THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/11/02 -- Vol. 20, No. 28
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
+4 Film Ratings (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: +4 Film Ratings (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I got comments from two or three people who were surprised that I
had given a rating of a +4 to the new LORD OF THE RINGS. The
comment that I heard was they thought that even though I called my
rating scale a -4 to +4 scale, I never actually used the -4 or the
+4 rating. In fact that is not the case, but I can see how people
might get that idea. I use the +4 rating only two or three times
a decade.
The truth is that my scale is not a -4 to +4 scale, it is a minus
infinity to plus infinity scale. The quality of films is a
statistical entity that is distributed in a bell-shaped curve.
The further you get from the center, the rarer films that good or
Bad get.
There is a mean quality of all films made. There is also a mean
and somewhat higher quality of released theatrical films. Some
films are made only for videocasette or DVD or cable release.
Some films are so bad that once completed, it does not seem
worthwhile to release them at all. When I rate a file, I roughly
guess where it would go in the bell-shaped curve of all films. A
rating of zero is just about in the center of this curve. That is
a median film. Pick a film at random and you have about a 50%
chance of it being a better film, and a 50% chance of it being a
worse film. That is the meaning of a zero film on my scale. A +1
film is one that is just about average for films released to
theaters. Remember we are cutting out the films that never get a
theatrical release. These are usually lower quality films but
some are actually very good films.
Why would a really good film not get a release? Richard Rush's
1980 THE STUNT MAN was a really good film that almost did not get
a release because the executives at 20th Century Fox did not think
had moneymaking potential. It sat on the shelf for years before
it was finally released and got some great critical reviews.
So Rush was vindicated. He had made a great film. Want to know
who else was vindicated? My understanding is that the release of
the film was a total financial flop. Had the film not been
released, which the Fox execs wished had been the case, it would
have been a very good film that did not get a theatrical release.
So just because a film does not get a theatrical release does not
mean that it is bad. The best film I saw this year showed at a
film festival but very likely will not get a theatrical release or
if it does it will be small. That film is THE GREY ZONE. It had
a cast including Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, and Mira Sorvino.
I found the story very powerful. It was about the sonderkommandos
who bought themselves a few more months of life in Auschwitz by
doing some of the dirty work for the Germans, surviving but living
in a moral gray zone. Want a chance to see it? Don't hold your
breath. Making this film must have been a labor of love because
it is not going to get much of an audience, even in art houses. I
would give THE GREY ZONE a +4 rating if I had to put a number to
it. More likely I would just refuse to rate it. It feels wrong
to compare a film like this to THE LORD OF THE RINGS to decide
which is better. SCHINDLER'S LIST is the only film I have refused
to rate when I reviewed it, but if I review THE GREY ZONE I will
have the same dilemma.
So what films do I give a +4 to? Well, I admit that I am somewhat
biased toward fantasy films. I usually break those out
separately. And of non-fantasy films I have a preference for
historical films:
SCHINDLER'S LIST
THE GREY ZONE
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
THE KILLING FIELDS
EMPIRE OF THE SUN
THE PATHS OF GLORY
SPARTACUS
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
THE PAWNBROKER
GETTYSBURG
INHERIT THE WIND
THE LION IN WINTER--maybe
THE COLOR PURPLE--maybe
If I am to include fantasy films I would add:
KING KONG
FORBIDDEN PLANET
THE WAR GAME (Peter Watkins'film)
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (a.k.a. FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH)
PHASE IV
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE
DRAGONSLAYER
BRAINSTORM (first 2/3 only)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Six people hunt and kill each other in an exaggerated
satire of today's "reality TV." Shot on video on an ultra-low-
budget and with melodramatic sub-plotting, the result is still
surprisingly entertaining considering its modest origins. The
film is a sort of latter-day EL MARIACHI, entertaining like a film
that cost many times more in production costs. Still, it comes
off a little phony, exploiting the violence it appears to condemn.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)
Curiously for so cynical a film as this, my first thoughts were of
the film's naivete. I remember as a young teenager sitting in
friend Lester Meyers's basement playing with his new tape
recorder. One of the first things we thought to do was to create a
little science fiction drama. It was a satire of violence on TV
taken to an extreme, supposedly a public broadcast of an execution
complete with commercials. I guess it was a sort of obvious
comment on the bad taste and sensationalism of television. It
lacked polish but was not very different for its day from pieces I
have actually seen produced since. For example, Peter Watkins did
THE GLADIATORS, a film in which war was replaced by teams from
different countries trying to kill each other off with the action
covered on TV sponsored by a brand of pasta.
The idea of sensationalism and public voyeurism, watching
something real and bloody seems to be one that comes naturally to
young minds and to television executives apparently. It is the
young in mind who crave seeing violence but also seem to blame
their elders for its extremity. SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS does not
actually have a public execution at its center. Instead it
borrows idea ideas from reality TV together with a concept I first
saw presented by Robert Sheckley in his short story "The Seventh
Victim," later adapted into the film THE TENTH VICTIM. The
story's idea is that at some point in the future life is cheap and
people hunt and kill each other on television, turning life and
death struggles into public entertainment. Though the idea for
the story has been well-trodden before SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS,
the current popularity of "reality TV" gives filmmaker Daniel
Minahan topicality and a set of publicly familiar stylistic
conventions to imitate.
The story is very straightforward. We are in a world that looks
like ours but has one major difference. At birth people are
registered for the game, much like they might be for the draft.
And like the draft if randomly chosen a person must participate
regardless of his current circumstance. In fact the main
character Dawn (played by Brooke Smith) is nearing term on her
pregnancy. The government supplies the players chosen with guns,
and then it is up to them. There is some mention of cash prizes
for winners, though the main inducement to play seems to be that
once chosen it is "kill or be killed."
Daniel Minahan, who wrote as well as directed, wanted to give a
reality TV effect which I have heard he did very well (though I
cannot claim to have ever watched an episode of a reality program,
so cannot judge for myself). The production was shot in a short
twenty-one days on videotape. Minahan claims that to this end he
chose actors in part for their unfamiliarity to the public. That
should make the story seem more real. But Brooke Smith played
Sonya, a major character in VANYA ON 42ND STREET and I was
familiar with that particular unreality film.
The game has a diverse, if melodramatic, selection of characters
playing the life and death competition. There is a pregnant
woman, a devout Catholic Nurse, a man dying of cancer, an elderly
man, a teenager, and a middle-aged father. We get to see a little
about these people's families, but they are developed only
superficially. The writing is a bit over-the-top. The dying man
was Dawn's high school sweetheart before they went their separate
ways. Oh boy.
In the early days of film Cecil B. DeMille was told that he could
no longer make the sexy films he had been making. Instead he
turned to Biblical films where he could be staging the sexy scenes
and at the same time appear to be condemning them. Minahan is
using a similar approach here to show violence and at the same
time appear to be condemning it. His film is moderately
successful as entertainment until the ironies get a little thick
toward the end. I rate SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS a 6 on the 0 to
10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Pray, n. To ask the laws of the universe be annulled
on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
--Ambrose Bierce
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