THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/26/03 -- Vol. 22, No. 13
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.
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Topics:
Free Films (announcement)
Placebo Follow-up (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Trailers for Upcoming Films Presented at Torcon 3
(film comments by Mark R. Leeper)
UNDERWORLD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SECONDHAND LIONS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
LOST IN TRANSLATION (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
ANYTHING ELSE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
DUMMY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
BUBBA HO-TEP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (FEAR, A BETTER WORLD'S IN BIRTH!,
BLIND LAKE, A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Free Films (announcement)
There will be free showings of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE on the wide
screen on Thursday evening, October 2, at the Strathmore Art
Cinema of Matawan, New Jersey. The film will show at 5 PM and at
7:45 PM. The theater will also be showing LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL at
5:15 PM and 7:30 PM, AMELIE at 5:30 PM and 8 PM, and CINEMA
PARADISO at 7:15 PM. I realize many of our readers do not live in
New Jersey, but this is for those who do live in the New Jersey
area (where this club was founded and still has many of its
members). The theater is on Route 34 in Matawan. People in our
area used to have only the theater in Red Bank for independent
films, which had only two screens or had to drive to Princeton to
see art house films. The Strathmore has been around for many
years competing with the neighborhood theaters, which it had
problems matching. Showing those hard-to-find art house films is
a supremely good idea. Evelyn is all a-twitter. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Placebo Follow-up (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In our July 18 issue
I did some
serious investigative reporting on the whole field of placebos and
their effectiveness. It seems that that article has ripped the
field wide open and other journals are following my lead. People
should note major similarities between my coverage of this subject
and the polished but less insightful coverage at "The Onion" this
week < http://www.theonion.com/3936/news2.html>. I will point out
that while their coverage is in their usual Onion style, my
coverage is more like a parfait.
(Note to the Pulitzer Committee, humbly submitted for your
consideration: Placebo article is in the July 18 issue.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Trailers for Upcoming Films Presented at Torcon 3 (film
comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last week I was talking about the trailers for upcoming films that
I saw at the presentation at Torcon. Frankly they do not look
that good to me. The second half looked a little better.
GOTHIKA
I don't think the trailer shown at Torcon tells much but I
understand the plot involves a psychologist who wakes up to find
she is now a patient accused of a murder that she does not
remember. Halle Berry and Robert Downey, Jr., star.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
The third of Robert Rodriguez's "El Mariachi" stories. Apparently
if he makes such good films on $5000 someone wanted to see what he
could do with a $10,000 budget. It is not that he makes great
films, but on his budget it is amazing he can make films at all.
While Hollywood is making expensive super-violence films with flat
characters, nobody can match Rodriguez for his ability to make
inexpensive super-violence films with flat characters. (Actually
the budget for this film is $30,000,000 which, it should be
explained, is not really a lot of money. It's paltry. Puny. It
is only a little more than three times what the first STAR WARS
cost. It is about the cost of MOONRAKER.) P.S. Word on the
street is that this actually is a super-violent film with flat
characters.
There was a set of pilots for Canadian TV programs that seemed to
be connected with Jim Danforth, a Ray Harryhausen protege. They
had titles like STARHUNTER 2300 and BATTLE QUEEN 2020. The first
was about a future bounty hunter. One had to do with virtual
reality helicopter battles. They looked a little like satires of
everything that is wrong with Hollywood films. The same things
are wrong with Canadian films.
Weird animator Bill Plympton had two trailers. One for MUTANT
ALIENS (2001) and one for HAIR HIGH (2003). The former is about a
human stranded in space and who comes back to Earth with alien
pals looking for revenge. There were some humorous images of
aliens who look like human body parts. HAIR HIGH is supposed to
have the feel of GREASE! or HAIR SPRAY. The latter trailer seems
to be little more than images of people with pompadour haircuts.
Supposedly there are lots of shock scenes in any Plympton feature
film (and the small sample of them I have seen, namely I MARRIED A
STRANGE PERSON, bears that suggestion out).
MASTER AND COMMANDER
What can I say? It is the British Navy in the Napoleonic wars. I
am an old Hornblower fan, though I have never read the Patrick
O'Brien novels, but I will definitely see this film. Russell
Crowe stars and Peter Weir directs. Yeah, I'll be there.
DECOYS
I seem to be about the only one not excited by the trailer of this
film. Maybe it has BUBBA HO-TEP's appeal. Two college kids are
looking to find attractive partners for certain social/biological
acts. They seem to be getting really lucky until they discover
the foxes are really alien monsters in disguise. Call it a Honey
Trap. It seems to me like a familiar joke.
THE ORDER
This is a film that looks stylish from the trailer, but it has had
no press screenings (always a bad sign) and probably the film is
not very good. It essentially deals with what appears to be an
attempted takeover of the Catholic Church opposed by an order of
protectors of the Church. VATICAN DRAGNET, maybe?
PETER PAN
This looks like a revisionist live-action version of the oft-
dramatized children's story. It looks like it might have mild
violence that will make it appeal to a teenage audience. Jason
Isaacs plays Captain Hook and Jeremy Sumpter is Peter Pan. I
think the trailer say something like "Forget everything you know
about Peter Pan." Since some of what I know about Peter Pan is
what was in the book, that is not a good sign.
LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION
This is a ROGER RABBIT-like mixing of animated figures and live-
action. Actually I think the animated figures were done with 3D
animation like was used in SHREK. The film may be amusing, but
not much could be inferred from the trailer beyond the concept.
The trailer does have a good joke not from the film.
SHAOLIN SOCCER
Apparently this film has already played a couple of years in Asia
and is quite popular. A family of brothers from Shaolin use their
fighting discipline to become a super-powered soccer team.
Neither soccer nor martial arts is my thing, but the film looks
recommendable to others. Combining soccer and martial arts seems
like a cheap shot.
RETURN OF THE KING
Peter Jackson is trying to make the last chapter of the series
"ultimate" in more ways than one. It is claimed to have the most
complex battle ever put on film. It should not be hard to have
the greatest number of fighters since the vast majority of those
fighting are CGI. Also you can put a digital image into danger
into which you would not put a stunt man. On the other hand, a
digital warrior frequently looks a lot like a digital warrior.
Trailers are supposed to tempt the viewer. I guess the films I am
most tempted to see are TIMELINE, MASTER AND COMMANDER, and THE
RETURN OF THE KING. But that is a reflection of my taste. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: UNDERWORLD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: If a vampire loves a werewolf, where can they set up
housekeeping together? Nowhere. At least not in a world where
werewolves and vampires have fought for a thousand years. Kate
Beckinsale plays a vampire Death Dealer who is a ruthless werewolf
killer and who discovers that her new love interest is from the
other camp. But really she has to stop a sort of coup to take
over the vampires. This is a film of non-stop action and non-
start intelligence. Lots of gunplay and the look of THE MATRIX
borrowed for another realm. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)
UNDERWORLD is a mass of contradictions. That is not necessarily a
bad thing in a film. Some very good films are paradoxical.
UNDERWORLD actually could be paradoxical if it was better done,
but it is just poorly thought out. This film seems like one long
violence episode and the violence is not even very well done. It
seems that the vampires and the werewolves have been at each
other's throats for nearly a thousand years. Unbeknownst to us in
the real world there is a population of vampires and a population
of werewolves and they are at war with each other. It does not
really matter a whole lot to the plot that they are vampires and
werewolves. With a little rewriting they could easily be two
rival street gangs, or Stalinists and Trotskyites. But then there
would not be so much use for the gore makeup and the CGI effects.
The beasties do very little chewing of each other preferring to
use automatic weapons on each other. There are a lot of automatic
weapons in this movie. There is the frequent staccato of
gunfights so totally lacking in 1930s vampire films.
Kate Beckinsale plays Selene, a beautiful vampire who wears these
skin-tight leather outfits. This is the same Kate Beckinsale who
played the comely nurse in PEARL HARBOR. Apparently she could not
resist the urge to play an action hero. She is a "Death Dealer"
which means she earns her daily blood by hunting down werewolves
in a war of attrition between the two armies of monsters. Selene
has to be very careful not to let the world of humans know of the
existence of these two armies in their midst so when she has a
wild gunfight on a subway she keeps everything very discrete in
some way not obvious to the viewer.
As sort of a sort of a secret agent in the war she sees something
that perks her curiosity. There is some strange behavior on the
part of the werewolves involving a human named Michael (Scott
Speedman). Michael is somehow involved in a strange plot
involving vampires and werewolves. (Are there any other kind of
plots involving vampires and werewolves?) The vampire Kraven
(Shane Brolly) wants rule all the vampires and is making deals
with (gasp) werewolves. Selene has to stop him. In the meantime
she is falling in love with the human Michael who may no longer be
human. The result may be the first love between a vampire and a
werewolf, like Romeo and Juliet, but without any sort of gentle
poetry. In fact there is not much in this film that is gentle.
Certainly nothing is gentle that can be made violent just like
nothing is quiet that can be loud. Just about everything is
overdone. The battles all have wirework and lots of gunfire. In
her battle to stop the evil Kraven (the name just sounds evils,
doesn't it?), Selene has a secret weapon. She can revive the
great ruling vampire, like the King of the Gypsies, to come to her
aid. This is Viktor (Bill Nighy of I CAPTURE THE CASTLE and the
upcoming LOVE ACTUALLY), an age-old vampire powerful but at the
same time decrepit.
About the best thing about UNDERWORLD is its production design and
art direction. The entire look of the film seems to imitate THE
MATRIX with dominant colors being black, gray, and steel blue.
Occasionally there is some muted red added because what is a
vampire film without blood. But the look of the film is far
better than the script. Many scenes are staged for visual
excitement but not logic. Selene will be running and from nowhere
a fist will sock her on the snoot. Then you will see that it is
from an enemy that she should have been able to see from across
the room, but then there would not have been the exciting scene.
One of my pet peeves from BLADE holds true here. The vampires
seem to be vampires by virtue of a special blood type. The same
goes for the werewolves. That would be okay if they were purely
scientific creatures, but they both have supernatural powers.
There are scenes of both running upside-down on the ceiling. That
is a supernatural power and could not possibly come from a blood
type. The writers should decide if their vampires are
supernatural or preternatural and not confuse the two.
The nice thing about this film is you are never more than five
minutes away from the big dramatic or action scene. If you go out
for popcorn you will miss it. But don't worry, there will be
another one along in another five minutes. And none of these
scenes will be clear in your mind in two hours. I give UNDERWORLD
a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SECONDHAND LIONS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A young adult film with a boy being dropped off to live
with his two strange old grand-uncles. The story revolves around
the boy's adjustment and his investigation into just what really
is the history of these two weird eccentrics. If you look at this
as a serious adult film, it seems contrived and does not quite
work. If you see it as the same sort of strange kids' story that
HOLES was, it is kind of fun. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to
+4)
SECONDHAND LIONS is being marketed as a mature film to show off
the acting talents of Robert Duvall and Michael Caine in a sort of
character study. I suppose that is true as far as it goes, but an
important point is being left out. This film is not so much an
adult film as a young adult film that most of us can appreciate.
It is a near-fantasy with a whimsical feel well attuned to teens.
Duvall and Caine play Hub and Garth, two crusty old men with some
kind of a past, but it is not clear what. These two weird old
coots live off by themselves in the baked fields of Texas farm
country. But I am getting ahead of myself. The real main
character is Walter (Haley Joel Osment of THE SIXTH SENSE and
A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE). Walter's mother Mae (Kyra
Sedgewick) is a woman of checkered past industriously proceeding
to checker her present and her future. Unannounced she drops
Walter off at the farm of her two weird uncles. Before she goes
she hints that the two might have a treasure hidden on premises
and Walter might pass the time looking for it. Then Mae goes off
to take a course on being a court reporter.
The uncles and Walter quickly come to an agreement. Walter does
not think much of his eccentric uncles and they would prefer that
Walter was someplace else. Walter has no idea what to do in a
house with no telephone or television. He watches as his uncles
take sport in shooting at traveling salesmen who come by. It is
going to be a long and painful summer for Walter, or so it looks
at first. It is no surprise that by the end of the film everyone
has a great deal of affection for everyone else. The real
question to be solved is not where the money is but what did Hub
and Garth do during the forty years that they seem to have
disappeared off the earth. Some say they were robbing banks.
Garth tells Walter an outlandish tale of pulpish high adventure in
North Africa.
Robert Duvall is one of our great actors and there are few roles
anyone is likely to cast him in where his performance would be
likely to disappoint. He is just fine as a Texas lunatic.
Michael Caine, on the other hand, finds playing a Texan to be just
a little beyond even his immense capabilities. It would be easy
to pay too little attention to the performance of Haley Joel
Osment, who is, after all, just a kid. But he also happens to
have an interesting face that adds a lot to any scene that he is
in. It may well be true that he serves the film better than Caine
does. Walter, all grown up and benefiting from his experience
with his uncles, is played by Josh Lucas of A BEAUTIFUL MIND and
HULK. And the lesson he has learned is that it is better to
believe in something that it is worth believing in than it is to
believe in something less worthwhile even if you are sure it is
true. (I am not certain that is not a dangerous or even immoral
philosophy.) I noted watching the film that there was something
in the score I could not describe but which reminded me of the
score to MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. This score and that were
contributed by Patrick Doyle. The film is written and directed by
Tim McCanlies who wrote the screenplay for IRON GIANT, another
adolescent film the whole family could enjoy.
I am not sure I can recommend this film whole-heartedly to adult
viewers. Too much seems a little contrived and unreal. The story
is just not told on a mature level. On the other hand SECONDHAND
LIONS seems a very good match for teenagers. Now the question is
how to get them to want to see it. I rate SECONDHAND LIONS a 6 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: LOST IN TRANSLATION (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Two Americans meet in Tokyo and spend the week as close
platonic friends. On the way we see their frustrations with the
strange culture in Tokyo and how each deals with his loneliness.
They get to know each other discussing love, marriage, and their
lives. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray) is in Tokyo filming commercials
for a familiar brand of Japanese whiskey. Harris was a big star
in America, though most of his films were made in the 1970s. Now
he is on the downside of his career and he still seems to be
idolized by the Japanese but mostly as a matter of form. These
days he is less an actor and more a family man living with the
little stresses with his wife.
Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) has had two years of a meaningless
marriage to John (Giovanni Ribisi) her photographer husband,
currently assigned to Tokyo. Both Bob and Charlotte are at loose
ends and a little tired of a town that is so strange to them.
After seeing each other a few times in the bar of their hotel they
strike up a friendship. Bob goes out with Charlotte and meets
some of her friends in Japan. They decide to share their time and
their minds, becoming intimate in several different ways, all of
which are platonic. The film builds to Bob and Charlotte coming
to a bittersweet understanding of their relationship.
Though the two had found initially they could not really connect
with each other, as time goes by they are more willing to open up.
Charlotte (in her early twenties) needs help with a marriage that
is not really working after two years. Bob's marriage of twenty-
five years is working, but has become routine. There are a few
(not nearly enough) heart-to-heart talks between the two, each
lonely and lost in a different way. Bob ties to give Charlotte
the benefit of his fifty-plus years of experience. (Side note: I
saw the film on Bill Murray's 53rd birthday.) The middle-aged man
gives his wisdom about marriage and how to get through life.
LOST IN TRANSLATION is about several things including the
difficulty that some American have adjusting to the Japanese
society. One continuing theme is the brashness of Japanese
advertising. Besides the fact that Bob is in Tokyo to create some
very Western-looking whiskey ads (with a convenient product
placement). We return to images of Technicolor bright neon
advertising at night. During the day office buildings project
films of dinosaurs and elephants on their mirrored windows.
Karaoke comes up several times and the singing is uniformly
painful. In fact, bad singing in general is a recurrent theme.
Bill Murray's acting as Bob has gotten much positive comment
though I think he overuses that bemused look and cynical half
smile he is famous for. The humor is frequently slapstick as in a
run-in with a ski machine. Scarlett Johansson of EIGHT LEGGED
FREAKS and THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is quite capable in the role
of Charlotte looking like a younger version of Uma Thurman. It
really is their film with Giovanni Ribisi in third billing having
a much smaller part. The film works best when the two of them are
having quiet talks together with Bill Murray playing it quiet and
sincere. Sadly there are fewer of such moments than the film
needed.
LOST IN TRANSLATION was written, directed, and co-produced by
Sofia Coppola, daughter of Francis Ford Coppola who gets and
executive producer credit. I rate the film a 6 on the 0 to 10
scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. (I can't quite figure
out where the Harris family could have lived to be having
breakfast when it was 4 AM in Tokyo. Perhaps it was Hawaii.)
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ANYTHING ELSE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Woody Allen's ANYTHING ELSE is mildly amusing, but that
still makes it the best film he has made in a while. A younger
version of Allen is manipulated and dominated by the people around
him, all sending contradictory messages. The movie is a little
slow toward the middle, but its point is made by the end. Rating:
6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
I will give Woody Allen credit. For decades he has been
experimenting with different genres. That makes him a constant
neophyte against more seasoned directors for each of these kinds
of films. In the last decade he has tried a musical, a pulp
adventure, a murder mystery, and several other films varying his
approach. But his misses have been far more common than his hits.
In ANYTHING ELSE he returns to his home genre. He is telling a
story about the neurotic intellectual trying to iron out his love
life and his life in general, much has he did with ANNIE HALL. He
is telling a story about a nebbish who can talk intelligently
about Sartre at parties, but who is a complete jerk in his love
life. It is familiar territory for Allen, but this time he seems
to be making a real point and though the success is mild, the film
is at least likable.
Woody Allen plays a supporting role as his usual disturbed
character, but that character is not the main focus. He has
another actor playing the confused, trademarked insecure Jewish
intellectual schlemiel. Jason Biggs (who plays Jim Levinstein in
the AMERICAN PIE films) here plays Jerry Falk, a comedy writer and
aspiring novelist. Jerry sees the sultry (?) Amanda, played by
Christina Ricci, and immediately decides that he must have her.
This is in spite of the fact she is the current girlfriend of one
of Jerry's friends and that he is already in a relationship. Once
he has won her, he finds that it is really a high-maintenance
relationship. Amanda is self-obsessed and selfish, but she knows
how to talk her way around Jerry so that she gets what she wants.
Actually Jerry has several people manipulating him at the same
time. There is his friend David Dobel (Woody Allen), another
comedy writer who has decided to latch onto and train Jerry with
life lessons and survivalist skills. Jerry's agent and manager is
Harvey (Danny DeVito) who has quietly upped his percentage to 25%
and does not seem to be doing much for Jerry at all. Jerry also
has an analyst who never says anything at all useful to Jerry.
But in each of these relationships Jerry wants to be a nice guy
and cannot tell these people that he is getting nothing nourishing
out of his relationship with each of them. There is a nice
subplot showing Dobel has inner fires eating at him, somewhat
atypical of an Allen role. He hears slights in other people's
comments that nobody else hears. He can give in to moments of
shocking violence. And he feels anybody living in the city needs
to keep a loaded gun handy. Dobel pulls Jerry in one direction;
Amanda pulls him in another. And Amanda's delinquent mother Paula
(Stockard Channing) moves in and makes her own demands on Jerry.
The big fault with the script is that once we get to the middle
act the story does little to develop. There are worse things in
life than listening to Woody Allen dialog, but even with that the
viewer get impatient. The film's middle makes the same point
repeatedly: that each of these relationships seems to be doing
nothing for Jerry. The psychiatrist does nothing at all, he agent
makes excuses, Dobel gives bad advice, and Amanda does exclusively
what she wants to do and gives Jerry excuses that that doing so is
good for their relationship. One can easily see and--even more
hear--a younger Woody Allen in the role of Jerry. The young
comedy writer talks in Allen-like language and even seems to think
like Allen. He makes little comments aside to the camera in much
the same way that Allen does in films like MANHATTAN. The story
is building to a nice ironic twist, but it takes longer than need
be to get there. ANYTHING ELSE does work, but it is not nearly so
ambitious as Allen's work of fifteen years ago. After his CRIMES
AND MISDEMEANORS he seems to have lost his way.
While this is really only a shadow of what Woody Allen has given
us in the past, it has some substance and is better than any film
Allen has given us in a long disappointing period. I give
ANYTHING ELSE a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to
+4 scale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: DUMMY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Rating: +1
DUMMY is a likable comedy about a collection of mildly
dysfunctional people trying to work out their lives in Long
Island. The center of attention is Steven, played by Adrian Brody
just prior to his making THE PIANIST. Early in the film he
decides to try ventriloquism as a hobby and it becomes a driving
force in his life. He is able to give his dummy a personality of
its own, far more aggressive than his own nebbish approach to
life. Much of the humor derives from what this irreverent piece
of wood is going to say. Steven's girlfriend is Fangora (Milla
Jovovich), whose punk rocker exterior hides a sweet person inside
desperately trying to stay hidden. Like Steven she is out of work
and is so desperate that she gets her group a wedding gig playing
Jewish klezmer music. Then she seriously studies klezmer in and
effort to do justice to a form of music that she has never heard
of. Fangora was hired by Heidi (Illeana Douglas), Steven's
sister, a wedding planner with her own problems. Her ex-boyfriend
has started stalking her and is going to Steven for advice. Their
father played by Ron Leibman has retired and is starting a new
career as a child.
Probably the oldest cliche in the very small genre of
ventriloquist films is that the dummy gets a personality of his
own and behaves in ways and says things that the ventriloquist
would not. Steven has romantic interest in his employment
counselor, but the dummy's frankness is a major impediment. Even
worse, Steven turns to the unimpressive Fangora for advice on how
to impress her. This film follows the schizophrenic relationship
between Steven and his dummy about as far as it can. The dummy's
comments are cutting and insightful. Too often even when he is
sitting by himself, the dummy has just the right expression on his
face. The screenplay by writer and director Greg Pritikin has
cute touches, but it takes a long time to make the viewer care
about characters. At times the plotting seems a little contrived.
Incidentally Brody is a ventriloquist and does his own work in the
film. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: BUBBA HO-TEP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This review ran in the 10/25/02 issue after its screening during
the Toronto International Film Festival, but since the film is
opening in theaters this week, we are re-running it.]
CAPSULE: In a Texas nursing home Elvis and JFK live on. And
they need each other's help. There is a murderous mummy on the
loose in a cowboy hat. Most of the action takes place in the
nursing home and the joke outstays its welcome. Clearly this is
the sort of film that will have a small following that thinks it
is CITIZEN KANE and a large number of people who will be accused
of just not getting it. I got it, but I didn't particularly
want it. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)
There is not a lot to this ultra-low budget film. Most of what
you get from the film is the idea. It takes place for the
greatest part in an East Texas rest home in the present day.
Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) is one of the residents. How he
came to be still alive and in an East Texas rest home is part of
the story. Another resident may or may not be John F. Kennedy.
(Ossie Davis... Don't ask.)
At this star-studded rest home some pretty weird happenings
happen. Just why takes some explaining, but a resurrected mummy
dressed in a cowboy suit walks the halls and kills people as
part of his evil plans. Presley and Kennedy team up to kill the
mummy. The mummy mythology, that part of it that comes from
films, seems to come entirely from Brendan Fraser mummy movies.
The Joe Lansdale story pre-dates those films, but the script's
emphasis on scarab beetles seems to come from the most recent
films.
Don Coscarelli (PHANTASM) directed and wrote the screenplay
based on a story by Joe R. Lansdale who also wrote RAZORED
SADDLES, a collection of western horror stories. Some of the
dialog is fun, but there is very little here to attract the
average horror fan and less for the average film fan. There are
much more rewarding films to rent.
Some of my friends had particular reasons for liking this film.
If you have a special interest in one of the actors, Elvis
stories, or rest homes this film may just be down your personal
alley. For everyone else I would have to put this film down in
the range of a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale or a low 0 on the -4 to +4
scale. [-mrl]
[The story by Joe R. Lansdale can be found in THE KING IS DEAD:
TALES OF ELVIS POSTMORTEM, edited by Paul M. Sammon, or WRITER OF
THE PURPLE RAGE by Joe R. Lansdale.]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
No, it's not a wedding--it's my recent reading.
The "something old" was L. Ron Hubbard's FEAR. First published in
1940, it's a *lot* shorter than Hubbard's later work and, while
not great, is certainly readable enough--and after sixty years,
that's saying something. Basically, a professor finds he has lost
four hours of his life and tries to discover what has happened.
While it's billed as a horror novel, it is not (by today's
standards) horrific, but it is a classic.
The "something new" was Howard Waldrop's A BETTER WORLD'S IN
BIRTH! (The exclamation point is part of the title.) The premise
of this alternate history is that Communism takes hold in Europe
in 1848 rather than later. As usual, Waldrop manages to write
something good, but based on history so obscure that most readers
won't follow it, and then publish it in a chapbook where most who
could won't find it.
The "something borrowed" was Robert Charles Wilson's BLIND LAKE,
which I borrowed from a friend. Somehow it's not up to his
previous work, perhaps because I found the character of the ex-
husband to be a bit over the top and not really necessary to the
story. I would have thought the idea of a secret installation
observing alien life on a planet circling a distant star enough
premise for the story. I also thought the premise of the "viewer"
to be a trifle too unbelievable--too much fantasy and not enough
science fiction. (Of course, I have the same complaint about some
of the "science" in Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END, about
which I will say more next week. I guess it's just Clarke's Third
Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.")
And the "something blue"? Well, Bill Bryson's A SHORT HISTORY OF
NEARLY EVERYTHING had a blue cover. It could equally well have
been titled LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING, since it is about
how the universe and our solar system came about, and how life
arose and developed. Of course, the latter title was already
taken. The book lacks much of the humor of Bryson's travelogues,
thought there are a few witticisms scattered throughout. Bryson
spends a lot of time talking about the people who actually made
the great discoveries first, but then failed to achieve
recognition, either by not publishing or by publishing in the
wrong place or at the wrong time. All in all, it's a very
readable history of, well, nearly everything. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Women want mediocre men. And men are working
hard to become as mediocre as possible.
-- Margaret Mead
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