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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 12/04/98 -- Vol. 17, No. 23
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 2E-537 732-957-6330 robmitchell@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
201-447-3652 for details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society
meets irregularly; call 201-652-0534 for details, or check
http://www.interactive.net/~kat/njsfs.html. 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. URLs of the week: http://www.bibliofind.com and
http://www.bookfinder.com. Both are databases of groups of used
book dealers: the former has 3500 dealers and 8 million books; the
latter doesn't cite numbers but is probably comparable and searches
Amazon and Powells for new books as well. (They're also handy for
figuring out if that old book you found in the attic is worth
anything.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. We were at the Boston Fine Arts museum and we took a break and
visited the cafeteria. I asked the cashier, "Do you have any
mayonnaise?" She told me, "He's up with the Impressionists." [-
mrl]
===================================================================
3. (Being somewhat serious for once, I have been looking at why
when I was growing up, the younger generation of Jews tended to
take up more esoteric religions.)
Some of the reasons we lost people are forces that all ethnic
groups face. Some of the reasons are more unique to Judaism. Now
I am talking here about not just the reasons people leave one
religion but leave it AND JOIN ANOTHER. I am not talking here
about assimilation. Chinese immigrants express frustration that
their children are not interested enough in Chinese culture. But
the children do not come down to breakfast one day and say, "Mom,
Dad, I have decided to become Latino." The children who assimilate
just do not stress their own culture so much. But I am talking
about the actual changing of religion.
You would think that the choice of a religion is a metaphysical
decision. You would think someone changes religion because they
really do think that wine turns into blood and their own religion
claimed it was only symbolic. For the vast majority that is not it
at all. There are a bunch of reasons why people change religion
and metaphysical differences of opinion, the belief that one
religion really is right and another is wrong, has got to be very
low on the list. Some people change religion for the sake of
convenience. If you marry a Methodist often you take up the
practice, for example. Or if you deal with Catholics a lot you
might think of yourself as part of the Catholic community. I don't
know if there is a Catholic community in the United States, but
there certainly is in countries like Ireland, Spain, Italy, and
Poland. There becoming Catholic would almost be assimilation.
But part of the reason that a religion attracts people is that it
seems like fun. You might not think that this is a really big
factor, but then you have to explain why the Japanese have picked
up so many Christian customs while it is still relatively low
numbers them who actually consider themselves Christian. Christmas
is a big holiday in a country where the overwhelming majority of
people are Buddhist and Shintoist. Why? It is because the
trappings of the religion are inviting. Christmas is a lot of fun
for some people. And it is not that the metaphysics of believing
in Christ imply people should put lights on trees. It is that
these customs attract people to the religion.
For what is now many centuries Judaism has been one of the few
religions that does not encourage conversion from other religions.
There are darn few Jewish missionaries. And most of the rest of
the religion thinks that the few Jewish missionaries are nuts. But
after centuries of religious intolerance toward Jews, they have not
wanted to look like competition to other religions. This has only
brought about the accusation that Jews are cliquish, but Jews have
had to walk the narrow path that would bring them the least amount
of hatred. It is better to be accused of being cliquish than to be
accused of trying to win converts from the dominant religions.
But being a religion that was not trying to win converts, Judaism
never developed customs that people from other religions would
consider particularly attractive. The brightly colored Christmas
decorations we are starting to see this time of year bear much the
same function as bright colors in flowers or bright plumage on
birds. It is to attract attention. If you do not need to attract
attention, you don't make yourself so visible. The Jews that had
great or colorful celebrations of their holidays attracted the
attention of intolerant non-Jews and were essentially weeded from
the gene pool. Jews were left with a lackluster and somber set of
holidays. Celebrations of holidays, those few that were pleasant,
involved quietly lighting candles or eating special pastries. The
candles were generally little tiny ones at that. But in making the
religion unattractive to members of other religions, or at least
never developing customs to make it attractive, we have succeeded
in making it less attractive to our own younger generation. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. The following is a comment from a reader (not me) about my
editorial started last issue. Name withheld at the request of the
of the reader.
In your recent MTVOID, you wrote:
I guess that Christians really enjoy Christmas. Boy, do
Christians enjoy Christmas.
I couldn't resist giving you an alternative perspective. As you
know, I was not born Jewish. (Truthfully, I was born "nothing" -
my family didn't bother with organized religion.) But, we
celebrated xmas. Boy, did we celebrate xmas. So can you guess
which holiday I despise more than any other? You got it....
It takes WORK to do xmas. Hours of dust-ridden, schlock-soaked,
carol-howling, mind-numbing WORK to put the goddamned holiday
together. Hauling out dusty old decorations that were tacky when
they were bought, and are now positively hideous after several
years of use. (Remember Portnoy's line: "For tastes that would
shame a gorilla....") Cooking mountains of disgusting gelatinous
xmas food (drop by my mom's house, and she'll treat you to some of
her famous lime-jello-with- carrots-and-marshmallow-topping).
Buying truckloads of inappropriate gifts for relatives you rarely
see and can barely stand when you do see them ("all the stores are
closed, except for the Pleasure Chest! I hope dear old Aunt Gertie
is into bondage gear...."). Staying up night after night wrapping
this junk, your eyes and fingers gummy. And then the holiday
itself, which is by turns boring (watching dear old Aunt Gertie
pretend to like her new manacles) and stressful (trying to
discourage dear old Aunt Gertie from trying her new manacles out on
you after she's had a few). And after it is all over there is the
massive cleanup, the broken toys, and worst of all, the WAITING IN
LINE AT VARIOUS STORES TO RETURN ALL THIS GARBAGE THE NEXT DAY.
As you've probably noticed, there is little mention of alcohol in
all of this. That's because the whole alcohol thing is a topic
onto itself. If xmas is such a joyous holiday, why do so many
xians have to anesthetize themselves to enjoy it? "Jesus is born:
let's celebrate by throwing up on our shoes." There was an
ironclad rule in my family: no drinking at all during xmas.
Period, end of subject. Without this rule, my family would have
celebrated the birth of the "prince of peace" by beating each other
half to death.
Shudder. The horror, the horror. By comparison, kashering for
Pesach is a breeze. [-anonymous]
===================================================================
5. BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: The second BABE film is more creative
than the first, but it is also darker in tone.
We are back in the world where animals talk to
each other, but never to humans. Babe is taken
to the big city in an attempt to save Hoggett
farm. But Babe gets separated and has
adventures with a whole menagerie of animals.
The art direction of this film is almost as big
a feature as the animal animatronics, but it
may be confusing for younger children. Still,
parents will find that they will have to go a
long way to find a film so enjoyable both
adults and for children. Rating: 6 (0 to 10),
high +1 (-4 to +4). A minor spoiler follows
the review.
The second Babe film, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, had plenty of room to
repeat what was good about the 1995 BABE. Co-writer and director
George Miller really did not need to change the film's approach.
But Miller was not content to rest on his laurels. The sequel is
quite a different film and gives the audience much that is new and
quite different to enjoy. Is it as good as the first film? To my
mind it is not quite as good. The story is a little less a
coherent story and the big climax of the film is more slapstick and
less subtle excitement. Like BABE this is family entertainment,
but I think it offers a little less for the children and perhaps a
little less for the adults also. The tone is definitely darker and
more disturbing. But like BABE, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY is probably
the best family film of its year. And it is one of the rare family
films that may well be better appreciated by adults than by
children.
The Hoggett Farm is certainly having its ups and it downs. After a
series of adventures related in the first film Babe has won
international fame as the pig who is a sheep dog. Things are going
well until Farmer Hoggett is disabled in a freak accident. (Note:
the scenario of this accident was a joke told as early as the Fred
Allen radio program in the 1940s and has appeared other places
since. It may even be older than that. But to the best of my
knowledge, this is the first time anybody filmed this strange
sequence of events.) With Mr. Hoggett unable to care for his farm
it falls on hard times and the bank is ready and anxious to make
the times even harder. Mrs. Hoggett takes the famous pig to
display him at a fair. But events conspire to maroon Mrs. Hoggett
in the city with her pig and then to leave her pig all alone. Babe
finds himself the new animal in a house full of animals with
dubious human supervision. Among the animals Babe meets is a
Damon-Runyan-esque pit bull, a family of chimpanzees,
The film is told in the same style as the first Babe film but
differently. Again the story is divided in chapters whose titles
are read to us by the trio of singing mice. The Classical and
popular music is back including the theme from Saint-Saens's Third
Symphony. Miller has managed to get the same cast back, though
James Cromwell has a much more limited role as Farmer Hoggett and
Magda Szubanski has a much larger role this time continuing as Mrs.
Hoggett. Again the comedy is genuinely funny and sometimes very
funny. The acting and voicing seems to have all the same people in
the same roles. The major characters are all present, even if
their roles are much foreshortened. And as with the first film,
the animals are frequently three-dimensional characters with
interesting personalities. But the city Babe visits is not so much
a city as a Disneyland-modified city-concentrate. It seems like a
Frankensteinian grafting together of many of the great cities of
the world. Looking out a window, Babe sees l
This is more expensive and a cut below its predecessor, but it
still is a good outing for the whole family. I give this film a 6
on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler...
Like ANIMAL FARM, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY may have many allegorical
meanings and perhaps even religious overtones. Babe wins over his
enemies with kindness and feeds his flock, but then allows an
enforcer to stand over feeding and no animal is allowed to partake
of the food without thanking Babe, under apparent threat of
violence. What begins looking like an allegorical Christ into more
a Huey Long allegory. [-mrl]
===================================================================
6. The 1998 Toronto International Film Festival (film reviews and
commentary by Mark R. Leeper) (part 9 of 10)
09/19/98
Breakfast was at McDonalds and was fully up to their standard of
mediocrity. But we had to get to the movie. This is our last day.
Much more so than a World Science fiction convention or even a
foreign trip, this I am sorry to see come to an end.
TRANCE (United States)
CAPSULE: This is the kind of film you used to see in the 60s from
small studios like Tigon. An American couple finds themselves in a
huge old Irish house with a mad woman stalking the hallways, and,
oh yes, a 2000-year-old Druid witch is also running around and
shape-changing. Once it gets going it is entertaining but it would
be hard to claim it is actually a good film. Rating: 5 (0 to 10),
low +1 (-4 to +4)
- Written and directed by Michael Almereyda who directed the
vampire film NADJA.
- Far less experimental than NADJA but more coherent.
- Alcoholic American couple Nora (Alison Eliot) and Jeff (Jared
Harris) take young son and visit wife's family mansion in
Ireland.
- Huge brooding mansion beside the ocean. Nora's grandmother is
near 90 and senile. Her uncle is nearly blind, but he
continues his experimentation with a 2000 year old petrified
body found in the bogs and now in the basement.
- Nora and Jeff are trying to give up alcohol, or so they tell
themselves. Very flip as if always drunk.
- Irish accent is hard to understand at times.
- Harris's acting style is very much like Christopher Walken's.
- Myth of Earth and Sky: At the beginning of the world there was
just Earth and Sky and they greatly loved each other. Then
they were separated. When it rains the Sky is trying to touch
the Earth.
23 (German)
CAPSULE: Two computer hackers from Hanover, Germany, members of the
Computer Chaos Club get involved breaking into the computers of
major companies and of governments. What starts as a game turns
into an international espionage incident. The (basically) true
story is told here. This is the story of the computer criminals
that Clifford Stoll caught as detailed in THE CUCKOO'S EGG.
Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)
- Directed by Has-Christian Schmidt who co-wrote the screenplay.
- The other side of Clifford Stoll's THE CUCKOO'S EGG. In fact
the Nova dramatization would make a very good companion piece.
This is the story of the Hanover data bandits.
- Begins with Karl Koch and his friend David's interest in the
Illuminatus book by Robert Shea (unmentioned) and Robert Anton
Wilson (who plays himself in a few short scenes).
- Karl and David are 19 when taken with Hacker's ethic that
information belongs to everyone. Begin breaking into
corporate and government computers. A go-between suggests
that the KGB will pay well for the right information. From
there life starts giving them big ups and bigger downs.
- 23 is basically a morality tale of how the Hanover bandits
ruined their lives. With their fascination in conspiracies
they actually bred conspiracies against themselves.
- Hard to keep up with the pace of the story telling. The names
are a little hard to follow.
- Hard to understand why the hackers ethic would cause Karl and
David to ally themselves with the KGB.
- Use money from their hacking to buy cocaine and only make
their lives worse.
- Making obvious errors. When the landlord no longer seems to
care whether you are paying rent or not, get the heck out.
- In tone similar to TRAINSPOTTING. People trapped by
shortsighted behavior.
- The information that the Hanover bandits gave the Soviets was
not the serious damage. They stole much of the innocence of
the Internet. Imagine a village in which people feel secure
and nobody locks their doors. Two kids discover this and
start petty thefts. They may not steal much but soon
everybody will realize they have to put locks on their doors.
Security becomes an industry. That is what the Hanover
bandits did to the world of computers.
While we were watching the film it stopped and the house lights
came up. We waited to find out if there was someone going to get
the film going again. Someone put their head in the door and said
it was not a real fire alarm. That was a relief since nobody had
heard any fire alarm and if it had been real we could have gotten
toasted.
Somebody came on the PA system and said "We are in an alarm
situation. Please remain where you are." We remained. Some
people left, as the film was nearly over anyway. Eventually the
voice came on and said that there had been a false alarm, but it
still took another five minutes before they could get the film
going again.
When the film was over we stopped for lunch at an Indonesian
restaurant, then back to the room to pack. Then to see a film not
part of the festival, though it starred the same pair of actors who
starred in CLAY PIGEONS.
RETURN TO PARADISE (United States)
CAPSULE: Wow! Pretty tough to imagine this not being the best film
I see this year. Three buddies committed a crime in Malaysia, two
left the country, and one was caught. If neither of the free
buddies go back to stand trial the caught man will hang. Whoever
goes back will be volunteering for prison under horrible
conditions. An intelligent film about very tough moral decisions
and their consequences. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), high +3 (-4 to +4).
A very heavy spoiler after the review discusses the issues this
film raises. This is a very good film but some of its issues
cannot be discussed without disclosing plot twists.
This is an adult film in the literal meaning. It is a film that
does not sugar coat its view of reality. Things do not happen in
this film because of wishful thinking the way they might in a Frank
Capra film. RETURN TO PARADISE is a film without a safety net. It
asks the right questions and does not provide the viewer with pre-
digested answers. In A FEW GOOD MEN there are some interesting
issues raised and there are giant neon signs telling the viewer
which side is right on the issues. Independently of the Jack
Nicholson character's ideas, the script makes him an insulting male
chauvinist. The film entirely sidesteps the issue of whether
Nicholson might be correct about defense, he clearly is a villain.
RETURN TO PARADISE also raises issues. But it is not a morality
tale. It does not tell the viewer what the answers are. There are
no neon signs.
Tony (David Conrad), Sheriff (Vince Vaughn), and Lewis (Joaquin
Phoenix) are having a good time together in Malaysia. They are
drinking beer, seeing the countryside, getting into trouble, and
smoking cheap hashish. They throw out the hashish they have not
used when Sheriff and Tony have to go home.
Flash forward two years. Sheriff is a limousine driver, Tony is an
architect. Lewis has spent the last two years in a Penang prison.
Now the Malaysian government is going to hang Lewis as a drug
dealer unless he can prove he was only a user. To do that he has
to produce who shared the drugs with him. Informally the Malaysian
government says that they will give a total of six years prison
time to the one or two people who show up and will commute Lewis's
term. Lawyer Beth (Anne Heche) has the job of convincing Sheriff
and Tony to go and take their prison sentences so Lewis will not be
executed. But how does one weigh the greater evil when the prison
is so bad that six years may be tantamount to a death sentence or
perhaps be enough to permanently unhinge the prisoner.
Vince Vaughn and Joquin Phoenix are perhaps better known as the
leads of CLAY PIGEONS. Here they have a very different moral
relationship but their fates are similarly connected. Anne Heche
of SIX DAYS, SEVEN NIGHTS is the lawyer stuck with the task of
getting two men to give up years of their lives to save the life of
someone they hardly know. The script is based on the film FORCE
MAJEURE by Pierre Jolivet. The original English language script
was Bruce Robinson who wrote what I considered the best film I saw
in the 1980s, THE KILLING FIELDS. And here he is connected with
nearly the best film I have seen thus far in the 1990s. However
the script was rewritten by Wesley Strict.
RETURN TO PARADISE is a rare film experience. It is an intelligent
and adult look at people making hard choices in the real world. I
give it a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +3 on the -4 to +4
scale.
Heavy spoiler.... Heavy spoiler....Heavy spoiler...
If this film were only about the heavy price Sheriff and Tony were
being asked to pay to save Lewis's life, this would be a very good
film. But it goes much beyond that. Unfortunately one only
realizes the other issues of this film toward the end.
If one were to ask if freedom of the press is a good thing or a bad
thing, I think most of us would vote in favor. We give the press a
broad range of freedoms in this country in the hopes that it will
help to topple dictators, or better yet never letting them get
started. We do not want to let the government limit our freedom of
expression, our First Amendment rights. If I were asked what is
the downside of giving this much power to the press the first
example that comes to mind is that we are giving the press the
right to publish how to make dangerous devices. There have been
issues in the past of magazines wanting to publish instructions for
building your own atomic bombs. It is also very timely that this
film comes out just as a media barrage is toppling a President.
There are certainly good arguments that the press has overstepped
its bounds.
Our First Amendment really hamstrings us in controlling dangerous
information. There are laws that may let us use restraining
orders, but deep down the First Amendment has given all the big
guns to people who want to make information available, for better
or for worse. In the case in RETURN TO PARADISE it was a lost
cause from the beginning. The international press was going tell
the world about Lewis's case.
That would anger the Malaysian government and they would punish
Lewis. Any nobility on the part of Sheriff and Tony would be
misplaced. (And that really is something we rarely see in film.
The ethical thing to do is rarely shown as being useless and
pointless.) As soon as the press got hold of the story, it was out
of the main characters' hands. Lewis was going to die, not because
of his crime, but because the founding fathers felt the press had
to be unrestrained.
The other issue of where we are paying a heavy price is that the
Malaysian judge has a very good point. In his country children are
free from the risk of drugs. Malaysia has a much lower risk of
crime. Our lax attitude on drug enforcement has a heavy price. We
walk a middle ground between either legalizing drugs or treating
drug use as harshly as the Malaysians do. We are afraid to do the
former and do not have the stomach to do the latter. And that
middle ground of shadow tolerance is also what kills Lewis in this
film. These are complex issues. Nobody is totally wrong or
totally right.
[to be continued] [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Hilbert once had a student in mathematics who
stopped coming to his lectures, and he was finally
told that the young man had gone off to become a
poet. Hilbert is reported to have remarked, "I
never thought he had enough imagination to be a
mathematician."
-- George Polya