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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 12/26/97 -- Vol. 16, No. 26
MT Chair/Librarian:
Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-5619 mleeper@lucent.com
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2E-530 732-957-5087 jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 732-949-7076 njs@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist:
Rob Mitchell MT 2D-536 732-957-6330 rlmitchell1@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-2070 eleeper@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
201-933-2724 for details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society
meets on the third Saturday of every month in Belleville; call
201-432-5965 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. URL of the week:
http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/hpersson/kaf.htm. Kobenhavns
Astronomiske Forening home page with information about the major
Greenland meteor strike. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. From Usenet, courtesy of judge@america.net (Dirk A. Loedding):
Here's the schedule for B5 stuff on TNT for the rest of this month
and part of January:
All times are Eastern. Also, the original pilot movie for the show
will be re-edited and re-scored, courtesy of TNT. The new version
will be shown on TNT on 1/4/98.
TNT original movies, reruns and promos:
---------------------------------------
12/26/97 11:00 PM The Guide to Babylon 5
(might be delayed by basketball)
12/28/97 11:00 PM The Guide to Babylon 5
2:00 AM The Guide to Babylon 5
01/03/98 11:00 AM The Guide to Babylon 5
5:30 PM The Guide to Babylon 5
01/04/98 8:00 PM In the Beginning (TNT Original Movie)
10:00 PM The Gathering (Re-edited Pilot)
12:00 AM The Guide To Babylon 5
12:30 AM In the Beginning
2:30 AM What is Babylon 5?
5:30 AM What is Babylon 5?
01/10/98 8:00 PM In the Beginning
01/14/98 10:00 PM In the Beginning
Reruns of the first 4 seasons:
-----------------------------
01/05/98 7:00 PM 103 Midnight on the Firing Line
01/06/98 7:00 PM 102 Soul Hunter
01/07/98 7:00 PM 104 Born to the Purple
. .
. .
. .
05/04/98 7:00 PM 420 Endgame
05/05/98 7:00 PM 421 Rising Star
05/06/98 7:00 PM 422 The Deconstruction of Falling Stars
(The rerun showings will be aired in the exactly correct order,
from an order list JMS will be providing.)
5th season on TNT:
-----------------
Air Date: 3 Title
--------- --- ------------------------------------
01/21/98 501 No Compromises
01/28/98 502 The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari
02/04/98 503 The Paragon of Animals
02/11/98 504 A View from the Gallery
02/18/98 505 Learning Curve
02/25/98 506 Strange Relations
03/04/98 507 Secrets of the Soul
03/11/98 508 In the Kingdom of the Blind
03/18/98 509 Cat and Mouse
03/25/98 511 Phoenix Rising
04/01/98 510 Day of the Dead
04/08/98 512 The Ragged Edge
04/15/98 513 The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father
04/22/98 514 Meditations on the Abyss
06/17/98 522 Sleeping in Light
Other stuff:
-----------
??/??/98 Thirdspace - Spring of 1998. No exact date is
currently available.
??/??/?? A third movie - no details available yet.
??/??/99 Crusade (Spin-off series) - Maybe.
Note: Each episode will air at 10:00 PM, with a repeat at 7:00 PM
on the Saturday following the air date listed above.
===================================================================
4. It is astounding that scientists think they soon may have a
Comprehensive Theory of Everything. I am still working of getting
a Workable Theory of Something. [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. I am watching THE WIND AND THE LION. The story has a Western
woman kidnapped by an Moroccan sheik. It was a true story--well,
sort of--and it became an international incident when Teddy
Roosevelt was President. Except it was a man who was kidnapped.
Still, it makes for better cinema to have the kidnappee played by
Candice Bergen playing against that oh-so-Moroccan Scotsman Sean
Connery. These days it is hard to look at Ms. Bergen and not think
of the highly successful ad campaign in which she stars. AT&T
people who feel less than sanguine toward Candice Bergen, if such
there be, can be reminded that since she was a little girl she has
a history of letting other people put words in her mouth. In THE
WIND AND THE LION the woman tries to be friendly with her captor
and wants a less formal name to call him. She asks him what is his
Christian name. It is a ridiculous question to ask someone who is
very, very obviously a Moslem what is that person's Christian name
and it puts the person in a bad position. Does giving one's first
name at that point become a sort of tacit false statement that the
person is Christian?
Almost the identical thing actually happened to me on our trip to
Eastern Europe. Well, no, I wasn't kidnapped by a Moroccan Sheik.
Not that time. There was a woman in our group who had been brought
up very much "old school" Christian. She was from South America
from some place I take it was not very cosmopolitan, though she
thought of herself as very worldly. The first thing she asked us
when she met us was what was our religion. We told her we were
Jewish. She found that fascinating, probably bred of not having
met many Jews. So she was well aware of our religion and the next
morning she asked to be reminded of my "Christian name." I sort of
felt like being rude and telling her that I did not have one or
asking her for her Jewish name but thought better of it. After all
I had to travel with her. And she was probably well-intentioned.
But she told me how wonderful she thought it was that all the
religions were coming together and becoming one religion. "They
are?" I ask warily. Oh, yes. She had just heard about something
called Jews for Jesus. And she assumed that this was some major
movement in Judaism to believe in Christ.
I think Christians don't know very much about Jews for Jesus and
don't know why Jews object to this particular strategy. And that
is what they are, not a sect but a planned element of a strategy
for Jewish conversion. I wonder if the roles were reversed if our
traveling companion would have been so excited about an
organization of de facto Jews calling themselves Christians
Rejecting Christ. That is the symmetric opposite, but I don't
think our companion would even want to consider such and
organization to be real Christians.
I think the Christian community have little appreciation for how
the Jewish community feels that they have been rubbed raw by (not
all but some) Christians ceaseless attempts to convert them. This
goes back to the very first Christians, to the Middle Ages when
Jews were hauled into cathedrals on Easter and lectured how they
should be Christians, to the announcement by the Southern Baptists
in June of 1996. The Southern Baptist Convention announced its
"Resolution on Jewish Evangelism". The Baptists voted to dedicate a
portion of their budget to conduct a mission to the Jews, including
hiring missionaries in predominantly Jewish areas, and buying time
on television and on the radio. Have they ever attempted to target
Buddhists? Moslems? Hindus? Not that I have ever heard. With
very, very few exceptions, Jews do not try to convince people from
other religions to convert to Judaism. That is a sort of de facto
policy of the religion. If anything, then, Jews should be the one
religion exempt from proselytizers from other religions. But that
is certainly not the way it works out.
This constant targeting of Jews by some Christians has led to a
constant feeling of minor discomfort on the part of some Jews. I
think that is why some Jews have that moment of this discomfort
when even a well-intentioned Christian wishes them a Merry
Christmas or when the company they work for decorates their
building for Christmas and has no decorations for Chanukah. [-mrl]
===================================================================
6. TITANIC (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: "Titanic" is indeed the word for the
huge film TITANIC. While it has been filmed
several times, this will be the version people
will remember first for years to come. Still,
a melodramatic love triangle with a villainous
jilted fiance firing off guns on the sinking
ship is just not what the story of the ill-
fated ship needed. The film could have had
more historic detail, less fiction, and could
have been even more enjoyable. But Titanic's
warning that no technology is totally safe from
failure is more timely today than it was in
1912 at the time of the sinking. Rating: 6 (0
to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
There are really two approaches to making a film about the sinking
of the Titanic, and both were tried in the 1950s. The 1953 film
TITANIC had passenger Clifton Webb reacting to discovering that his
son was illegitimate. Impending death as the ship sinks changes
his attitude for the better. On the other hand, the 1958 film A
NIGHT TO REMEMBER is a dramatization of passengers' accounts of the
sinking of the great ship. They had some false ideas about the
sinking, but for the most part they were trying to accurately
portray events that happened that night. The 1953 TITANIC is a
pleasant old film and fun to watch; A NIGHT TO REMEMBER is a cinema
classic. As one might imagine, there were a large number of very
dramatic stories going on at the same time when the Titanic sank.
It just is not necessary to invent a fictional story to take place
at the same time, and it is an irritating distraction from what
most of the audience considers the real story they paid to see.
The 1997 TITANIC, written and directed by James Cameron, is about a
very one-sided love triangle set on the Titanic. At 194 minutes,
the film also has time for some detail about the sinking including
some that has never been filmed before. But overall it has less
historic detail than the much shorter and lower-budgeted A NIGHT TO
REMEMBER. That is in part because James Cameron takes almost two
hours of screen time to get the Titanic to the iceberg and even
after it does hit, he still cannot bring himself to believe that
the audience is more interested in the sinking ship than in his
banal love story.
Visually, the 1997 TITANIC is by far the best version, but for
historical detail, I think the real enthusiasts about the sinking
will probably prefer the 1958 telling. Cameron seems to accept
this by borrowing many scenes almost intact. Some of these may be
from historic accounts, but the similarities go beyond the content
of the borrowed scenes. The incidents are simply re-filmed using
the same style.
The film begins with some intrepid young explorers, led by Brock
Lovett (played by Bill Paxton dragging along memories of his too
similar role in TWISTER), exploring the recently found sunken hull
of the RMS Titanic and in particular looking for a (fictional)
diamond that supposedly went down with the great ship. They do not
find the diamond itself, but they do find a drawing of a nude woman
wearing the diamond. When the drawing is shown on television, a
woman calls the team to say that not only can she identify the
picture, she is the woman. (Hey, would you believe the elderly
woman is Gloria Stuart, who played opposite Melvyn Douglas and
Boris Karloff in OLD DARK HOUSE and opposite Claude Rains in THE
INVISIBLE MAN?)
As the old woman tells the explorers her story, we drift back to
the sailing of the Titanic. Rose DeWitt Buketer (Kate Winslet) is
from a family of old money and new debt. Her mother has arranged a
marriage between her and Cal Hockley (Billy Zane, played as quite
possibly the most obnoxious American man then alive). This part is
extremely over-written, with Hockley making judgments that Pablo
Picasso will never amount to anything in the art world and that
lifeboats are a waste of space on the unsinkable Titanic. Having
to watch him on the screen for a few hours is painful; a lifetime
with him would have to be worse than death. At least that is what
Rose decides and is ready to cast herself into the cold ocean when
Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young artist from the lower
classes and the lower decks, steps forward and convinces her to
live. Of course he is everything that Cal is not, including poor,
unfortunately. But of course the two fall madly in love. And of
course the angry and spoiled Cal plots revenge. Even after the
Titanic strikes an iceberg--sorry, was that supposed to have a
spoiler warning?--the film still concerns itself too much with this
love triangle and not enough with the sinking ship. Earlier we
have seen parts of the ship behaving perfectly. We should revisit
the engine room and its machinery with grasshopper-like legs
kicking fly-wheels and see what flooding is doing to it. One wants
to return to the radio room and see what is happening there as the
operator desperately tries to find help. Instead we follow a
fictional Cal hatching nefarious plots at Jack's expense. It is
class warfare at its most obvious. This is one time when truth
would be a lot more interesting than fiction.
Frightfully underutilized is Kathy Bates as the unsinkable and
likably straightforward Molly Brown. Also misused is David Warner
as Cal's one-dimensional thug and bodyguard. And why bother
casting Eric Braeden/Hans Gudegast as John Jacob Astor if you do
not intend to use him?
What we do see of the ship's problems, and in so long a film that
is still quite a bit, is enough to make this the most visually
impressive rendition of the sinking, at least in other ways. We
might expect that from a film produced by both Paramount and Fox,
costing $200,000,000--making it the most expensive American film
ever, perhaps beaten only by the Russian version of WAR AND PEACE.
(The original ship itself cost about $7,500,000, incidentally.)
Camera shots flying us the length of the ship are jaw-droppers even
if they do have the feel of digital images. Seeing dramatized the
contortions of the ship as it breaks up is new to cinema and pretty
scary.
TITANIC does make the mistake that every version of the sinking
makes, something that could be called "angular continuity." Until
it breaks up at the very end, the Titanic was a rigid ship. This
means that if one stateroom is tipped at a 27-degree angle, at the
same instant of time every room, every deck, every walkway is also
tipped at a 27-degree angle. During the sinking every scene should
show a room tipped at just a bit more of an angle than the previous
scene. No film version has ever paid close enough attention to
angular continuity. It means, for one thing, that before shooting
one has to know exactly the order of the shots and that order
cannot be rearranged in the editing (well, perhaps only minimally).
The angle of tipping varies wildly from scene to scene. A room
will be shown tipped at a high angle, but in the next scene dishes
will fall off shelves that should have fallen considerably earlier.
TITANIC is a lot of movie for the same priced ticket as anything
else at the multiplex. This is a big film with a lot to like as
well as a lot to not. For this budget and with digital technology
the story could have been told with supreme accuracy and been a
much more compelling film at the same time. Overall I give it a 6
on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
7. TOMORROW NEVER DIES (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Media mega-tycoon and megalomaniac
Jonathan Pryce matches wits with the Pierce
Brosnan's James Bond. The film is long on
action sequences and short on plot. Brosnan's
interpretation of Bond gets more and more like
Roger Moore's. There is less and less
effective under all the polish and instead we
have plot contrivances to make sure things work
out for the best. TOMORROW NEVER DIES ranks
about 12th of the 18 James Bond films from
United Artists and (now) MGM. Rating: 5 (0 to
10), high 0 (-4 to +4)
If one looks at FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, there is a lot that
happening in the film. The plot involves British intelligence,
Russian intelligence, Turkish intelligence, and SPECTRE. Within
SPECTRE there are competing agents chess champion Kronstein
vs. Rosa Klebb. There is a false seduction and other double
crosses. There are also fights and chases, but they are each
relatively short in duration. When Bond fights Grant it is a
believable fight and Grant is dispatched in three or four minutes.
Then the plot starts moving forward again. The result was that
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE was a James Bond thriller. If you have James
Bond captured by the nasties and twenty minutes later he is still
escaping and the plot is still at a standstill, it does not matter
how many cars have been blown up, how many people have been shot,
or how many helicopters have crashed. What you have may be a James
Bond action film, but it is not a thriller. If Bond has to do some
clever deductive work to realize what the villain is up to, you may
have a thriller. If Bond's success just happens because by
coincidence he is in the right place at the right time, you might
have an action film, but you do not have a thriller. TOMORROW
NEVER DIES has an unfortunate shortage of plot complexity. It is
an action film with James Bond, but it is not a James Bond
thriller.
After a shaky start in his first film, Pierce Brosnan is every bit
the James Bond that Roger Moore was, for whatever that is worth.
TOMORROW NEVER DIES reminds on of a Roger Moore Bond film. After a
mostly irrelevant opening sequence we have a British battleship
first buzzed by Chinese MiGs, then chewed up by some sort of
mechanical device that combines aspects of a torpedo, a tunnel
borer, and a lamprey. It goes to the bottom much like the Titanic,
the film about which was released in the same weekend. (I wonder
if the allusion could have been intentional.) The British and
Chinese governments are on the point of war and James Bond is sent
off to figure out another puzzle. It seems that while sea-water
was still leaking into the battleship, news of the attack had
already leaked out. It was on the news channel before anyone could
have possibly known unless they knew in advance the attack was to
happen. The news channel is ruled over by magnate Elliot Carver
(played by Jonathan Pryce). Pryce seems to comprise the worst
aspects of Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and a lamprey.
Can it be that Carver is actually creating the news--WAG THE DOG
style--for his own ends? Wait till you hear the reasons why! But
Bond has to get his information pumping Paris Carver (Teri
Hatcher), former Bond lover and now Mrs. Elliot Carver. The plot
works like a too-well-oiled machine taking us from one fifteen-
minute action sequence to one that is possibly twenty minutes
without ever slowing down for the audience to ask if it all makes
sense, which it does not.
Along for the ride this time are Judi Dench as M, trying to look as
much as possible like Bernard Lee with two X-chromosomes and
frighteningly succeeding. Desmond Llewelyn is trying to give the
impression that a job in the Secret Service is for life. He is
probably there mostly for continuity as is Joe Don Baker's
superfluous Jack Wade, formerly of GOLDENEYE. Jonathan Pryce is a
great actor who makes a nearly colorless Bond villain. Two
characters are not colorless and should have been used to
considerably advantage. One was a Chinese agent played by
Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, a sort of female Jackie Chan who
could well have out-performed Brosnan in the action scenes. The
other was a terrific small role for Vincent Schiavelli as Dr.
Kaufman, expert in torture and other infamous arts. Schiavelli has
one short delectable scene in a role that cried out to be expanded.
Also there is a totally lackluster and boring acting job by Bond's
car. The scenes in which the car appears look like second rate
automobile ads, which by an odd coincidence is exactly what they
are. (I would not mention that here, but since the filmmakers
accepted all that nice money from the manufacturer to pose the car
so much more carefully than they pose any of the human characters,
I feel obliged to review the car's performance.)
As a director Roger Spottiswoode is, well, spotty. His UNDER FIRE
was a very solid political film. His made for cable adaptation of
AND THE BAND PLAYED ON was a high-point of its year. Let us not,
however, dwell on his STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT. As a director of
a Bond film he was only middling successful. He should have
exerted more control on the script, making it more intelligent and
refusing the product placements. David Arnold has written an
acceptably John Barry-sounding score built around Barry's James
Bond theme (credited falsely to Monty Norman).
TOMORROW NEVER DIES is below average for the Bond films to date.
They never even bother to tell the viewer what the title means. I
rate the new Bond film a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high 0 on the
-4 to +4 scale
Just so the reader can know what my values are in Bond films I
would rate the Bond film best to worse as:
1. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
2. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
3. THUNDERBALL
4. DR. NO
5. LICENSE TO KILL
6. GOLDFINGER
7. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
8. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
9. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
10. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
11. OCTOPUSSY
12. TOMORROW NEVER DIES
13. GOLDENEYE
14. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
15. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
16. A VIEW TO A KILL
17. MOONRAKER
18. LIVE AND LET DIE
[-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
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