THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/02/06 -- Vol. 24, No. 49, Whole Number 1337
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:
Neat Sites
Working in New Jersey, Living in Hawai'i (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
THE DA VINCI CODE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (CLASSIC MYSTERY STORIES; THE MAN IN
THE HIGH CASTLE; MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM HAWAII;
and I, CLAUDIUS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Neat Sites
http://www.literature-map.com/
If you read author A, who else will you like?
http://interact10ways.com/usa/information_interactive.htm
Infinite-depth photo montage
===================================================================
TOPIC: Working in New Jersey, Living in Hawai'i (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
I am recently back from my first trip to Hawai'i. I guess the
general opinion is that this Hawai'i is a paradise. It is the
place that a lot of people really want to live. Once they come
to those islands they want to stay. I can see where they get
that attitude. Some of Hawai'i is spectacularly beautiful.
We were hearing about it when we landed on Hawai'i. Side comment
here: Landing on Hawai'i is not the same thing as landing in
Hawai'i. Hawai'i is an archipelago. It is made up of many
islands, but over two-thirds of its landmass is a single island
called Hawai'i. Sometimes to avoid confusion they call it just
"the Big Island." Landing on Hawai'i is landing on the big
island.
Anyway we had landed on the Big Island and were being taken to
our rental car by the car rental shuttle. When the driver heard
this was our first time he said he had a warning for us. He came
to Hawai'i thirty years earlier for an eleven-day vacation and
never left. Never left. I could interpret his warning two ways.
One is that you may be tempted by the beauty of Hawai'i to just
never leave. Or he might have been warning us that if we give in
to a temptation to stay on the island we might end up doing
something like driving an airport shuttle. I did not ask him to
explain which he meant.
Not far from where we visited on Maui is an area accessible only
by four-wheel drive and by helicopter. There are the homes of
some wealthy reclusive celebrities like Carol Burnett, Kris
Kristofferson, George Harrison, and Jim Nabors. I guess it is
nice to live in a place of beauty, but do they really notice that
beauty after the first month? After that I would think you would
look at these homes as places of confinement. You can interact
with people only in limited ways. The Internet might help, I
guess, but it would run slowly because you would not have
landlines. I doubt you even have telephone. There is too much
speed-of-light delay on satellite communications. It would be
bad enough to be a bird in a gilded cage, it would be worse to
realize you built that cage at huge expense.
I know that back when I was working for Bell Laboratories in New
Jersey a lot of people had the dream that they could keep their
job and still live in some place exotic like an island paradise.
The dream was that telecommuting would advance to the point that
would be possible. Back when we were working there, telecommuting
was really a new adventure. People could work from their homes.
People would not even have to live in the same state as their
employers. Technology was actually making things better for the
workers. And unlike most of our technological dreams gradually
telecommuting really did became a reality.
We watched as we passed the milestones of the telecommuting
capability. First there were connection to home PCs. You could
be twenty miles from the company and still doing your work. You
did not have to come to the building to get work done on the
weekends. It sounded good, but at the same time we knew that if
it came about we would probably be expected to work on weekends.
Well, it was worth the price. Then a few technical visionaries
tried to prove you actually could live in another state and do
the same work. And, yes, they proved their point. The
technology really was good enough that the people doing the work
could live places like Florida and Arizona. Wow! Things were
REALLY getting better. And now the dream has actually become a
reality. People are working for technology companies in New
Jersey while they really are living in exotic places like
Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay, and New Delhi. And a lot of the
people I knew don't have to come in to work at all. Sadly most
of the people who looked forward to what telecommuting would do
no longer work for Bell Laboratories. But that also is the power
of this technology. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE DA VINCI CODE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: What appears to be a ritual murder in the Louvre leads
to the discovery of secrets that could change our concept of two
millennia of history. For once we have a thriller that is 90%
idea and 10% action rather than the other way around. Ron Howard
directs the film adaptation of Dan Brown's international
bestseller from a script by Akiva Goldsman. Rating: +2 (-4 to
+4) or 7/10
Okay, I admit it. This film was my first contact with the story
that has become a small industry unto itself. I did not read the
novel and was only somewhat knowledgeable about the speculations
in Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh's book HOLY
BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL. This novel was based on ideas or similar
ideas to ones in that supposedly non-fiction book. I came to
this film fresh.
I cannot comment on how likely are the historical suggestions in
this film, but what a pleasure it is for me to have a film based
so heavily on interesting historical speculation. Today the
majority of film thrillers are action thrillers. This is a film
with some action, but the action is not a major part of the film.
Much of the screen-time is devoted to explanations. That can
make the film dull, and perhaps some viewers will find these
explanations uninteresting, but that was not how I found them,
and they seem to have enthralled readers of the book. The action
scenes are rather prosaic. It is the wordy parts of the film
that make the film that are the attraction. The ideas are really
are engaging even if not entirely convincing. There is violence
in the film but we only see it really closely in one scene and
that is voluntary self-inflicted masochistic violence. The
kiddies will know not to do this at home.
Tom Hanks plays Robert Langdon, Dan Brown's Harvard professor of
symbology and sometime detective. Langdon is asked consult on a
murder case. He has to examine the body of a murdered colleague
and then finds out that he is the prime suspect in the murder.
Soon he is on the run, accompanied by Sophie Neveu (played by
Audrey Tautou), a French police officer. The motive for the
murder does not just have its roots in history, it has its roots
all over the history of the last 2000 years with conspiracies and
cover-ups in several different eras. To investigate, the two
people have to solve what turn out to be a string of puzzles and
codes. Each puzzle will leave the two investigators high and dry
if the correct answer is not found. Along the way the two are
joined by Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), a scholar of
religious history. At their heels is Police Captain Fache (Jean
Reno). Also on their trail is Silas (Paul Bettany), an albino
assassin who is the cat’s-paw of the sinister Bishop Sringarosa
(Alfred Molina). This film has a very twisty plot, which makes
it more unfortunate that the biggest plot twists of the story are
telegraphed and spoiled by scenes early in the film.
THE DA VINCI CODE is shot in a very dark film noir style. Much
of the photography is intentionally murky. The film is dotted
with characters' visualizations of historic events, shot in a
different style reminiscent of visualizations from CSI. These
flashback (way back) add a nice texture to a film that involves
so many incidents of the distant past.
THE DA VINCI CODE is a thriller with some intelligence and some
historical detail of moot reliability. But it is nice to have a
hero who relies on his brain rather than his fist or a gun. Like
INSIDE MAN, the other intelligent thriller this year, it relies
primarily on ideas and dialog rather than explosions and chases.
I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
There have been a number of objections to this film claiming that
it defames either the Catholic Church or the related organization
Opus Dei. It is hard to support either charge from the screen
adaptation itself. In the film neither group is said to sanction
the villains or their actions. It does claim that certain
aspects of Church doctrine are wrong. But people have made that
claim at least since the time of Martin Luther. I cannot see
that much harm will be done by a film suggesting that in its own
fantasy world that doctrine is mistaken. Some members of the
Church have taken exception to the film, which is their right.
But I do not blame the film for that.
Last question to ponder: In the painting, where is the twelfth
male disciple? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The X-Men face off against the Brotherhood of Mutants in
a fracas over a government-sponsored cure for mutant-ness. Are
mutants going to savor their special unique natures or are they
going to try to be like the "normal" population. It could be an
intriguing idea, but the film does not develop the issue in any
detail. And this third installment in the series does not stand
well on its own as a film. Viewers who, like me, have only
passing knowledge of the X-Men will find that they may be at
rather a disadvantage. Brett Ratner directs. Rating: high +1
(-4 to +4) or 6/10
I frequently identify some of my reviews that the reader should
take with a grain of salt for one reason or another. Be aware
reading this review that I have not been a regular comic book
reader since I was in junior high. Sorry, but it is a fact.
Half the audience I saw this film with could recognize all the
superheroes and knew all their special powers and their
histories. At my level of knowledge I am thinking to myself
things like, "Oh, look, that guy has wings." I did see the two
previous films in the series, but those were six and three years
ago. But, hey, I do get some points because I was the only one
in my row who recognized Stan Lee's cameo appearance (as the guy
with the water hose).
The story starts back in the days that Professor Charles Xavier
(played by Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Eric Lensherr (Ian
McKellen)) were still good buddies and trying to find and
recruit super-mutants to their cause. They identify Jean Grey--
later Phoenix (played as an adult by a statuesque but static
Famke Janssen)--as a promising telekinetic.
These mutants find all sorts of problems fitting in and finding
acceptance in society. For example, the aforementioned guy with
the wings is Warren Worthington III (Ben Foster) who has a hard
time accepting his mutation and tries to pluck his wings. His
father Warren Worthington II (Michael Murphy) cannot accept his
son's differences either, and he will eventually discover a
process to make mutants what society considers normal. But do
the mutants want this capability to make themselves like other
people, or do they accept what they are already? (Can you see a
parallel to homosexuality? Everyone else can.) This is the
issue that divides the X-Men from the Brotherhood of Mutants.
The problem with the script by Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg is that
rather than looking at the question in any depth, it simply
repeats the question over and over in the spaces between the
film's action scenes. The failure to explore this issue or any
relevant issue in any completeness makes the film a self-
important but superficial exercise with just a hint of
pretentiousness.
With the government offering mutants a path to normality we see
for the first time that there are lots of mutants who have been
hiding super-powers across the country. Where they have been all
this time, and where the mutants in other countries are is left
to speculation. Maybe there are tens of thousands of super-
mutants in this country. There certainly were lots in this film.
Do you want to get an idea how many action heroes were needed for
this one film? Kelsey Grammer gets to play a mutant super-action
hero. Kelsey Grammer, for gosh sakes! How desperate do you have
to be to have Kelsey Grammer playing an action hero? This film
has more little subplots than Wolverine can swing an adamantine
steel claw at. There are love-triangles; there are mutants who
want to leave Dr. Xavier's mutant school. The list goes on.
There seem to be plenty of inconsistencies in the film.
Apparently mutant powers come from a special mutated gene.
Presumably it causes changes in the person who has this mutation
by the usual ways a gene works. Yet the effects, no matter what
they were, can be totally nullified in seconds by contact with a
chemical or even the touch of a hand. Science can't even cure a
headache that fast. It seems to be more magic than science.
The mutant Juggernaut seems to be a character who can build up
great momentum so he can slam through walls. Yet he jumps onto a
floor without ever having any ill-effects on the floor. Many
cars are stuck on a bridge in daylight. They are still there on
the bridge after night falls, but by then someone seems to have
visited each car and turned on the headlights.
Hey, this is as good a place as any to say that I like the Marvel
Comics Logo at the beginning of each Marvel Comics film. And it
makes more sense than the leaky gun-barrel that we see at the
beginning of each James Bond film.
Those who, like me, cannot immediately remember a wealth of data
about Marvel Comic heroes will still enjoy some flash and
excitement to watch here, but will frequently realize that there
must be more going on than meets the eye. I rate X-MEN: THE LAST
STAND a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. But where do they
get these titles? A last stand is some group of people fighting
to the last person like Custer at the Little Bighorn or the
Spartans at Thermopylae. There is no "last stand" in this film.
===================================================================
TOPIC: SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In his first documentary Sydney Pollak looks at his
friend Frank Gehry, one of the world's most esteemed architects.
Pollak takes the pose of knowing nothing about architecture so
the viewer can learn along with him in sort of a FRANK GEHRY AND
ARCHITECTURE FOR DUMMIES. A number of interesting questions go
unasked and some only unanswered, but what is there is still more
that worthwhile. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Sydney Pollak is one of the film industry's most respected
filmmakers, having directed films going back to THE SLENDER
THREAD and THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY and including TOOTSIE.
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY is his first documentary. His subject
matter is his longtime friend Frank Gehry, perhaps the most
unorthodox and artistic architect working today. Gehry is
fascinated by shape and form and his buildings frequently have
shapes that seem to appear nowhere else in the world. In fact,
from the documentary he seems to be taking shapes that are from
much simpler objects. He makes models of buildings out of
cardboard. When the cardboard bends due to pressure from his
hand or gravity, the shape it takes on is fascinating to Gehry.
He will fashion the same accidental shape out of concrete and
metal. The Gehry Tower in Hanover, Germany, looks like a paper
tower perpetually in the process of collapsing. Others look like
they were cut with scissors from giant sheets of aluminum and
steel by a much more enormous hand. In this way a Gehry building
looks like no other architect's work. Pollak's approach for the
film is to say that he knows nothing about architecture, perhaps
to bring out aspects of Gehry for the uninformed. But ironically
at the same time he claims that Gehry is a very great architect.
His pose casts doubt on that flattering judgement.
Where this film falls down, as do other documentaries about
architects such as MY ARCHITECT and MY FATHER, THE GENIUS is that
the architect's aesthetic remains mysterious. When Gehry points
to a piece on one of his cardboard models and says, "the piece
has to be made more grumpy" the viewer has only a vague idea of
what he means. Perhaps Gehry knows no more what he means. Gehry
will decide that a piece of cardboard that is helping him
visualize a future shape on a building needs eight fan-folds
rather than just four. But we never get into his mind to know
why. His aesthetic remains unexplained, and is perhaps
unexplainable. He will say that some feature of a building that
it looks "so stupid-looking it's great." He talks about how
insecure he is whenever he starts a new project and is at the
"dangerous point of beginning."
Gehry's style is as unique as it is beautiful, but for at least
some of his works one has the feeling they must be hellish to
maintain or even to use. It is fine, for example, to have curved
walls, but office furniture tends to assume flat walls that it
can rest against. A curved wall will waste the space. Perhaps
there are just some personalities that are not ready for avant-
garde architecture.
While there is much that is unexplained, this film makes the work
of this great architect seem comprehensible even if the aesthetic
is elusive. Certainly this film makes for an entertaining and
frequently enlightening experience. I rate it a low +2 on the -4
to +4 scale or 7/10.
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY was made for the Public Broadcast
System's American Masters series and should air in the fall of
2006. For more information about Frank Gehry including pictures,
a list of his most famous buildings, and his awards, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
CLASSIC MYSTERY STORIES edited by Douglas G. Greene (ISBN 0-486-
40881-7) is an anthology of thirteen detective stories from 1841
through 1920 (not coincidentally, just about the most recent year
for works to have passed into the public domain). Some may be
overly familiar (Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue", for example, but most are far less well known, by such
authors as Baroness Orczy, Susan Glaspell, And Rodrigues
Ottolengui. Even the better-known authors are represented by
less familiar stories; for example, Jacques Futrelle's story is
*not* "The Problem of Cell 13", but "The Phantom Motor". While I
suspect aficionados of this era's detective fiction will be
familiar with a lot of these stories, they are a good
introduction and overview for the reader wanting to expand their
range from just post-World War II works. (And since it is a
Dover Thrift Edition, it is a very cheap way to do it.)
Our science fiction group read Philip K. Dick's classic alternate
history, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (ISBN 0-679-74067-8). Some
things became more meaningful for me after our Hawaiian trip,
such as references to the Wyndham-Matson shipping line. But the
I Ching references are still something I assume Dick got right,
because I am not so familiar with it that I can recognize the
hexagrams. The one or two I looked up were accurate, but more
importantly, Dick relied heavily on the I Ching in writing the
book (making one of the characters semi-autobiographical in that
regrad anyway). Characters use both the yarrow sticks and the
coins, though the coins are much easier to use. The alternate
history aspect was very unusual at the time, but people reading
it now may well ask what the fuss is about. And Dick has decided
to show the Japanese influence on society by having his
characters talk and think in the stereotypical pidgin English
spoken by Japanese characters of the time ("Essential to avoid
politics. ... Yet they might arise. ...Mr. Baynes, sir, they
say Herr Boormann is quite ill. That a new Reichs Chancellor
will be chosen by the Partei this autumn. Rumor only? So much
secrecy, alas, between Pacific and Reich."). One could argue, I
suppose, that if the Japanese were the conquerors, they would not
feel any need to learn perfect English (did the British learn
Hindi in India?), but why would the American characters be
talking and thinking like this?
We got somewhat side-tracked in a discussion of what the title
"The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" (the title of the book within the
book) is supposed to mean. It comes from Ecclesiastes 12:5, but
even that source seems to have as many interpretations as there
are interpreters.
The entire verse reads in the King James Version as "Also when
they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in
the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper
shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his
long home, and the mourners go about the streets;"
The one phrase is variously rendered as:
ASV/KJV/WBS/WEB: the grasshopper shall be a burden
BBE: the least thing is a weight
DBY: the grasshopper is a burden
JPS: the grasshopper shall drag itself along
YLT: the grasshopper is become a burden
(The Vulgate refers to "lucusta", or locust, but everyone
translates it as grasshopper.)
Everyone agree that the verse as a whole, refers to old age, but
the precise meaning of this phrase is unclear. The Geneva Study
Bible annotates the phrase as "They will be able to bear
nothing." Wesley's Notes says, "They cannot endure the least
burden, being indeed a burden to themselves." Another commentator
says that the grasshopper is used as a metaphor because it
resembles a man on crutches.
Of course, none of this got us any closer to what this meant as
the book title, unless it is the notion just as even a small a
thing as a grasshopper can be impossible to carry, so even the
smallest change in reality may be impossible to accomplish.
While in Hawai`i, I picked up a copy of MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS FROM
HAWAII (edited by A. Grove Day, ISBN 0-8248-0288-8). There have
been many discussions about Twain's supposed racism in THE
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but it is fairly clear in this--a
non-fiction work--that he has many of the racist attitudes of his
time, regarding not just the Hawaiians, but also the Chinese and
other races. In fairness, one should point out that he is pretty
negative on a lot of white men as well, going back in Hawaiian
history as far as Captain Cook--which is about as far back as one
can go in that archipelago's written history.
I found a couple of Twain's turns of phrase particularly timely,
though. In his letter of May 23, 1866, he is describing the
sorts of men who serve in legislatures, and says, "Few men of
first-class ability can afford to let their affairs go to ruin
while they fool away their time in legislatures for months on a
stretch. . . . But your chattering, one-horse village lawyer
likes it, and your solemn ass from the cow counties, who don't
know the Constitution from the Lord's Prayer, enjoys it, and
these you will always find in the assembly." And later he
describes a debate on a motion as "wandering further and further
from the question before the House, and quacking about stuff that
had no more to do with the subject under discussion than the
Decalogue has got to do with the Declaration of Independence."
These days, one might claim that a lot of politicians seem to be
suffering from these same confusions.
Our original discussion group read I, CLAUDIUS: FROM THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS, BORN 10 B.C., MURDERED AND
DEIFIED A.D. 54 by Robert Graves (ISBN 0-679-72477-X). I had to
keep reminding myself that this was a novel. Yes, it was
strongly based on Suetonius and other historical sources, but
there is a lot of fiction and conjecture in it as well, so it
would be a mistake to believe everything in it was true. That
Graves manages to write in such a way as to have a work of
fiction appear to be a genuine historical memoir of the Roman Era
is quite an accomplishment. This (and its companion/sequel,
CLAUDIUS THE GOD, were first published in 1934, and probably
inspired such later writers as Gore Vidal (*) and others who
write novels that appear to be almost factual histories.
Considering the enormous popularity of I, CLAUDIUS, it is ironic
that (according to Wikipedia), "Graves later professed a dislike
for the books and their popularity. He claimed that they were
written only from financial need on a strict deadline."
(*) At a continuing education class a couple of years ago, the
professor presented as fact a claim made in Vidal's BURR that was
actually something that Vidal made up. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Animals are such agreeable friends,
they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
-- George Eliot