THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/17/04 -- Vol. 23, No. 12
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
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Topics:
In Defense of Visual Imagery and Special Effects (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (10 TALES TALL & TRUE; UNLIKELY
STORIES, MOSTLY; POOR THINGS; THE VOICE OF THE
CORPSE; MYSTERY MIDRASH; IBID: A LIFE / a novel in
footnotes; THIS JUST IN: WHAT I COULDN'T TELL YOU
ON TV, and THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Cat Woman Mystique (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I didn't see the film CATWOMAN, but at the same time it was on I
was listening to an old time radio show about another mysterious
fictional cat woman. I guess the exotic mysterious feline
personality seems to be easily melded to the feminine. I remember
a Sherlock Holmes movie in which he reasoned that a crime was
committed by a woman because the reasoning was feline and not
canine. The one in the radio play was always surrounded by cats.
It takes something from her mystique to think how she must
continually be opening tins of smelly meat and emptying even
smellier litter boxes. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: In Defense of Visual Imagery and Special Effects (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
This weekend we will have the release of SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD
OF THE FUTURE. From what I have seen of this film it is mostly
visual images with an intentionally pulpish plot. Films like this
and SPIDERMAN 2 now seamlessly mix animation and live action so
that what you are seeing is more a cartoon than live action. Just
about anything an artist could draw on paper could be put on the
screen these days. And it is true that films with really good
scripts are not as common as films with great special effects. I
was in a discussion recently about the value of visual effects.
It was just after the release of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. The
person I was having the discussion with pointedly asked me what
was the value of a film with spectacular visual effects that did
not have interesting characterizations.
Now he had a good point as far as it went. Human drama is
important, but it is not the only virtue a film may have. The
truth is that we are getting a lot of films whose whole reason to
be is to show off special effects. That is not too surprising.
Filmmakers and financiers can much more easily mandate good
special effects than they can a good script. There are fewer
people out there who can write a good script time after time.
Unlike the education system in England, our school system does not
really teach the writing of drama in schools. And that makes a
big difference. Most people in this country get through school
without ever having written in the dramatic form. At least at one
time it was taught in the British schools. I do not know if they
teach the writing of drama currently, but we rarely or never did.
England seems to be acutely aware that it is the country of
Shakespeare. Meanwhile we get a lot of films that are poorly
written and seem to be just canvasses for special effects. I,
ROBOT is for me a good example. It is not a good thing to not
have the writing needed for the story, I admit. But my
correspondent went what was in my opinion too far in the other
direction. He asked me who cares about a film like THE DAY AFTER
TOMORROW given that we're not seeing anything that realistically
resembles [human drama] but a bunch of spectacular visual
effects?" Who cares? Well, I have to say I care. Just like I
learn from seeing artist depictions of what happens when a black
hole rips a star apart or a comet impacts the Earth. It makes the
science more meaningful.
Science fiction is not the only genre that has benefited from the
visual revolution. I saw THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS not for deep
insights into the human condition but to get a mental image of the
French and Indian Wars. It made that history more meaningful for
me even if the story could have been better. (And, as Samuel
Clemens pointed out, James Fenimore Cooper was not such a great
writer to begin with.)
Consider that a hundred years ago people read in books about
Ancient Egypt or Ancient Rome or Troy, but they did not have a
good mental picture of what it was like. They could not picture
the world of the ancients. Today they have a much better mental
vision of what it was like. That isn't because the education
system got a lot better. It didn't. But films have become great
educators. Today I have a better mental picture of what really
extreme weather conditions are possible and might look like
because I saw THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. It may not be 100% accurate
in every scene, but I am thinking in the right direction. For
that matter astronomical pictures like the previously mentioned
black-hole-destroying star may not be entirely accurate either.
They are just suggestions that other scientists frequently correct.
And filmmakers are concerned with getting the effects accurate.
Cecil B. DeMille said, "The value of special effects depends
entirely on the impression they give of reality."
And *similarly* I ahve read about the errors in THE DAY AFTER
TOMORROW and know what they *should* look like rather than what
they did look like. Even the inaccuracies were productive. There
is a lot more I look for in a film than special effects, but
special effects have their place as well as good acting,
particularly when they have an informational and educational
value. Now one might argue that SKY CAPTAIN is not all that
anxious to teach real science, but just as the existence of
Stradivarius violins allows an artist more latitude to be
expressive, so good techniques for creating special effects also
help artists to express themselves.
By the way, if you want to get a better idea of the physics, where
films get it right and wrong, see the movie physics site:
.
They get have a fairly good and amusing style analyzing the
physics in popular films. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This week will be a bunch of quick takes.
Alasdair Gray recently achieved fame (or notoriety, depending on
your point of view) with his introduction to the Canongate edition
of the Bible's "Book of Jonah", which many denounced as
blasphemous. However, his other works tend to be a bit less
controversial--and unusual, in that he also does illustrations and
interesting layout designs for his book. I enjoyed 10 TALES TALL
& TRUE (ISBN 0-156-00196-9), and also UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY
(ISBN 0-862-41737-6), but found his novel POOR THINGS (ISBN
1-564-78307-3) (about a female creation a la Frankenstein) not
enough to hold my interest. It may be that Gray is an author who
works best in short fiction.
Max Murray's THE VOICE OF THE CORPSE (ISBN 0-486-24905-0) is yet
another Dover mystery from the first part of the last century, and
is full of blackmail and hidden secrets, perhaps to excess. I
suppose it is possible that everyone has such things to hide, but
that one person could ferret them all out strains credulity a bit.
Lawrence W. Raphael's MYSTERY MIDRASH (ISBN 1-58023-055-5) is a
collection of Jewish mystery stories. It is not just that the
characters happen to be Jewish, but also that there is some aspect
of Jewish law, or some story from the Jewish written or oral
tradition that ties in, or some other more substantive connection.
I enjoyed them, but as with the "cat mystery" of a few weeks ago,
these seem aimed at a fairly specialized audience. And the not
everything was fact-checked. For example, one author makes a
reference to "Lee's strategy at Vicksburg." Lee was not at
Vicksburg; he was a thousand miles away at Gettysburg at that
time. Another author claims there are three laws one may not
violate even to save one's own life, and that Sabbath observance
is one of them. Actually, it's not.
Mark Dunn's IBID: A LIFE / a novel in footnotes (ISBN 1-931561-65-
6) is just what it says. The introductory material explains how
the actual book was accidentally destroyed, and only the footnotes
are left. (There was, of course, no such book.) The book was/is
about a three-legged man and his life. The problem is that the
gimmick wears thin quickly, and the view of his life is as one
seen through a strobe, with brief unconnected vignettes that were
footnoted. Dunn's earlier book ELLA MINNOW PEA, in which
gradually each letter of the alphabet is discontinued, transcended
its gimmick by having a fairly straightforward story to carry it.
But in IBID: A LIFE the anecdotes are too bizarre and the story
too fragmented to keep my attention.
The most fascinating part of Bob Schieffer's THIS JUST IN: WHAT I
COULDN'T TELL YOU ON TV (ISBN 0-399-14971-6) are his stories of
how the Nixon White House brought pressure on the news media
(especially television) to present a more favorable view. His
comments on the evolution of party conventions is also
particularly timely, but a lot is autobiographical information
that is not of general interest.
Terry Manners's THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN 0-7535-
0536-3) is about Jeremy Brett and his life and career, and is
probably more thorough about his earlier career than his stint as
Holmes. In part this is because his illness (manic depression)
became most pronounced during his times as Holmes, and so Manners
concentrated more on the illness than on Brett's portrayal of
Holmes. It all seemed a bit sensationalist at times, but I suppose
if one is attempting to explain a lot that people may have
misinterpreted, that is necessary. (For example, towards the end,
Brett was too heavy to be an accurate Holmes, but this weight gain
was a side effect of medication and not something he could
control.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Pessimism is only the name that men of
weak nerve give to wisdom.
--Mark Twain
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