THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
07/08/05 -- Vol. 24, No. 2, Whole Number 1290
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:
Articles on Science Fiction
I Was Right All Along (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE INVISIBLE BOY Has Arrived (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Parallel Lines (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
WAR OF THE WORLDS (letter of comment by Jerry Ryan)
Commentary on a War of the Worlds Festival (film comments
by Kate Pott)
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (BOUND TO PLEASE, TRUTH AND FICTION
IN THE DA VINCI CODE, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, and
the film H. G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS)
(book and film comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Articles on Science Fiction
Two articles on science fiction from the magazine "Science &
Spirit"--one by James Gunn and the other by Gregory Benford--have
been reprinted on their web site:
http://www.science-spirit.org/newdirections.php?article_id=528
http://www.science-spirit.org/newdirections.php?article_id=527
===================================================================
TOPIC: I Was Right All Along (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The brain is a sophisticated computer. It is also a mysterious
thing. It is capable of processing millions commands to your body
every second. Because of the complexity the ways it will behave
are unpredictable. No example of this is more interesting than
the case of the Y2K bugs. People may remember that I was
concerned in late 1999 that when the calendar turned over to the
year 2000 many computer systems would stop functioning. Nobody
was quite sure what all the effects would be and how serious they
would be. It is now becoming clear that the effects were worse
and more widespread than even I had expected. Contrary to what
seems to be popular opinion there was widespread failure of
sophisticated computers. So why were there so few mentions of the
failures? It is because the brain is a sophisticated computer.
When it failed on January 1, 2000, people were no longer able to
perceive and remember the Y2K bugs. Ah, the brain is a mysterious
thing. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE INVISIBLE BOY Has Arrived (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
When I was young and just getting into science fiction in a big
way one of the films that got to me was the 1957 film THE
INVISIBLE BOY. This was a follow-up (and some say a semi-sequel)
to FORBIDDEN PLANET, made the previous year. Really, a producer
of the earlier film and two of the writers got together to make a
second film that would trade off the popular Robby the Robot
created for the previous film. There is some suggestion that the
robot was brought back in time for events of the second film.
THE INVISIBLE BOY tells of a closer term future when humanity is
just reaching into space and about a space project. A scientist
who does a very poor job of relating to his son has that son,
Timmie, learn chess from the project computer. Little does
either realize that the project computer is evil and plans on
world domination. The computer gets Timmie to repair re-activate
Robby. The computer uses Robby and Timmie as agents to work its
terrible plan.
As a kid I thought this was great stuff. Then I learned the
actual language of computers: FORTRAN. I learned keypunches and
card-sorters and printers. And at 20 I quickly came to realize
how silly and off-base the film THE INVISIBLE BOY was. I knew
everything in it that was absurd and not how computers really
work. The problem is that now in my fifties I have a different
opinion of what was wrong with the film. A lot of the technology
that I knew was absurd at one time is really a part of the
fantastic futuristic world of 2005. All one really has to do is
consider that the master computer they are talking about is
really a network of computers linked by the Internet.
We are told that the computer in the film has the "sum-total of
human knowledge, constantly being updated and revised." I knew
at the time that that was ridiculous. No computer has that much
memory. Even today that is more information that a computer
could hold. And I knew the huge effort it would be to collect
this information and put it into the computer. All that is still
true, but I didn't reckon on the computer being publicly
available. Being public, it can distribute the work over millions
or billions of volunteers.
One could speak to the computer asking a question in English and
it would answer out loud in English. I knew at that time that you
talked to computers with tab cards. This one I should have seen
coming. Certainly answering in printed English was possible when
I was 20. It was rarely done because it was not efficient. These
days I can ask a question in English to "Ask Jeeves" and have a
pretty good chance of getting the answer, which I can pipe to a
text-to-speech program. The only piece that is missing is to be
able to speak the question rather than typing it. There are such
interfaces now, I think, but they are still experimental and not
generally used.
Now this one was really silly. If you connected Robby the Robot
to the Master Computer with a cable, the MC actually could take
over control of Robby as a sort of mind control. (Say, have you
checked your PC for spyware recently? I hope you are using a
firewall to keep out hackers.) At one point in the film, the
scientist is talking to the master computer which he now at this
point to be evil. The scientist asks the computer, "Who am I
speaking to?" In other words, "who has broken into the computer
and is controlling it?" This sort of person would one day come
to be known as a hacker, or more accurately a cracker.
Part of what saves the day in THE INVISIBLE BOY is that there is
information on the computer that villains cannot reach. This is
because it is protected by what is mysteriously called "a secret
numerical combination" that only the scientist knows. Those of us
who really know computers will have a special technical term for
such a thing. It is what we in the know today call that a
"password".
There were two things that admittedly the film did get wrong.
1) As I have said, it was assumed that the master computer was
secret and non-public, and there was only one of that power in the
world. I effectively own a computer with the power of the master
computer right now. 2) The scientist had to explain to his
*uninterested* son what a computer was. These days it would be
more likely that the son would explain to the father how to reload
the operating system.
Usually science fiction films get the view of the future wrong,
but THE INVISIBLE BOY got a lot right. Another film, not a
particularly good piece of science fiction, that got something
very right was RED PLANET MARS (1952). In spite of the absurd
(I think) main plot, it does show a day would come when the people
who lived in the Soviet Union would say, "We are tired of
being Communist. It is not working. Let's be something else."
And the government would not be able to stop the tide of popular
opinion. I saw that one really happen also. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Parallel Lines (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
Fred Lerner writes in response to Mark's comments on mathematics
in the 07/01/05 issue of the MT VOID, "You wrote, 'You cannot
have parallel lines on a globe and you can on a plane.' My globe
has parallel lines. That is why, in speaking of latitude, we use
terms like 'the 38th parallel'." [-fl]
Mark explains, "What is called the 38th parallel is actually a
circle whose center lies on the axis of the planet (like the
Arctic Circle). It is not a line because (unless there is a good
reason not to) we say a line segment is the shortest distance
between two points. The shortest distance between two points on
the 38th parallel is entirely off the parallel. If you stretch
a rubber band between two points on the 38th parallel but
otherwise fairly distant from each other, you will see that
except at the endpoints the rubber band will lie north of the
38th parallel. On a plane as well as a sphere circles may be
disjoint, but they are not considered parallel. On a flat map
the surface of a round Earth is distorted and one way in which
it is distorted is that circles whose center lies on the axis of
the planet usually get mapped to lines." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: WAR OF THE WORLDS (letter of comment by Jerry Ryan)
Mark's review of Steven Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS in the
07/01/05 issue of the MT VOID generated this exchange:
Jerry Ryan [GWR]: "I was terribly disappointed with the ending,
were you? It felt as if they decided that they were out of film
and had to wrap it up early."
Mark Leeper [MRL]: "Perhaps, but I blame Wells for that. I am
not sure what else they could do without doing violence to the
original story. They aliens do die on their own. Wells has a
very unspectacular end for them. About the most that can be done
is having the war machines crash spectacularly."
GWR: "Yes, I suppose you're right about that. It has been a
*very* long time since I've read that book, and I haven't seen
the earlier movie in quite a while either, but I don't remember
their endings being that abrupt."
MRL: "Well, the first film built up to an crescendo where it was
obvious that everybody was going to die, then suddenly the
machines start mysteriously crashing. It is less faithful to the
book, but it is more dramatic. Not unlike the climax of
BLADERUNNER. Spielberg's was more like it was in the book. But
the book is not the best way to do it in a movie.
GWR: " I thought I remembered the illness of the aliens taking
more time to unfold, somehow."
MRL: "I don't believe so. It is always handled as a sudden
revelation. In the book the main character decides to commit
suicide by alien. He finds a war machine expecting it to kill
him and then he notices that birds are pecking at brown pieces of
meat hanging from the war machine. He never sees another war
machine that is not dead."
GWR: "The notion of having the machines buried for a very long
time was a bit of a strain, too."
MRL: "I think Spielberg wanted to do an invasion plan never seen
before. Nigel Kneale did it with each Quatermass play."
GWR: "If you could come all the way to Earth to bury the
machines, why wouldn't you just stay?"
MRL: "Two possibilities come immediately to mind:
1) Keeping options open. There's no place like the Mother
Planet, but we cannot be so sure Mars will stay so nice forever.
We could live on Earth, but it already has life. We may have to
move it out of the way if we need the planet.
2) Xenophobia. Apes on earth have a potential to be dangerous to
the Mother Planet if they ever develop civilization and space
travel. Let's prepare now before the option to destroy them is
out of our tentacles."
GWR: "See, now you're makin me dig the book out and reread! To
say nothing of needing to see the Quartermass works, which I know
nothing of.
And on the subject of the "why wouldn't you just stay"
question... If it's easy enough to get over to Earth to bury
machines for a future ambush... And if it's easy for you to
remain undetected such that you can send your crews into your
buried machines in a way that the earthers think you're just a
lightning storm... Then it's easy to just land the ships and
blow the opposition away. Yes?
Anyway, an interesting data point: my fifteen-year-old, who has
neither read the book nor seen the original film, had similar
reactions to the film (strange plot holes w/r/t aliens being on
the planet a jillion years ago and deciding to not stay...
"quick" ending... Etc).
And on another point: I'd seen "Man on Fire" just a few days
before, so I'd had a large dose of Dakota Fanning. This is a
very gifted young lady, I think. It will be interesting to watch
her career develop."
MRL: "Incidentally, if you do look it up, it is "Quatermass".
People spell it like "quartermaster" all the time, but it is
incorrect. The name is Welsh. It should not be hard to find
material about him since he is *very* well-known in Britain. He
is up there with Dr. Who and James Bond: http://tinyurl.com/73oph."
===================================================================
TOPIC: Commentary on a War of the Worlds Festival (film comments
by Kate Pott)
[Long-time reader but first-time contributor Kate Pott gives us
her approach to the "War of the Worlds" phenomenon.]
Well, the fest started well with a midnight showing of the 1953
George Pal version. The audience was small but well-behaved. No
heckling, perhaps some inattention as a shower was taken during
the showing. The echo of the Pal's beloved war machines drifted
into the hall and brought in next door neighbors complete with
cockatiel for the last reel. Synjon, the bird, was held rapt by
terrified cats cowering under couch. Unfortunately, he had no
comment on the movie.
The programming re-started reasonably early Friday morning with
an 11AM showing of the new Spielberg version. Your reviewer once
again demonstrated her remarkable talent of entering a fairly
uncrowded theater and finding the one seat in front of the guy
who has wrapped up a five course meal in carefully knotted
plastic bags. A few glares later, and I'm finally able to hear
the dialogue for the King Kong trailer. The natives look like
Orcs and Kong looks rather small. Having avoided all reviews, I
dove in and became one with the screen. Major impressions: movie
opens with repeat of Spielberg's fascination with storm imagery
as in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, here much more sophisticated and scarier.
Immediately like the color palette of the film, grays. Blinding
whites, and blood red. Once again forced to watch action through
eyes of emotionally damaged children, divorce as usual. Adults,
other than usual father figure, dangerous and unable to make
proper survival decisions. Required long shot of main character
seen framed by forewarning prop, as in Cruise seen framed by
window broken by baseball. Spectacular visuals of war machines,
crashed plane, but most memorable scene, night battle against
Martians by badly overwhelmed military. Civilians running across
field in darkness broken only by Martian rays and answering
artillery. Military positioned off-screen, furious fire slowing
stopping. Humanity at its best and bravest. Pickett's regiment
revived. Enjoyed entry into Boston and image of musket-bearing
Minuteman. Noticed that for some reason, Spielberg leaves a lot
more churches standing than Pal did. Silently cheered when my
beloved Corvids once again lead the human hunters to prey by
demonstrating that the Martian shields are down. Wonder if they
could actually eat Martian road kill? Necessary Spielberg happy
ending, but enjoyed the further twist on the Martian lack of
immunity to our biosphere, as Morgan Freeman declaims that
through a billion deaths we had earned our right to life. Just
realized that we don't actually know the aliens are Martians but
we don't know they aren't either. Overall impression: great
visuals, not at all accurate to original source, but pays homage
to previous American versions. After all, if Wells wanted to
write a metaphor of colonial repression set in today's world,
wouldn't he be tempted to set it in the U.S.? Full of
Spielbergian formulaic flaws but a least one scene of real
emotion. Will buy the DVD for my favorite scenes but Pal still
reigns supreme.
After lunch break at new noodle shop behind main venue, festival
continued with showing of documentary: H. G. WELLS AND THE WAR OF
THE WORLDS, sponsored by Netflix. Very detailed look at Wells'
personal history, focusing on relationship between Victorian
politics, sexual mores and his major works. Interesting
material, but unimaginative visuals for those of us used to Ken
Burns, and delivered in a constant BBC drone, which resulted in
an emergency espresso run.
After dinner of Thai curry, next to espresso shop, festival
continued with the final program item : H. G. WELLS' THE WAR OF
THE WORLDS, photographed, edited, and directed by Timothy Hines.
Immediately liked the strange look of the film, with camera work
and acting reminiscent of silent film. Suited perfectly the time
period of the action. Very accurate to original source, cheered
and actually clapped, when for the first time all three of the
Martian ships: Tripod, Handler, and Flying Machine are all put on
screen! Note in response to friend's review: the red weed is in
there, scattered along the country roads and can be seen withered
and dying when main character enters the last village before his
suicide attempt. Overall impression: film perfectly captures a
sense of how such a first contact might be perceived by the late
19th century. The most faithful version to date, which raises an
interesting question. Why does a short novel which takes about
an hour to read, take three hours to film? I doubt if Wells
would have minded greatly had the director deleted a few of those
endless rambling hikes. Lots of fun but I will continue to
worship at the feet of Mr. Pal. [-kp]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This was the first special effects extravaganza science
fiction film in color. And in the 1950s it was dazzling. At 84
minutes, the film is too rushed with little attempt to expand on
some of the more interesting details like the human reaction to
the invasion. Much of the potential intelligence of the film is
lost in the headlong rush. But it was a great film and one of my
great memories of my youth. Rating +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
My earliest memories of ever being in a movie theater were from
before I was three years old. I absolutely hated the film I saw,
though I am not sure if I was more bored or frightened by the
film. We sat through it twice and that was more than enough to
please me, at least for another three years when suddenly seeing
this film again became a major life goal. The film was George
Pal's third and most spectacular science fiction film of the
Fifties, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. It is still considered George
Pal's film though he produced and Byron Haskin directed. Nothing
like it had been done before on the screen and for the pure
viciousness of the aliens' military frontal assault the film has
rarely if ever been matched. In the novel on which it was based,
Wells intended to criticize Britain's militaristic imperialism
and created a merciless imperialistic power to deconstruct
British society. Wells seemed to take great joy in describing
scenes of destruction.
Later Orson Welles's radio play, inspired by the novel, succeeded
in terrorizing a large listening audience. In 1953 the film gave
us aliens who had two kinds of death-rays that rained horrible
death on the Earth people from behind shields that made them
totally impervious to human defenses. The Martian destruction
strategy was probably also inspired by the German Blitzkrieg.
And with German war tactics fresh in the public's mind, this film
was made at the time in which its subject matter would have
struck a particularly responsive note. The detailed science
fictional carnage has probably never been matched on the screen,
though films like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS and THE MYSTERIANS
have tried. A very popular series of bubble gum cards called
"Mars Invades the Earth" was issued and it was clearly heavily
inspired by the film. The cards just concentrated on imaginative
and gruesome Martian weapons that were just and extension of
Pal's creations. In the 80s a TV series was made as a sequel to
the film.
Reduce the Wells novel to about five sentences and move the
setting to Southern California and you have very much the plot of
Pal's WAR OF THE WORLDS. The world suffers an all-out invasion,
not unlike an interplanetary D-day, from a technologically
superior alien foe. Wells's novel had the Martians vastly
superior but occasionally vulnerable to human attack, Pal's film
may even be more effective in making them absolutely implacable
and invulnerable. Wells's Martians used tripod war machines.
Pal's Martian war machines are also tripods, though Pal gave up
on showing the legs as electrical arcs. The legs are reduced to
rays of force that are just barely visible and then only in one
scene. The rout of humanity, which was much more the centerpiece
of the Wells novel, is reduced in emphasis and the more
interesting battles with the Martians become much more the
central focus. However, the street riots do give some evidence
that more thought was given to realistic human behavior than in
the previous Pal science fiction effor WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
Wells also concerned himself only with England, and this film is
actually an improvement over that making the invasion a worldwide
thing.
No matter how mature I get, when the film starts I am always
dragged into it by Paul Frees's prologue, using the music from
the old Paramount newsreels. The narration takes a touch from
Howard Hawks and seems to go about one third too fast, but it
works. We get into the film and the first thing we have is a
tour of the planets of the solar system, showing us the planets
the Martians considered. Chesley Bonestell once again provided
astronomical art for Pal, but since the story really only
required at most a view from Mars at a distance we have a sort of
artificially added tour of planets to show off Bonestell art. It
is nice and it is spectacular, as his art usually is. But it
slows the story and seems repetitive, and it makes no sense that
the Martians would have considered anything further out than
Jupiter and even that would have gotten no more than a moment's
thought.
The writing for THE WAR OF THE WORLDS has improved a great deal
over that of DESTINATION MOON, in part because the script is by a
much better writer, Barre Lyndon. Lyndon is one of the unsung
heroes of the fantasy film. While this may be his best known
film, he did a surprising number of really good film scripts in
the fantasy genre or plays on which films were based. Among the
films that credit him are THE LODGER, THE MAN IN HALF MOON
STREET, THE CONQUEST OF SPACE, and the under-appreciated DARK
INTRUDER. In this film, instead of having DESTINATION MOON's
Brooklyn engineer who understands nothing, we have a somewhat
selfish fire marshal who cheats at cards and bums cigarettes.
And he is dispensed with quickly. Also present are reasonably
good character actors such as Robert Cornthwaite of THE THING
FROM ANOTHER WORLD and Paul Birch. But the real star of the film
is an excellent collection of special effects including some
terrific miniature sets. This is a film that has special effects
though the entire length of the film, rather than at a few
isolated points. The Martian war machines have a very original
look that combines the shapes of manta rays and cobras. One
problem seeing the film on the wide screen or on DVD is that the
wires moving the alien craft are all too apparent.
Not everything still plays well on modern audiences. An early
scene has the Martian presence stop electricity, borrowing from
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, though this seems to be an
unintended side effect of the Martians landing and some sort of
use of hyper-magnetism. It stops even hearing aids from working
but, oddly, has no apparent effect on automobile electrical
systems. The heat ray might seem like the precursor to the
modern laser (though in the novel it was more closely related to
a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays). But one can see
matter moving from the projector so it must be some different
principle. Also no heat ray would be likely to leave human-
shaped piles of ashes, as the ray does the first time it is used
in this film, but only the first time. The Martians have blood
so much like ours we can say it is anemic. There is no
explanation why our biology should be even remotely like theirs.
To represent a really futuristic aircraft, the film uses a flying
wing. Wrong guess. There was only one or two ever constructed
at that time and by reputation it was a terrible aircraft and a
design very quickly abandoned. Turner Classic Movies
occasionally shows a single Paramount newsreel showing the
wonders of the modern age that seems to have been the source for
the stock footage of the flying wing and the computer used in
Pal's earlier two films.
Martian biology seems oddly synchronized. All the Martians in
Los Angeles die of disease within minutes of each other. Like
Pal's WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS suffers from a
cloying emphasis on religion. The Lord's Prayer is little
protection for Uncle Matthew, but when whole bunches of humans
pray, the impression is that God stamps out the Martians, though
there is a comment to that effect in the book. It took Him a
while to get involved but He chose our side.
This was the first real special effects extravaganza of the
science fiction film. This was one of the great science fiction
films of the Fifties, by some people's estimation the greatest.
I rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale 9/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Michael Dirda's BOUND TO PLEASE: ESSAYS ON GREAT WRITERS AND
THEIR BOOKS (ISBN 0-393-05757-7) is a collection of some of his
book reviews from 1978 to 2003. One of things worth noting is
that Dirda does not review only "literary" fiction or non-
fiction. He includes an entire section of "Serious Entertainers"
(Vernon Lee, Avram Davidson, Terry Pratchett, and a biography of
Edgar Rice Burroughs), as well as an appendix of a basic reading
list of science fiction. Lest you think this is just setting up
a "ghetto" for this, I'll point out that Dirda includes Philip
Pullman's THE AMBER SPYGLASS in his "Writers of Our Time"
section.
One problem from a reader's perspective is that this is not a
good book to read from the library. There are probably close to
a hundred reviews here, and after many of them you will want to
stop, think about it, go out and find the book(s) discussed, and
read them before going on to the next review. Given the usual
lending periods of most libraries, this will not be possible.
(Of course, from the writer's perspective, this just means that
people are more likely to buy the book.) Obviously this was less
of a problem when the reviews first appeared, one a week, in the
Washington Post. (I've already added works by Fernando Pessoa,
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and Iain Sinclair, as well as
Tyndale's translation of the Bible.)
Bart D. Ehrmann's TRUTH AND FICTION IN THE DA VINCI CODE (ISBN 0-
19-518140-9) could be considered yet another book in the ever-
growing list of "Da Vinci Code" books (was it in the New Yorker
where I saw a cartoon showing a bookstore with an entire section
labeled "Da Vinci Code"?), but it is a debunker of the book, not
yet another prop to its claims. Ehrmann begins by saying that he
has no complaint with the fiction aspect of Dan Brown's book--in
fact, as fiction he likes it a lot--but he does take issue with
Brown's claim that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture,
documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."
Ehrmann addresses only the documents, but that is sufficient.
One might charitably say that perhaps Brown's claim is like that
at the beginning of the film FARGO, which says that that movie
was based on a true story--in both cases, part of the fiction
rather than the truth. Early on in the "Da Vinci" craze, Ehrmann
put together a list of ten errors in its claims, and this book
elaborates on them. These include (but are not limited to)
Brown's characters' claims that Constantine was instrumental in
deciding what gospels were included in the New Testament, that
before this there were dozens of gospels and thousands of
documents to choose from, that the Dead Sea Scrolls were
Christian in nature, and that before Constantine Jesus was not
considered divine. This is must reading for anyone interested in
the claims of the phenomenon.
H. G. Wells's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (ISBN 0-812-50515-8) was this
month's selection for our science fiction discussion. Rather
than rehash what has been said a zillion times, I'll note two
things. First, even H. G. Wells can write an ungrammatical
sentence: "No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as
sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the
idea of life upon them as impossible and improbable." What is
obviously meant is "No one gave a thought ..., [or if they did,
they] thought of them only...."
Second (and I know I'm being to sound like a broken record), some
of Wells's more bigoted comments have been bowdlerized in later
versions. In chapter 16, "The Exodus from London", the original
describes the scene after the bag of coins breaks as, "The Jew
stopped and looked at the heap," and later says that the brother
was "clutching the Jew's collar with his free hand." In later
editions, the man (who has been described as "a bearded, eagle-
faced man", is referred to only as "the man." And the "Jewess"
in chapter 22 disappeared in a major re-write of everything after
the death of the curate. (I believe that this rewrite was the
conversion of the original magazine publication to book form.)
One line which appeared almost verbatim in Jeff Wayne's musical
version was "'The chances of anything man-like on Mars are a
million to one,' he said." Wayne changed it to "'The chances of
anything coming from Mars are a million to one,' he said."
Timothy Hines keeps it precisely verbatim in his direct-to-DVD
three-hour H. G. WELLS' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. (Steven Spielberg
never mentions Mars.)
And since I have mentioned the Timothy Hines version, I might as
well say a couple of things about it. It is extremely faithful
to the novel, with almost all of the dialogue taken verbatim from
the novels. There are a couple of minor differences (the
extortionate newspaper cost is one pound, rather than four pence
or a shilling as in the book, and the brother finds the bicycle
on the street rather than taking it from a shop window).
Yes, the acting is not naturalistic. But it's the same style as
the way the Jane Seymour character acts on stage in the Edwardian
period in SOMEWHERE IN TIME. Yes, the image compositing has flaws;
so does the compositing in the Paris flashback and other scenes in
CASABLANCA. Yes, the effects look non-realistic at times, but if
you like the visual effects and style of such movies as SKY
CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE or SIN CITY, this should
present no problems. [-ecl]
[The Hines/period version is available on DVD for $8.42 at Wal-
Mart, or $10.49 from amazon.com. Considering how much movie
tickets for the Spielberg version cost, this is cheaper than two
matinee tickets. I really hope that people would give this one a
chance. -ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
-- Jules Renard