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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 05/11/01 -- Vol. 19, No. 45
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@avaya.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@avaya.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@avaya.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 are listing what I consider to be the best films of the last
century. Alternatively these are the best films ever made. We are
down to what I consider the best three films every made.
3) A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966) -- Robert Bolt wrote the screenplay
to LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and DR. ZHIVAGO, but also wrote the play that
was produced on Broadway. It was later adapted to the film of the
same name. Paul Scofield leads the cast as Sir Thomas More, a man
of overpowering intelligence and integrity, one of my two screen
heroes. Once a close friend of Henry VIII, More refuses to endorse
Henry's divorce of his first wife, Catherine, to marry Anne Boleyn.
More chooses instead the neutrality of silence on the matter. The
efforts of Henry's henchmen to try to force More to abandon his
integrity becomes a story for all seasons. More's strong
principles and the clarity of his thinking and arguments make him
one of my two cinematic heroes. His arguments are paragons of
simple and clear thinking. High point of the film is his line of
reasoning of why he must give his enemies the protection of the
law.
Honorable Mention: THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER -- I said that
Thomas More was one of my two screen heroes in A MAN FOR ALL
SEASONS. My other hero is John Singer played by Alan Arkin in THE
HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. While Thomas More was a man of great
strength, Singer is a man of great weaknesses. He is a deaf mute
who simply cares about helping other people. He makes a difference
in the lives of everyone he touches. Based on a novel set in the
Depression South it updates the setting without harming the story.
I find this a very moving film.
2) SPARTACUS -- Technically I do not consider SPARTACUS to be a
Stanley Kubrick film. The creativity on this historic epic really
owes more to Kirk Douglas than to Kubrick. Kubrick was invited to
direct only when Anthony Mann, who was the first director, was not
doing the job as Douglas had wished. Douglas remembered working
with Kubrick on the great PATHS OF GLORY brought in Kubrick, then
had artistic differences with him. Somehow with all this a really
fine film of the Servile War of ancient Rome was made. The script
for this production is terrific including spectacular war scenes,
profound (even enigmatic) characters, politics, and an in-depth
look at Rome. Douglas and Jean Simmons star and supporting roles
go to greats like Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov. The only
actor who seems a little out of place and out of his depth is Tony
Curtis. Nothing remotely like the Servile Wars had ever happened
to Rome at the time. Gladiators and slaves revolted against their
servitude and, led by a remarkable commander, brought terror to the
ruling class of the Roman Empire. Spartacus has for centuries been
a hero to liberals. And if all this were not enough, this film was
one of the most important films in the history of American film.
It came out at the time of Hollywood black listing. Most
blacklisted artists were denied their right to work. Dalton Trumbo
wrote the screenplay assuming that it would credited to a front or
a false name. Instead, Kirk Douglas gambled the success of this
film and millions of dollars of his own money when he insisted that
Dalton Trumbo receive credit for the script. His name would not
just be on the screen, but in letters no smaller than Douglas's own
name. When only a minor protest followed, led most notably by
Hedda Hopper, SPARTACUS demonstrated that blacklisting had lost its
power. The film signaled the end to that tragic period of American
History.
1) SCHINDLER'S LIST -- I grew up hearing frequently about the
Holocaust. But I heard about it at home. There was no mention of
it in school when we talked about the Second World War. There was
an occasional mention in films like EXODUS. But, in general, there
was rarely a public mention. It was 1974 before the Holocaust
actually showed up in the media in a TV-movie QB-VII. That was 29
years after the Holocaust ended. Up until that time most of the
American public was ignorant about that piece of history when in
this century more than eleven million people were murdered, better
than half being Jews. There has never been a film that showed how
bad things were and perhaps never could be because one cannot find
actors starved to emaciation. Steven Spielberg knows better than
just about anyone else how to control the tone of a film. Here he
just wanted to make a powerful statement and he does it better than
it has ever been done. It is a film of importance in the face of
Holocaust deniers and it is a film artfully made. For me it is the
finest film I have ever seen.
Now let us recap the top ten films.
10) INHERIT THE WIND
9) KING KONG (1933)
8) STAR WARS (1977)
7) THE KILLING FIELDS
6) PATHS OF GLORY
5) THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
4) LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
3) A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
2) SPARTACUS
1) SCHINDLER'S LIST
Honorable Mentions:
THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903)
EMPIRE OF THE SUN
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
===================================================================
2. THE MUMMY RETURNS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: The 1999 precursor film THE MUMMY
seemed aimed at fifteen-year-olds with their
love of martial arts, monsters, action, and
adventure. For the sequel, the dark tone has
been toned down and the film aimed more at
ten-year-olds or younger. One of the heroes is
younger than that though he talks like an
adult. Gone are the grim horror elements of
the original source films and instead the film
(at times) is a lighter than air fantasy
adventure. Most of the majors of the cast
return with the Mummy, though there is a newer
and bigger villain. This was a magnificent
attempt to make a really wild film, but the
pieces are just too much mismatched a patchwork
and they never gel together. Rating: 4 (0 to
10), 0 (-4 to +4)
Stephen Sommers's THE MUMMY made some questionable style choices
moving the film from the realm of horror. That is basically what
we would have expected with a film called THE MUMMY. Instead he
gave it a lighter feel with more comic adventure. The plot as
written by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer had been an
amalgam of THE MUMMY (1933) and THE MUMMY'S HAND (1940), but had
thrown in some Indiana-Jones-style adventure. Sommers wrote the
script for the new sequel himself and has made it an uneven
collection of many bizarre styles. They rob the film of any
credibility the viewer might want to find.
What hurts the viewer's suspension of disbelief the most is how
anachronistically and out-and-out ridiculously the film is when it
tries to recreate the feel of either 3000 BCE or 1933. In addition
the film tries to combine far too many weird elements into one
film. The film gives us on one platter martial arts, CGI-special
effects, recreations of Ancient Egypt, one WWF wrestling star, a
re-vivified mummy, and a fantasy air ship that looks like it came
from a children's storybook. At the same time Sommers tries to
rewrite Egyptian mythology with none of the proper feel and to
create an adventure set in an Egyptian jungle. (An Egyptian
jungle? Don't ask.) The film almost seems inspired by BEING JOHN
MALKOVICH with its strange compounding of weirdness on absurdity on
farce. On top of this the script is a mess with so many factions
fighting each other that it is hard to keep them straight. The
Mummy may return at the title suggests, but he is not even the main
villain and is reduced to a secondary role. In fact in this film
Im-Ho-Tep the Mummy (played by Arnold Vosloo) is opposing the real
villain, an ancient sorcerer and conqueror called the Scorpion
King. (What kind of an Egyptian name is that?) So does that make
the Mummy a good guy this time around like the Swarzenegger robot
in TERMINATOR 2? No, for some reason everybody has got to oppose
everybody else. Perhaps that is the only way there are enough good
fights. One almost has the feeling that in the early drafts
perhaps Im-Ho-Tep did not participate in this adventure at all.
It is 1933, about eight years after the events of THE MUMMY. Rick
O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) are
now married and have an irritatingly precocious son Alex (Freddie
Boath). Having a family does not stop the O'Connells from going on
Egyptology expeditions. In fact young Alex has learned a great
deal of Egyptology from his parents. The Happy O'Connells on
vacation discover a bracelet that was worn by the Scorpion King
some 3000 years ago. They bring the bracelet to London just when
somebody else brings Im-Ho-Tep back to life and back to London.
(Jeez, I've forgotten, who is it now? It isn't Ardeth Bay. He is
supposed to be keeping the Mummy dead. There are so many different
factions of people in this film it is impossible to keep them all
straight. Well, it probably doesn't matter.) Meanwhile Evelyn has
been having funny dreams and visions of Ancient Egypt. She seems
at the same time to be learning martial arts in her sleep, which is
a pretty good trick. Yes she is learning to fight Kung Fu style
(just like the ancient Egyptians did???) and has taken to wearing a
sort of low-cut leotard (the way women in 1933 all did???). I
guess those who forget history are doomed to miss some of the
biggest howlers in this film.
While we are on the subject, let's talk about some of the other
inaccuracies in this film. We are told almost from the beginning
that Anubis is a "dark god" and is evil. No, Anubis humans' guide
though the world of the dead. He is a very necessary ally. Rick
is shown as bashing his way through a tomb with a crowbar. By 1933
he would have known better. Giovanni Belzoni may have done stunts
like that in his excavations but he was already dead 110 years when
they show Rick unthinkingly breaking down walls. By the 20th
century Egyptologists were a lot more prudent. I have seen a lot
of Egyptian artifacts in my time, in and out of Egypt, but I have
never heard of a curse on a tomb or a gizmo like the star-shaped
key. The latter may be somewhat forgivable. Most mummies would
have wanted to leave their mummy cases in the next world. This was
a special case. The actors are all wrong for Ancient Egyptians.
Egyptians were a small people by modern American standards; adults
averaging something like five feet tall. Certainly that is what
the skeletons inside most mummies seem to indicate and because
proper nutrition was probably hard to come by, even kings would be
small by our standards. We can be certain they did not look much
like Arnold Vosloo and Dwayne Johnson. Neither Boath nor Weisz are
very convincing as 1933 people. Of course, they are not really
convincing as 2001 people either. This film has lines like "There
is a fine line between coincidence and fate." What does that mean?
How could anyone know that?
The script is not only unfaithful to Egyptian mythology, it is
inconsistent with the first film. In the first film Ardeth Bay was
part of a small very secret society that fights the return of Im-
Ho-Tep. In this film he seems to have the ability, without benefit
of magic, to summon up armies the size of the population of
Schenectady. Who are these people?
The score by Alan Silvestri is one of his better efforts, sometimes
better than the action it enhances. The special effects are more
complex than the first film but much more often they are crude and
unconvincing. There are obvious matte paintings and a very
unconvincing stop-motion model toward the end. Some of the CGI
work goes in for quantity and not quality. Effects that would have
been knockouts in the 1960s just are not up to 21st century
standards. On the other hand one good touch is that virtually
every important character from the first film who did not
permanently die in that plot is back and played by the same actor.
That is extremely uncommon in sequels. The character of Evelyn is
much more like Emma Peel than the Evelyn of the last film, but the
same actress, Ms. Weisz, plays her in this go-around.
Unpredictable style can be a virtue in a film. In THE MUMMY
RETURNS the styles seem less blended than thrown together and
pitted against each other. It is storybook fantasy one moment and
something from the WWF the next. It is not audacious, just
incongruous. I rate it 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@avaya.com
Winners never quit and quitters never win. But people who never win and never quit are idiots.
-- E. L. Kersten