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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 08/11/00 -- Vol. 19, No. 6
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. They were talking on the radio again about the transition to a
"digital economy." What do they think we have now? Have you ever
heard of a non-digital economy? I mean since the days of Olduvi
Gorge. When was the last time you went to buy a loaf of bread and
they asked for a medium-sized handful of coins? [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. It is getting to be time to tie up this discussion, but I should
make some mention about the homogenization of our culture as far as
restaurant chains go. The success of the restaurant franchise
system has been great news for rejecters and terrible news for
people who are looking for culinary adventure. I know of one child
who refused to visit Florida until he was assured that the Sunshine
State had plenty of Burger Kings. More recently having driven
through the South I can say he had nothing to worry about. It is
extremely easy to find Burger Kings all over that region and
probably all over America. Driving through my native New Jersey I
see the same restaurants from one town to the next. Every town has
a McDonalds, a Burger King, a Taco Bell, and a KFC. There are some
other more limited chains like Denny's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden,
etc. It must be very comforting for some people to know they are
never more than five miles from a Burger King Whopper. All over
the country you find the same restaurants like they were cut with a
cookie cutter. Oh, you can find less franchised restaurants, but
the easiest to find are always the national chains.
It is interesting that even as popular as Chinese food is in this
country there seem to be very few chains of Chinese restaurants.
Sure I have seen successful restaurants open a second branch or
perhaps even a third, but that is about the extent of it, at least
for menu restaurants. Of late a new kind of Chinese restaurant has
opened, the steam-table buffet. There really does seem to be a
small chain of steam-table buffet Chinese restaurants. Rejecters
seem to feel more comfortable with the added variety a buffet gives
coupled with the opportunity to preview. Generally Chinese buffets
have a stock of comfort food that so people do not have to fear
they will only have dishes made from things with tentacles. Enough
people are comfortable with Chinese food that chains of Chinese
food. Even more strange, while they are not chains per se, a bunch
of nearly identical Chinese take-out restaurants have sprung up so
that there is one in nearly every shopping center.
Asian Indian food is another study. There are some authentic
Indian restaurants in this country, but as with Mexican you fairly
much have to go to an ethnic neighborhood to find it. In our neck
of the woods that means Edison, New Jersey. Most Indians I have
met tell me that Indian restaurant food in this country is
expensive and generally only mediocre. But the roles of Indian and
Chinese food are in Britain the reverse of what they are in this
country. Chinese restaurants are expensive and frequently mediocre
in Britain, but Indian restaurants are plentiful and fairly good.
I have just heard that in Britain fish and chips is no longer as
popular as are Indian curries. A British invention called a
Balti, really an imitation of Indian food much like chop suey is
imitation Chinese, is available all over Britain and is becoming
available in India. So is Chicken Tikka Masala, a British sauced
version of India's previously dry spicy chicken dish.
In fact my experience was that the best Indian food I ever had was
in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Scots for the most part have given up
on even their own people wanting to eat their cuisine when they go
out. You can get authentic Scottish food in some pubs, but search
for Scottish food in a restaurant in Scotland and you can be
looking for a long time. On the other hand their Indian food is
really superb. The popular restaurants in Scotland seem to be
pizza places, hamburger places, and Indian restaurants. The Scots
seem to be the only people who are not really comfortable with
their own food. That is carrying rejection too far. But there
something rather strange has taken place. They seem to have
adopted a foreign cuisine as their main comfort food.
There is probably a lot more to say about the emerging field of
restaurantology, but perhaps fours weeks on the subject is a bit
much. I knew I had some things to say when I got started, but I
did not intend to make such a meal of it. Next week I promise I
will not be talking about food.
Let me correct something I said wrong in a previous article. The
nickname of a fish and chips shop in Britain is not a "chipper" but
a "chippy." Of course we have a different meaning for "chippy" in
the US. Funny how we use the same slang words for different
meanings. Whether you are in the US or Britain, if you have a
"chippy" just west of you and "tart" just east of you, you are
probably about to feed a prostitute who is facing the Atlantic.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
3. SPACE COWBOYS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: In a something-for-everyone
adventure-comedy, four Air Force pilots,
would-be astronauts from the Sixties, now in
their seventies, get a chance to fly in space
on what turns out to be an important space
mission. This is a warm family comedy with
more emphasis on characters' personalities than
on special effects that transcends its Over-
the-Hill-Gang-in-Space high concept. Rating: 7
(0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
THE RIGHT STUFF told how U.S. Air Force test pilots who had the
so-called "right stuff" were nevertheless washed out of the space
program by the government bureaucracy. That film was almost
certainly the inspiration for SPACE COWBOYS in which four of those
pilots, now in their seventies fly an important shuttle mission for
NASA. The film opens with the four young test pilots, guys with
the smarts and the guts it takes to save themselves in an
emergency, being frustrated in their dreams to fly in space.
Locked out are Frank Corvin, Tank Sullivan, Jerry O'Neil, and Hawk
Hawkins, all commanded by the marginally competent Bob Gerson.
Flash forward to the present. The Russian communications satellite
Ikon, dating back to the cold war era, is in a decaying orbit. For
reasons not being clearly explained by anyone it is very important
that the satellite be placed back into a healthy orbit. High
people in both the American and Russian governments are anxious
that it not be allowed to simply re-enter the atmosphere as its
current course will take it. A NASA mission is being headed by
Sara Holland (Marcia Gay Harden) under the management of program
veteran Bob Gerson (James Cromwell) to repair the guidance system
and put the satellite back in orbit. Retired pilot Frank Corvin
(Clint Eastwood), previously washed out of the space program,
designed a guidance system in the Sixties and it is the one that
was used aboard the Ikon. He is asked to come out of retirement
and help repair the Ikon's guidance system. Frank asks the obvious
question: what is his guidance system doing aboard a Soviet
satellite sent up during the Cold War? He does not get an answer.
Corvin's deal for NASA: They can have his help only if his 1960s
team of four pilots get to fly the mission. Gerson's response:
they can go if they can get through training.
Corvin collects the other three members. There is Tank Sullivan
(James Garner), now a Baptist minister. Jerry O'Neil (Donald
Sutherland) now engineers roller-coasters, and Hawk Hawkins (Tommy
Lee Jones) flies biplanes. Corvin reassembles the somewhat
startled and bemused team and they begin their training. When it
is clear that they cannot possibly get through the training through
fair means, they resort to foul. Somewhat irksome is the unlikely
device that the nearly blind Jerry O'Neil is able to bluff his way
so that nobody suspects. The training is a major part of the
movie. The actual mission does not begin until about ninety
minutes into the film. All the while the mystery of this enigmatic
Soviet satellite deepens as the questions begin to pile up.
At the center of the story is Eastwood, not the world's most
emotive actor, and Tommy Lee Jones. Donald Sutherland as an aging
Lothario who bluffs his way around his near-blindness. Garner's
trademark is his low-key quietly amused performances. Here he it
works against him as he frequently melts into the scenery in the
presence of the other major actors. Marsha Gay Harden is a good
choice for the mission planner. Many actresses would look a little
too glamorous in the role and she gives the impression of being
more an intelligent, no-nonsense sort of person. William Devane,
who in other films frequently shows little more characterization
than a funny way of talking, for once has a role that he can sink
his teeth into as the gum-chewing Mission Control.
Nicely handled is the prologue set in the 1960s. It would be
impossible to make the cast look so many decades younger. The
characters are played by look-alike actors with the real actors
voices processed to sound younger. The sequence does not entirely
work to convince the audience these are the same people, but it is
close enough for the viewer to go with it. The younger version of
Eastwood (Toby Stephens) looks close enough to Eastwood that there
may have been some digital processing going on. In general the
space special effects are kept conservative and inexpensive. Stock
footage seems to be used where possible. But this film is not an
effects extravaganza. You probably do not go to a film like this
dazzling effect, for excitement, or even believability in the
adventure. You want to see the interplay of four elder stars, each
with proven comic flair from earlier films. As expected they
deliver.
SPACE COWBOYS will probably be classified by most people as a
science fiction film, though there is not much in it to make it
science fiction any more. But it is a well-crafted film with an
accent on characters. I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low
+2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. HOLLOW MAN (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Really disappointing is this films
complete failure of originality and
imagination. Now that filmmakers have visual
special effects sufficient to do an invisible
man story on the screen, they no longer have
writers who can think of intriguing things to
do with the idea. Some incredible special
effects cannot save a pedestrian and overly
familiar plot. Rating: 3 (0 to 10), -1 (-4 to
+4)
If Hollywood's makers of summer films can be said to show any
creativity and imagination--admittedly a difficult point of view to
defend--it is in how they manage to takes such a variety of film
premises and turn them into standard borrowed endings. It is truly
remarkable how many different films build to cliches like the
sympathetic underdogs winning the big game. The other standard
ending, which if you think about it is only a variation on the
first one, is the sympathetic heroes in a confined space facing and
defeating something that wants to kill, perhaps already has, but
cannot itself be killed. We saw it in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND
SPACE, ALIEN, ALIENS, HALLOWEEN, and who knows how many more films.
Of the eight films playing currently at my local multiplex three
have unkillable killer endings. One of them is HOLLOW MAN which
begins as a revisiting of concepts from H. G. Wells's THE INVISIBLE
MAN but in the end is just two people being chased by a perfectly
visible monster and killing him several times only to have him keep
on coming. The once-respectable Paul Verhoeven should have
rejected the script as inferior, but instead let it be just another
step in his decline. Besides its striking lack of originality
HOLLOW MAN wastes some of the most interesting convention of the
Invisible Man.
Most invisible man films are all based on H. G. Wells's novel THE
INVISIBLE MAN. That novel is itself a reframing of the story of
Gyges, which today we remember best through its reference in
Plato's REPUBLIC. Gyges, a shepherd who comes into possession of a
ring of invisibility, uses it unscrupulously to make himself king.
In the dialog of THE REPUBLIC Glaucon suggests that god-like power,
like that of Gyges, of necessity corrupts. These stories look at
the power an invisible man has and frequently examine whether that
power really does necessarily corrupt the person who has that
power. One important aspect is that he can be virtually anywhere
unseen, using his power in clever ways. But since this film places
the invisible man in an inescapable deep lab complex (with the
exception of one short sequence) most of the imaginative power of
the concept is thrown away. There is just too much haste to get to
the secure territory of cliches and ultra-familiar plotting.
Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) heads up a super secret government
project. With his ingenious process he already can make animals
invisible. Ironically his most difficult problem is making them
visible again. (Perhaps this is also an idea borrowed from Wells.
As the novel begins Griffin has already made himself invisible and
struggles to find the way back to visibility. The old Universal
Invisible Man series stretches this quest over multiple films.)
For Sebastian's discoveries he expects to win a Nobel Prize. (Why
does every cinematic mad scientist who can grow a three-foot-long
blood-sucking garden slug think that is what they give Nobel prizes
for?) The military is ready to cut his funding for lack of usable
results so Sebastian decides to experiment on himself. He already
is a bit of a jerk, will the power that invisibility gives him
exaggerate his character flaws into madness? Was this plot built
from a kit or what?
This is a film that could have risen to the level of mediocre, but
blows it in the cliched final reel. Sure, there is a tradition in
films that the hero and the villain survive hazards and situations
that really should have killed them. The final sequences of this
film go beyond any reasonable suspension of disbelief. The writers
confuse the concepts of "invisible" and "invincible." Sebastian
goes through a gauntlet that should have reduced him to the
consistency of tapioca pudding, made even worse by him running
around without the protection of clothing, but he keeps on
fighting. The heroes themselves survive treatment only a little
gentler.
The script by Andrew W. Marlowe seems oblivious to the most basic
technical issues about invisibility. H. G. Wells gave more thought
to the technical questions of invisibility than went into this
film. This film uses Star-Trek-style double-talk physics to
explain the invisibility in the first place, something like a
"quantum phase shift," but then apparently is going to use chemical
and biological means to bring the guy back. At one point Sebastian
eats a Twinkie and it is immediately invisible. Wells knew better.
Sebastian is totally invisible and yet his eyes are apparently
still focusing. Again Wells knew better. Even the opportunities
for prurient voyeurism, while absent from Wells, have been handled
considerably better elsewhere. Jerry Goldsmith probably saw little
effort on the part of the filmmakers to exercise much imagination
and followed suit with what is one of his least memorable scores.
Not to be totally negative and to give the film its due, the
special effects are uniformly dazzling. The original series used a
few simple effects that were not entirely convincing. Most notably
I believe they filmed in a black room an actor with clothing over a
black velvet suit that totally covered him. Only the clothing
shows and it gives them an image they could lay on top of another
shot. The computer has changed a very great deal. The visuals
here are flawless and delightful. Also as is ironically if
frequently the case, even a very bad horror film can have a very
good first scene. (MARS ATTACKS is a prime example. Most of what
is good in that film is in the pre-credit sequence.) The horror
potential of concept of an invisible predator has never been
captured on film so well as in the first scene of HOLLOW MAN. That
makes it all the more disappointing how the filmmakers so badly
blew the rest of the film.
For the same budget this film could have brought the invisible man
film into the modern age. Instead if will hopefully quickly sink
from sight. I rate this a 3 on the 0 to 10 scale and a -1 on the
-4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten
percent a bad name.
-- Henry Kissinger
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