THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/16/05 -- Vol. 24, No. 12, Whole Number 1300
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:
Your Horoscope (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
On-line Mugging (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Warning: This Article Contains Spoilers
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Harry Potter (letter of comment from Daniel Kimmel)
SHADOW OF THE GIANT by Orson Scott Card
(book review by Joe Karpierz)
TRILOGY: THE WEEPING MEADOW (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
THE LIBERTINE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (ANARCHAOS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Your Horoscope (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
(Due to economy concerns we cannot provide complete horoscopes.
Your cooperation is appreciated.)
Capricorn, Virgo, Scorpio, Cancer, and Aries: In an age of
diminished expectations it is best if you learn to share with
others.
Everyone else: send us your sign and we could be doing your
horoscope next issue. One entry will be picked at random and the
lucky person will have his sign's fortune published. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: On-line Mugging (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
There is a story titled "Student held over online mugging" on the
BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4165880.stm that I
think I am supposed to understand. It begins, " Police in Japan
have arrested a Chinese student over the use of a network of
software 'bots' to steal items in an online role playing game
(RPG). Players were attacked in the game, Lineage II, and their
items were then sold for cash on auction sites."
I am afraid I have gotten out of touch with what is happening in
the world. Parts of it are understandable, but I think the world
has gotten beyond me. I am more out of touch than I thought.
Another version, at
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7865, explains a
bit more: "A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion carrying
out a virtual mugging spree by using software "bots" to beat up
and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The
stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash.
... Several players had their characters beaten and robbed of
valuable virtual objects, which could have included the Earring
of Wisdom or the Shield of Nightmare. The items were then fenced
through a Japanese auction website, according to NCsoft, which
makes Lineage II. The assailant was a character controlled by a
software bot, rather than a human player, making it unbeatable."
Well, no, maybe it doesn't explain it after all. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Warning: This Article Contains Spoilers (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Reviewing films for me is a game with certain rules. I have my
own three laws of reviewing films. (They are, I suppose, yet
another set of three laws inspired by Asimov's Three Laws of
Robotics.)
I. For the viewer who has not seen the film, do not damage
his/her enjoyment of seeing the film and where possible improve
his enjoyment.
II. Tell the truth about a film except when in conflict with the
First Law.
III. Make the review interesting for people who have seen the
film will find interesting and entertaining about the film except
when in conflict with the First or Second Law.
I have had occasions when the First Law trumped the Second one.
It is fair game to lie about a film rather than spoil a film for
the reader who has not seen it. I have also had times when
the Second Law trumped the Third Law, though I will not go into
that. Sometimes that First Law trumps the Third Law, and that is
what I will be talking about here. I want to make my writing
interesting enough to read without damaging the film experience
for those who have not seen it.
I am willing to allow a review to be less interesting than it
might be in order to avoid giving too much away. However there
are extreme cases when there is little that can be said without
really damaging the film. For example, it is a bit of a spoiler
for a film like VANILLA SKY to even give away what genre it is
in. Knowing the genre gives away a twist that comes in the plot
fairly far into the film. I felt I had to say something about
the film in my review, so I put in strong spoiler warnings. This
is a way I could say something of substance about the film to
people who have seen it and I am telling the those who have not
to read the review at their own risk.
About the time I reviewed the film I discussed the review with a
friend of mine, a film critic of some prominence. I was saying
that a film like VANILLA SKY is very hard for me to review because
anything I would say of substance would be a spoiler. I was
surprised with the vehemence of his response. He told me, "I hope
you are not one of those anti-spoiler fascists." I have to say
that I think I might just be one of them.
My principle is that regardless of what the reviewer thinks of a
film there is an unwritten rule that the reviewer should always
increase the reader's enjoyment of the film. Under no
circumstances should the reviewer actually decrease that
enjoyment. As far as revealing plot twists, I can reveal
nothing that the viewer does not know ten minutes into the film.
Frequently this turns writing a review into a puzzle. My piece
on TERMINATOR 2 was the only review of the film I read that did
not reveal that in this outing Arnold Schwarzenegger was the good
guy. It is clear from the film itself that this twist is
supposed to be a surprise. Yet even the trailer gave the secret
away. Every review I saw but my own gave the plot point away. I
had to carefully choose my words in ways that probably most people
did not notice so that it was left ambiguous in my writing which
side Arnold was on. What brings this discussion to mind, in fact,
is that I am writing this just after I reviewed the film RED EYE.
I left an almost identical ambiguity in that review to avoid
spoiling a plot twist that is early in the film but not in the
first ten minutes.
In some cases I have declined to write a review because I could
not do it without spoiling a major plot twist. LADYHAWKE is
nearly impossible to review by my principles since the main
premise is not revealed until well into the film. My principle
is that it is better to sacrifice the quality of a review or to
not write it at all than to diminish the viewers' pleasure on
seeing the film. I took notes on that film and had every
intention to write a review, but I could not find a way to
describe the basic situation without giving away the nature of
the curse. (P.S. Okay, it is twenty years late, but I will say
what I thought of the film. I think the rock score really spoiled
the nice historical feel that the production designer gave the
film. The final sequence is also too far drawn out. The
situation of the two lovers is, however, poignant. I would give
LADYHAWKE a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. There, that is out of
the way at last.) I guess taken to its extreme, I could not even
reveal if in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Klaatu is a good alien
or a bad alien. If you look at the film, the director clearly
wanted to frighten the audience and leave Klaatu's nature unknown
until he arrives at the boarding house. And the advertising
campaign tried to make the film look to be horrific.
http://tinyurl.com/adznq
It was not uncommon in 1950s science fiction films to create
suspense using ambiguities to be dissolved later in the film.
THEM! tries for the entire first act to pass for a police
procedural crime drama. Here, however, the advertising campaign
was not so discreet.
http://members.tripod.com/count_floyd/poster6/them.jpg
The call of what to reveal about a film may depend on many
things. I think the writer has to consider the intention of the
script. Then I follow the ten minute rule. If someone does not
want to hear about a plot twist from the first ten minutes, he
should not be reading reviews. However, after the first ten
minutes of the story anything spoiled by the reviewer is the
reviewer's fault.
Ironically the film distributors' interests are at odds with the
film viewers. The distributor might want the reviewer to give
away jokes from a Woody Allen comedy, for example, because the
reader might find them funny and will want to see the film. It is
a free sample. But revealing a joke may decrease the viewers'
enjoyment of the film experience itself. The distributor wants to
sell tickets and is willing to give a sample that to sell the
film. Frequently a trailer will give much too much away. THE
ISLAND is a recent example. A reviewer given special showings by
the distributor might feel he owes something to the distributor
to help in that process. I do not feel that way. I personally
don't feel I feel I owe anything to the distributor and do not
want to reveal too much just to help sell the film. I have to
keep in mind my first principles of reviewing as expressed in
those laws at the beginning of this column. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Harry Potter (letter of comment from Daniel Kimmel)
Dan Kimmel writes, "Let's see if I can answer Joe Karpierz without
giving anything away:
Yes, the death of So-and-so at the hands of Mumble-mumble seems
strange. It doesn't quite ring true. There are unanswered
questions not only about the death but about their relationship.
And I suspect that's exactly the point. I got through that scene
and saw that she had no intention of resolving the mystery in this
book, leaving me convinced that the missing pieces will be
revealed in the final volume. Why did it happen, and where are
Mumble-mumble's real loyalties? Was So-and-so a fool, or was
he/she absolutely right?
It's going to be a long two or three years (let's hope no more)
until we find out." [-dk]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SHADOW OF THE GIANT by Orson Scott Card (TOR, copyright
2005, ISBN 0-312-85758-6, 363pp, $25.95) (book review by Joe
Karpierz)
I think I got it. By Card, I think I finally got it. I've been
going on and on in the last couple of reviews in this series
about wanting to know what Card is going on about, and I think I
got it now. But more of that later.
It appears that with this book Card finally brings the "Shadow"
series of books to a close, but not without an escape hatch for
more books in the Ender universe if he wants to write them.
Quite frankly, as nicely as this thing finished up, I think it's
time to put Ender and his friends to rest and move on to other
things.
The story is still about things that the last two "Shadow" books
have been about: politics, diplomacy, and war. But added to that
are the human elements of family and love--and it's these last
two elements that make the book good. But it's just that--good,
but not great.
Here's the setup: Peter Wiggin, Ender's brother and the Hegemon
of Earth, is trying to unite the planet under one government.
Unfortunately for him, he's running into severe obstacles in the
form of former students back at the Battle School: Han Tzu, now
Emperor of China; Virlomi, now goddess of India, and Alai, the
Caliph of the Muslim people. Bean, the Giant of the title, and
his wife Petra are expecting their first child by normal means,
and have eight more elsewhere in the world due to Vorlescu's
experiments with Anton's Key that originally brought Bean into
this world. The eight embryos have been implanted in
unsuspecting women across the globe, and there is a frantic
effort to find them all before Bean dies from his condition.
And Graff and Mazer Rackham are still working behind the scenes,
pulling all the strings--or at least trying to.
But while the story is about the efforts of Peter Wiggin (he of
the Locke-Demosthenes essays, and now of the Lincoln-Martel
essays) to unify the planet in a peaceful fashion, this story,
and eventually all the rest of it, is about family and how a
family, in whatever form, will hold things together and make it
all work out. We have the Bean/Petra family, with their love and
devotion for each other and their children, all nine of them, and
how all their actions are driven by that love. We have the
Battle School graduate, and in particular the members of Ender's
Jeesh, who we find out are driven to become leaders of people
because of their particular skills that brought them to the
Battle School in the first place. And we have the parents, if
you will, of those same graduates--Graff and Rackham--who look
out for those Battle School graduates as if they were their own
children. In a sense they are. And we have the family of Petra,
concerned about her, Bean, and their children. And they play a
nice role in the end.
So really, it's all about family. And yeah, it's a little corny,
because in trying to unify the planet Peter is trying to make
everyone one big happy family. But for me, it works--just
enough. But this isn't a science fiction novel, no more than the
last two were. It has the trappings of SF, but it really isn't
SF, no matter what Card's website says it is.
In the end, I had a feeling of sadness and melancholy about it.
I also had that feeling as I was reading the novel, in part
because I realized that this was the end, and in part because I
was still resentful that Card went down this road and, in my
mind, cheapened the original Ender books by continuing with a
story that up until I got hit over the head with a lead brick I
was convinced had no point at all. I thought that what the Ender
universe had come down to was very sad. However, when it was all
said and done, it came out all right.
Card did end this series in a very proper fashion. And while
many might think that the final conversations between Peter and
Ender were unnecessary (as was the reference to Card's second
Hugo winning novel in the series, SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD), once
again I say that this was about family. It was about two family
members, in a sense, reconciling after a bitter childhood. I
thought it was a nice touch, and made the ending complete,
because I do feel it was necessary to bring Ender back just one
more time to close things off.
Again, it doesn't have to be over. Readers will see for
themselves what the escape hatch is, and realize that there's a
whole bunch more that can be written. But no more Ender books
should be written. It should end right here, while I'm still
feeling good about it, and before the series is cheapened even
more. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: TRILOGY: THE WEEPING MEADOW (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This review originally ran in the 11/19/04 issue of the MT VOID,
but is being re-run since the film is opening this week.]
CAPSULE: The first of a trilogy of films by Greek director Theo
Angelopoulos tells the story of thirty tragic years in a woman's
life. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
This film is the first film of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos's
trilogy of films simply called TRILOGY. TRILOGY: THE WEEPING
MEADOW covers the life of one woman from 1919 to the late 1940s.
During this period the Greeks flee from Odessa, are involved
conflicts between the government and trade unions, enter World War
II, and have a civil war between fascists and communists. The
film runs almost three hours in length and uses an appreciable
chunk of Greek history as a backdrop.
Eleni (Alexandra Aidini) is adopted as a refugee from Odessa when
the revolution comes. In the family that adopts her there is a
boy her own age. As the boy grows up he shows musical talent and
Eleni is attracted to him, in spite of having been raised
essentially as his sister. But when Eleni comes of age, it is the
father of the family, Spyros (Vasilis Kolovos), who arranges to
marry her. On the wedding day Eleni runs away from the ceremony
where she would marry the father and runs off with the son. The
two become fugitives from Spyros.
Angelopoulos's trademark are his very long takes, perhaps no
shorter than those by Tarkovsky or Amos Gitai, but considerably
more detailed and interesting. He will pan across showing an
entire Greek village with its work and other activities. In
another scene he gives us a visual essay of a Greek funeral on
water. In this film water is always associated with pain and
death. Since the usual connection is with the life cycle he may
be saying that pain and death are just natural functions of life.
They certainly are for Eleni. Angelopoulos says he wants his film
to be a study of the human condition running with deep emotions
and sincerity. Certainly the predominant emotion we see in this
film is pain. It is a moving document, but not likely to get a
wide release in the United States, where killing and dying are
endemic in films but pain is a rarity.
I believe the next two parts of the trilogy will continue the
story of Eleni's life, though it is hard to believe with all the
experience and anguish in this film that she still has two-thirds
of her story to go. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LIBERTINE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This review originally ran in the 04/15/05 issue of the MT VOID,
but is being re-run since the film is opening this week.]
CAPSULE: Johnny Depp plays a role unlike any he has played
before. (Doesn't he always?) This film about a great rake in
Restoration England is a literate morality tale. The writing is
good, but the presentation is indifferent. Rating: high +1 (-4
to +4) or 6/10
"Anyone can oppose. It's fun being against things. But there
comes a time when one must be for things." This is the advice
that Charles II (played by John Malkovich) gives supreme cynic
John Wilmot (Johnny Depp) in the film THE LIBERTINE, directed by
Laurence Dunmore from a literate and intelligent screenplay by
Stephen Jeffreys based on his play.
During the English Restoration period the John Wilmot, Second
Earl of Rochester, is one of the great minds of England as well
as one of its most shameless rakes. (Historically the two
capacities do seem to go hand in hand.) His father saved the
life of King Charles II and Charles admires Rochester's talent
for words, but Rochester just wants to be the worst bad boy he
can arrange to be and to squander every advantage he has. On a
bet Rochester adopts a very bad stage actress and tutors her on
his own ideas about acting. Though he really has no credentials
he manages to turn her into a very fine actress. Requested to
write a major literary work for Charles to use as a status symbol
for his country, Rochester decides to write an extreme
embarrassment for Charles. Perhaps a story that dwells so long
on one man's decadence is not the highest aspiration the film
could wish for, but the Depp performance certainly makes the film
worthwhile by itself.
In stark contrast to Michael Hoffman's RESTORATION, set in the
same period and making it look magnificent, Dunmore gives us
images of painted dandies and fops walking in streets of running
mud, muck, and sewage. The photography and language are murky
and smoky. Depp really stretches his range in the sort of role
that at one time might have gone to John Hurt. The film shows
the degradation of the character from handsome fop to . . .,
well, to a much lower state. Depp may well be the finest actor
of his generation. Certainly he is frequently claimed to be.
And this could well be regarded as one of his best roles, if the
film will get a release. I saw it at a film festival where it
was called a work in progress. It is not clear what the
producers want from the film. It could be it needs more
technical enhancement, as the photography seemed so dark. If
there were dramatic problems or production problems like editing
they were not evident. I rate the version I saw of THE LIBERTINE
a high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Donald Westlake is known primarily as a crime writer, tending
toward the farcical. He has also written a series of humorous
science fiction stories, published in "Playboy" and available at
http://www.donaldwestlake.com/wks_ss6_intro.html. (I reviewed
these in the 01/16/04 issue of the MT VOID.) However, ANARCHAOS
(ISBN 0-7278-6096-8) is anything but humorous. (It was actually
written in 1967, under the pseudonym Curt Clark.) Rolf Malone,
the protagonist of the novel (one hesitates to call him a hero),
goes to a planet to find out what happened to his brother. This
eponymous planet is politically an anarchy, and driven in large
part by corporate greed. Malone begins his stay there by
murdering the taxi driver he hires and stealing his taxi. This
behavior is perfectly legal (or at least not illegal). This novel
is political science fiction, and somewhat more realistic than a
lot of that genre, though I am still not convinced that such a
total anarchy would survive. Then again, I suspect it is not all
that different from the West before the Army and the lawmen moved
in. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I like long walks, especially when they
are taken by people who annoy me.
-- Noel Coward