@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 04/02/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 40
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. When I was growing up I loved science fiction films. Science
fiction films were really what fostered a lot of my interest in
science and even mathematics. I desperately wanted to live in a
science fiction sort of future. I think we rarely notice how
mythic science fiction films really are. Consider one of my
favorites from those days, THE FLY. I am talking about the 1958
version, the one with Vincent Price and Al (David) Hedison. I was
about eight years old when I saw it. And what was it about? It
was about a man who had just about everything anybody could want.
He had a lovely wife and son he adored. He and his wife loved each
other. And for income he was doing what he enjoyed most. He would
go into his basement laboratory and invent things that would change
the world. He was vitally fascinated with his work. And he lived
in a beautiful house.
And then what happened? Well, to quote Vincent Price, "for one
moment he was careless." The man who had everything I could ever
want made one little mistake. One moment he was off guard and it
all came crashing down around his ears. Or where his ears used to
be. Now what makes that a great film? Well, it is one of the
great mythic stories. THE FLY was OEDIPUS REX for the junior set.
Maybe not even the junior set. It may be a better telling even for
adults. Most of us cannot see ourselves killing a man and marrying
a woman old enough to be our mother. In the case of Oedipus the
woman was provably old enough to be his mother. But if I was
working with a matter transmitter (I wish!) I could well miss the
fact there was a fly in the transmission booth with me. And that
was it. That was the mistake. And you know being the King of
Thebes never really appealed to me, particularly in Oedipus's
uncomfortable times. Certainly being the basement physicist
appeals a lot more.
THE FLY has since become a laughing stock. Even at the time
Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall thought the whole idea was
uproariously funny. It still seems ridiculous, but you never know.
Some of the things that seemed absurd in the 50s are more correct
than we might have thought. Consider THE INVISIBLE BOY. That was
a movie with a huge supercomputer trying to take over the world.
The film writers thought of a computer as if it were just an
incredibly knowledgeable person. They would ask the computer
questions in plain English. The questions could be on just about
any subject. And the computer would answer the questions. It was
more powerful than any encyclopedia. As a little boy, I thought
that was a really nifty idea. But by the time I was a little older
I knew that was absurd. A computer is limited by the data it has
at its disposal.
A computer that is smart enough to answer just about any question
posed--posed in English--is a physical impossibility. No computer
could ever have that much data at its disposal. The whole concept
is absurd. And I knew that as a teenager. I knew it all the way
through college. I knew it working for Burroughs Computer Company.
I have known it for most of the time I have worked for AT&T. Now I
am not so sure. I have a computer in my home. It has an Internet
browser. Through the Internet browser I can get to any of a
variety of search engines. I am not quite to the point where I can
ask questions in complete sentences, though most search engines
claim that I really could be doing that. I find it a little more
effective to give the search engine just the keywords of my
question. But it is not easy to think of facts that I could not
possibly get from my computer. Of course it is a slight illusion
that I am getting the answers from my computer. I am actually
getting my answers from a huge super computer. A Gestalt mind made
up of smaller computers sharing information. In fact our giant
computer girdles the globe. It is more powerful than any
encyclopedia. Of course this computer is not trying to take over
the world. It just dabbles in politics. It had an undeniable part
in toppling the Soviet Union, it has the Chinese government
terrified, and it has Nebraska mothers worried about what it will
tell their children. The US Congress tried to take it on to limit
its power. The computer won. Congress lost. Maybe we do live in
science fiction times. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. TRUE CRIME (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: In a story that takes place almost
entirely in one day a reporter covering a Death
Row execution tries to prove the condemned man
is innocent. Clint Eastwood stars, produces,
and directs. The mainline story is cliched
melodrama, but the writing and especially the
well-developed minor characters give the plot a
royal treatment. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4
to +4)
Steve "Ev" Everett (Clint Eastwood) is a bad-boy reporter who
refuses to follow any rules. Right now he is holding back on his
drinking, but he is smoking and, oh yes, sleeping with his editor's
wife. This does not make for good relationships around the office,
but Ev carries on (in several different senses). When a fellow
reporter is killed in a (gratuitously spectacular) car accident, Ev
picks up her responsibilities including the interviewing and
writing a human interest sidebar about Frank Beachum (Isaiah
Washington), a Death Row inmate scheduled to be executed the next
night at midnight. But in reviewing the trial from six years
earlier Ev starts questioning whether the story makes sense. There
appear to be problems in the trial testimony. But Ev now mistrusts
his own once powerful talent to "smell out" when there is something
suspicious with a story. And as he traces the story he sabotages
his own effectiveness by not following anybody's rules but his own.
Eastwood creates more believable characters for the minor roles
than the character he creates for himself. But then going back to
THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES he has frequently done the same thing.
Bernard Hill plays the role of Luther Plunkett, the prison warden.
It would be cliche to play him as officious and unfeeling. Instead
he turns out to be a genuinely caring person. On the other hand
Isaiah Washington has been getting some favorable press as the
condemned Frank Beachum. We see a lot of him, but he plays the
simon-pure innocent to the hilt. Where an actor should have
personality he has only virtue. Though his character was not
always so, we see him he is the perfect husband and father. The
film intentionally contrasts his ultra-perfect family values with
those of Everett which have ripped apart Everett's family. We feel
for Beachum, but other than in his moments of greatest pain it is
more for his predicament than for his character. His family is
just a little too wholesome. James Woods plays Eastwood's boss at
the newspaper in a role only a little less slimy than his usual.
Woods is one of the few actors who can steal attention away from
Eastwood. Other familiar actors include Anthony Zerbe and an
almost unrecognizable William Windom as a bartender.
Clint Eastwood is really a very good director in a very controlled
film. However he has the same Achilles Heel that Woody Allen has.
He has to paint himself as being the great lover. His character
seems to be able to seduce any woman he wants. The problem is that
he is getting on in years. His youthful good looks have given way
to an older chiseled look. Eastwood seems to be doing his locker
room bragging on the wide screen. His even raspier voice is now a
sort that lost actors careers when sound came to films. Perhaps
Eastwood, the gifted director, should consider if he needs a better
star than Eastwood, the actor. On the other hand playing the
character himself thematically gives the film one big advantage.
Eastwood almost invariably plays the outlaw. He is Kurosawa's
samurai Sanjuro, a law unto himself, transplanted to America. But
in his younger spaghetti Western and Dirty Harry days he has played
that character as hero. As he has aged Eastwood has begun to look
at that character more deeply than Kurasawa ever did. In
UNFORGIVEN he began re-examining the hard man who was this
character he had created on the screen. He began questioning on
film if the violence that was the former screen persona's daily
bread did not exact a toll. Was the man with the big gun not
dehumanized and desensitized by carrying and using that weapon. In
TRUE CRIME Eastwood shows us how that character gets to middle age
and can no longer make his personal relationships work. In this
film he clearly envies the man who, though once a criminal, has
reformed and built a strong family, even if that relationship turns
out to be only temporarily.
Just as an aside, an interesting visual allusion is used. When Ev
is interviewing Beachum, Eastwood has himself shot through the bars
recreating the poster from his ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. It is a
reminder of the days when Eastwood was building his reputation and
his films were just solid entertainment. TRUE CRIME is certainly a
good film, but lacks the fun of his earlier work. Still I would
give it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
"Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk
about things. Small people talk about people."
-- Anonymous