THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/26/04 -- Vol. 22, No. 39
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.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Topics:
Gigolo Joe Dances Because Gigolo Joes Dance (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
SPARTAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CONQUEROR FANTASTIC edited by Pamela Sargent (book review
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (UNFORGIVEABLE STORIES,
PRE-REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE FICTION: AN ANTHOLOGY,
MY SHERLOCK HOLMES, HYBRIDS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Gigolo Joe Dances Because Gigolo Joes Dance (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
For many years I have been talking about science fiction films at
science fiction conventions. Over and over I hear the same
complaints. People ask why science fiction films cannot have
sophisticated ideas the way science fiction books do. I think
there are several answers to that question, but one I want to
concentrate on this week. People are victims of their own
expectations. They do not expect to find an intelligent idea in a
science fiction film, so they do not see it when it is there. The
idea goes right over the head of the much of the audience. It is
like complaining that animated films could be telling
sophisticated adult stories, but at the same time assuming every
animated film is a children's film.
I would like to give two examples of science fiction films that
were widely reviled as bad and self-indulgent Hollywood product
that actually had interesting ideas behind them. The public as a
whole just missed the ideas by not expecting to find them. The
films are THE POSTMAN and A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
Most people who saw THE POSTMAN apparently thought the film was
intended to create heroes out of mailmen or some stupid thing like
that. It was thought by many to be a story of mailmen saving the
world and most people saw little more than that in the film. THE
POSTMAN is really all about the irony that the right lie at the
right time can do more good than strict adherence to the truth.
In this film you have a post-holocaust society in which among the
survivors almost everybody wants the world to heal itself. People
are ready for civilization to return. A con-man who needs a good
meal puts on a mailman's uniform and claims to have been sent from
a newly re-established United States Government. His motive is to
con a town into giving him a little free food. He finds, however,
that the lie that civilization has returned is so powerful and
seductive that people in the society just start believing it and
behaving as if it were true. That it turns out is really all it
takes to bring back civilization. But it would not have come
without the lie and people willing to believe the lie. It is the
lies and the myths that keep society together and allow it to heal.
It is a complex moral situation and a very paradoxical story. THE
POSTMAN may not be great, but it is at the very least a good piece
of science fiction. David Brin, who knew what his novel was
saying, saw the film as saying the same thing and doing it well.
There are few people who respect the film, but Brin is one.
(Actually I have found a small group of friends who all think the
film deserved more respect.)
The other film I want to defend, though it too may be a lost
cause, is A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Nearly everybody
disliked this film too. At a science fiction convention one of
the panelists was talking about how it was about a robot who
wanted to be a real boy. No doubt he combined the Pinocchio
symbolism in the film and Data from STAR TREK: THE NEXT
GENERATION and came to that conclusion. It is, however, a complete
misreading of the film. In A.I. you are explicitly told what
David, the robot, wants. He wants to love the person he was
imprinted on. Being a robot his only goal is the one he was
programmed to have.
I felt watching the film the first time that the director was
trying to say something profound that I was not quite sure I was
understanding. Ironically, it was a complaint about the film by
Roger Ebert that crystallized the whole film and showed me what it
was all about. (I think. The comment is not in Ebert's final
Internet review, but I am reasonably sure it came from an earlier
review.) Ebert complained about a scene from the film. The
dancing pleasure-bot Gigolo Joe was running from the police who
thought he had killed a customer. Even while he was running
Gigolo Joe takes time to stop and dance. Why would he? The review
said that did not make sense.
I think Ebert was very near to putting his finger on the whole
point of the film there and still missed it. Gigolo Joe dances
BECAUSE Gigolo Joes dance. That's what they do. There may no
longer a reason for Gigolo Joe to dance, but that only adds to the
pathos. Gigolo Joe will continue to dance even if there is no
purpose. David will continue to love his "mother" even after that
makes no sense for him. It will continue even after he has lost
her forever. Or, as the script contrives, forever less a single
day, which may be even more poignant. For the rest of David's
very long life he is doomed to live in frustration. He cannot
abandon this goal and go on with his life. In no way is that a
silly, sappy, children's story.
These two films went under-appreciated, I think, because few
people were expecting them to be good. Each film has a powerful
idea behind it. I think if we want some sophistication in our
science fiction films we have to get better at recognizing it when
it is there. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is quite probably the best new science fiction film
I have seen since MINORITY REPORT and well before. A device allows
for the removal of painful memories by erasing them. The hitch is
that the memories must be opened and partially relived as they are
being erased. Charlie Kaufman's third script is demanding, but it
is delightfully engaging, intelligent, and even profound. Rating:
+3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10. SPOILER WARNING: Some people seem to be
missing the point of the film. I will explain the concept of what
I saw. This reveals no more than other reviews or what the trailer
reveals, but even that might harm the viewer's enjoyment.
It seems these days that Philip K. Dick has eaten the top end of
science fiction films. Just about all the best science fiction
films seem to be based entirely, in part, or implicitly on ideas
from Dick's writing. ETERNAL SUNSHINE is a film that does more
than borrow Dick's reality-bending ideas, it tells a story that
has center and heart. It is also a film that has pathos and
chuckles. And it has what Martin Gardner would call the "Aha!"
experience. This is a film that does what the best science fiction
does. It allows us better understand the human experience by
putting it on a lab table and dissecting it in ways we could never
do without science fiction. If the viewer can follow what is going
on, and not all viewers will be able to, this is a real gem of a
movie.
Picture Frank Sinatra. You have just pulled a memory from your
head and visualized it, seeing it not exactly as you first saw it,
but as a close facsimile. Suppose your memories of Frank Sinatra
cause you pain. Dr. Mierzwiak (played by Tom Wilkinson) has a
machine that can locate those memories, open them up, and erase
them. But in opening them up the patient relives the memory at
least partially until it is completely erased. Years of memories
can relived in a single night, each for the last time.
The memories that Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) finds and the being
reminded of his reasons for having his memories erased give insight
into his relationship with Clementine (Kate Winslet) and also more
generally into human behavior. And there are fascinating visuals
of him reliving his memories at the instant those memories are
deconstructed.
Plot. Yes, I should tell what the plot is. Joel wakes up one
morning dissatisfied with his life. On a whim he skips work and
takes a train to the beach at Montauk. There he meets Clementine,
who attracts him and who seems playfully interested in him. She is
an off-beat kook, but "kook" is just to his taste at the moment.
Some time later their relationship has run its course and the good
time he had with her is just a painful memory. But Dr. Mierzwiak
is an expert on removing painful memories. For a fee he has his
two (indifferent) assistants (Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo) go to
Joel's apartment one night and put a big weird helmet on Joel's
head to replay and erase Joel's memories of Clementine. This
starts Joel's strange odyssey through his memories, reliving each
for the last time. Meanwhile the less than positive attitudes of
the two assistants causes problems for the sleeping Joel and for
the awakened Dr. Mierzwiak.
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's first film was the creative BEING
JOHN MALKOVICH. His second film was the nearly as good
ADAPTATION. Now he is showing that he has not yet reached his
peak. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is the best script by
a surprising margin. The director is Michel Gondry, but for once
it is the screenwriter who is getting the attention. And that is
only fair. Hopefully this is a movie that will show the film
industry that good writing can do more for a film than good
special effects. I rate ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND a
+3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SPARTAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Mamet could not put both intelligence and action in this
political thriller and gave the latter priority. Val Kilmer is an
anti-terrorist operative called in on the kidnapping of an
important woman. The story has some interesting twists. Rating:
+1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
This is a political action thriller with the accent on action and
not intelligence. Not that David Mamet would ever give us a
stupid film, but the action leaves insufficient time to fill out
the plot. SPARTAN is no MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. It is a film of
shoot-outs and sudden violence. Mamet, who wrote and directed
SPARTAN, has done more intelligent films, but the action somewhat
gets in the way. The pacing is quick and the dialog is crisply in
Mamet's style.
Val Kilmer plays Robert Scott who trains military soldiers for
what is probably counter-terrorist actions. He teaches people to
be lethal and to sweat even the smallest details. Suddenly Scott
is called in on the kidnapping of a nationally-known Harvard
student.
A lot of people seem very concerned about this particular crime,
but it takes a while for the audience to know why. Mamet
carefully avoids the traditional expository dialog that would
explain what is going on but which is probably not realistic. It
is the audience's responsibility to get up to speed. Mamet's
strategy in to throw the viewer in the middle of an unfamiliar
situation and to make the us work to understand what has happened.
His point may be that while some films work hard to create puzzles
for the viewer, just placing the viewer in the middle of an
unfamiliar situation and letting him figure out what is going on
is puzzle enough. In his previous films, like THE SPANISH
PRISONER, he has intentionally set up tricks on his audience. He
does that much less in SPARTAN, which like THE UNTOUCHABLES is
more a straight action film. The puzzle here is figuring out what
is happening, who everybody is, and what each person's open and
hidden agendae are.
It has been noted that Mamet likes to do stories of professional
men on the job. He dramatizes how they talk and how they relate
to each other under stress. Usually he has a standard set of
actors several of which will be in each film. There is no role
for Rebecca Pidgeon this time around and William H. Macy only
lurks around in the background of scenes without even a line to
speak until late in the film. Incidentally, Said Taghmaoui has a
role as a low-life. I don't know who this actor is, and I have
seen him only once before as an eloquent and very angry Iraqi in
THREE KINGS. But he does make a strong impression and when he is
on the screen he IS the movie.
Listening to Mamet's dialog is like watching ping-pong. In ping-
pong the ball goes back and forth, spending little time on either
side of the net, but is always on one side or the other. In Mamet
dialog, A says something terse and clipped, then B does, then A
does. Nobody talks over anyone else. It was less obvious in
SPARTAN, but the dialog is stylized.
Much of what the film is about is the amoral nature of modern
power politics. The film overstates its message against
politicians much as it overstates the violence. Mamet wants to
sensationalize and shock a little. It makes for a decent lower-
budget action film, but it is does not show the full intelligence
we have come to expect from Mamet. I rate SPARTAN a +1 on the -4
to +4 scale or 6/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: CONQUEROR FANTASTIC edited by Pamela Sargent (book review
by Evelyn C. Leeper) (DAW, 2003, 320pp, ISBN 0-756-40191-7)
When one gets an anthology titled CONQUEROR FANTASTIC these days,
and it is described as "thirteen original 'what if' tales about
famous, infamous, or legendary figures, and the paths their lives-
-and the world--might have taken," one expects alternate
histories. In the case of Pamela Sargent's anthology, one would
be wrong.
Oh, there are a couple of alternate history stories here. Barry
N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini's "Intensified Transmogrification" has
a more extreme Lyndon Johnson. Janeen Webb gives Philip of
Macedon and his son Alexander a different end in "The Lion Hunt,"
although the fact that the story ends with the change, rather than
starting with it, makes the alternate history aspect almost moot.
Only Ian Watson's "An Appeal to Adolf" gives us a relatively fully
realized alternate history, in which heavier-than-air flight is
impossible and Hitler has a different plan for invading England.
The remaining stories seem to fall into two categories: straight
fantasy or unreadable. Michelle West's tale of Alexander ("To the
Gods Their Due"), George Alec Effinger's story of Saladin
("Walking Gods"), and Pamela Sargent's Genghis Khan story ("Spirit
Brother") are fantasies involving gods or spirits. James Morrow's
"Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole" has neither gods nor spirits, but
"heuristic healing" and "kinetotherapy" to help his characters try
to defeat cancer (though Genghis Khan has a bit part as well).
Stephen Dedman's "Twilight of Idols" is closer to alternate
history, but is secret history rather than alternate history. The
same seems to be true of Jack Dann's "Good Deeds" (with Robert
Kennedy). George Zebrowski's "Nappy" has alternate virtual
realities, and Kij Johnson's The Empress Jingu Fishes" and
Michaela Roessner's "Del Norte" seem barely fantasy at all.
In the unreadable category (for me) was Paul Di Filippo's
"Observable Things," written in the style of H. P. Lovecraft
crossed with Robert E. Howard, and featuring the latter's Solomon
Kane. People who have a greater appreciation of those authors
would probably enjoy this more.
While I thought a few of the stories worthwhile (the Dedman,
Morrow, Watson, and Malzberg & Prozini), on the whole I found this
anthology a disappointment, both from an alternate history
standpoint and from a broader context of it as just fantasy. (I
am somewhat curious how Effinger managed to have a new story in
it, as he died in early 2002.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I haven't read many of Kim Newman's novels, but I find his short
fiction excellent, and UNFORGIVEABLE STORIES has several that are
first-rate. But while most of my favorites are not stand-alone",
it's not in the usual way of being part of an author's series.
Rather, they build and develop on classics or common tropes. So,
for example, in order to appreciate "Further Developments in the
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," some familiarity with the
original story is a prerequisite. (The movie versions are not
enough, because they change the events around considerably, and
none is at all accurate to the book. For example, in the book Hyde
is introduced before Jekyll, and you don't actually find out what
is going on until after Jekyll is dead.)
Another story I liked was "Completist Heaven." You have a much
better chance of liking this story if you recognize that
"Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS" is 1) not a real movie,
and 2) a conflation of two titles for movies that are real. A
knowledge of all the character actors in the 1940s Universal
horror films also helps. "Quetzelcon" requires a familiarity with
both Aztec mythology and science fiction conventions. There are
other stories which require little if any arcane knowledge; they're
good too.
Leonard Fetzer's PRE-REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE FICTION: AN ANTHOLOGY is
an anthology of early Russian science fiction stories. However, I
don't know if they're all utopian stories because that's all
Russians wrote, or because that's what interested Fetzer. In any
case, this is probably only of interest to people interested in
that sub-genre, and at a similar level (and style) to Edward
Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD.
As I noted a few weeks ago, trying to come up with ways to
distinguish new Sherlock Holmes anthologies from all those that
have come before is getting harder, and new twists are getting more
convoluted. Michael Kurland's MY SHERLOCK HOLMES takes the
approach of having the stories told by different viewpoint
characters: Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft Holmes, Moriarty, Billy the Page
Boy, .... My problem with this is that it is not just the plot of
the Holmes stories that I like, it is the characters, the
atmosphere, and the style. When you have a different narrator, all
of these change. (There are whole web sites devoted to retelling
"The Lord of the Rings", for example, in different author's
styles. The Raymond Chandler version is very different from the
Dr. Seuss version. See http://www.teemings.com/extras/lotr/ for
lots more.) So Billy the Page Boy writes in a different style from
Watson, sees the characters differently, and certainly see
Victorian London differently than a retired Army surgeon, and very
little Holmsian is left.
I finished Robert J. Sawyer's "Neanderthal Parallax" series with
his book HYBRIDS, and found that I thought it the weakest of the
three, with Sawyer getting up on a soapbox about a lot of things:
Americans' supposed love of guns, selective breeding, rape, male
versus female psychology, and so on. There was also what might
truly be called a deus ex machina about religion, the human brain,
and the earth's magnetic field which all just happens to come to a
climax at a few minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve in Times
Square. This has always been my problem with Sawyer's books--he
seems to put everything in, and doesn't spend enough time to
develop a lot of it sufficiently. Somehow after working through
three books, I was very dissatisfied with the resolution. (This,
of course, is another problem with a multi-volume work. If at the
end a reader doesn't like it, the reader is going to be even more
annoyed at having spent so much time over such a long period to
read it.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
To educate a man in mind, and not in morals,
is to educate a menace to society.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/J.MolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mtvoid/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/