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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 11/19/99 -- Vol. 18, No. 21
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
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. Frequently the sacred cows of our society do not bear close
scrutiny, particularly in works of art. In art the same criteria
we apply to newer works of art if applied to the classics would
show them to be flawed in the same way. There are two film
versions of NOSFERATU. One is a classic of German cinema directed
by F. W. Murnau in 1922, one is a nearly identical remake made
almost as a silent film in 1979. The former is one of the most
chilling films ever made. The latter is and intentionally close
recreation using almost all of the same techniques and style is
ponderous and dull. The only major difference is that the remake
is in color. But watching it one knows it could have been made
with modern techniques so you are less likely to be impressed.
When you see a silent film you make allowances for its age. The
difference is not that the first is done so much better but that
one knows it is not a classic so one can be critical in the way one
would not be with the original. (Or one should. I do not know
what a young audience would make of the original NOSFERATU.)
I am listening to a radio adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
story "The Speckled Band." By the way, SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU
HAVE NOT BEEN IN CONTACT WITH THE STORY AND DON'T KNOW THE ENDING
AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE END, GO AWAY. I would be spoiling it
for you. Anyway this was what Doyle himself considered to be one
of his very best Sherlock Holmes stories. One of his best, mind
you. And most of his fans agree. If you remember Holmes's client
tells him about a woman who had spent a night alone in a particular
room. In the middle of the night the woman had screamed, staggered
from her room, gasped cryptically "the speckled band," and died.
The whole story is about Holmes trying to figure out the meaning of
these last words. These days most of us know that the murder
weapon is and title refers to a deadly swamp adder.
Now this is a classic, but it occurs to me that this story is
really a prime example of what is frequently called "the idiot
plot." That is a story where if one person did the logical thing,
the whole plot would fall apart. The plot works only because the
people are behaving like idiots. They are unrealistically doing it
as well. Now I am not going to try to second guess the great
Sherlock Holmes. I will assume it was a brilliant piece of
deduction to figure out that the clues pointed to the murder weapon
being a deadly reptile. Even the clue that there was an indiscrete
saucer of milk left hanging around. How that points to swamp adder
I have no idea, because adders, being reptiles, are not partial to
dairy products. There are few swamps where any self-respecting
adder would get a taste for milk. But what is really foolish in
the plotting is the behavior of the victim. What kind of person
would feel herself dying, find a sympathetic sister, and say
something stupid like "the speckled band." And people in the story
think the words mean a speckled band of gypsies. Her last words
are poetic. They are picturesque language. But under the
circumstances it really is not the way the woman would express
herself. Does it not only seem more natural and at the same time
more intelligent for her to yell, "SNAKE!!" [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Paydirt! A really, really off-the-
wall fantasy that provides just one strange
idea or one weird insight after another. An
office worker discovers his file cabinet hides
a doorway into the head of John Malkovich so
that fifteen minutes at a time the visitor can
be the famous actor. Different people are
affected differently and the implications of
the premise are used in multiple comic ways.
Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is an audacious new comedy that starts
strange, keeps getting stranger, then hits an idea so weird that it
takes the rest of the film to explore only some of the many
ramifications. "Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry
economic climate," complains Craig Schwartz (played John Cusak) an
out-of-work puppeteer to his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz). Craig has
been reduced to street performances of Heloise and Abelard for
change, and even that does not work for him. Lotte looks and
dresses and generally lives like a hippie. She works in a pet
store and has turned the Schwartz's modest apartment into a
menagerie of distressed animals. In his desperate efforts to find
work Craig takes a job as a filing clerk on the seven and a half
floor of an office building. The floor only about five feet high
was created to provide equal access for midgets. Craig reluctantly
settles into his job and starts having designs on the office
beauty, a leggy clerk named Maxine (Catherine Keener). When Maxine
finds out Craig is a puppeteer his attentions are only a little
less welcome than the strep throat.
Then Craig discovers that there is a little doorway hidden behind
an office file cabinet. Behind it lies a dark, damp, gratuitously
Freudian tunnel that drops the trespasser into the mind and body of
John Malkovich (played by John Malkovich). For fifteen minutes the
visitor sees what Malkovich sees, hears what Malkovich hears, and
feels what Malkovich feels. Then the visitor is gently dropped
from thin air to the ground next to the New Jersey Turnpike. For
Craig the strange phenomenon is his inroad to win the attentions of
Maxine. Maxine sees the Malkovich tunnel as a giant moneymaking
opportunity. When Lotte tries the tunnel she discovers that she
likes to be Malkovich to ... well that would be telling.
Charlie Kaufman's script never slows down and never leaves a scene
with the expected. And only toward the end is the plot so
convoluted that it stops making sense. Not all the story
possibilities are used, but Kaufman does carry the premise and its
ramifications to some strange extremes. Different people get
different benefits from the Malkovich ride. Some visitors want to
try just being in another body; some want a taste of the Malkovich
life style. Malkovich's finely appointed, but sterile and lifeless
apartment is a stark contrast to Craig's cluttered low-rent
apartment teeming with animals and life. Other people want to
share the actor's sex life.
John Cusak seems to have a taste for intelligent humor and takes to
his role with gusto. For some reason he looks as seedy as he has
ever looked on the screen. Cameron Diaz, who has been alluring in
most of her other films here is almost unrecognizably frumpy in a
mop of flyaway hair. They are both made as unglamorous as possible
to define their rank in society and to contrast with Catherine
Keener, one of the beautiful people who can have a lover like
Malkovich for the asking. And the old doctor with a voice like
Orson Bean really is played by Orson Bean.
At last something new and original in a movie. This is a film as
fresh and entertaining as was the story ALICE IN WONDERLAND when it
was new. It would be nice if following the lead of BEING JOHN
MALKOVICH filmmakers would realize that you could start with some
really crazy premise, possibly fantasy, and just follow it to
wherever it leads. I rate BEING JOHN MALKOVICH a 9 on the 0 to 10
scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Maybe someone who knows more about the state of marionette
techniques than I do. Can a good puppeteer really make a
marionette do a somersault and not get the strings tangled up.
Questions unanswered: Is there a separate in-house documentary
about the seventh floor? After all we know from the outside of the
building that the floors started out all the same height, so they
must have divided the seventh floor. I was willing to suspend my
disbelief for that; I was even willing to suspend my disbelief on
the major premises of the film. But one thing is minor premise
goes a little too far. I find it very difficult to believe that
without benefit of a magical tunnel anybody could get from an
office building in Manhattan to the New Jersey Turnpike in only
fifteen minutes.
When Malkovich enters the tunnel the result is a really bizarre
scene borrowed from a Twilight Zone episode, but it is totally
unsatisfying as what would be seen. I was expecting to see an
ever-diminishing tunnel or repetitions, not unlike the mirror scene
in CITIZEN KANE. But my question is what did the Japanese tourist
who was in the tunnel with him see. I assume from the script that
Malkovich really has never played a jewel thief. However the
reference to him playing someone mentally retarded was probably to
his performance as Lenny in John Steinbeck's OF MICE AND MEN
(1992). [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. DOGMA (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Kevin Smith has put together an extremely
ambitious comedy fantasy based on Christian
doctrine. The film is occasionally very clever, but
too often it is heavy-handed. Ultimately this
uneven theological farce fails because he has thrown
too much in and often communicates it poorly to the
audience. Between heavy violence and heavier ideas,
between gross-out humor and bizarre satire, the film
tries to be too many things. Eventually DOGMA falls
apart of its own weight. Smith is not yet the
filmmaker it would take to make this whole film
work. Rating: 5 (0 to 10), low +1 (-4 to +4)
One of my favorite comedies of all time is Stanley Donan's
BEDAZZLED featuring the writing and acting of Peter Cook and Dudley
Moore. It is a retelling of the story of Faust in modern terms.
But what makes it funny is are the often hilarious discussions of
theology and religious dogma between the Devil and a nebbish Wimpy
Burger grill man selling his soul. Films rarely get into humorous
examinations of anything so abstract as religious belief and in the
deft hands of Cook and Moore it made for a really original comedy.
I hardly expected a film along these lines from relative newcomer
Kevin Smith, with only the films CLERKS, MALL RATS, and CHASING AMY
under his belt. None of these films indicated any inclination
toward a far-out fantasy with a humorous take on religious belief,
one along the lines of BEDAZZLED. When I heard that was what he
had done I came hoping for a lot and I got a lot, but not the same
lot. Smith wrote himself a script that a many-year veteran
director might have found overly ambitious. There is just too much
in the film for it to all hang together. One has the feeling that
any fleeting idea Smith had stuck to the script like flypaper.
Somehow feces monsters, heavy violence, deep theological
discussion, fantasy, and an action thriller plot just do not all
fit comfortably in the same film.
The plot is convoluted and often the viewer has to listen quick to
get the concepts. Apparently two fallen angels Loki and Bartleby
(played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) have found a loophole in
God's rules so that they can get back into heaven, though they may
have to destroy the world to do it. An abortion clinic worker
Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) is chosen by the archangel Metatron
(Alan Rickman) to stop the two angels. Soon she is travelling with
Kevin Smith's repeating characters Jay and Silent Bob. In DOGMA we
learn they are prophets of the Lord. This may limit their
usefulness to Smith in future films. They are also joined by Rufus
(Chris Rock), the 13th Apostle whom we never heard about in the New
Testament because he was black. The fact that the film also
suggests that Christ was also black requires some fancy explaining.
What Smith should have done was drop one idea of the other and not
was screen time reconciling the two ideas. There is enough
explaining that has to be done in this film as it is. George
Carlin has a small role as a Catholic Cardinal with a concept for
popularizing religion. It is possible that the ideas for this
sequence were all Smith's or perhaps he was writing a pastiche in
the style of George Carlin. But the whole George Carlin Buddy
Jesus sequence is very, very much in the style of Carlin and it
would hardly surprise me to find out that the long-time
iconoclastic comedian had a lot of input on his sequence or even
wrote it himself. Tiny roles go to Bud Cort and Janeane Garofalo.
It is not clear why name actors were needed in such tiny roles.
With CHASING AMY Kevin Smith showed that he could write characters
with some emotional complexity. Unfortunately DOGMA does not take
the time for developing characters in a meaningful way. The acting
and seems much cruder in this film than in CHASING AMY. Some
surprisingly crude production values betray the low budget this
film must have had. Particularly noticeable early in the film
words seem to fit lips very poorly as if the in studio dubbing were
not competently done. The plot calls for special effects but they
range from adequate to crude.
The script is full of interesting ideas but frequently they go by
at lightning speed and such basic concepts as why the action is
taking place now rather than at some other point of the past or
future seem too quickly glossed over. Consideration should have
been given how to convey the ideas better. Inconsistencies mix
into Christian theology in the form of a muse from Greek mythology
and the Norse god Loki. Humor is always subjective and there were
members of the audience laughing, but for me much of the levity for
me fell flat and was not even germane to the subject matter (e.g.
Wisconsin cheese hats). Smith needs to be more selective in the
humor included. Smith might well have considered letting less be
more.
DOGMA comes close to subject matter I would have greatly enjoyed.
A little refinement of the script could have made this like
BEDAZZLED, an intelligent comedy to be savored for years. It still
has a lot to offer, but I rat it only a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and
a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. DOGMA's reinterpretation of
theology is causing the same protest that Milton or Dante might
face if they were around today. The upside is that the protests
appear for now to be low-key and generally ignored. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
In every well-governed state wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
-- Anatole Frace