of a melody.

Angela Bassett is the one misused celebrity in a totally minor
role that should have been played by a less famous actress who
needed a break.  She has nothing to do in the film but demand that
Nick give up crime and to look like an attractive reward if he
does.  Speaking of being attractive THE SCORE seems to be
attracting an older audience who learned to appreciate much the
same sort of film in the 1950s and 1960s.  It does the job.  I
rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]


===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           mleeper@...


            It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
                                           -- George Bernard Shaw

THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/13/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 2

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, markrleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

Topics:
     Announcements
     The Speeding Up of Time
     SEXY BEAST (a film review)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Announcements:

Well, we discovered last week that the where we had intended to
send the MT VOID from imposed a limit on the size of outgoing
email, and that that limit was less than the size of last week's
MT VOID.  (Admittedly, last week's was the largest we had published
in at least two years.)  While we will probably be using a
different machine for email in the future, this raises the rather
frightening possibility that the MT VOID could become a semi-weekly
rather than a weekly newszine.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Also, note that the Big Cheese has a new email address.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Time (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

(This article contains nothing salacious, but it would be best
that children under 18 not read this.  You will be finding out
about this soon enough.  You are on your honor not to read what
follows.  It is just the same as if it were a web site.)

Well, here we are.  Can you believe it?  The summer is about half
over already and it feels like it just began.  You have probably
asked yourself where has all the time gone?  Now a recent
discovery of science has the answer.  We have all known
subjectively for years that as you get older time speeds up.  When
you were young holidays always were far away.  If you were waiting
for Halloween or Christmas it took forever to come.  And we all
remember how long summers seemed when we were children.  On that
first day of summer you had almost an eternity before school
started again.  You had what seemed like years in which your time
was your own.  Later as you grew up time started telescoping down
on you.  By the time you reached college a summer was already much
shorter.  You probably got yourself a job, stuck with it a while
and the end came faster than you realized it would.  Then it was
back to school.  By the time you got to be an adult summertime
went by very fast.  It was like this year.  You look at your
calendar and ask yourself where has the time gone.  When you were
a kid half of a summer was so big you could not see the beginning
or the end from the Fourth of July.  What is going on here?

For a long time science has thought that the speeding up of time
was easy to explain.  As you grow older you see the same intervals
of time, but now you have a longer life of experience to compare
them to.  When you were a child summer seemed long because you had
had only eight or nine years to compare that length of time to.
It was thought that as an adult with a much greater stretch of
life to compare to, summer only seems shorter by comparison.  It
is an easy explanation and as often happens an easy false
explanation hid the not so obvious truth.  Subjectivity was never
a totally satisfying or convincing explanation for the phenomenon.
We all had the feeling that something else was going on.  Now it
can be revealed.  There is another explanation, but it has been
suppressed because it is just too depressing.  I am afraid I am
going to have to let you know what it going on.  But don’t forget
you did not read it here.

Hold on to your hats.  Here it comes.  It is not an illusion.
Time is actually speeding up.  You cannot prove it easily and it
is not obvious because we measure the passing of time with clocks
and watches that are themselves speeding up.  Our subjective
measures of passing time do distort our perception of that time,
but not as much as we had been assuming it did.

What gives us the feeling that this measure of time is subjective?
Well, your children think that these summers last a long time,
just like you did when you were young.  It feels long to them as
children and short to you as an adult.  But what do they know?
They were not around to experience the really long summers when
you were young.  To them this is a really long summer because they
have never experienced what summer that actually does seem really
long is like.  But here’s a shock: you haven’t either.  What you
thought was a long summer was really summer just flying by.  Ask
your parents.  Summers were REALLY even longer when they were
young.  They were three months like ours, but they were three much
longer months.  And your parents felt it at the time.  They just
thought that what felt like the shorter summer when you were young
only felt that way because they were older.

If you could go back to Ancient Rome, summers were like what we
think of as eons.  No wonder they had time to build all those
roads.  The Roman children knew that the summers were long.
Perhaps they did not realize how long they were, but they seemed
long to them.  Roman adults lived through these huge summers and
clucked their tongues and said in Latin how fast the year seemed
to be going.  "Tempus fugit," they would say, to coin a phrase.
Here it is already the Ides of the Month of Julius.  Before you
know it, we will be into the Month of Augustus.  The merchants in
the marketplace are already showing their winter togas.  It will
be cold in Rome soon.  We better reserve a place in Pompeii.  But
if you were there with your time sense it would seem like the rest
of the Month of Julius would be time enough time to walk to the
nearest star and back.

But the truly sad thing is that your children will have barely any
time at all.  Time has sped up so much that even this pitifully
short summer will be long by their standards.  When they are
adults twenty years from now (or seventeen months adjusting for
inflation) their lives will be going by so fast they will have no
time for anything.

Where will it all end?  Nobody knows.  We have calculated there is
a subjective 317 years left to the end of time.  That is the
convergence point as you total an infinite number of years each
going by at a fraction (less than one) of the time the previous
year took.  317 years.  Then what happens?  [-mrl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: SEXY BEAST (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: Gal is a 50s-ish London cockney gangster who has
     retired to Spain.  His old associates want him for one last
     job and send the vicious Don to give him an offer he can’t
     refuse.  A standout performance by Ben Kingsley as Don cannot
     save what is essentially a set of cliches recycled from old
     Westerns.  Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)

Roger Ebert asks in his review OF SEXY BEAST, "Who would have
guessed that the most savage mad-dog frothing gangster in recent
movies would be played by...  Ben Kingsley?"  My response would be
that anyone who has seen Alan Arkin in WAIT UNTIL DARK, Henry
Fonda in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, or Anthony Hopkins in THE
SILENCE OF THE LAMBS should have guessed it.  They should know
that the way for a film to create a really creepy sociopath is
cast someone who generally plays mild, sympathetic, or even
ineffectual character roles.  The same characteristics that make
an actor seem gentle in most of his roles can work in his favor
when a role calls for him to be fierce and vicious.  That is the
principle that works for Kingsley in SEXY BEAST.

Gary "Gal" Dove (played by Ray Winstone) has retired from a London
career of crime and is living on a luxurious villa in Spain.  Life
has become a routine of sunning himself and relaxing.  But his
paradise is about to be shattered by a one-two-punch.  The first
punch is a boulder that comes rolling down the hill next to the
villa.  The second punch comes from Gal’s past.  Back in London
gang boss Teddy Bass (Ian McShane, TV’s Lovejoy) is planning to
break into a safety deposit room in a bank and he wants Gal.  He
sends his most rabid henchman Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) to fetch
Gal.  Don will accept any decision Gal makes from "yes" to
"certainly."  However, if Gal says "no" Don will do whatever it
takes to turn it into a yes including threatening Guy’s ex-porn-
star wife DeeDee (Amanda Redman).  In the meantime Don knows just
how to get under everybody’s skin.  Kingsley makes Don a compact
package of fury and nastiness.

There are some serious problems in Louis Mellis’s and David
Scinto’s script that should have been caught before filming.  When
we see the actual crime we have no idea why Gal was so important
to its success.  Beyond an ability to use skin-diving gear, no
special talents are required of him.  Any local hood could have
done what Gal is needed for.  Additionally the crime involves
digging from a swimming pool to the bank vault, flooding the
vault.  No only could they have let the water out of the pool and
avoided the complication altogether, but there is by far too much
water to be accounted for by what was in the pool.

In spite of the provocative title, the story is cliched and overly
familiar.  I know I have seen all the plot elements of SEXY BEAST
in old Westerns like THE LAW AND JAKE WADE.  The story is usually
of the reformed outlaw, a Robert Taylor type, who has hung up his
guns and is trying for a life of peaceful respectability.  The old
gang, however, wants to do one more job with their old buddy and
sends a rabid Richard Widmark type to go and git ‘im.  It is not a
great plot.  In SEXY BEAST even the plot twists have gray beards.
Perhaps the film has a little more respectability because it was
made not as a Western but as a stylish British gangster film.  It
is an old plot dressed up to look new.

If the plot is old, at least the style is creative.  This is
director Jonathan Glazer’s first film, but he has reputedly done
some notable TV ads for Guinness Stout.  His style does have some
unexpected touches including some very odd dream sequences.
Cinematographer Ivan Bird uses a lot of half lit scenes.  We see
one side of a person’s faces.  But the other side fades into the
darkness, a sort of metaphor for the half-world these characters
in-habit.  Half of everything that is happening is also kept
hidden.

We Yanks will have a hard time with some of the dialog.  At least
in my theater it was difficult to make out the words with the
quiet speaking, the heavy accents, and the cockney language.

SEXY BEAST is a very and familiar minor plot lent respectability
in the US by being done in what is here a still somewhat novel
genre, the London crime film.  The plot may be new to British
crime films, but it would be overly familiar as a Western.
Further respectability comes from Ben Kingsley’s high-powered
performance.  I give it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4
to +4 scale.

===================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           markrleeper@...


            When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of,
	    he always declares that it is his duty.
                                           -- George Bernard Shaw






_______________________________________________________
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THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/06/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 1

Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, _mleeper@...
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@...
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

Topics:
     Announcements
     Rights
     A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (a film review)
     Hugo Comments
     THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY (a film review)

==================================================================

TOPIC: Announcements:

The Science Fiction Club library will be donating several of its
reference books to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America (SFWA) Medical Fund auction at Worldcon this year.

We are still looking for a home for the thousand or so science
fiction books, preferably an organization that can come pick them
up from Holmdel.  Any pointers welcome!

For those of you who get HBO Plus, this month it is showing OSCAR,
Sylvester Stallone's best movie.  This was voted even funnier than
SOME LIKE IT HOT when we showed them as a double feature several
years ago, and we highly recommend it.  Showtimes are July 19 at
1:30PM EDT and July 22 at 6AM EDT.  [-ecl]

==================================================================

TOPIC: Rights (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

This week is the anniversary of the signing of one of the classic
documents on human rights, the Declaration of Independence.  You
hear a lot of talk about rights these days: reproductive rights,
civil rights, entitlement rights, animal rights.  Leaning liberal
and libertarian myself, rights are very important to me.  But this
week I would like to think a little more about human rights and
what they actually mean. And I want to be open enough to see them
upside and downside.

People of around the time of 1776 had more time to make moral
decisions and thought about them more carefully.  That was a time
when the pace of life was considerably slower.  It was not because
people were different and moved more slowly, but because there
were fewer choices of which people could avail themselves.  These
days if I wake up at three in the morning I can get in my car and
do my grocery shopping. Or I can talk to people by computer.  Or I
have a chess opponent right in my den that I can play against.  Or
I can see a movie.  With there being more and more we can do with
our time the demands have also increased.  We are expected to
achieve more in our lifetimes to keep up with other people who
also have the opportunity to achieve more.  You can see in
literature that writing styles have gone from florid and unrushed
as Dickens wrote, to short and punchy in Hemmingway's style, to
pre- illustrated with the emergence of the comic book as a major,
serious art form.  Fast microwave cooking is becoming popular
because people can do it quickly and move onto the next thing.
The path to popularity may not guaranteed by saving the consumer
time and effort, but that is becoming a prerequisite.  What does
the pace of life have to do with rights?  More than you might
think.

What exactly is a right?  It is a sort of simplifying assumption.
It is a short cut to turn what can be a tough moral decision that
takes time to decide into a "no brainer."  This can be a good
thing or this can be a bad thing. An example may explain how a
right is a laborsaving device.  A Hindu wants to practice his
religion in this country. Historically where different religions
have interfaced in the past there have been problems.  We want the
Hindu to be happy, but we do not want the social strife that may
follow.  This is a difficult moral question.  But we give
everybody the right to choose the religion they want.  A Hindu has
the right to practice his religion.  End of discussion.  I think
most people would agree the right decision was made here.  Just as
the quality of coffee may be lower if use the "instant" version,
so to your moral decisions may be of lower value with too great an
emphasis on the "instant" version.

As another example a magazine wants to publish the recipe for
making a fertilizer bomb.  Making the information public might put
it in the wrong hands and may actually endanger the public.  On
the other hand, the public might be better off knowing how simple
the process is and in how much danger they stand.  This is a tough
moral decision.  Here again the thinking is sidestepped because
the magazine has a First Amendment right to say what it wants.
There is no need for moral discussion beyond that point.  Once you
have a right to do something you can ignore anyone who tells you
it is immoral and you should not do it.  In this case it is much
more debatable whether the automatic decision is the right one.

The problem is that we have given out more rights than we should
have. And we have not checked them for consistency.  Frequently we
see rights in conflict and we are returned to moral decisions to
see which rights are more basic.  The newspaper has a right to
obtain and print news.  A celebrity has a right to be free from
aggressive photojournalists. Those rights are inconsistent.

The greater stress on rights these days is necessary because they
are shortcut moral decisions.  There was a legal case a few years
back about a man who was staring at a woman at swimming pool.  The
woman brought suit claiming that she had a right not to be stared
at.  The man claimed a right to look at whatever he wants.  It was
a difficult issue.  Each by claiming a right said it was really
unnecessary to consider the issue.  Thank goodness both were wrong
about the existence of rights.  It was a difficult moral issue and
it should have been.  We neither have an unlimited right to look
at what we wish, nor to be free from observation.  A well-meaning
society could have legislated either right or both rights
previously.  Issuing one right would have severely limited
privacy, issuing the other would limited the press.  And if both
rights had been issued then we would have had a case of rights in
collision, one that is extremely difficult to resolve.  If the
issue was difficult to resolve, our society provides means of
making the decision.  They are slower and more difficult than just
making new rights, but they are far less hazardous.  Rights are a
fundamental of our political system, just like money is.  But
minting either too freely is a short route to chaos.

Creating new rights in an ad hoc manner is a dangerous path.
Defining new rights has to be done with the utmost care.  The more
we are tempted to do it the more it is necessary to resist.
Putting too many trump cards in the deck only leads to chaos.
[-mrl]

==================================================================

TOPIC: A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (a film review by Mark R.
Leeper):

     CAPSULE: A very short story is expanded into a longish but
     powerful film about time, durability, and purpose of
     existence by the combined efforts of the late Stanley Kubrick
     and of Steven Spielberg.  There are some very nice sequences
     in this film, but overall it is stylistically uneven.  The
     story of the robot that wanted to be human is getting a little
     hackneyed for this film to really work throughout.  Though
     some of the views of the future are very powerful.  Rating:
     9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)

Permanence is a major theme of A.I.  I am told a glass bottle
takes a million years to biodegrade.  The purpose of that
existence may end after a month--essentially its first moments of
life, but the bottle goes on.  Its whole reason for existence is
just the barest beginning of its journey.  This is bad for the
environment, but not really for the bottle because it has no
feelings.  But what if a machine could be given feelings and told
to love one person?  What happens to a machine that has emotions,
but also longevity far greater than that of its reason for
existence?  And can a machine really have feelings?  If not, why
not since an accumulation of biological cells, what a human is,
can have feelings?  These questions are the heart of A.I.

A.I. was a project developed by Stanley Kubrick going back to the
early 1990s.  It used as a springboard the 1969 short story
"Super-toys Last All Summer Long," by Brian W. Aldiss.  (A copy of
the story can currently be found at
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0068.html.) I am not sure I
understand why Kubrick saw so much potential in this particular
story.  It seems to me to be a variation on an episode on "The
Lateness of the Hour," an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.  (The
story in the film seems to lean more toward a different episode,
"I Sing the Body Electric.")  However, Arthur C. Clarke's "The
Sentinel" would also seem an unpromising source and it made one
of the classics of cinema 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

Much as he had previously done with Clarke for 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY, Kubrick wanted to partner with Brian Aldiss on the
project of adapting his story.  Together they looked at a lot of
variations on the narrative, none of which where suitable to
Kubrick.  Kubrick then called in Clarke as his partner, but they
could not agree where the story should go.  Kubrick tried science
fiction author Bob Shaw, but Kubrick did not have a film until he
brought in Ian Watson.  Allegedly when Kubrick thought the time
was right he arranged a two-film deal, one film on the subject of
sex, one returning to the science fiction field where he had
enjoyed working in the past.  Those films were, of course, EYES
WIDE SHUT and A.I.  Unfortunately, Kubrick lived only long enough
to complete the former and to get the project moving on the
latter.  Enter Steven Spielberg to inherit the A.I. project and
bring it to completion.  Now, of course, it is unclear what is
Kubrick's contribution and what is Spielberg's, but the resulting
film is very different from either director's previous work.

Whatever the truth is on who contributed what, the film is wildly
uneven in style like a landscape painted by a committee.  That is
not necessarily a bad thing, it just makes the future world seem a
bit schizophrenic.  It uses a variation on the Aldiss story as a
core, but abruptly goes off in other directions.  There is even
some feeling that the story was being held back by spending too
much time on the Aldiss themes.

One might speculate that Kubrick filmed the first and last
sections of the film and Spielberg did only the middle section.
Certainly acting styles seem that way.  In the first part of the
film people appear pensive and insular in their own shells.  Not
unlike the characters in 2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY, people just do
not seem to be connecting with each other.  The middle section of
the film is set in a frenetic world like from TOTAL RECALL OF
BLADERUNNER BEYOND THUNDERDOME.  The viewer should be warned that
this is a film of about two and a half hours.  Parts of the film,
particularly toward the end when the pace slows, seem drawn out as
it is.  If the viewer is expecting the film to wrap up, the final
reel may seem interminable.

The story follows David (played by Haley Joel Osment), the first
and only robot who has been given a capacity to love.  David is
built for a couple, Monica and Henry Swinton (Francis O'Connor and
Sam Robards), whose own son Martin is in a frozen state.  At first
Monica wants no part of an artificial surrogate son, but that
resolve starts to crumble.  The story takes off from there.  This
is a lot like the plot of BICENTENNIAL MAN or Ray Bradbury's "I
Sing the Body Electric," but the story goes places that those
stories do not.  It would be a spoiler to say how, but eventually
we are introduced a friend for David, a Gigolobot named Gigolo
Joe, programmed to dance through life as he performs his Gigolo
function.  That programming cannot be dropped even when he is on
the run for his life.  Like David's, his programming outlives its
purpose.

Spielberg (or whoever) did a fairly good job of setting the story
in some indeterminate future.  For once an automobile looks like
it might have come from a future world.  In the first part the
whole world seems subdued.  We go from one scene shot with a
filter to give a hazy image, then we go to another scene with a
lot of fractured pieces coming together.  A crisper image is used
for the middle section of the film and toward the end the camera
returns to a soft focus.  David, the main character, has a special
makeup that makes his skin look glossy like smooth plastic.  Most
of the film is shot in cold lifeless colors, though there are some
reds and earth tones in the middle section of the film.  The
middle section also has a faster pace with images suddenly coming
very fast at the viewer.  It is like going from sensory
deprivation to sensory overload.  The final part of the film is
again slow and introspective.  Most Dreamworks films work an image
of the moon into the story someplace, more or less as their
trademark.  A.I.  goes a little overboard in giving us a moon
image that is hard to miss.  Several celebrity voices are used in
the film, though frequently they are only subliminally noticeable.
I recognized Robin Williams as the voice of a futuristic vending
machine, but reading the end-credits I realized I had missed
several of the others.  It should make for an interesting game for
owners of the future DVD to search out the other voices.

Steven Spielberg was perhaps a very good choice as a replacement
for Kubrick.  A director of some stature was needed, but also
because few directors could handle the poignancy of the final
parts of the story.  The film has already been criticized for its
sentimentality, but the emotion is precisely the point.  Spielberg
is one of the few directors of mass audience films who are not
afraid to put emotion into a film when it is appropriate.  The
critics who complain about Spielberg's sentimentality would rob
cinema of much of its impact.  The final dilemma of this film is
an emotional one and that is how the story should be told.  I rate
A.I. a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the  -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]

==================================================================

TOPIC: Hugo Comments (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):

Here are my observations and comments on the Hugo nominees in the
fiction and dramatic presentation categories.  Since I doubt my
opinions will sway anyone, this is not a blatant attempt to sway
your vote.  :-)

HUGOS:

Nominations for Novel:

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod

First of all, I'll note that there is only one American here, and no
American science fiction novels.  Two of the five are fantasy, and
three of the five are in book series.  Since my feeling is that a
book (or story) must stand on its own to be worthy of a Hugo, this
has affected my opinions.

Though everyone raves about Ken MacLeod, THE SKY ROAD is the second
of his books that I have started and given up on.  (The fact that I
went back to Plutarch and found him much more readable says more
about me than about either MacLeod or Plutarch, no doubt.)

And after reading a chapter or so of A STORM OF SWORDS, I gave up.  I
felt that I would have to read the first two to even make sense of
this volume, and therefore it doesn't meet my personal criteria for a
Hugo.

I was surprised to see MIDNIGHT ROBBER on the ballot.  Its patois
makes it much slower going than most science fiction and I would have
thought narrowed its audience, but apparently not.

CALCULATING GOD is good solid writing, but a bit too pat in parts.

But my vote goes to HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE.  Yes, it's
part of a series, and since I have read all the preceding books I may
be having difficulty judging whether it stands alone, but to me it
seems to.

Nominations for Novella:

"A Roll of the Dice" by Catherine Asaro (Analog Jul/Aug 2000)
"Oracle" by Greg Egan (Asimov's Jul 2000)
"Radiant Green Star" by Lucius Shepard (Asimov's Aug 2000)
"Seventy-Two Letters" by Ted Chiang
"The Retrieval Artist" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Analog Jun 2000)
"The Ultimate Earth" by Jack Williamson (Analog Dec 2000)

I found "Radiant Green Star" the hardest to read, not because of the
content, but because the page size of ASIMOV'S, combined with
Shepard's long paragraphs, meant that I was being presented with an
almost-solid block of over five hundred words on each page, and with
more lines per line than in an average book.

That aside, what about the stories themselves?  Asaro's "Roll of the
Dice" just didn't do anything for me (though I did finish it).
Similarly, I couldn't see the appeal of "Radiant Green Star."  "The
Ultimate Earth" proves that Jack Williamson still can write classic
science fiction in his tenth decade--and I suppose that his story
covers a large time span is quite fitting.  Rusch's "Retrieval
Artist" was very good, with its realistic feel, but the winner hands
down (as always) is Ted Chiang with "Seventy-Two Letters," an
absolutely superb story based, as was Richard Garfinkle's CELESTIAL
MATTERS, on the premise that what in our world is a previous view of
science since discredited, is in reality the accurate one.  For
Garfinkle, it was Aristotelian science.  For Chiang, it's a
different theory of biology.  (See also James Alan Gardner's "Three
Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream.")
Chiang just sold a collection to Tor, which I eagerly await.

Nominations for Novelette:

"Agape Among the Robots" by Allen Steele (Analog May 2000)
"Generation Gap" by Stanley Schmidt
"Millennium Babies" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov's Jan 2000)
"On the Orion Line" by Stephen Baxter (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2000)
"Redchapel" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's Dec 2000)

I have no great insights into this category, though I thought many of
them represented the authors doing again what they're known for
without any really new additions.  Nothing wrong with that in
general, but I thought that "Millennium Babies" did stand out as, if
not astonishing new and fresh, at least not as predictable as some of
the others.

Nominations for Short Story:

"Different Kinds of Darkness" by David Langford (F&SF Jan 2000)
"Kaddish for the Last Survivor" by Michael A. Burstein (Analog Nov
2000)
"Moon Dogs" by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Mar 2000)
"The Elephants on Neptune" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's May 2000)
"The Gravity Mine" by Stephen Baxter (Asimov's Apr 2000)

Didn't I see some of these people elsewhere on this ballot? :-)

Seriously, if you have to vote for Dave Langford for a Hugo, vote for
him in this category.

But seriously, seriously, his was the best story and I'm not sure I
can even pin down why.  I liked the idea of "Kaddish for the Last
Survivor" but didn't find all the premises convincing.  I liked "The
Elephants on Neptune" but thought it very reminiscent of ANIMAL
FARM.  And so on.  But something about "Different Kinds of Darkness"
was new and interesting and enough to make suspend whatever
disbelief I might have had.

Nominations for Dramatic Presentation:

Chicken Run
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Frank Herbert's Dune
Frequency
X-Men

In spite of my comments in the Retro Hugos section regarding a bias
toward science fiction over fantasy, I still give the nod here to
fantasy--maybe because I thought the fantasy works were *so* much
better here than the science fiction ones.  FREQUENCY had a lot of
promise and started well, but turned into yet another "unstoppable
psychotic killer" movie.  (Mark described this as "convergent
alternate history"--rather than a single past forking into multiple
possibilities for the present, a variety of premises for films all
merge into the same conclusion.  FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE (to distinguish
it, no doubt from the other DUNE which wasn't Frank Herbert's?) was
workmanlike but uninspiring.  The same was true (for me, anyway, of
X-MEN.  On the other hand, CHICKEN RUN was a true delight, full of
in-jokes and characterization and puns ("Chocs away!") and just a joy
to watch.

But the winner has to be CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.  It has
everything: fantasy, real characters, great cinematography, a
marvelous score, ....  Too often we are reduced to choosing a Hugo
winner from a set of films that may be good science fiction (though
not even always that), but are not good *films*.  (Or television
shows--the same criteria apply.)  If one looks at some of the films
nominated for Hugos in the last decade, one sees a lot of films that
were completely undistinguished as films.  For example, any Oscar
consideration for them would be for special effects or (Ghod help us)
sound effects.  The very fact that CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
garnered ten Oscar nominations at least implies that it's good as a
film as well as being good as a fantasy.

RETRO HUGOS:

Nominations for Novel:

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein
First Lensman by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.
Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The longest of these is shorter than the shortest of the "non-Retro"
novels; together they are only abour twenty pages longer than the
Martin by itself.  It has been argued that THE LION, THE WITCH, AND
THE WARDROBE is actually a novella, and the Vance just a collection
of short stories.

It's hard to decide whether to vote for what I would have voted for
in 1951, or what I would vote for now, even allowing me to vote as I
think I would have from a fifty-year-old's perspective in 1951.  At
the time, PEBBLE IN THE SKY and FARMER IN THE SKY might have seemed
great, but now both appear very dated.  (The references to tobacco,
and the German/Dutch stereotyped farmer, in the latter are
particularly jarring.)  I still find THE DYING EARTH unreadable, and
having tried to read FIRST LENSMAN, I can now add that to the list of
books I just don't get or can't read.

This leaves THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, which is readable,
and not dated.  This may be one advantage of fantasy.  At any rate,
it gets my vote.  (And the Lewis estate gets my raspberry, for
authorizing new Narnia books that eliminate all the Christian
symbolism, and a line of Narnia plush toys.)

(What was it with smoking in 1950?!  Just about every one of the
Retro nominees has people smoking as a major aspect of it.  Even
Mr. Tumnus smokes a pipe!)

Nominations for Novella:

"...And Now You Don't" by Isaac Asimov
"The Dreaming Jewels" by Theodore Sturgeon
"The Last Enemy" by H Beam Piper
"The Man Who Sold the Moon" by Robert A. Heinlein
"To the Stars" by L. Ron Hubbard

The magazine version of "The Dreaming Jewels" is probably a novella,
but I suspect everyone is going to vote on the novel version (14%
longer) instead.  Similarly, "...And Now You Don't" (the second half
of SECOND FOUNDATION) is also skirting between novella and novel,
but at least I think the book version is identical to the magazine
version, as is "To the Stars" in its re-incarnation as the first half
of RETURN TO TOMORROW.

At one time, "The Man Who Sold the Moon" might have appealed to me.
Now, after thirty more years' worth of similar preaching from
Heinlein, I find it annoying and couldn't force myself to read more
than a third of it.  "The Dreaming Jewels" is not my usual cup of
tea, but stands up better.  "The Last Enemy" and "To the Stars" are
also okay, but my vote here has to go to "...And Now You Don't."  I
realize this may sound inconsistent based on my criterion that a book
(or story) must stand on its own to be worthy of a Hugo, and one
major problem here is that the "Foundation" series is so much a part
of the landscape that it's hard to pretend the rest don't exist.  So
all I can do is say that as best I can judge, this has enough
background recap to stand alone.

Nominations for Novelette:

"Dear Devil" by Eric Frank Russell
"Okie" by James Blish
"Scanners Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith
"The Helping Hand" by Poul Anderson
"The Little Black Bag" by C. M. Kornbluth

This is a strong category, and tough to decide.  "Okie" seems
somewhat dated, as does "Scanners Live in Vain."  (Of course, if I'm
trying to vote based on 1950 sensibilities, this shouldn't count.)
"The Helping Hand" is just too obvious.  Maybe it wasn't then, but
the whole phenomenon has been discussed so much since then that it's
hard to see this as thta original.  "Dear Devil" has sentiment on its
side, but my vote has to go to "The Little Black Bag" as the best,
and certainly the most memorable.

Nominations for Short Story:

"A Subway Named Mobius" by A. J. Deutsch
"Born of Man and Woman" by Richard Matheson
"Coming Attraction" by Fritz Leiber (Galaxy Nov 50)
"The Gnurrs Come from the Voodvork Out" by Reginald Bretnor
"To Serve Man" by Damon Knight

"A Subway Named Mobius" is the clear winner here for me.  I know
people liked "Born of Man and Woman"--I just don't know why.  "To
Serve Man" is good, but I don't believe would be on this ballot if
there had not been a "Twilight Zone" episode of it.  (And if you
think about it enough, the ending doesn't actually stand up.)  I
can't believe anyone liked "The Gnurrs Come from the Voodvork Out"
enough to nominate it--it must be one of those butterfly ballot
things.  And "Coming Attraction," while good technically, just
doesn't  have the certain something of "A Subway Named Mobius."
(Of course, I do have a degree in mathematics, and read this story
back in Clifton Fadiman's FANTASIA MATHEMATICA about a zillion times,
so that might have something to so with it too.)

Nominations for Dramatic Presentation:

Cinderella
Destination Moon
Harvey
Rabbit of Seville
Rocketship X-M

I couldn't locate a copy of "Rabbit of Seville" and don't remember
ever seeing it.  CINDERELLA I have seen, but only as an adult, and I
am not as enthusiastic about the Disney classic cartoons as many.
ROCKETSHIP X-M was a quickie made to beat DESTINATION MOON to the box
office. (Which is not to say that sometimes the quickie isn't better
than the major film: consider TOMBSTONE versus WYATT EARP.)  HARVEY
*is* very good, but I'll admit to a certain bias toward science
fiction over fantasy here--particularly since this was the beginning
of the massive cinema science fiction boom of the 1950s--and give my
vote to DESTINATION MOON.

So there you have it.  Now everyone can tell me how wrong I am. :-)
[-ecl]


==================================================================

TOPIC: THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY  (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

     CAPSULE: This is a film of characters and interactions rather
     than pyrotechnics.  The film is driven by the personalities of
     the characters.  That's good.  What's missing is the reason to
     care much about these characters and their interactions.
     That's bad.  The film has a gamut of emotions presented but
     few rub off on the viewer.  We need not just more films like
     this but also better films like this.  I would invest interest
     in Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Alan Cummings not for current
     value but for growth potential.  Rating: 5 (0 to 10), low +1
     (-4 to +4)

THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY is a film about characters and
relationships. Most of what happens in the film is talk.  We have
seen a number of such film like John Sayles's THE RETURN OF THE
SECAUCUS SEVEN, Lawrence Kasdan's THE BIG CHILL, and a personal
favorite, Bruce Beresford's DON'S PARTY.  I am not sure why the
latter is a favorite of mine unless perhaps because it is
Australian and has a little bit of that country's politics.  In
any case these films are perhaps cautionary tales suggesting that
parties and get-togethers should be kept brief and free from mind-
altering substances to avoid indecent exposure of painful truths
(and assorted body parts).

THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY does not take place in an exotic local
(assuming that DON'S PARTY does) unless you consider the suburbs
of Los Angeles exotic.  The film is produced, directed, and stars
Alan Cummings and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but sports a hefty
ensemble of actors from independent films who are anxious to play
opposite other actors rather than digital effects.

Sally and Joe (played by Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Alan Cummings)
are celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary, but not
celebrating six years together.  They have been together only a
few months of the six years and have just recently gotten together
again.  They have invited their friends, most of whom they cannot
stand.  Though the film Joe is to direct has a character based on
Sally, He has cast a younger actress, Skye (Gwyneth Paltrow), in
the role and Sally is less than pleased with Skye.  Also among the
invitees are the neighbors (Denis O'Hare and Mina Badie) with whom
a thin coat of civility covers a festering feud over the behavior
of Tom and Sally's dog.

Where THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY failed for me was in my lack of empathy
for any of the characters.  The script fails to give us much
reason to care whether these people are going through a bad patch
or not.  The script seems contrived to set up ironic dramatic
revelations and superficial insights into people's characters.
These people are more involving than checkers on a board, but less
than chess pieces.

There is not much that can be told in a review about a film like
this because the characters are introduced, they party, and then
there are ironic plot twists about the characters.  Introducing
the characters without telling the plot twists is pointless.
Revealing the plot twists would spoil the experience of seeing the
film.  Not that what happens is so dramatic, but in a description
of such a film less is more.

Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh have assembled a cast of
familiar actors including themselves and Paltrow, but also Kevin
Kline, Phoebe Cates, Jane Adams, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Beals,
and Parker Posey. If you do the math, not every one of these can
be use to his full potential.  Each is part of some small subplot
and each does a little fun acting exercise.  The feel is as if
Cumming and Leigh wanted to actually throw a party for their
friends, mixing business and pleasure.  The result is diverting
enough to eavesdrop upon but really rather un-engaging as a while.

THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY keeps several plots going, each of which
will be resolved by the end of the party.  Once they are resolved
the viewer will happily simply drop them.  There is little to
think about here after the film is over. I rate THE ANNIVERSARY
PARTY 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]


==================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           _mleeper@...


        Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and
        you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are a god.
                                           -- Jean Rostand

Please let me know if you get this.

==
Evelyn C. Leeper
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
"We should be as passionately opposed to those who discriminate against
gays and lesbians as we were passionate in our opposition to apartheid."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, February 1999, Brown University





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                         Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
                     Club Notice - 09/15/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 11

        Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@...
        Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@...
        Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@...
        HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@...
        HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@...
        Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
        All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

        The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
        second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
        201-447-3652 for details.  The Denver Area Science Fiction
        Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
        Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.



        ===================================================================

        1. I took part in an interesting discussion recently.  I thought it
        might  make  a  good  thought  piece  here.  My father is a polymer
        chemist.  But he has always had an interest in words and  language.
        At  the  dinner  table he would proudly bring and drop some obscure
        word that nobody else had ever heard of.  "Does  anyone  know  what
        'panegyric'  means?"   He would do it with much the same pride as a
        cat dropping on the front porch a dead mouse she knew  nobody  else
        could  catch.   My  father,  though  a chemist, was fascinated with
        words and gave them precisely the enthusiasm that people  who  work
        in words--scholars and authors--do not give to polymer chemistry.

        Not that I always agree with him on the subject.  He recently  sent
        me a piece of mail.

        ----

        Subject: "Worst Grammatical Error."

        "I'll try AND complete this by Tuesday" or "I'll try  AND  convince
        him ----," etc." instead of "I'll try TO ----."

        This ranks with me as the  most  egregious  error  in  the  English
        language  not  only because of its incorrectness, but because it is
        so wide spread in its flagrant use, even by people of education, by











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 2



        people who use English professionally, editorially, etc.  Can I get
        your comments?

        Dad

        ----

        To this I responded:

        Subject: Re: Worst Grammatical Error

        I am not sure what brought this on, but  it  is  part  of  a  long-
        standing  disagreement  we  have.   I  would  say  this is a proto-
        idiomatic usage.  At least on a pretentious day I would  say  that.
        Language  is  determined  by  how people agree to speak and what is
        understood.  Idioms are frequently added to  the  language.   Would
        you call a moratorium on the invention of idioms?

        Much worse to my mind are the usages that are factually  wrong.   I
        dislike the ones in which you say something that taken literally is
        the opposite of what you mean.  If we could get those  out  of  our
        language I could care less if people said "try and".

        Mark

        ----

        Subject: Re: Worst Grammatical Error

        When does a grammatical error become proto-idiomatic?  Where do you
        draw  the  line  of  now-acceptability?  Is there such a thing as a
        grammatical error?  Who decides when a  grammatical  error  crosses
        the  proto-idiomatic  line?   Like  "the criteria is" and "the data
        is".  Why bother to teach correct use of the English language?

        Dad

        ----

        Subject: Re: Worst Grammatical Error

        You ask, "When does a  grammatical  error  become  proto-idiomatic?
        Where do you draw the line of now-acceptability?"  There is nothing
        more democratic than language.  When did  pony-tails  and  earrings
        become  acceptable  for  men?   Some places they have not yet, some
        places they have been acceptable all along.  By  the  standards  of
        Shakespeare's  day you make a lot of grammatical errors.  In school
        you learn the rules of grammar because  children  need  rules,  but
        when  you  approach  it on an adult level suddenly it not longer is
        rules.  It goes from being the "grammar" of the English language to
        being  a  "style."   Strunk and White's book on usage, probably the











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 3



        most popular, is called THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE not THE  ELEMENTS  OF
        GRAMMAR.   The  New  York Times gives its writers a "style book" to
        explain how they make plurals, possessives, etc.  In school you are
        taught  not hard and fast rules about our language but a style that
        works.  It is sort of a common ground neutral style that will  work
        in  the black community, in the English-speaking Yiddish community,
        in the English-speaking Serbian community, etc.  But each of  these
        communities  has  its own grammar apart from the utilitarian common
        grammar.  No?

        You ask, "Is there such a thing as a grammatical  error?"   Not  in
        the  same  sense  that  there  is  a mathematical error.   There is
        varying from the common style.

        Who decides when a grammatical error  crosses  the  proto-idiomatic
        line?   The  same group of people who decide whether you can wear a
        blue shirt with brown pants or white shoes after Labor Day.  It  is
        a committee we call "common consent."

        Why bother to teach correct use of the  English  language?   Purely
        because   if   people   stray  too  far  from  common  usage,  then
        communication breaks down.  The "rules" that don't  really  enhance
        communication  eventually  fall  to derision. I don't think anybody
        ever  misunderstood  a  sentence  because  the  speaker  chose   to
        carelessly  split  an  infinitive  or  use  a  preposition to end a
        sentence with.

        Mark  [-mrl]


                                           Mark Leeper
                                           HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
                                           mleeper@...


            Conscience: The inner voice which warns us that someone may
	    be looking.
                                           -- H. L. Mencken





















































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                         Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
                     Club Notice - 09/08/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 10

        Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@...
        Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@...
        Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@...
        HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@...
        HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@...
        Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
        All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

        The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
        second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
        201-447-3652 for details.  The Denver Area Science Fiction
        Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
        Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.



        ===================================================================

        1. You know, for a long time I have had the feeling  something  was
        going wrong with this country.   I was listening to the radio and I
        found what is wrong.  I was listening to that candidate and I think
        he  has put his finger on what is happening.  You know the one, the
        one who is going to come in and fix all the things that  have  been
        souring, the one who knows why things have been going so badly.  He
        was saying that it was the big money interests  that  were  running
        the  government.  Suddenly I realized that he was in government and
        he knew what he was talking about.  I realized what was going wrong
        with...  well,  everything.  You know I have always had the feeling
        that things were supposed to be better for me.  I have  wanted  gas
        prices  to go back to thirty-five cents a gallon.  I want to have a
        real big SUV.  I want to have a lot more money.  I want a big house
        in  a  fancy  neighborhood.   Expensive  vacations.   Maybe  even a
        stretched limousine once in a while.  Do  I  have  all  that?   No.
        None  of it.  Life has just gotten more frustrating, not less.  And
        I think I deserve to have it a lot better.  Now I  realize  I  have
        been  right  all  along.   I am supposed to have more.  But the big
        money interests have been cheating me out of what is coming to  me.
        But you know, at last we have a chance to do something about it.  I
        want to vote for that guy who was talking on  the  radio  and  make
        things go right again.













        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 2



        You know what he said?  He said he was for the little  guy.   Well,
        now I never thought much about it.  I thought of myself as a pretty
        big guy, but, you know, to Government I probably AM a  little  guy.
        And  I  think  I better vote for a guy who is finally going to look
        out for the kind of little guy I am.  I want someone who  is  going
        to take care of me.  Yeah, I bet if we all go out and vote for this
        guy everything is going to change for better.  Things will  get  to
        be  the way they ought to be.  Everything will be the way it should
        be again.  "It is time to have honesty in government."     That  is
        what  he said.  And you know, he's right.  That says it all.  There
        are a lot of people who are going to vote  the  other  way  because
        honesty  is  not  important to them.  But I bet we can get a lot of
        people voting for my guy.  This  is  going  to  be  a  grass  roots
        movement.   The  people  are  going  to  speak, not the big special
        interest groups.  The  people  want  and  deserve  to  have  things
        better.

        What else did he say?  Something about how it  was  time  to  start
        thinking  about the Middle Class?  I never really thought about it.
        The poor have government to look out for them.  The rich have those
        fancy  lawyers  and  special  lobbyists.  But who have we got?  Who
        looks out for us Middle Class working stiffs?  I'll  tell  ya  who.
        Nobody.   Well,  till  now nobody.  Now we got somebody we can vote
        for who looks after Middle Class folks like us.  I  tell  you  this
        guy  sounds better and better.  He said he wants honest government.
        He said he wanted to return government to  the  people.   Hot  dog,
        that's what I want too.  And, boy, did you see how he was applauded
        at the convention when he said that?  Boy, I bet he's gonna be  the
        best President ever.

        He also said what we need is  leadership.   That  should  make  all
        those  anti-leadership  politicians think twice.  They should stand
        up and take notice.  After all isn't  leadership  what  choosing  a
        President is all about?  Sure it is.

        Then there's integrity.  Let's face it.   We  all  know  the  other
        party  is not REALLY into integrity.  They say they are, but we all
        know different.  They say they are, but listen to  how  much  their
        speeches sound like ours.  They want you to think that their guy is
        the leadership and integrity candidate.  But I bet they can't  fool
        us  any  longer.  You just know when our guy talks he really sounds
        like he means it.

        And you know what else I like.  Our party's positive thinking.  You
        hear  how  they  are already calling our guy "the next President of
        the United States?"  That's  how  someone  introduced  him  at  the
        convention.   What  a clever idea!  It gets everybody thinking like
        it is already done.  Like the election is just a formality.  Really
        smart.

        And isn't it about time we had really smart government?  [-mrl]

                                           Mark Leeper
                                           HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
                                           mleeper@...

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                         Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
                     Club Notice - 09/01/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 9

        Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@...
        Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@...
        Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@...
        HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@...
        HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@...
        Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
        All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

        The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
        second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
        201-447-3652 for details.  The Denver Area Science Fiction
        Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
        Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.



        ===================================================================

        1 In the news New York University is trying to demolish a  building
        where  it  turns  out  Edgar  Allan  Poe  once  lived in one of the
        building's earlier incarnation.  What interests me are the  protest
        songs.   What  they  are  currently  chanting  in  protest is "NYU.
        Nevermore."  Pretty pallid.  At least it is better than "NYU has to
        go.  Hey, hey! Ho-ho!"  But with a few seconds of thought I came up
        with the much better "Just like a coffin deep within a sepulchre...
        we shall not be moved."  [-mrl]


        ===================================================================

        2. Harold Bloom, a great supporter of education in the classics  of
        literature,  takes  the  Harry  Potter books to task in the July 17
        National    Post.     (The    editorial    can    be    found    at
        http://www.nationalpost.com/stories/20000717/346015.html)   He says
        that "if you cannot be persuaded to read anything  better,  perhaps
        Rowling  [author  of the Potter books] will have to do...  Why read
        if  what  you  read  will  not  enrich  the  mind  or   spirit   or
        personality?"   I  notice  conspicuously  missing from this list is
        imagination.  Personally I have always found imaginative  works  to
        enrich  mind, spirit, *and* imagination.  Bloom goes a step further
        and says "Perhaps Rowling appeals to millions of reader non-readers
        because..."   By  implying  that  many of the Potter fans are "non-











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 2



        readers" he negates some of his own arguments.  He complains  about
        the number of cliches in Rowling's writing, but how can anything be
        a cliche to someone who is a  non-reader?   And  surely  turning  a
        non-reader  into a reader, even if a limited one, should enrich the
        mind, the spirit, and the personality.

        What is it that Bloom believes young people should be reading?   As
        he  says "The ultimate model for Harry Potter is TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL
        DAYS by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857.   The  book  depicts  the
        Rugby  School  presided  over  by  the  formidable  Thomas  Arnold,
        remembered now primarily as  the  father  of  Matthew  Arnold,  the
        Victorian  critic-poet.   [Oh  boy!]  But Hughes' book, still quite
        readable, was realism, not fantasy."  Bloom places great  value  on
        realism and apparently much less on fantasy.  He does not, however,
        give any arguments why fantasy is intrinsically of less value  that
        realism.   To  be fair, he does give examples of fantasy that would
        be better for young people to read, but they are limited  to  works
        like THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS and Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books.

        Bloom's opinions reminded me  that  I  had  heard  a  very  similar
        opinion voiced in a film not very long ago.  The film was THE WHOLE
        WIDE WORLD and the speaker was  Novalyne  Price,  played  by  Renee
        Zellweger.   Ms.   Price  was  a  real person, though her name will
        probably not be very familiar.  The film was based on her memoir of
        the  period  that she dated another writer, Robert E. Howard.  That
        name may ring a few more bells.   Howard  was  a  pulp  writer  who
        created the character Conan the Barbarian.  Price was interested in
        Howard's talent, but  was  frankly  not  very  impressed  with  the
        fantasy  genre  in which Howard chose to write.  To her fantasy was
        childish.  She felt that  Howard  had  the  talent  to  write  good
        realistic  literature  about  the  lifestyle of Depression-era West
        Texas where he lived.  She wrote that sort of  literature  and  she
        was  sure he could also.  And perhaps he could have.  But I suspect
        that even Dr. Bloom has not read Price's descriptions of West Texas
        life.   I  would  not surprise me to hear that he did not even know
        her name.  If Novalyne Price is remembered today it is as the woman
        who dated fantasy writer Robert E. Howard.

        Howard wrote fantasy, and not very elevated fantasy either.  But he
        wrote  with  imagination  that  has  now  inspired  generations  of
        writers.  Howard founded a  genre  of  writing  called  "sword  and
        sorcery"  and  better  writers  have  found  a place in that genre,
        perhaps ones that Price and Bloom would approve of and perhaps not.
        But  for  Howard to focus on realism he would not have been setting
        his sights higher.  He would only have  been  pointing  them  in  a
        wrong direction.  Robert E. Howard and J. K. Rowling have something
        that Thomas Hughes does not.  They  have  the  ability  to  inspire
        modern  readers.   People have a curiosity to visit the worlds that
        they create.  Few people have much curiosity to visit  worlds  that
        Thomas  Hughes  created,  and in fact he does not do much creation.
        The act of writing realism is not one of creating worlds but merely











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 3



        describing them well.

        Bloom asks "Can  more  than  35  million  book  buyers,  and  their
        offspring,  be wrong?  Yes, they have been, and will continue to be
        so for as long as they persevere  with  Potter."   But  thirty-five
        million  book  buyers  seem to think they are enriching their lives
        with Potter.  Popularity is no  sign  of  elevated  literature,  of
        course.   Trashy  novels  frequently  are  best-sellers.   But they
        almost always pander to sexual  curiosity  or  a  fascination  with
        violence  that  is not present in the Potter books.  Why do so many
        people want to read Potter?  They are finding some reward.  I think
        it  is fantasy and fun.  I can understand that viewpoint.  I do not
        know what Bloom wants in a book.  He would have to show me how  TOM
        BROWN'S  SCHOOL  DAYS enriches the mind and the personality in some
        way that Rowling does not.  [-mrl]


                                           Mark Leeper
                                           HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
                                           mleeper@...


            Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
                                           -- Oscar Wilde



































































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                         Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
                     Club Notice - 08/25/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 8

        Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@...
        Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@...
        Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@...
        HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@...
        HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@...
        Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
        All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

        The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
        second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
        201-447-3652 for details.  The Denver Area Science Fiction
        Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
        Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.



        ===================================================================

        1. Because of the various spin-offs, we have decided  to  move  the
        mailing  list  administration for the MT VOID to eGroups, a mailing
        list hosting service.

        Some time in September, you will get a piece  of  mail  saying  you
        have  been  added  to  the  mtvoid  group at eGroups.  No action is
        required unless you  want  to  unsubscribe  or  change  your  email
        address, in which case it's probably easier if you do this ahead of
        time by sending email to eleeper@...  or  mleeper@....
        [-ecl]


        ===================================================================

        2. With the release of GODZILLA 2000, there have been a  number  of
        reviewers  mentioning  the  first  Godzilla film, both the Japanese
        version GOJIRA and the re-cut American version  GODZILLA,  KING  OF
        THE  MONSTERS.   The  web  has,  however,  very  few reviews of the
        original film.

        GODZILLA really has to be seen as two very  different  films.   You
        have  to  see the film as it was released in the United States, and
        you have to see through that to the original  Japanese  film.   The
        Japanese  film,  made  as  an  imitation  of  THE BEAST FROM 20,000











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 2



        FATHOMS, turned into a fairly serious allegory of the close of  the
        Second World War and the fear of nuclear weapons.  This was in part
        because of timing.  The film was made just after a Japanese fishing
        boat  had  strayed into the waters where the hydrogen bomb had been
        tested.  The fish they  caught  were  radioactive  but  were  still
        allowed  to  be  sold  in  Japan.  When the Japanese found out that
        dangerous radioactive fish had been sold to  unsuspecting  citizens
        they blamed the United States and they called the incident Americas
        third atomic attack on Japan.  The script is also is an exploration
        of  the  theme  of the responsibility of the scientist to the world
        and an indictment of the developers of the  atomic  bomb.   So  the
        plot  of  BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, the indignity over the fishing
        incident, and festering anger over the use of  nuclear  weapons  in
        the  war all came together into a story of a primordial evil coming
        out of the sea.

        The American version crudely interpolates American  reporter  Steve
        Martin  (played  by  Raymond Burr) into the story.  The scenes with
        Burr  are  obviously  of  a  different  film  stock  and  have   no
        overlapping   characters   whose  faces  are  seen.   Actually  the
        characters of Emiko Yamane  is  both  in  scenes  with  Martin  and
        without,  but when she is with Martin her back is to the camera and
        her blouse is a different plaid.  Clearly another  woman  stood  in
        and  the  filmmakers  could  not  quite  match the blouse material.
        Martin appears to be in several of the key points  of  activity  as
        the  Japanese  react  to  the  attack  of the monster, without ever
        really  participating  much  in  the  action  except  to  throw  in
        occasional comments like "I can't believe what just happened."

        For the plot here I will  describe  the  American  version,  though
        there  are  some differences in order of events.  (For example, the
        Japanese version is not told in flashback like the American version
        is.)   The  film  opens  looking  at  the destruction that has been
        wrought on Tokyo.  It looks like it was intended to suggest that  a
        nuclear blast has taken place.  That was probably not the intent of
        the original film, since it does not have  this  opening  sequence.
        Journalist  Martin  was on his way by plane to cover another story.
        During a layover in Japan to visit a school friend,  Dr.  Serizawa,
        he  is called in and questioned if he saw any anything unusual from
        his plane.   Ships  from  the  Japanese  fishing  fleet  have  been
        disappearing.   Sometimes  they  get  off  distress  calls that say
        mysterious things like the "ocean has exploded."  (That is actually
        a very powerful image, by the way.)

        Soon the mystery seems to be centering around Odo Island,  near  to
        all the disasters.  There the natives have worshiped a terrible god
        who has lived in the sea.  They call him Godzilla.   Scientists  go
        to Odo Island to discover if there could be some connection between
        the island and the disasters.  While they are there something  very
        like a storm destroys half the island.  But it is a funny kind of a
        storm that is oddly destructive.  It destroys their  helicopter  as











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 3



        if  it  were  a  toy  (which with the low-budget special effects is
        exactly what it looks like).  The  natives  think  the  island  was
        attacked by their deity.

        A ship full of scientists, headed by Emiko's father, paleontologist
        Dr.  Yamane  (Takashi Shimura), comes to investigate the island and
        discover radioactive remains from the storm.   Finally  the  island
        deity shows himself in clear weather, a four-hundred-foot dinosaur,
        a survivor from two million [sic] years ago.  (The Japanese version
        says  he  is  two  hundred  feet.)  He has lived in the sea for all
        human memory, but now nuclear testing has goosed him up,  made  him
        radioactive, and he wants to wreak revenge on the world.

        Godzilla dodges the depth charges of the Japanese fleet  and  makes
        his  way to Tokyo harbor.  Then he comes ashore twice, laying waste
        to the city in two very  nicely  filmed  sequences.   Up  to  these
        sequences  we have seen little of the monster and after we will see
        little, but these two sequences are supremely powerfully filmed.

        Meanwhile we learn that Emiko has been promised to Dr. Serizawa but
        is actually in love with Ogata, a young navy officer.  Serizawa has
        his own problems and is not  very  interested  in  Emiko.   He  has
        developed a powerful weapon that could kill Godzilla, but to use it
        would mean revealing it to the  world.   Being  a  moral  Japanese,
        unlike immoral American scientists, he believes that the discoverer
        has responsibility to be certain that his discoveries are not  used
        for  evil  purposes.  Serizawa has revealed the weapon to Emiko and
        she has told Ogata.  Serizawa must weigh  his  fears  against  what
        Godzilla  is  already  doing to Tokyo.  (Ogata argues that Serizawa
        should use the weapon.  You  have  your  fears,  which  may  become
        reality.   And you have Godzilla, which is reality.)  Serizawa must
        resolve his moral dilemma.

        Sometimes the lack of a budget can work in the  favor  of  a  film.
        GODZILLA  certainly  benefits  from  the  low budget of some of its
        production.  The scenes of the attacks on  Tokyo  have  a  sort  of
        crudeness  that  in  black and white, a little fuzzy, gives them an
        almost documentary quality.  Scenes of the great beast  are  almost
        always  shot  from  a low angle, looking upward.  Why this approach
        was abandoned in later Godzilla films is unclear, but the  size  of
        the  creature  is  emphasized in a way that would be difficult in a
        color film.  Filming in color at eye level just does not convey the
        threat  and  no  other  film  has  ever  made  a  giant  monster as
        frightening.

        Some of the best effects were found by  chance.   The  model  steel
        towers  melted  under  the hot studio lights.  They were remade and
        the effect of their melting was combined with an aerosol  spray  in
        Godzilla's  mouth  to  create  the effect that his fiery breath was
        causing the damage.  The sound of the great beast's heavy footfalls
        were  created  by  a  drum.   I  personally  never  associated  the











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 4



        drumbeats as being anything but mood music,  but  the  sound  works
        that  way.  On the other hand, the sound of stroking the strings of
        a large cello-like instrument with a leather glove, then slowing it
        down  and playing it backwards, acts as the groans of Godzilla.  It
        sounds like steel girders giving way in hell.  The effect  is  just
        about  perfect.   The  musical  score  is  crude  with its military
        marches, but somehow they seem to work.

        When the effects work they are terrific, when  they  do  not  work,
        they  do not work.  All too often the effects are just a bit on the
        cheesy side.  There are scenes when we are obviously looking  at  a
        hand-puppet.   Even  that would not be so bad, but we then see what
        is supposedly a photograph of what we had just seen  and  it  looks
        nothing  like  the  puppet version.  There was a similar problem in
        THE BEAST  FROM  20,000  FATHOMS.   Another  problem  is  with  the
        Godzilla  suit  itself.  Godzilla has what can best be described as
        an A-line figure.  He has very heavy massive  legs  and  gargantuan
        feet,  but  his  trunk  is not commensurately large.  His legs also
        have and unfortunate tendency to have folds on a way that a  jacket
        might  but an arm would not.  The crudeness of the filming conceals
        the fact that Godzilla has external ears in a way that reptiles  do
        not.   The  producers  at  Toho  thought  that  people would assume
        Godzilla was deaf if they did not give him obvious  external  ears.
        Of  course  a  parrot has no external ears and hears well enough to
        repeat sounds he hears.  The film also features a  traveling  matte
        of  a  view  directly into the face of the beast as seen from Tokyo
        tower.  It is one of the worst jobs  of  matting  I  ever  remember
        seeing.   Some  of  Bert  I.  Gordon's  matte  jobs  look  good  by
        comparison.  In most scenes the  beast  is  shown  moving  in  slow
        motion  to  accentuate his size, but when he bats away missiles, he
        moves at normal speed and spoils much of the illusion.  However, it
        should  be  remembered many of Universal's classic films have their
        moments when they do  not  show  consummate  visual  craftsmanship.
        DRACULA,  for example, has some very silly scenes including a silly
        scene of a bee coming out of a bee-size coffin.  In  some  ways  we
        cannot  be  really  sure where some of the errors crept in.  We are
        told a disaster at sea occurred at 3:30 AM,  but  when  we  saw  it
        earlier the crew was on the deck and the sun was shining.

        Where THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS had just showed its monster  in
        the  streets  and  people running from it, GOJIRA looks more at the
        emotional effect on people.  What made it to the  American  version
        is  fairly effective, but what was cut out are some very impressive
        scenes.  In one scene of the Japanese film only, a mother  sits  at
        the  base  of  a building near where the monster is rampaging.  She
        sadly tells her children that they will all be  with  their  father
        soon.   This  tone  is surprisingly bleak for a monster movie.  The
        whole population of Tokyo seems to mourn the great  losses  wrought
        by  Godzilla.   Themes  of  sacrifice,  honor,  and suicide seem to
        accent the bleak tone  of  this  film.   Other  imaginative  scenes
        include  a  view of the monster ravaging Tokyo with a cage of birds











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 5



        seen in silhouette in the  foreground.   In  other  scenes  we  see
        Godzilla walking and the dust his huge feet kick up.

        It is never easy to judge acting ability of someone who is speaking
        in  a  language  you  do not know.  This film does have the second-
        best-known international actor from Japanese film.  Dr.  Yamane  is
        played  by  Takashi  Shimura,  the star of films like IKIRU and THE
        SEVEN SAMURAI.  Unfortunately the actor who dubs his lines  in  the
        American  version is not very good.  Particularly noticeable is his
        inability  to  pronounce  the  word  "phenomenon"  which  he   says
        "phenonemon."   To  have  such  an  educated  man making that silly
        mistake is unintentionally humorous.

        This is a film with some very nice visual imagery and it has become
        a favorite film.  It is not so much a good film as a weak film with
        some very good moments.  The American version I would have to  give
        only  a  high  +1  on  the -4 to +4 scale.  The Japanese version is
        probably a high +2 film.

        It should be noted that also that this is the most influential film
        ever  made  in Japan.  It was Japan's first international cinematic
        success.  It spawned the Japanese genre of "kaiju" films.   "Kaiju"
        is  Japanese  for  "monster"  and  the  continuing Godzilla series,
        Japanese anime, and even Pokemon are  direct  descendents  of  this
        film.  [-mrl]


        ===================================================================

        3. GOJIRA NI-SEN MIRENIAMU (a.k.a. GODZILLA 2000) (a film review by
        Mark R. Leeper):

                  Capsule: This is the first  Godzilla  movie  to
                  get a wide American release since GODZILLA '85.
                  And it is  no  bargain.   The  plot  is  poorly
                  constructed  and  things happen for no apparent
                  reason.  The effects are  better  than  in  the
                  past,  but still occasionally cheesy.  Godzilla
                  has a new look that makes him resemble  more  a
                  martial  arts  weapon  than  a  giant dinosaur.
                  Still this film is fun for  Godzilla  fans  who
                  rarely  get  a chance to see the big guy on the
                  big screen.  Non-fans are unlikely find much to
                  enjoy.  Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)

        What can I say?  For the sort of viewer who enjoys seeing  two  men
        in  rubber  monster  suits  battle  over  a  city  that  looks like
        cardboard boxes, this might be the  film  for  you.   I  liked  it.
        Godzilla  got  to  me  at  an  early age and I am too old to become
        objective about Godzilla films now.  As  I  said  in  the  capsule,
        there  is  not a lot done really well in this film, but it is a lot











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 6



        of fun for people who like Godzilla  films.   There  is  a  certain
        thrill  of  anticipation  in  seeing  the  Toho Films banner at the
        beginning.  Even the best are  crudely  made  and  often  a  little
        incoherent, but they are also a good time.  Non-fans can be assured
        that they will not be much impressed by GODZILLA 2000 and can  tune
        out of this review at this point.

        Plot?  Well, truth be known, there is not  a  whole  lot  of  plot.
        Scientist  Yuji  Shinoda left the employ of the Japanese government
        and formed the minuscule Godzilla  Prediction  Network,  a  startup
        that predicts where and when Godzilla will show up and strike next.
        Yuji does the science and Yuji's  ten-year-old  daughter  does  the
        financial  work.   They  are  joined  on  a  Godzilla  hunt by Yuki
        Ichinose, a photojournalist looking for  a  story.   Together  they
        discover that finding Godzilla can be a big mistake.

        At the same time some scientists have found an odd rock,  600  feet
        across,  in  the  ocean of Japan.  Because it shows some intriguing
        abnormalities they decide to bring the rock to the surface where it
        can  be studied, lifting it with floats.  Oddly the rock seems more
        enthusiastic about reaching the surface than can be explained as it
        rises  up  past the floats.  It then hangs over the water and waits
        for sunshine to activate it.  It seems under the stone shell is  an
        alien  craft that has been waiting 60 million years to come back to
        life so it can complete its mission.  It would be  telling  to  say
        what  its  mission  is,  except  that logical or not, there will of
        course be another monster for Godzilla to fight.  (And of course it
        will  be  just  roughly  Godzilla's height.  Godzilla never has any
        fifty-foot monsters to fight.)

        Word on the street has been that the new film is intended  to  come
        right after the original Godzilla film in its own new series.  That
        was true of the film we call GODZILLA '85, which did spawn its  own
        separate series of Godzilla films in the 1980s and 1990s.  (To save
        confusion I will use American titles.)  That second series repeated
        many  of  the  same  mistakes that the first series did, but it was
        aimed at a higher level.  The rumor has been that like GODZILLA '85
        (and  of  course  the  film  we  call  GIGANTIS, THE FIRE MONSTER),
        GODZILLA 2000 is a direct successor to the original GODZILLA,  KING
        OF THE MONSTERS.  However, a cursory look at the film tells us this
        is simply not true.  Godzilla died in the first film and all  other
        films are supposed to feature a second very similar Godzilla beast.
        Yet in GODZILLA 2000,  attacks  by  Godzilla  are  taken  to  be  a
        periodic  phenomenon.  There is even a Godzilla Prediction Network.
        At the end of the film there is a comment about all  of  Godzilla's
        attacks  in  the past have taught lessons.  None of this would make
        sense if only the events of the first film and this one  had  taken
        place.   The  second  series apparently ended with the death of the
        second Godzilla and his  replacement  by  his  son,  just  reaching
        maturity.   Logically  it  would  make  sense  to  say that the new
        Godzilla is really the son from the second  series.   But  so  much











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 7



        logic  is  probably more than the series can reasonably be expected
        to bear.

        Godzilla is like James Bond.  His looks change  but  the  character
        himself is timeless.  His face had a very lumpy appearance and buck
        teeth in the earliest film and then became more  dinosaur-like  for
        KING  KONG  VRS.  GODZILLA.  As the series became more childish and
        aimed at younger children his  features  became  rounder  and  less
        frightening.   In  the  second  series  he  looked a lot better and
        consistent from to film, but just a bit rubbery.  His  looks  never
        changed.   For  GODZILLA 2000 again his looks have been modified to
        please the younger set.  This time, however, it is  a  younger  set
        brought up on NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and FRIDAY THE 13TH.  The new
        Godzilla has sharper teeth with four canines  regularly  spaced  on
        each  side.   His  back  fins  are more jagged, sharp, and vicious-
        looking.  It looks like they crossed the traditional Godzilla  with
        a punk rocker.

        Toho Studios from the beginning  did  excellent  work  with  labor-
        intensive  special effects.  But not every effects problem could be
        solved with inexpensive labor.  Visually their  films  were  always
        very   nice,  but  their  special  effects  were  not  always  very
        convincing.  As time went by their visual effects got better.  This
        film  really represents a big jump in the quality of their effects.
        There are many very nice images.  And what  attracts  people  to  a
        Godzilla  film  has got to be the visuals.  It certainly is not the
        writing.  Toho films can usually be counted on for nicely  composed
        scenes  with  good  use  of  color.  Where possible in the new film
        Godzilla is shown from a low angle to accentuate the height.  A low
        angle camera was used in the first film and then abandoned for most
        of the first series.  It was used sparingly in the  second  series.
        Here again the camera creates an illusion of great size by shooting
        upward, in fact he looks larger than he ever has  before.   Several
        new  compositions of shots give this film a look that is unique for
        the series.  For those who like to just stare in awe  of  the  size
        the mega-saurian, this is the film.

        The writing however, is not the best of the  series  and  has  some
        strange  touches.   There  are  some half-hearted attempts at humor
        that seem thrown in  as  an  after-thought.   There  is  one  short
        sequence  of  slapstick  comedy,  in  this  case  almost  literally
        slapstick, and it seems like it belonged in another  movie.   There
        are some allusions to JURASSIC PARK, DR. STRANGELOVE, and perhaps a
        few other films.  (By the way, the film scene someone  is  watching
        on  TV  when  we  can  hear  only the dialog is Morris Ankrum being
        interrogated by aliens in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.   I  wonder
        what film was used in the Japanese-language version.)  I have never
        been quite able to make out if the writing in these films is out of
        kilter  or  if  it  just  works  better in Japanese.  But the final
        scene, like the writing in several of the situations, just does not
        work.   It  almost  seems to be rooting for Godzilla as he destroys











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 8



        Tokyo.

        The musical score by Takayuki Hattori is a little too polished  and
        Western  for a Godzilla film.  Godzilla films usually have Japanese
        military marches and brash brassy music.   Much  of  that  feel  is
        missing  here.   The film is released by Tristar who hopefully have
        learned to leave Godzilla films to  the  experts  after  their  own
        attempt  to  make  a  Godzilla  film  ended  up with something of a
        monstrosity.  (Though rumor has it that their own attempt to make a
        Godzilla film failed in large part because of constraints placed on
        them by Toho executives.)

        Even for Godzilla fans, this could have been a better film.  It  is
        only mid-range in the quality of films in the second series.  Still
        as he approaches fifty years old, it is good to know  the  big  guy
        still  looks good on the silver screen and in some ways better than
        ever before.  I rate this GODZILLA 2000 a 6 on the 0  to  10  scale
        and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.  It will be interesting to see
        if its sequels will get an American theatrical release.  [-mrl]


        ===================================================================

        4. THE CELL (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):

                  Capsule: Yet another serial  killer  plot,  but
                  one  with  some difference.  This one becomes a
                  sort of FANTASTIC VOYAGE of  the  mind  crossed
                  with  NATURAL  BORN  KILLERS.   A  psychologist
                  travels within the  mind  and  visions  of  the
                  serial  killer  (and  vice  versa) in a race to
                  save a victim from a deathtrap.  The  film  has
                  some   remarkable   visions   in  an  otherwise
                  pedestrian plot.  There are lots of  intriguing
                  ideas  floating in this film of psychology made
                  visual.  Be warned that the  visuals  and  even
                  the dialog are a harrowing experience.  Rating:
                  7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)

        THE CELL is one more story of the FBI  trying  to  catch  a  serial
        killer  and  free  his captives.  But when it seemed that there was
        not much more that could be done with that tired  plot,  this  film
        has  some  refreshing  new  ideas.   It  is  the  premise that some
        unspecified technological advance allows psychotic and psychologist
        to  enter  the  other's  dreams  and  walk  around  in that surreal
        landscape.  Similar ideas have been  tried  before  in  films.   In
        SPELLBOUND,  Alfred  Hitchcock  took  us  through  the  mind  of  a
        neurotic's nightmare  in  a  symbolic  surreal  world  designed  by
        Salvador  Dali.   The  concepts of actually visiting inside another
        person's mind or dreams were explored in DREAMSCAPE and BRAINSTORM.
        The  latter  film even suggested that there was a particular danger











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 9



        being inside a psychotic's mind.  NATURAL BORN KILLERS  suggests  a
        natural  disorder  to  a  psychotic's mind, though it explores that
        disorder without use of science fictional devices.  All these ideas
        come  together  in  an  otherwise  simplistic violent serial killer
        plot.

        Catherine Deane (played by Jennifer Lopez) is a psychologist trying
        to  get  into  the mind of her young patient, Edward.  A new device
        allows her to do it in a much more direct fashion than what we  see
        used  today.   The invention lets her visualize his mind and dreams
        and actually become a character inside of them.  It is a tremendous
        leap  toward  understanding her patient.  And the vistas within his
        mind are strange even if the boy has a rather standard normal mind.
        Then  Deane  is  given an opportunity to enter a most unusual mind.
        The FBI has  captured  a  serial  killer,  Carl  Stargher  (Vincent
        D'Onofrio), and has him under sedation.  But his most recent target
        is still alive in a death trap somewhere.

        FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) would like Deane  to  go  into
        Stargher's twisted, violent mind and retrieve a clue as to where he
        is hiding and torturing his current victim.  That  said,  there  is
        not  much  more  plot  to  the  film.   The  serial  killer plot is
        abbreviated and for the most part predictable.  The real story goes
        on  inside the heads of Deane and Stargher and we see it as fantasy
        worlds.

        The  success  of  THE  CELL  becomes  very  much  the  property  of
        production  designer Tom Foden (of cable TV's "The Hunger") and art
        directors Guy Dyas and Michael Manson.  Dyas is debuting as an  art
        director, but he has been a production illustrator on several major
        films including MEN IN BLACK, MIMIC, ARMAGEDDON, and GALAXY  QUEST.
        The  worlds  this  team  created  in  Stargher's  mind are dank and
        forbidding, twisted, dark and bloody.   Religion  is  an  important
        aspect  of  both  Deane's and Stargher's mindscapes but it has very
        different roles in each of those worlds.  Each uses religion  in  a
        different  way.   There  are  many other tantalizing ideas floating
        around.  There is a strong hint that two  different  people  seeing
        the  same subconscious world will see it quite differently yet each
        will find the others actions consistent with the world they see.

        First-time film director Tarsem Singh directs a  script  by  first-
        time writer Mark Protosevich.  Singh intentionally mutes the colors
        of the film to heighten the oppressive effect.  So much of the film
        is  taken up with the fantasy world action, the real world story is
        somewhat shorted.  How  Stargher  was  able  to  build  his  ornate
        torture  device  leaves  many  unanswered questions.  Other writing
        problems are obvious.  The film had a nearly  perfect  ending  very
        shortly  after the action ends.  Unfortunately the film keeps going
        to tie things up more pleasantly and warmly and out of keeping with
        the cold style of the best of what had preceded it.












        THE MT VOID                                                 Page 10



        The viewing public hardly needed another serial killer  film.   But
        if  another  must  be  made,  at  least  this  is the way to do it.
        Combine it with something fresh and creative with  ideas.   I  rate
        THE  CELL  a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
        [-mrl]


                                           Mark Leeper
                                           HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
                                           mleeper@...


            The Believer is happy; the doubter is wise.
                                           -- Hungarian Proverb

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                         Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
                     Club Notice - 08/18/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 7

        Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@...
        Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@...
        Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@...
        HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@...
        HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@...
        Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
        All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

        The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
        second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
        201-447-3652 for details.  The Denver Area Science Fiction
        Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
        Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.



        ===================================================================

        1. I probably should make some comments  about  Alec  Guinness  who
        died at 86 less than two weeks ago.  After all, Guinness really was
        one of my favorite actors.

        There was a crop of major English actors who came  into  prominence
        during  and  shortly  after the Second World War.  I guess the most
        respected  was  Lawrence  Olivier,  but  also  included  were  John
        Gielgud,  Ralph  Richardson,  and  Alec  Guinness.   (Incidentally,
        probably I should be using the title of "Sir" for all these actors,
        since  all  had been knighted, but that is a bit more formal than I
        want to be.)  Certainly Olivier and Gielgud one thinks of as  being
        Shakespearean.  Not Shakespearean in the sense that Kenneth Branagh
        is, but sort of cast in marble.  They became famous for playing  in
        very  respectable  productions  of  classic  plays.  They played in
        films, but usually they were people who did  not  have  a  moment's
        doubt  about themselves.  They took grand dramatic roles.  It was a
        little less true of Richardson than the other two, but it  was  not
        true at all of Alec Guinness.  From some of his earliest film roles
        Guinness played people who were very human and very vulnerable.   I
        think I am glad I never met Lawrence Olivier's Heathcliff, but most
        people that Guinness became in films are people that I  would  have
        liked  to know. When Olivier felt pain he played it as one force of
        nature facing another.   The  impression  one  gets  is  like  rain
        hitting  a cliff face.  It is hard to feel any sympathy for Olivier











        THE MT VOID                                                  Page 2



        as he was in REBECCA or WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

        On the other hand Guinness always played very human characters.  He
        played frequently with an impish smile when he was happy.  But also
        he knew how to feel emotion in a role and express  it.   More  than
        that  he  could get the viewer to feel that emotion along with him.
        In the best remembered of his 1950s films I think THE  MAN  IN  THE
        WHITE  SUIT,  at the end when he feels betrayed, we do also.  But I
        think of all his performances the one that I like best is in one of
        his lessor known films.  He did a wonderful comedy-drama called THE
        LAST HOLIDAY.  In it he was a man diagnosed with  a  fatal  disease
        who  after  a life of penury wants to spend his last days at a very
        posh resort.  There was nothing overplayed about the way he let the
        knowledge that death was approaching eat at him.  Even today I find
        it very hard to see the performance and remember that  it  is  only
        the  character and not Guinness himself who is dying.  I think that
        Olivier and Gielgud had more respect, but I think more people  feel
        a genuine affection for Guinness and his characters.

        Of course later on  Guinness  took  roles  that  brought  him  more
        acclaim.   He  got  an  Academy Award and a prefix of "Sir" for his
        role in THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI in one of the most fascinating
        studies  of  obsession  in film.  Second only to THE LAST HOLIDAY I
        liked him in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.   He  was  a  perfect  choice  for
        Prince   Feisal,  actually  physically  resembling  Lawrence's  own
        sketches of Feisal.

        Probably today Alec Guinness is best known for  the  role  he  most
        regretted.   When George Lucas sent him the script for STAR WARS he
        said his reaction was "Oh crumbs, this is  not  for  me."   But  he
        liked  the  script  and  agreed  to  play Obi-Wan Kenobi.  The role
        brought the modest and shy man just precisely the sort of notoriety
        that he did not want.  He became a hero to a younger generation who
        did not know of his serious work.  Even worse people  responded  to
        his  character as if he was real and would send him mail asking for
        advice.

        Guinness supposedly retired in 1988 but I know better since in 1989
        I  saw him on the stage as Botvinik in A WALK IN THE WOODS.  It was
        a classic Guinness character, serious and worried, yet  impish  and
        playful.  Nobody could have played the role better.

        As usual when a major actor dies, many of his old films are playing
        on  television  and cable.  I hope that the younger actors of today
        take a close look.  [-mrl]


                                           Mark Leeper
                                           HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
                                           mleeper@...