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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 7/14/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 2
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.
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1. Our trip logs for Ireland are available at:
http://www.geocities.com/markleeper/ireland.htm
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/ireland.htm
===================================================================
2. CARTOON WITHOUT DRAWING: Nostradamus driven mad by a vision of
something called "e-commerce."
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3. What we are going to discuss here is a little bit of
restaurantology--the new emerging anthropological science of
restaurants. Restaurants are very important. An alien species
looking at Earth's culture would undoubtedly conclude that the most
remarkable, not to say unique, thing about human civilization on
earth is that we have restaurants.
A restaurant is a place where one buys food. With the invention of
restaurants you can pick your food much more freedom than you can
pick your friends. At least in theory. But friends are only
companions, other bodies to keep in proximity to your body. The
choice of food is a much more personal one. Food is not merely
kept around the body; it is physically taken into the body and
actually becomes part of the body. Objectively speaking this is a
very personal relationship indeed. When you choose a piece of food
you are really recruiting. You choose in the expectation that part
of it will remain inside you and actually become part of you. This
is what would be fascinating to an alien. Only on rare social
occasions does a human take even a part of a friend into ones body
and almost never does that part become recruited as part of you. A
restaurant is a place where this very personal relationship can be
negotiated for money.
The weight of a baby is roughly 1/20 that of an adult human
specimen. Even if none of the baby cells ever died and went away
an adult would still be a minimum of 95% reformatted food. The
most intimate biological relationship a human ever has is not with
another human but with food. Hence how one chooses the food one
negotiates from restaurants is a more basic and personal and
important study than mating rituals.
As it might be expected just as you have technology acceptors and
technology rejecters one has people who are food rejecters and food
acceptors. These are people who in the recruiting process are more
and less selective. The rejecters do not reject food altogether,
but reject new experiences with food tending to want to remain with
the foods that are familiar. One might assume that what determines
whether someone is an acceptor or a rejecter is whether that person
is cosmopolitan or not. One assumes that if someone is used to
what seems to be an exotic cuisine from our point of view, they we
be acceptors. This is, however, not true. I have found that Asian
Indians in the US may be used to what is to us a fairly exotic
cuisine, but that does not make them acceptors. An Asian Indian
friend considered himself to be cosmopolitan because he ate Indian
and American cuisine. When confronted with Mexican food he turned
out to be extremely tentative. You cannot assume that because
someone eats his own exotic cuisine that he is an acceptor.
Someone who in his own country eats a delicacy of earthworms may
well balk at the concept of eating a peanut butter sandwich.
Another Indian recently told me that he was not expecting to like
Japanese sushi but on trying some discovered that it is quite good.
Since he seemed to like a number of cuisines foreign to his own, I
could more or less expect that he was a natural acceptor and that
he would not let the knowledge that what he was eating was raw fish
get in his way.
Next week I will look at what an alien would find some of the
ironies of food accepting and food rejecting. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. DISNEY'S THE KID (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: A successful image consultant who is
rude to just about everybody gets a look at how
he turned out the way he did by meeting an
eight-year-old version of himself. Even
attributing much of what is going on in this
film to magic, there is a lot that does not
make sense. This is a mildly entertaining
comedy for those who do not think too deeply
about the logic of their films. Rating: 5 (0
to 10), low +1 (-4 to +4) A minor spoiler
follows the review asking where we have seen
this plot before.
Russell Morely Duritz (played by Bruce Willis) is an image
consultant. He is very successful at this. Unconcerned, he uses
his talents to make society's slimeballs acceptable to the public.
His assistant Amy (Emily Mortimer) tries to get him to reform him,
but he ignores her efforts. Lately however, Russell's life does
seem to be unraveling. He is seeing a red bi-plane flying overhead
and occasionally buzzing his convertible. Nobody else seems to see
it. There is a young child who seems to be breaking into Russell's
property. But proof that what is happening is not in the realm of
the natural is that this Rusty (Spenser Breslin) turns out to be
Russell at age eight. This is an opportunity for Russell to see
himself at age eight and come to understand better where he came
from. Rusty gets a chance to see what he will really become: no
wife, no dog, in short a loser.
Questions about what is going on in this film come in two types.
One type is things that we can gloss over with the explanation it
is all magic, the other flavor is real logic flaws. We can say
that the fact Russell has very little memory of this strange
interlude is magical. Part of the process is wiping the memories
clear. It is a lot harder to explain why Russell remembers so
little of his life at age eight. It is almost like he is delving
into the life of a stranger.
DISNEY'S THE KID is light fantasy of the sort that when it works,
you get a magical film like a BEING JOHN MALKOVICH or even a JOE
VERSUS THE VOLCANO. Here the magic makes the story run, but the
magical never takes hold of the viewer. It seems like a strange
complaint but this film has a serious lack of Wonder and the
Wonderful.
Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin do act well together. There is a
certain chemistry between them. They do play off each other well.
Lily Tomlin is present to be a voice of reason, Janet, Russell's
righteous secretary. Similarly principled is Russell's assistant
Amy played by Emily Mortimer of THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS and
currently of LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
The problem is not that THE KID is lacking in magic, but that too
much of the magic does not really work. I rate it a 5 on the 0 to
10 scale and a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler.. .
I think the breezy summertime look of this film belies its actual
origins. We have the story of a man nasty to people in and out of
his profession. He is happy to go through life with no human ties
except to his employees whom he abuses. He has little thought
about the future he is making. Then through supernatural agencies
he is confronted with his past, his present, and his future.
Suddenly he knows what he wants in life and it transforms him into
a loving and generous man. He will be good to his employees and
will have human ties. Isn't this a plot we have seen someplace
before? Maybe it might be connected to some December holiday? [-
mrl]
===================================================================
5. SUNSHINE (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Covering the last 140 years of
Hungarian history and anti-Semitism, SUNSHINE
is the story of one Hungarian Jewish family,
each willing to do what is necessary to be
successful and safe with the current regime and
each finding it impossible to be accepted.
Ralph Fiennes plays three generations of
fathers and sons. The film does not quite live
up to its ambitions, but in trying it is far
better than many a film that succeeded in less
ambitious undertakings. Rating: 9 (0 to 10),
+3 (-4 to +4).
SUNSHINE chronicles four generations of the Hungarian Sonnenschein
family, from around the 1870s to recent history. Three generations
of sons share a common desire to be accepted Hungarians. They have
more loyalty to the country than to their religion. Each finds
sooner or later that they can deny their religion, but they cannot
become what they are not. Each new regime uses the family's Jewish
origins as a weapon against them.
Emmanuel has two sons, Gustave and Ignatz. He also adopts as his
daughter his niece Valerie. To his horror, as his sons age they
become romantically interested in Valerie. Since he has raised all
of them as his children this has the feel of incest. And there is
some truth to his fears because they are cousins. But Ignatz and
Valerie as adults (Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Ehle) are willing to
ignore Emmanuel's wishes and marry. And Ignatz has a bright legal
mind. He is willing to give up his religion, change his name to
the non-Jewish name Sors, and surrender his scruples to advance his
legal career in the military, yet he is always limited by the
Hungarian aristocracy who cannot accept a man born as a Jew.
Ignatz's son Adam (Fiennes again) makes himself the finest fencer
in Hungary. Even one generation removed from his Jewish origins,
the Hungarian aristocracy still holds his religion against him. In
the 1936 Olympics he becomes a Hungarian national hero. And in his
success he feels he is at last free of his origins. He is three
ways exempt from the new Jewish laws that the Nazis bring on
Hungary. But he discovers all the barriers he has placed between
himself and his religion are to no avail.
Adam's son Ivan (a third personality for Fiennes), indignant at the
horrific treatment of his father at the hands of the Fascists,
eagerly joins the Communists to embrace their reforms against the
previous regime. But he is unwilling to learn from the history of
his own family that political regimes come and go, but the same
prejudices remain with all political systems.
SUNSHINE was written and directed by Istvan Szabo, director of
MEPHISTO and HANUSSEN. At just three hours it strikes the viewer
not so much as being long for a movie but as being short to
chronicle a family over so many years. Sadly, there are few media
for a drama whose natural length is something like five hours.
Szabo is able to give us a textured view of Hungary, occasionally
doing it by giving in to artificial devices, especially camera
filters, to suggest the age of chapters. The change of filters
jarringly announcing the beginning of a new chapter of his story.
A different filter still is used where there is documentary
footage. In each generation there is a different personality for
Fiennes, but each makes much the same decision to try to fit in and
assimilate. Each has the same pessimism that he must cover his
origins and the same optimism that it will help. Each generation
rebels, but at last the similarities in the stories are greater
than the differences. And over it all is watching Valerie, played
by Jennifer Ehle and later Rosemary Harris, in reality daughter and
mother actors. The choice of Maurice Jarre to score is well in
keeping with its historical sweep. Lajos Koltai's camera
frequently beautifully recreates Hungary through the 1930s, until
there is much less beauty in Hungary to film. Viewers should
expect some fairly explicit depictions of love and just as explicit
are the depictions of hatred.
As rushed as it is this is a film with a sweep of history, a
personal story within the turmoil. It is a remarkable document and
one worth seeing. I give it 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the
-4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
The Trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Bertrand Russell