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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 03/26/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 39
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-957-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-957-2070, 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. I see now that they are releasing to the theaters an official
director's cut of Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR. Here at
last we can see the film as Bertolucci would have made it. I
remember seeing the film. At the time it was playing in New York
City. Evelyn and I went to New York to see it. I do not remember
the ticket price, but they are always a great deal more than our
local ticket prices. Also I had to pay for parking in New York.
It was not an inexpensive day. But I had heard that it was really
worth seeing. And I am interested in Chinese history. Well, I did
not care for the film. I did not think that it was a good summary
of Pu Yi's life. But it did have an implicit positive point. It
was what it was. It was Bernardo Bertolucci's film, THE LAST
EMPEROR. Supposedly. At the time. Recently I find out that it
was not really Bertolucci's film. It was--gasp--someone else's
cut. I had no idea. Old Bernardo didn't give me a hint that this
was not his film. And I am sure he got his cut of the take. Now
we are told that it was not his film and if you really want to see
what he wanted you have to pay again. There is no discount for
those poor souls who already spent good money on the first one.
And Bernardo is not the first person to pull this stunt.
I guess I first became aware of this strategy with the film CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS. The film got a second release with just a little more
special effects added. It was CLOSE ENCOUNTERS--SPECIAL EDITION.
I do not think anybody ever heard again of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS--
REGULAR EDITION. In fact, I doubt if I could get my hands on a
print of the regular edition any more. At the time I much
preferred the STAR WARS films and I told myself that George Lucas
would never shoot a little more footage and re-release his films.
He was too nice a guy. He was above all that. He let me down big
time. I have not seen THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK or THE RETURN OF THE
JEDI in their new formats. I did see A NEW HOPE. Well, admittedly
I had never seen a film called A NEW HOPE before. I saw it when it
was just called STAR WARS and I am pretty sure it had no subtitle.
That is another rewriting of history.
The thing is, I have a criterion for how good the experience of
re-viewing--not reviewing but re-viewing--a given film is. You
want as closely as possible to recreate what would have been the
experience of seeing the original print in completely deserted
theater. If you start fooling around with the title, that is a
step in the wrong direction. Adding a bunch of new special effects
and maybe changing the ending is even more an offense. I thought I
could detect some differences in BLADE RUNNER, THE DIRECTOR'S CUT.
But at in that case they put right up front what was important to
the director. It was his cut. He wanted to increase his cut of
the cash.
I am told the Harlan Ellison is pulling the same stunt and is
disavowing stories he has written but has since re-written. I have
even heard that if you ask him to autograph a book with the earlier
version of the story he confiscates the book as if it was
contraband. He does not refund the purchase price of which he has
already gotten the author's cut. Well I have never been
particularly fond of Harlan Ellison--the man or his writing.
But I want to absolutely assure readers that when you get an issue
of the MT VOID, it is an artifact to last forever. Every word you
get is guaranteed to be what we wanted to say and continue to want
to say. There will be no later re-writing and claims that what you
have is invalid. I will live by what I have done. That is not
counting a certain recent film review in which there is one edition
in which in the section where I put it in historical context I
reversed the order of two major naval battles in World War II. (I
had my nose rubbed in it in time to fix it in the VOID, thank God.)
But you should understand that the issue you hold in you hand is a
document not just for today, but for all ages. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS (a film review by Mark R.
Leeper):
Capsule: Comic chaos in the criminal class. We
have seen this sort of thing before, but it
remains amusing. Six different groups of
people, all on the shady side of the law, keep
bumping into each other. Our four main
characters owe money to one so steal from
another who are stealing from yet another. The
script manages to juggle all six so they are
each in constant motion. Rating: 6 (0 to 10),
+1 (-4 to +4)
LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS is the kind of farce we have
seen before. It is a comedy of chaos. This sort of comedy puts
enough groups of people together in a script, none knowing what the
others are doing and (perhaps) the audience can follow what is
going on, but you can reasonably expect that none of the characters
has a clue. Particularly good comedies in this vein are Martin
Scorsese's AFTER HOURS and John Landis's OSCAR.
The plot of LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS works like a
well-oiled machine set on high-speed, with everybody doing things
to everybody else and nobody being sure who is doing what to whom.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Four young London low-
lifes figure they have a good shot at getting rich if they can get
into a high stakes poker game. They get together 100,000 pounds.
What they did not count on was that the game was rigged and that
they would end up owing 500,000 pounds. And they have one week to
get it. Luckily a possibility presents itself. Their next-door
neighbors are planning to rob an urban marijuana farmer. Our group
plans to steal the proceeds of that crime. But that is not all
that is happening. All told there are about six different groups
of people, all criminal in some ways, running around bumping into
each other, double-crossing each other, and shooting each other up.
Everybody is doing something illegal in this part of London; it
goes with the turf. Set in a part of London where the law is
something of an irrelevancy, this frantic farce is the first outing
for 30-year-old writer and director Guy Ritchie. Everyone here is
a criminal, but at least he is an eloquent one. As has been the
style for crime films since PULP FICTION, the dialog leans to the
clever and inventive side and away, far away, from realism.
Everybody knows that few real thugs, and certainly not the ones
this far down the ladder, are as eloquent and as engaging to hear
as the ones in this film. If they were this bright, they would be
in a less hazardous profession. But then the filmmaker's first
responsibility is to entertain. Some Americans will have problems
penetrating the thick accents that unfortunately obscure some of
the funniest lines.
Most of the actors have good credentials in British films, though
they may be less familiar in this country. One exception is a
small part for Sting. Supplementing the cast are some particularly
ugly actors, apparently by the credits supplied by a special agency
dedicated to providing ugly actors.
The film has considerably more violence than an Alec Guinness
English crime comedy would have and some of it may cut against the
humor, but Guy Ritchie is a promising director. Rate this a 6 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
The young always have the same problem--how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have
now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
-- Quentin Crisp