THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/24/02 -- Vol. 20, No. 47
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:
Leeperhouse Film Festival
Claiming Kidnapped Children (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Leeperhouse Film Festival
THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) dir by John Huston
THE CHEAP DETECTIVE (1978) dir. by Robert Moore
Some time around 1941 George Raft turned down the lead role in an
upcoming mystery film. He did not want to risk his career on a
first time director, one John Huston, son of an actor, who was to
direct his own screenplay of a detective novel. THE MALTESE
FALCON was written in 1929. The story had been filmed twice
before, once as DANGEROUS FEMALE (1931) ten years earlier and once
as SATAN MET A LADY (1936) five years earlier. Neither time did
it seem anything to get excited about. Why remake a flop? The
story is kind of a strange one also. Today we might say it is
sort of Philip Marlowe meets Indiana Jones. The acting role went
instead to a then second-ranked actor, Humphrey Bogart. Peter
Lorre would be in it and the film introduced a new actor, Sidney
Greenstreet.
"In 1539, the Knights Templar of Malta paid tribute to Charles V
of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to
claw with rarest jewels--but pirates seized the galley carrying
the priceless token, and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a
mystery to this day." So begins the adventure of THE MALTESE
FALCON. The story has aspects of a fantastic pulp adventure, of
then contemporary Black Mask style of hard-boiled detective
stories, and of the later film noir mysteries. Some have claimed
that this film actually defined the film noir mystery. The author
of the novel, Dashiell Hammett, managed to create a whole nest of
colorful crooks including the nasty little punk Wilmer Cook, the
sinister and heavily perfumed Middle Eastern Joel Cairo, and the
worldly and hugely obese Caspar Guttman, And then there is the
Woman with No Name.
One could say that the real star is the dialog which is crisp and
clever. But there are too many aspects of this film vying for
being the real star. The nominal stars are Humphrey Bogart, Mary
Astor, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, and Elisha
Cook, Jr. A marvelous evocation of the pre-war hard-boiled
detective story from a time when $200 was a healthy fee for a
private dick.
Our second feature is THE CHEAP DETECTIVE, Neil Simon's follow-up
to his MURDER BY DEATH. As a matter of personal taste, I find
THE CHEAP DETECTIVE to be by far the funnier of the two films.
Somehow Simon has managed to tie the plots of THE MALTESE FALCON
and CASABLANCA in an overhand knot. Peter Falk fills Humphrey
Bogart's shoes in both plots. The ensemble cast includes Peter
Falk, Madeline Kahn, Stockard Channing, Nicol Williamson, James
Cromwell, John Houseman, Ann-Margaret, and several other name
actors. The plot involves Nazis, missing treasures, and murder.
We will start at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, May 29. Contact us for
directions if needed. RSVP appreciated. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Claiming Kidnapped Children (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p596.pdf is a government booklet
explaining the Earned Income Tax Credit. It contains the
following useful information:
Kidnapped child.
You may be able to claim the EIC for persons with a qualifying
child even though your child has been kidnapped.
A kidnapped child is treated as living with you for more than half
of the year if the child lived with you for more than half the
part of the year before the date of the kidnapping. The child
must be presumed by law enforcement authorities to have been
kidnapped by someone who is not a member of your family or the
child's family. This treatment applies for all years that the
child remains kidnapped. However, the last year this treatment
can apply is the earlier of:
1) The year the child is determined to be dead, or
2) The year the child would have reached age 18.
If your qualifying child has been kidnapped and meets these
requirements, enter "KC," instead of a number, on line 6 of
Schedule EIC. [-mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Ambition is but avarice on stilts and masked.
-- Walter Savage Landor
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