THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/04/02 -- Vol. 20, No. 27
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Topics:
Paid Advertisement
What Went Wrong with the Film GREEN MANSIONS?
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
KATE & LEOPOLD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Paid Advertisement
This issue of the MT VOID is brought to you in part by THE
HOMECOMING.
Coming in February: Homer's THE HOMECOMING. For the many avid fans
of Homer, the wait is over. Homer has finally completed the third
book in the Odysseus Saga. Odysseus has fought, he has wandered,
but sometimes greatest challenges can be found at home. Read
Homer's THE HOMECOMING from Penguin Classics.
"It's like nothing Homer ever wrote before. THE HOMECOMING is a
real departure." --Rosetta Stone, Harvard Department of Classics
===================================================================
TOPIC: What Went Wrong with the Film GREEN MANSIONS? (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
The other day I watched a film I had not seen since I saw it from
the back seat of my parents' car in a drive-in movie in what must
have been 1959. The movie was director Mel Ferrer's adaptation
of William Henry Hudson's GREEN MANSIONS. The film was a
surprising failure at the time since it was based on a book that
is well-liked and it starred Audrey Hepburn, who in 1959 had
made a success of every film she had been in. (Also she was
chosen because at this point she was Mrs. Mel Ferrer. This was
probably the reason Ferrer wanted to do the film in the first
place.)
The novel is about an explorer in the rain forests of Guyana (the
film changes his background a little) who is enchanted by the
magic of the forest. Perhaps no less enchanting is an apparently
mystical girl of great beauty who lives in the forest and is
feared and revered by the local Indians. Though she is not a
feral human, like Tarzan, it is easy to believe that Tarzan is
based at least in part on Hudson's Rima, the bird girl. (And
perhaps both are in part based on Kipling's Mowgli.)
The peculiar thing about the film is the odd way it seems just a
little out of joint. It does not seem to work. This got me to
wonder why the book would work and the film would not. What was
ill-fated about the project and should Ferrer have been able to
tell it in advance? I decided to read the book. (One nice thing
about owning a big library is that I can put my hands on books
almost as soon as I get interested in them.)
Reading GREEN MANSIONS goes quickly. In fact, this is the book
that a girl once accidentally dropped in the mud as she was
reading it. When the book dried the girl went through page-by-
page dusting the grit out of the book. As she dusted she skimmed
the words under her hand and was surprised that she picked up a
great deal of the story. This was probably the most important
event in her life. As you have probably guessed, her name was
Evelyn Wood and she parlayed her experience of reading the novel
GREEN MANSIONS into a career of and a well-paying business
promoting speed reading.
What made the book a particularly apt choice for Evelyn Wood is
probably the same thing that made Mel Ferrer think it would make
a good movie. The plot is relatively sparse and the book is
filled with prose description of the natural wonder of the rain
forest. Hudson will go on for pages describing a spider and her
web. Wood probably got the feel of the forest scenes skimming
over the descriptions, many of which are really dispensable once
the reader gets the idea. To adapt the book into a screenplay it
also had to be much cut down. Certainly the film could not have
long verbal descriptions of the forest. Instead, the art
director or the production designer (I am never sure which does
what) just created a rain forest. Now, visually much of the film
is quite striking. I was surprised that I remembered since 1959
that the film opens with a chase down a hill done in silhouette.
But the image remained in my memory and there it was exactly as I
had remembered it. But to match Hudson's rich descriptions the
film just shows us scenery that looks like romantic essence of
rain forest. This left Ferrer free to concentrate on the story
of the explorer and of the mysterious Rima. No doubt he wanted
to emphasize the role of his wife.
I think what he underrated is that in this novel it is not true
that the descriptions support the plot, giving it richness.
Instead the plot supports the description. The real center of
attention is the setting. The story is just only mediocre and a
skeleton to hang the descriptions of the background on. The
problem with the film is that the background is relegated to the
art direction where it just seemed exaggerated. The story, which
was not Hudson's main concern became, a rather silly allegory
without much point. Unfortunately, probably more people got
their impressions of the story from the film than from the book.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: KATE & LEOPOLD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Heavy on romance but light and error-ridden on its logic
and science fiction concept, this is the story of a romance across
125 years. An 1876 man falls both into 2001 and in love. Director
James Mangold leans a bit too heavily on the insufficient charm of
Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman. Dissatisfying in many regards.
Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)
I am told there is a sub-category or romance novel in which one of
the lovers comes from another age. The fans of these novels will
probably get more pleasure from KATE & LEOPOLD than people
watching the film for its science fiction content. The problem is
that writer-director James Mangold and co-writer Steven Rogers did
not think out the logic of his script and did very little history
fact-checking. For example, they should have checked if Duke
Leopold (Hugh Jackman) really would be knowledgeable about
Puccini's "La Boheme." ("La Boheme" was first performed in 1896;
Leopold is from two decades earlier.)
The film opens on April 28, 1876, as someone (it can't be John
Roebling, as he died in 1869, or Washington Roebling, as he never
visted the site after 1872) is making a speech at the partially
completed Brooklyn Bridge. (You know it is the past because
everything looks a little sepia-toned. That's the way things
looked back then, didn't they?) Admiring in the audience is
English Duke Leopold, an amateur inventor himself, who is in
America looking for a wife. His parents want a woman with a
large inheritance to marry to his title. Watching the speaker,
photographers with their big box cameras and trays of flash
powder are photographing the event, but the duke's eye is
attracted to someone in the crowd who rudely chuckles at the
speaker's reference to "his erection" and who seems to be
photographing the scene with a tiny palm-sized camera. Curiosity
drives the Duke to question the stranger who turns and runs.
That same day the duke sees the stranger, Stuart (played by Liev
Schreiber), again and chases him through a tear in space-time and
into our present. Now it is Leopold who is out of step with the
world and he has only Stuart to guide him through the present
world. Matters get even worse when elevators fail all over
Manhattan. (How does that happen? Don't look for logic.) Stuart
is injured and taken to the hospital. This gives Leopold a reason
to better get to know Stuart's upstairs neighbor Kate (Meg Ryan).
She is a public opinion expert for an advertising firm. Kate is
soon going to find that there are three men interested in her.
There is her boss, there is ex-beau Stuart, and there is this
strangely dressed visitor in Stuart's apartment. Kate does not
really believe Leopold is a time traveler and the audience should
have an even harder time. Leopold adapts incredibly quickly to a
world that must be a great deal different from his own. It is
never really clear where he is learning a good deal of what he
seems to pick up about the 21st century.
Meg Ryan is an actress who does try to take some roles beyond her
standard "youthful charm" persona, but it may be getting to be too
little too late. She is getting a little old for the role. In
fact much more the focus of the film and a little more interesting
character is Hugh Jackman's suave Leopold. However, they are not
nearly as interesting as the similar couple in TIME AFTER TIME.
In that film, the time traveler hunting for Jack the Ripper and
winning the girl is much more engaging than the time traveler in
this film, who wins the girl and appears in a television
commercial. But then this is not a science fiction adventure but
a leisurely play of manners. Given the choice, I think I would
have preferred the science fiction adventure.
James Mangold is best known for more serious films like COP LAND.
That film gave the viewer something reasonable to chew on a
little. This one is best swallowed in one gulp. I rate KATE AND
LEOPOLD a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
(I have three comments. Are TV commercials really shot on
Sundays? That seemed unlikely, but I am not certain so I give the
film the benefit of the doubt. As the credits at least
acknowledge, it was no Duke Leopold who invented the elevator.
And it is not really true that dogs are colorblind either, though
their color perception is much weaker than that of humans. At
least they have something. Imagine the enormous nasty trick
nature played on them, making their most acute sense be that super
sense of smell. Thanks to Evelyn Leeper for doing some of the
historical research.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: A BEAUTIFUL MIND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Inspired by a true story, but taking very large
liberties, this is the story of John Nash, a mathematical genius
but a social misfit. His career goes down unexpected paths when
he agrees to help the OSS fight the Communist threat. Russell
Crowe does surprisingly well in a taxing role and Jennifer
Connelly equals his feat. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)
The film is aptly titled A BEAUTIFUL MIND. John Nash's mind and
the bargain it made with the world are exactly what this film is
about. While it tells a fictionalized version of the life of a
mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in economics, central to the
story is John Nash's mind, what is happening in the world around
it, and in what unique ways it perceives that world. Ron Howard
very effectively showed the world what goes on in an Apollo
spacecraft in APOLLO 13. Even that is a simple task compared to
that of showing workings the mind of a human, both functioning and
malfunctioning. And Nash's mind does both, as if it had made some
sort of Faustian bargain with the world to see things enough
differently to give him great insights, but in the process to be
unable to see the world normally. That is frequently the price
that genius pays. "Eccentric" is the term we apply to people
either rich or brilliant like Isaac Newton and Nikola Tesla who
would have been total social misfits but for the brilliance of
their output.
The film begins with Nash's days at Princeton. Russell Crowe
plays Nash, who was described by his former teachers as having a
double helping of brains but only half a helping of heart, is
frank beyond the point of rudeness and seems totally to lack
social graces. He has won a prestigious scholarship, but he
decides to use the faculty as a counsel to discuss his ideas
rather than as teachers in the usual sense. Lectures are
something he has completely dispensed with. His mind is a beehive
of ideas, but he chastises himself that all are small ideas. None
is worthy of a thesis. When he gets his idea, a cooperative
"everybody-wins" strategy in game theory, it is the idea that will
eventually win him a Nobel Prize. He also somewhat refines his
social graces enough to earn the love of a woman, Alicia (Jennifer
Connelly), who would become his wife.
Nash knows that as one lecturer puts it, "mathematics won the
war." It was public knowledge at this point that heavily
dependent on mathematicians was the Manhattan Project as well as
the project to break the Japanese codes. (In fact, the lecturer
understates the case since then it was still considered top secret
that British mathematicians had broken the German Enigma code and
also unknown was just how important breaking that code had been to
the British war effort.) It is at this point that that Nash
begins to see the shady-looking government men hanging around
Princeton. They seem to be taking an interest in Nash's work and
wish to tempt him to apply his mind to a huge new problem of
breaking Soviet codes and finding infiltrators. "McCarthy is an
idiot but that doesn't make him wrong," the shifty OSS man William
Parcher (played by Ed Harris) tells him. Nash makes the decision
to let himself become embroiled in the cloak and dagger nether-
world of counter-espionage. The pressure of balancing the two
lives begins to show on his mental condition.
Akiva Goldsmith used the life of the real John Nash as a
springboard in writing the screenplay, but fictionalized many
details and introduced some anachronisms along the way. Alicia,
in fact, divorced Nash early on. 1948 is a little early for pizza
to be a favorite with college students. Some of the devices Nash
sees at the OSS were not invented until years later. Other times
the screenplay impishly plays tricks on the viewer.
Where the film attempts to visualize Nash's thought, it is not
perfect but does a very interesting job. Nash sees complex
mathematical structure is even the most prosaic things around him.
That is not easy to convey on the screen. He looks for patterns
in printed text, a difficult activity to show in a film, but the
film manages to make it visual. Mathematics written on
blackboards looks to have been written by someone who knew
mathematics. The makeup effects used to show John and Alicia
aging is not perfect, but is quite good. Connelly is known so
well for juvenile roles it is almost hard to see her as the same
woman here. As she ages in the film it becomes even harder.
Crowe is good as a man who still has the body language of a child,
but it is Connelly who rivets the viewer's focus when she is on
the screen. Crowe, however, just does not physically resemble
photographs of John Nash. An actor who to me does resemble the
real Nash, Austin Pendleton, has a small and a different role in
this film. For just a flash we see veteran actor Roy Thinnes of
the TV series "The Invaders." Surprisingly, director Ron Howard
did not place his brother Clint in the film anywhere. The name
Howard does appear in the cast a few places, but not Clint Howard.
That had become almost a Ron Howard trademark.
The task of showing an audience what is going on in a human mind
is not easy in film. While Howard is not entirely successful
doing it here, occasionally he uses cliches, but it is a valiant
attempt. I rate this film a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on
the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Two business women spend an evening of playing mind games
on each other while traveling for business. This is a modest film
with the feel of a stage play. Writer and director Patrick
Stettner keeps a feeling of unease and tension going between the
two main characters for the film's spare 84 minutes.
Unfortunately, much of what does happen is predictable. This may
be a good film only for those who have not seen similar stories
before. Stockard Channing gives one of her best performances.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)
THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS has a script ideally suited for an
independent film. There are only three characters who have more
than two or three spoken lines and just a few sets. The entire
film was shot in only 23 days. Perhaps the story would have been
even better done as a stage play. The major problem is that if
one has seen a story of two people playing with each other's minds
before, one has a good of an idea where this film is going. Much
too good.
Julie (played by Stockard Channing) has fought her way up to being
a high executive in a software company. She has something of a
negative attitude after all she has had to do to get to her
professional position. Lately there are signs that she is being
eased out with meetings being held behind her back. The last
straw falls is when at a meeting with a potential customer her new
assistant, later to be identified as Paula (Julia Stiles), fails
to arrive until the end of the meeting. As soon as they are alone
Julie fires Paula. Julie later discovers that the secret meetings
were deciding to make her the company's new CEO. In a better mood
Julie runs into Paula and decides to make it up to her. What
follows is an evening that starts with conversation and quickly
moves into mind games with more than a hint of lesbian flirtation.
Julie and Paula each shows a different sort of anger. Julie
drinks men's drinks and wields power like a stereotyped male
executive. Paula is a young in-your-face rebel. She sports angry
tattoos and flaunts her bisexuality, daring Julie either to be
shocked or to indulge. The third player is Nick (Fred Weller) a
slick and slightly oily headhunter who has worked with Julie
before. Julie pays a price for working in the system; Paula pays
a price for playing outside of it. At least there is no feminist
message here. There is no gratuitous statement that the way would
have been any easier for either woman has she been a man.
Patrick Stettner wrote and directed this film developed at the
Sundance Institute Lab. He creates a real feeling of unease
between two women who each for her own reason wants to control and
use the other, but has to keep up her guard in the other's
presence. This is not a very restful film to watch. In its taut
84 minutes there is not one moment of ease. THE BUSINESS OF
STRANGERS is a competently made story, but I think it is not as
sly as Stettner had hoped. This game of gambit and parry works
like a clock. Everything functions, but nothing is very
unexpected. I give it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4
to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
--Lillian Hellman
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Tiny Wireless Camera under $80!
Order Now! FREE VCR Commander!
Click Here - Only 1 Day Left!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/WoOlbB/7.PDAA/ySSFAA/J.MolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mtvoid-unsubscribe@egroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/