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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/23/00 -- Vol. 18, No. 52
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/evelynleeper
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. We have been talking the last several weeks about radio drama of
the 1930s through the 1950s. One such show was the "Lux Radio
Theater." It was brought to you (or them) by Lux soap. And in its
episodes we learned that four out of five top stars used Lux Soap.
This and other dubious statistics and testimonials were worked
right into the program. That brings up the relationship between
sponsors and programs. This is something that has since become
illegal on radio and television, but the programming would often
have very close association with the sponsor. Commercials would be
worked into the content. "Well that is certainly disappointing,
but you know one thing that is never disappointing is the richer,
smoother flavor of Chesterfield cigarettes." On "Sherlock Holmes"
Watson would invite the host to listen to an exploit with a glass
of Roma wine and then start talking about how good the sponsor's
wine is.
Often the sponsor would both ownd and produce the program. They
would frequently insist on top billing even over the star of the
program. What everyone would think of as "The Jack Benny Show,"
they would call "The Lucky Strike Show Starring Jack Benny." I
doubt that anyone actually thought of it that way. Nobody said
"Hey did you hear 'The Lucky Strike Show' last night?" The official
names of the programs were frequently forgotten as soon as the
announcer was off the air. And they would sell the show to other
sponsors like it was a piece of real estate. "The Lucky Strike
Show starring Jack Benny" could become "The Grape Nuts Show
starring Jack Benny" without anybody consulting Jack Benny.
They had programs like "The Eveready Hour." "The Johnson Wax Show
starring Fibber McGee and Molly" was another. The titles were quite
a mouthful. And of course it would be called popularly just
"Fibber McGee and Molly." The sponsor was just as happy. I mean,
who in their right mind would be so desperate for entertainment to
watch something called "The Johnson Wax Show"? The talent,
however, could quite their own show. In 1948 CBS got several of
NBCs biggest stars to defect to NBC. But at for owning the shows,
after the 1950s they never could do that anymore, so now that urge
seems to have gone into having sports stadiums like 3-Com Park.
Old-Time Radio faded in the 1950s with a few straggling exceptions.
There were a few stray drama programs into the 1970s. But there
just was not a big enough interest base to sustain it. Most of the
most popular radio programs had moved to television. In at least
one case a popular TV program was adapted to radio. "Have Gun,
Will Travel" became a hit with Richard Boone on television and was
adapted into a radio program starring John Dehner. Dehner also was
the star of "Frontier Gentleman." He had a distinguished voice.
In the latter, one of the best of the adult Westerns, he played a
reporter from a London newspaper writing about the American West.
He met many famous people (or people who would be famous) and a lot
of fairly realistic and well-written characters. Even in films
there is little really good dialog written in the media today. The
British still know how to write well, but the Americans do not.
But shows like "Frontier Gentleman" could interest you in a
character just from the way he talks.
These days the fandom of radio drama is reduced to occasional
listeners to Old-Time Radio programs and hobbyists. The latter
even have conventions where they get together and talk to the
ever-diminishing veterans of radio production.
Since a big part of my readership is in the New Jersey area I will
say my greatest source is the program "The Golden Age of Radio,"
hosted by Max Schmid, himself a real character. The program runs
7:30pm to 9pm Sunday nights on New York's WBAI (99.5 FM). He has a
second show 3:30am to 6:00am Tuesday early morning and the last
half the of program is usually radio programs. You can listen to
that if you want to time-shift. For those who are not technophobes
there is also a continuously running old-time radio station that
you can get to on the web at http://143.236.125.4/. I have
listened only a little and am not sure how often they repeat
programming, but it is worth a listen.
[P.S. I found an e-mail address and ran this article past Max
Schmid. To my surprise he was willing to take the time to comment
on it thoroughly and to correct some of my mis-impressions. I much
appreciate his assistence.] [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. Additional information from Bill Higgins:
In Chicago, Chuck Schaden has "Those Were the Days," a good four-
hour show every Saturday afternoon on WNIB, 97.1 MHz, from 1 to 5
PM. It's a mix of comedy, drama, and variety shows, and often
includes tapes of Schaden's interviews with aged radio performers
in the past few decades.
WMAQ-AM at 670 kHz has a syndicated show weeknights from 11 PM to 1
AM, hosted by Stan Freberg, and produced by Carl Amare, who was or
is a Chicago-area old-radio collector.
I like comedies, *Fibber McGee and Molly* best of all, but enjoy
the other stuff too. I'm fond of Jack Benny and *Our Miss Brooks*.
Sturgeon's Law applies, so some of the surviving transcriptions are
rather mediocre programs. The ratio is no worse than it is for TV
shows. Schaden plays *Life of Reilly,* *Ozzie and Harriet*, and
*Life With Luigi* often, and I don't think they were very funny.
Even the mediocre programs are somewhat interesting to me, since I
can learn something about scriptwriting and radio acting of the
period.
By the way, Norman Corwin is still alive, and still writes a radio
program every now and then. Sometimes you can hear his stuff on
NPR stations. See
.
===================================================================
3. TITAN A.E. (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: By rights this film should become a
milestone. TITAN A.E. recreates much of the
feeling of awe I had when the first STAR WARS
film was released. This is a space opera writ
large. In the 31st century aliens have
destroyed Earth. Humans and aliens race to
find the spaceship Titan which holds the key to
the survival of the human race. That kind of
plot can be a lot of fun if done well. TITAN
A.E. does it well. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3
(-4 to +4)
The year I got frustrated with animation was 1973. That was the
year that two events coincided. One was the release of the French
film FANTASTIC PLANET. The other was NBC running an animated Star
Trek series in its Saturday morning line-up. The former had some
fascinating images of strange animals and plants in an imagined
world, but the script was obscure, static, and emotionally cold.
Ultimately it was very disappointing. At the same time the
animated STAR TREK TV series used limited animation and even more
limited imagination in the artwork. As I told friends that in
animation you have to put up 24 frames a second, but it is not like
live action. You have complete freedom as to what you put in those
frames. Somebody somewhere was making the decision that the images
in those frames would be unimaginative and boring, that the alien
world where Kirk was standing would be represented by a horizontal
line at the bottom of the screen. Even with an example like
FANTASTIC PLANET to show what could be done to show some
imagination, nobody did.
When Japanese anime came along I thought that film was finally
starting to use the potential of animated film. And it was a step
closer to what I was looking for but in spite of its many
advocates, I think anime cinema has turned into a colossal
disappointment. The films are full of under-developed characters
and over-extended chases and fights. If you do not care about the
characters, you do not care who wins the fights. That brings
seeing the film down to the level of watching professional
wrestling. And in spite of claims to the contrary Japanese
animation is not good. Generally in anime that animation is crude
and jerky. What people are responding to is the occasional quality
of the artwork.
TITAN A.E. much closer to what I had in mind. The is solid space
opera in the classic tradition of writers like Gordon Dickson and
Alan Dean Foster. In addition the animation is good and the
artwork extremely imaginative. With the artwork, the humor, and
the animation, there are no dead spots in the film. This is a film
that you turn away from at your own risk. Do not go out for
popcorn.
In the early days of the 31st century a discovery is made that
could change the future for everybody on the planet Earth.
Whatever that discovery was (and we never find out precisely) it
threatens an alien race called the Drej. The Drej respond to the
threat by destroying Earth in 3028 A.D. Only handfuls of people
make it off the planet before it is destroyed. Scientist Sam
Tucker arranges for his five-year-old son Cale to be taken to
safety and then pilots the huge spherical starship Titan into space
just in time to escape the dying Earth. Fifteen years later Cale
(voiced by Matt Damon) is a piece of space flotsam. He is working
in an interplanetary space dump with the dregs of several alien
races. The shadowy human Korso (Bill Pullman) tags Cale for a
mysterious mission to go and find the Titan.
So far it seems like a space opera primarily aimed at a teen
audience. That is exactly what it remains, but then so was STAR
WARS. The point is that it is space opera well done. The
screenwriters are an eclectic bunch with Ben Edlund creator of the
satire "The Tick," John August who wrote the surprisingly
Generation X film GO, and Joss Whedon creator of "Buffy the Vampire
Slayer." Three screenwriters is generally a bad sign, but three so
different talents can make for synergy and one very rich
screenplay. Here they have written a screenplay that has some
depth. It has unexpected twists (August's forte), some good humor
(likely from Edlund), and a good deal of fantasy imagination (which
may have come from Whedon). They have bound in strong mythic
elements (the quest, the son avenging the father) that, though
familiar, should resonate with the audience. The film does owe a
debt to anime, but the characters are much more developed and
three-dimensional.
Where the writing has weaknesses it is in an emotionally weak
ending which also rather stretches the credulity. There are loose
ends left unresolved, an over-emphasis on fighting, and the Drej
make a very flat and uninteresting villain. The other questionable
command decision is to use a raft of name actors for voices where
they are not needed. There are so many good but barely-known
actors they could have used. And speaking for myself only, I come
to a film like this not even knowing whose voices I will be
hearing. I would rather not even recognize the voice and be
saddled with connections to the actors' roles in other films.
Speaking of what is flat and what is three-dimensional, the
animation is an uneasy mixture of the two. Most of the character
animation is flat, but the hardware uses three-dimensional
animation techniques. This occasionally means you have a flat face
in a three-dimensional space suit. But more important than how it
is animated is what is being animated. Perhaps George Lucas has
finally been beaten in creating worlds and scenery rich in
imagination. Even the artwork is full of novel ideas in the center
stage and in the details. And making these spacescapes seem real
may well be the best use to date of 3D animation techniques.
TITAN A.E. was produced and directed by the team of Don Bluth and
Gary Goldman, graduates of Disney animation studios. The two left
because they saw different potentials for animation than did
Disney's other people. They missed out on what is probably
Disney's golden age of animation and frequently their films, while
some were quite decent, seemed a step or two behind Disney Studios.
Films like AN AMERICAN TAIL and THE LAND BEFORE TIME seemed to be
only Disney-esque. The real creativity was from places like
Disney's Pixar in the TOY STORY films and in film's like BEAUTY AND
THE BEAST, THE LION KING, and this season's DINOSAUR. And for
animation technique, perhaps they are still a step behind. But in
TITAN A.E. Bluth and Goldman have given us much more imaginative
images and probably a better story. In a season when in short
order we have DINOSAUR, TITAN A.E., CHICKEN RUN, and FANTASIA 2000
released, Bluth and Goldman have given us what may well deserve to
be the STAR WARS of animated films.
TITAN A.E. is a film of images and imagination, perhaps the best
space opera to come to the screen since the original STAR WARS.
Weighing heavily the novelty of this film I give it a 9 on the 0 to
10 scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. I am hoping this film is
a bellwether of things to come. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. CHICKEN RUN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: The British Aardman Animation team,
Oscar winners, make their first feature length
film. It is a satire on all those old World
War II POW escape films, especially THE GREAT
ESCAPE. But it is done as chickens trying to
escape from a chicken farm. The film relies
too heavily on that one joke. Somehow the
Aardman charm just does not work for 85
minutes. We are left with a few jokes that
really are funny and a lot that is overly
familiar and not very good. The film did not
work for me. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)
Nick Park is now a three time Academy Award winner having won
Oscars for his shorts "Creature Comforts," "The Wrong Trousers,"
and "A Close Shave." The latter two feature his characters Wallace
and Gromit. He has made his trademark to have his clay animation
characters have teeth that do not quite fill the cheeks from side
to side so there is a gap on each side. In this country his style
may best be recognized in some commercials he has done,
particularly Chevron ads with talking cars. It takes a little
chutzpah for him to do a feature length film with chickens
satirizing World War II POW escape films like THE PASSWORD IS
COURAGE, STALAG 17, THE COLDITZ STORY, and especially THE GREAT
ESCAPE. In the first place it is a little hard for Park and co-
director Peter Lord to sustain one joke for that length of time.
The joke in his popular Wallace and Gromit stories are that Wallace
is such a dull personality. It takes considerably more character
value to keep an audience interested for 85 minutes. In the second
place chickens do not have teeth or wide cheeks so he must give up
his trademark or have his chickens look not very much like
chickens. He does the latter. Does the Nick Park charm work for a
feature film? In my opinion, not really. There were chuckles
throughout the film but the story is cliched and silly. Apparently
that is part of the point and that can be done in satire if the
film just remains entertaining. It becomes a little too much of
the same good thing.
Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) is one smart chicken. She knows
that her days are numbered at the chicken farm where she lives.
Sooner or later she will stop producing eggs. And she knows that
when a chicken stops providing breakfast, she provides dinner. So
every night she tries to escape from the barbed wire fences and
every night she is caught and thrown into solitary confinement.
After several attempts and after involving other chickens, she is
about at her chicken-wits' end.
No escape plan works until an American rooster named Rocky the
Rooster (Mel Gibson) comes flying over the compound one day. So
chickens can fly! The news is inspiration to all the hens. They
convince a reluctant Rocky to teach the group to fly and lead them
all over the fence. There are a lot of jokes, but most are more
cute than funny. The few surprises in the plot have a way of
telegraphing themselves. The plot seems to have been written on
autopilot and, except for the choice of animals, is very familiar.
John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams provide a nice military
score reminiscent of Elmer Bernstein's score for THE GREAT ESCAPE.
Park and Lord have chosen a number of major British actresses to
voice the chickens and humans, though their names will be familiar
mostly to art house crowds here. He has Miranda Richardson (of THE
CRYING GAME and MERLIN), Jane Horrocks (of LITTLE VOICE) and Imelda
Staunton. The main character is played by Julia Sawalha who is
almost unknown in the US. To balance this, apparently top billing
unjustifiably goes to Mel Gibson.
Park's cartoons have always had a dark side and this film has a few
grim scenes involving head chopping that could be disturbing to
younger children, so parents should not be fooled by the G-rating.
In some ways this film is even grimmer than the war films it
imitates. The prisoners in the war had the Geneva Convention to
give them some protection and they could look forward to being
released at the end of the war. These chickens could be killed any
time at the farmer's will and their captivity would never end of
its own. So if you look for it the story is fairly grim. Still,
the script shies away from looking at the implications of the
treatment of domestic animals unlike some better films like
Caroline Thompson's excellent BLACK BEAUTY (1994).
This film is a "curate's egg" as the British would say. Some parts
are much better than others. Overall it does not deliver quite
enough. I give it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4
scale. Stay through the end of the credits. [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. EAST IS EAST (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: An outwardly ideal Pakistani family
living in London is in fact having troubles
inside due to a father who takes a very
fundamentalist view of Islam and his authority
over his family. The family comes to realize
that it has gone too long without asserting
itself. The father wants to arrange marriages
for the older sons and they want instead to do
things the British way. Ayub Khan-Din's play
mixes comedy and some very powerful drama.
Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)
In 1946, before there was a partition between Pakistan and India,
Muslim George Khan (play by Om Puri) moved to London, started a
business running a fish and chips shop, and took a second wife, a
non-Muslim English woman. He then reared six sons and a daughter
by the English wife. He raised his children to be good Muslims--
better Muslims than he could have afforded to be. They took little
looks at the English world around them, but they did what George
wanted. When they needed discipline, George did his fatherly duty
and corrected them. But overall life went fairly smoothly. That
is what happened for twenty-five years as George saw it. The seven
children, living in the same house but a different universe, saw
things quite differently. They wanted to assimilate into the
society they saw around them. To them Dad's presence was always a
hazard. He could catch them eating pork or marching in a Christian
procession. Generally they just pretended in his presence to be
practicing Muslims, the path of least resistance. Outside the
house they were living the new world of freedom that England and
particularly 1971 brought.
For twenty-five years their world views diverged more and more.
But there was no reason for a confrontation. The first sign that
things were not right was when the eldest son, in the middle of an
arranged marriage ceremony walked out and went to live in London.
George is bewildered by this strange behavior, but never questions
if perhaps he might be part of the reason. After all he did
nothing but fulfill his role as father as Islam seems it. The
family certainly could not fault him for that. It would be going
against Allah. But two of his other sons are now becoming a little
too English. It is time to bring them back to their religion by
arranging good Islamic marriages for the two of them.
The script follows the sons around showing the character of each as
they try and perhaps fail to be like the people around them. The
youngest son is picked on by each of his siblings and even his
father calls him by the nickname "Bastard." He frequently hides
from the world in a shed behind his house or retreats into his
parka which he wears day and night, on the street and even to bed.
It is his own portable cave to retreat into. When it is discovered
that somehow he is not circumcised his father gives not a jot of
thought to a little boy's fears, the religion says he must be
circumcised and, of course, he will be.
EAST IS EAST was produced for Channel 4 television in England,
following in the traditions of MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE, and SAMMY
AND ROSIE GET LAID. Those dealt with Indians fitting into London
lower-middle class Manchester neighborhoods, this film deals with
Pakistanis. EAST IS EAST is the most pointed of the three dramas
and by far the best story. Tensions between George and his family
mirror those between the Pakistanis and their neighbors, many of
whom espouse Enoch Powell's anti-immigration policies and use it as
an excuse for intolerance. (Enoch Powell's 1968 "Rivers of Blood"
speech argued against allowing non-white British subjects to
immigrate into Britain. His speech contained some rather dire and
fanciful predictions of a Britain in which the whites were a
persecuted minority. The speech did not end his career, but it
ruined it. A brilliant classical scholar but less than savvy
politically, his views were quickly exaggerated and adopted by a
racist minority who used his arguments as an excuse for racial
intolerance.) George faces the intolerance of a neighboring Powell
supporter and tries to break up the Romeo-and-Juliet relationship a
son of his has with the daughter of the neighbor.
The story finds an almost perfect ending in a very understated but
poignant exchange between George and a neighbor boy. This film
packs a great deal into a small space. I rate it an 8 on the 0 to
10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
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