THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/23/06 -- Vol. 24, No. 52, Whole Number 1340
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:
Lunacon Report Available
Inductees to the RHOF Announced (pointer by Mark R. Leeper)
Are We Helping the Wrong Students? (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Captain Marvel (letter of comment by Charles S. Harris)
Various Topics (letter of comment by Chris Garcia)
THE LAKE HOUSE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE HIDDEN BLADE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (DARK SINS, DARK DREAMS;
DARWIN FOR BEGINNERS; IN HIGH PLACES;
"Gor" novels) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Lunacon Report Available
Evelyn's Lunacon report is available at
http://fanac.org/Other_Cons/LunaCon/m06-rpt.html.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Inductees to the RHOF Announced (pointer by Mark R. Leeper)
On June 21 Carnegie Mellon announced this year's inductees to the
Robot Hall of Fame. The lucky new inductees this year include the
ever-popular Maria of METROPOLIS, Gort from THE DAY THE EARTH
STOOD STILL, and David from A.I. Also included in the list were
real the toy robot Aibo and the industrial robot Scara. It is
heart-warming to see the first three robots make the list in spite
of being reality-impaired.
Already the most controversial inductee is Gort. He was triply a
dark horse being reality-impaired, of foreign origin, and having
a questionable past of having actually threatened a reduction of
Earth to cinders. Those differences have apparently been patched
up and are now considered past history. In fact some analysts
suggest that Gort's induction at the current moment represents a
tacit endorsement of his anti-nuclear policies in the light of
ineffectual responses to recent events in Iran and North Korea.
Officials at Carnegie Mellon could not be reached for comment
because I did not have a phone number. It has been noted that
previous foreign inductees have at least been in the
non-threatening position by being both from a greatly distant
galaxy and from a remote period in the past. One previous
inductee was from the future is of "mixed" origin.
Controversy extends to other choices. Members of the Dewey
Appreciation Society expressed disappointment that their candidate
has been overlooked but are optimistic that he will be inducted in
2007. Also there has been some questioning as to the
appropriateness of inducting of David. A recount has been
suggested on the grounds that his film, A.I., bored the bejeezus
out of most of the audience.
A complete list of current and previous inductees may be found at
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=robot+hall+of+fame.
[-mrl]
[I'll add that the fictional robots inducted, both this year and
in the past, have all been from films or television. Somehow,
Asimov's great robotic creation, R. Daneel Olivaw, has been
completely overlooked. -ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Are We Helping the Wrong Students? (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
The "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 is a program to go in and
improve the performance of our schools by setting minimum
standards that all the students, including the very slowest have
to meet. The schools are accountable for getting every student
up to certain standard levels of academic accomplishment. When I
first heard about it I thought it was a good idea. Now I am not
so sure. I am starting to wonder if putting a lot of our funding
into helping the poorest students is really what is best for the
country. I want to explore this idea, somewhat by playing Devil's
Advocate.
Over the last two years I have been tutoring and teaching
mathematics. Some that I am teaching are failing students who
want to pass. Some are C-students who want to be B-students.
The B-students want to be A-students. I have one student who is
young (eleven years old) and bright to whom I am introducing the
ideas of more advanced mathematics in much the same way I would
have liked to been introduced to them.
There is a whole spectrum of students, of course. There are the
bright, the normal, and the slow. Most of the teaching resource
gets spread roughly evenly over these groups. What extra
resource is available to school systems seems traditionally to
have gone to give additional help to the slow. That appears even
more true of late with the philosophy of testing students and
making sure that all of them get to a certain minimal level. This
means concentrating on the poorer students. The normal and the
bright are treated almost identically. The philosophy may be that
the brighter students can educate themselves if they want to go
beyond what is taught. The bright may be put into more advanced
classes. But this costs very little in the way of resource since
those classes may already being taught for the older students.
The fact that students are taking more advanced courses means
vacant seats in less advanced courses. That means fewer sections
of classes on the lower level have to be taught and this may
mostly pay for their seats in the more advanced classes.
The total expense for the brighter students comes in the creating
of one or two high-end courses that are mostly for advanced
seniors. In my case I was relieved of my high school biology
requirement and instead took Algebra II at the same time I took
Geometry so that I could catch up to students a year ahead of me
in classes that were already scheduled. I vacated a seat in
Biology and took up one extra seat in Algebra. As a sophomore I
was in with juniors. As a junior I was n with seniors. As a
senior I took Advanced Placement Calculus. There was little
expense involved to the school. Then the bright students in
senior year took AP Calculus. Someone had to teach that class,
but fewer teachers were needed on a lower level so it was not much
additional expense to the school to offer one or two college-level
classes. Our school system's investment in their bright
mathematics students was to teach one or two additional courses
and maybe to pay for the bus transportation for the math team. I
believe that was really about it. One or two teachers volunteered
to help with the mathematics club, but I don't think they were
paid extra for that.
I was not aware of it at the time, but school system had to put a
lot more resource into helping the slow and the troublesome
students. You almost would expect that. To paraphrase Tolstoy,
the good students all get good grades in much the same way. The
problem students are all difficult in different ways. But the
lower achievers' frequently were discipline problems also and
were not very dedicated to learning.
Putting a lot of the educational resource into the poorer
students makes sense in some ways. They seem to be the students
who need the most help and helping them is the compassionate
thing to do. On the local level that is a reasonable policy. On
the global level giving attention to them and nearly neglecting
the bright students is disastrous. Other countries do a lot more
than we do to nurture their best and brightest students. Much
more than we wanted to admit until a few recent press observations
we are losing our technological edge to China, Japan, and India.
Asia is a rising technological giant and Europe and the United
States simply are not. More and more we are keeping the
management jobs in this country while outsourcing technical work
to Asia.
I suppose it could be argued that we have more management
intelligence here, but I think no country has management that on
the whole is any better than mediocre when it comes to taking the
long view. There is not room here to discuss the question of how
American management is being characterized by a general tide of
unprofessional behavior, selfishness, greed, dishonesty, and--as
with the case of management from companies like Enron--outright
criminality. For a while these people in Asia will be working for
the managers of American companies. It will not be long before
they do not need American management and their domestic
corporations will be as successful as ours are. Meanwhile
American companies are investing less and less in research,
mortgaging the future for near-term profits. Less every year the
United States is the place where pure research is done. We just
no longer have the pool of talent to do it. And that comes very
much out of our unwillingness to do very much for the brightest
students. We need to hold onto the technological edge that we are
currently squandering. And that means developing and nurturing
the most promising students. Next week I will make some
suggestions how that might be done. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Captain Marvel (letter of comment by Charles S. Harris)
In response to Evelyn’s comments on Captain Marvel in her column
in the 06/19/06 issue of the MT VOID, where she says, “the
original Captain Marvel takes on both the strength of Hercules
and the wisdom of Solomon, while the more recent version acquires
the strength of Hercules but *not* the wisdom of Solomon-his
wisdom becomes merely an external voice giving advice.,”
Charlie Harris writes, “Huh? Does the new Captain Marvel shout
"HAZAM!"??” [-csh]
Evelyn responds, "Actually, in DC Comics he still says 'Shazam!',
but the Amalgam Comics Captain Marvel says, 'Kree!' Why there are
two different super-heroes with the same name remains a mystery
to me." [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Various Topics (letter of comment by Chris Garcia)
Chris Garcia writes on various topics:
Chris: "I was looking through some of the stuff on FANAC.org and
came across MT VOID. I am a film nut and seeing that the opening
article was on AFI's latest list forced me to start reading."
Mark: "I consider myself a film nut also. You can see that from
http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/author-1309/. All reviews I
write show up in the VOID."
Chris: "First off, I love the AFI, I think they're great people
and they've worked with me and some of the fests I work for over
the years. I think most of the lists they put out are pure crap
though (except they did some early ones like 'The Best Film Noirs'
that were great but seldom publicized)."
Mark: "I think they just represent a vote of the members.
Chris: "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was a mess. I will say that the scene
with the telegram and no dialogue was great film making, something
that I thought Spielberg had forgotten about. It's so simple and
wonderfully done. I wasn't much moved by the battle scenes, but
that's just me. I must admit that the most recent time I saw it,
which soured me on it the most, was right after having sat through
THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR about Desmond Doss that really moved
me."
Mark: "Well, I think what I liked about RYAN was that we all have
read that war is hell, but this film shows you that it is really
true. It is intended to shock."
Chris: "I can't quibble with your comments on BREAKING AWAY,
GRAPES OF WRATH or MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, though I think there's
something in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET to be admired by the younger
generation. You can replace BREAKING AWAY with PRIDE OF THE
YANKEES, GRAPES OF WRATH with HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, and MIRACLE
ON 34TH STREET with IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and I think the list
gets much better."
Mark: "PRIDE OF THE YANKEES does not do much for me. For me the
best sports film is THE NATURAL. Number 2 is a long way back."
Chris: "ET is a sham. It's a piece of schmaltz that doesn't
deserve the love it received. I'm not sure if there's a SF film
that would fit inspirational."
Mark: "ET gets a bad rap. But I think it is a very good kids'
film. It is supposed to capture kids' imaginations and then give
them an emotional ride. I think there were a lot of adults who
got caught up in the story and then got angry when they realized
that Spielberg made them feel sorry for a piece of plastic."
Chris: "To be fair to Rocky, it wasn't a great film, but damn if
it didn't give theatre-goers of the day a hell of a time. I can
remember my Dad telling me that people were reacting to it like it
was an actual Ali boxing match. Watching it today, I think there
is a certain inspiration to be drawn, but then again, I love
boxing."
Mark: "I think I reacted to it like I would an actual Ali boxing
match. Each would have me rooting for the experience to end.
Sorry, I am pretty much immune to sport-oriented excitement."
Chris: "SCHINDLER'S LIST is one of those movies that I use for
comedy all too often."
Mark: "I am not sure I want to know what you mean by that."
Chris: "I hate TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but I can't deny that it's
an inspirational film.
Mark: "I like it very much."
Chris: "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE shouldn't be #1."
Mark: "It would not have been for me."
Chris: "There are any number of Westerns that deserve it (HIGH
NOON, perhaps?) but I think it should be on the list, just lower."
Mark: "HIGH NOON inspirational? I like the film, but I can't
imagine what it should inspire. It is rather bleak and
misanthropic."
Chris: "In other comments, I thought LINT was delightful. I do a
lot of that fake Non-Fiction stuff myself and LINT did it so well
it just made me smile. As a giant film fan, I'm making my run to
the local seller to buy ASIMOV'S."
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LAKE HOUSE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A man from 2004 and a woman from 2006 are in mail
communication through a magic mailbox outside the same house that
each is living in his or her respective year. It could be a good
idea, but the fantasy is leaden and refuses to play by the rules
it itself set up. So it is not very good as a fantasy and it
really does not work as a romance. Alejandro Agresti directs a
screenplay by David Auburn based on the Korean film SIWORAE (IL
MARE). Rating: +0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
In vampire films there are certain rules defining a vampire's
powers and limitations. They can vary from one vampire story to
the next, but within a single story the rules must be logical and
consistent. Rules are very important in a fantasy film. A world
in which just about anything can happen is a world in which
nothing that happens much matters. It is hard to have much of an
emotional investment in such a fantasy world. It has been noted
that fantasy has to make more sense than the real world does. In
writing a fantasy story the writer has to know at the beginning
what the rules are of this world. It is evident that that was
not done with THE LAKE HOUSE and the film suffers badly as a
result.
Sandra Bullock plays Chicago doctor Kate Forster who is moving
out of the title house in 2006 and leaves mail for the next
tenant in the mailbox. (Ironically, no postman ever seems to
come near this mailbox in the whole course of the film.) Keanu
Reeves plays Alex Wyler, a successful architect who is moving
into the house and finds the note. The strange thing is that he
is moving in 2004. The mailbox seems to be a sort of time
portal. He is at first confused because he knows there had been
no previous tenant. In addition, his mail seems to be coming
from someone who does not know the correct date. After they meet
cute (but weird) they come to be attracted to each other through
their correspondence, but can they actually meet? There is a
side question of whether Alex can reconcile with his cold and
distant father, a world-famous architect.
My problem with the script is that even if you accept the premise
much of what you see does not make sense. They seem to have
conversations "in real time." Kate and Alex seem to have rapid
back and forth conversations, in one case during a tour of
Chicago architecture. Much of the tension comes from the
question of whether the two can find each other in spite of the
two-year delay. It is hard to believe that in this age of easy
information a successful doctor cannot find out about a
successful architect from the same city. Alex also never seems
to realize the possibilities and value of getting information
from two years in the future. Kate never tells him about the
Indian Ocean Tsunami, for example. Nor does she mention
Hurricane Katrina. It is a little hard to believe she would not
mention events that important. Even as a doctor pledged to same
lives she just says dreamily that the world has not changed much
in those two years, but of course it had. Having her so
disinterested makes her sound very self-absorbed.
Other little things bothered me about the plot. Probably no
restaurant would take a reservation two years in advance. The
plot has a lot of coincidence and frequently telegraphs upcoming
surprises. The screenplay is by David Auburn, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright of PROOF (and who my family assures me
is a remote cousin of mine).
This film is being called a reunion of Keanu Reeves and Sandra
Bullock who co-starred in SPEED. Given that they have only a few
scenes together they do not have much time for screen chemistry.
Even when they are together Reeves seems a little remote.
Shohreh Aghdashloo, best known for her Oscar-nominated role in
THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, is notable as a co-worker of Kate's.
THE LAKE HOUSE is nice and soft and romantic but has no logic or
even intelligence whatsoever. I rate it a 0 on the -4 to +4
scale or 4/10.
Two more minor complaints: Hollywood scriptwriters seem to know
about only a handful of professions. Here the main characters
are an architect and a doctor. Movies have lots of doctors and
quite a few architects. How about an asphalt layer or an
airplane baggage handler? Most professions never show up in
films.
Also Kate lives at 1620 Racine. Why are so many film addresses
16-something? In one week I saw three addresses that were in
some 1600 block. Sean Connery in the UNTOUCHABLES lived at 1634
Racine, just a few doors down from where Kate would supposedly
live. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE HIDDEN BLADE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In Japan 1861 a minor samurai is torn between his
responsibility, his desires, and his morality. With this film
Yōji Yamada follows up his TWILIGHT SAMURAI, also set in the mid-
19th Century against the backdrop of the dying order of Shoguns
and Samurai. It is a story this story of a man who must choose
between his duty and what he thinks is right. The film is less
one of bloody martial arts and more a study of a personal
conflict in a society at once overly ordered and rapidly
changing. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Yōji Yamada's TWILIGHT SAMURAI won a host of awards from the
Japanese Academy and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best
Foreign film. He continues to adapt Shuuhei Fujisawa's stories
with another film about conflicting values in a 19th Century
Japan being ripped apart by two factions, those wanting to
continue with the old Bushido Samurai values and those wanting to
modernize the country to survive in the modern world. As one
character laments, "Wars are now won by expensive guns." The
conflict will be familiar to those who saw the film THE LAST
SAMURAI. Yamada's theme is one common in Japanese film, the
dissonance between private morality and public duty, particularly
in this time of change.
Change was perhaps more frightening in the outwardly well-ordered
historical Japan than in any other culture. This was very much a
society in which everybody was expected to be in his place and
his duty. The greatest virtue was absolute loyalty and obedience
to those above in the pecking order. Everybody in the society
had to be obedient at a level that we tend to associate only with
our military. Perhaps the most poignant scene of THE HIDDEN
BLADE has a servant girl telling a samurai that he terrified her
when she first saw him. Why? He carried a sword, and being of
the samurai class he had the right to use it against her if she
displeased him. The samurai is bewildered because though he knew
he had that power over her, he also knew that few samurai would
ever use that right. This is a story in which loyalty to friends
and love is balanced against duty in a culture in which
disobedience can be a capital crime.
Munezo Katagiri (played by Masatoshi Nagase) was an expert
swordsman as was Yaichiro Hazama (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) who learned
from the same master swordsman. It was never clear whether
Katagiri or Hazama was the better swordsman. It may sound at
this point like this will be a standard martial arts plot, but
there is more to this story. As the film opens Hazama is being
posted to Edo (later to be called Tokyo). Katagiri appears to be
not so lucky. He will remain in a backwater town in northeast
Japan and his life and his career will stagnate over the next
three years. Katagiri would remain loyal to the code of the
samurai if he could, but he and the military are being commanded
to learn about the European ways of fighting with guns and
artillery, a less honorable way of fighting. Katagiri does not
really mind staying in the town because he loves his family's
servant Kie (Takako Matsu), a beautiful country girl. Sadly,
marriage is out of the question with a woman of lower caste.
Three years later the beautiful Kie is married to a merchant
whose family's abuse is slowly killing Kie. What to do about Kie
is the first of several moral decisions he will have to make.
Meanwhile, the local defense forces are getting a crash course in
the new techniques of guns and artillery. They are taking to the
new methods like a duck takes to stock trading. Word comes that
Hazama has fallen in with the Unasaka Clan that opposes the
modernization of Japan. (The Unasaka is a fictional clan that
also featured prominently in TWILIGHT SAMURAI.) Hazama took part
in a political conspiracy against the Shogun, but was caught and
brought back to his home village as a prisoner. Local officials
begin a witch-hunt to find any of Hazama's friends who might
harbor similar sympathies.
American audiences my not recognize how unusual the casting
choices are. Masatoshi Nagase is known mostly for comic roles in
Japan, particularly the hard-boiled troubleshooter with the
humorous name Mike Hama. Takako Matsu is a popular singer and
actress whose father was a famous Kabuki actor.
Yamada's film is strong and poignant, though perhaps it will be
more so with Japanese audiences who better understand societal
pressure. The film is powerful, though it fails a little in the
final few scenes. I rate THE HIDDEN BLADE a high +2 on the -4 to
+4 scale or 8/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
"This is a genre book, a category book if you will; it will go
into bookstores and libraries, it will go out of print, but ten
or twenty years from now someone will have been reached by this
book just as I was reached by similar genre or category hardcover
books which were mine to behold a quarter of a century ago at the
Flatlands Public Library." [Barry N. Malzberg, Afterword to DARK
SINS, DARK DREAMS, October 1976, no ISBN] Read by me June 2006
in a copy checked out from the Red Bank Public Library. As with
many books I get through inter-library loan, I am grateful this
was not "de-accessioned" even though its complete check-out
history seems to be three instances: one in 1987, one in 1996,
and now mine. This book is a collection of science fiction crime
stories, and was edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg.
Nowadays there are many collections that could be described as
"science fiction crime stories", but almost all of them consist
of stories written for those particular anthologies and the
overall quality is below this collection, which consists of the
best of the genre over a period of many years.
DARWIN FOR BEGINNERS by Jonathan Miller and Borin Van Loon (ISBN
0-679-72511-3) is one of a series that is competition in a way to
the "Introducing" series I have previously written about. (And,
yes, it is "Borin", not "Boris".) The "Beginners" series is
usually somewhat more political, but this volume is less so than
others, and it is written by Jonathan Miller, polymath. Miller
is a physician, actor, writer, and director, so he understands
both the science and the art of presenting it in an entertaining
fashion. And Van Loon's illustrations are considerably more
elaborate than most of what one finds in the "Introducing"
series.
One of the techniques Van Loon uses is to represent the
scientific approach is the inclusion in many of the illustrations
of a pair of characters: one has (variously) a tartan cape,
curved pipe, magnifying glass, deerstalker cap, and aquiline
features. The other man has an average British face with a
mustache. They are not named anywhere, but they are immediately
identifiable.
I do have a small quibble with one illustration: a package sent
in 1858 has a stamp on it saying "Malaysia"--it should be
"Malaya".
Miller and Van Loon work together to explain why "obvious"
theories take so long to be formulated. They compare people
looking at the world to people looking at "optical illusions".
For example, there is a classic drawing which, when looked at one
way is a young woman, another way, an old hag. Or the drawing
which is either two silhouettes facing each other, or a goblet.
As long as you are used to seeing one of these one way, you may
never see it the other way until it is pointed out. And then it
seems obvious.
I recommend this book—even if you understand Darwin's theory, the
illustrations are fascinating.
IN HIGH PLACES by Harry Turtledove (ISBN 0-765-30696-4) is the
third book in the "Crosstime Traffic" series. This is apparently
intended as a young adult series. Not only is one of the
cataloging categories is "Teenage girls--fiction", but the
content seems very toned down. Annette Klein is a seventeen-
year-old girl captured by slavers in an alternate world to which
her family has traveled as agents of Crosstime Traffic, yet
although she is described as pretty, none of the slavers attempt
any sexual contact with her, nor does her new master, nor do the
overseers in her master's house. (Other girls are called to the
master's house, but no details are given, and nothing like this
happens to our heroine.) The resolution is definitely a deus ex
machina, and the actual alternate history content is about as
much (or as little) as one might find in a short story.
Another cataloging category given for IN HIGH PLACES is "Women
slaves--fiction", leaving me curious why there is that category
and why it is not just "Slaves--fiction". In any case, this ties
in with a story Mark noted this week about a subculture based on
John Norman’s “Gor” novels; it can be found at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4996410.stm. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
If history has proven anything it is
that you cannot trust history.
Forget it and you will repeat it.
Remember it and it will mislead you
because nothing happens the same way
twice.
-- Mark Leeper