THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
03/28/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 39, Whole Number 1486
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Correction
Star Quest (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
City Editor Has a Lot of It Wrong (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Old Films with New Ideas (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
JELLYFISH (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
WAIT UP HARRIET (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Overly Frank People (letter of comment by Bill Higgins)
This Week's Reading (THE SIRENS OF TITAN and A TALENT
TO DECEIVE) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction
Michael Chabon's novel-nominated novel is THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S
UNION, not THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION. That is, the union has
more than one policeman. (This typo was in the initial press
release. In fact, it was apparently in the mail sent to Chabon
notifying him, and *he* didn't notice it!) [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Star Quest (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Netflix has a member rating system for their films. One rates a
film from one to five stars. Then under each film they display
you see some number of stars which is their average rating. One
day this week they did not display the stars. It was as if the
stars were just suddenly winking out. I was thinking that might
be a tribute to the recently deceased Arthur C. Clarke. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: City Editor Has a Lot of It Wrong (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
I think I just lost my respect for the important position of
newspaper editor. This is an except of an editorial by Greg
Bucci, city editor of the "Mohave Daily News":
H.G. Wells had a lot of it right.
I've always been a fan of H.G. Wells, the 19th/20th century
British sci-fi author. You know, he's the guy who penned such
classics as "The War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine" and
my personal favorite, "1984."
Besides giving me column fodder from time to time, Wells has
provided Hollywood with motion picture themes since, well, a
darned long time ago.
In "1984," Wells describes a frightening future with kids
spying on their parents and their neighbors; screens in every
home that monitor everyone doing almost everything humans do.
In the 1956 film based on Wells' book, helicopter-like
devices whirred overhead in the hellish city in which the
hero Winston Smith resided. [http://tinyurl.com/ysnf93]
I suspect that Mr. Bucci may by now be able to see the upside of
being able to go back and edit history they way Wells described it
in his 1984. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Old Films with New Ideas (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I read David Brin's short story "The Crystal Spheres" recently.
In the story it is discovered that there is an invisible barrier
in space, a "crystal sphere" around the solar system. Spaceships
that do not expect that this invisible barrier is they collide
with it and never know what hit them. If humans want to get out
into interstellar space they have to break through this barrier
first. Once they do the whole universe is there. But first they
have to smash their way through the barrier. It is a very
dramatic idea to smash through an invisible barrier and to escape
to the freedom of being able to go anywhere in the universe. It
is almost like a baby chicken has to get through the shell to get
to get to the real world outside. This 1984 story won the Hugo
for Best Short Story, mostly because of its idea. There was
something about this story that I found a little odd. I will get
back to it shortly.
One of the perennial topics of discussion at science fiction
conventions is how bad science fiction films are compared to
written science fiction. Most science fiction fans are convinced
that there is a lot better writing in books than in films. One
argument is that the films do not have as good ideas as the
written form does. If I get on one of these panels I tend to
like to play Devil's Advocate. I perhaps am not so fond of the
current crop of science fiction films, but I make the outrageous
case that films by any objective standard do better than would be
expected when compared to the written science fiction. Let me
try to give a case in favor of science fiction films.
Comparing a science fiction novel to a film is an unfair
comparison to start with. These days a science fiction novel is
often 500 pages long. And those pages are fairly dense with
writing. A rule of thumb says that a film script has about one
page for each minute of film time. So a film script is about 100
pages with a lot of white space. To be fair, a film has to be
compared to a story about 20 to maybe 50 pages. You might expect
that you can do a lot more with 500 pages rather than something
like 40 pages.
Even then it is not a fair comparison. A science fiction film
has to be for the most part external to the characters, seeing
them from the outside. A written story can tell you what is
going on inside a character's head, while a film has to show it
with sign language. This means that a film usually has to be
more superficial. Now the filmmaker can make up for it a little
by using visuals. But visuals tend to slow down the story
telling even more and that makes for less story told. Consider
how long it takes to read the words "the dog jumped off the boat
and ran down the beach." To show that action in a film takes
considerably longer than it does to read the words.
I do not know how many short stories and novelettes there are
published in science fiction in a year, but I suspect that there
are a lot more than there are films. A film is an expensive
production (literally). To write a story requires only a PC. We
would expect that stories should be a lot better than science
fiction films. Sorry, I just do not get the impression that the
stories I see are so much better than the films. I think that if
one took the first twenty science fiction films released in a
given year and the first new twenty stories less than fifty pages
to appear in print, I think the films would do very well by
comparison to the stories. Considering the flexibility that a
prose author has you would expect the stories to do a lot better
and they just simply do not.
The argument can be made that more interesting ideas go into the
stories than the films. I do not mean to be picking on David
Brin with my examples, but two of his more audacious and
seemingly original ideas I had seen earlier in films. For years
when people have talked about Brin's Uplift series I have pointed
out that the idea of Uplift was apparently originated by TV and
film writer Nigel Kneale. Uplift is one species or race bringing
another race to higher intelligence. In Brin's "Uplift" series,
no species has ever made the jump to space travel without being
uplifted by another race. But as far as I have been able to tell
the first case of uplift in science fiction appeared in the 1958
BBC television play "Quatermass and the Pit". The story was
redone as a film in 1967. The idea of uplift appeared again in
the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in which apes are apparently
raised to a higher level of intelligence by alien intervention.
But as far as I have ever been able to tell, Nigel Kneale
invented the idea of uplift. (Well, with three moot exceptions.
One might argue that there was a rough sort of uplift in
H. G. Wells's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Machinery rather than an
alien race did a sort of unintentional uplift in the film
FORBIDDEN PLANET. Also one might hold that real world teaching
human communications skills to apes and birds is a form of
uplift.) I do not know if Brin was influenced by these earlier
dramatic works, but it seems quite certain he saw uplift in 2001:
A SPACE ODYSSEY before he wrote about uplift.
Now the reader has probably guessed that I am going to make a
case that the concept of Brin's crystal spheres--a concept that
won him a Hugo I might add--had appeared earlier in a film. But
probably most readers will not be able to think of the film
because today it is an almost forgotten film. In 1957 the Soviet
Union launched Sputnik. Roger Corman realized that the birth of
what was to be a space race was on everybody's minds. So was a
fascination with the whole concept of satellites. In early 1958
he directed a fairly weak science fiction film to capitalize on
the new interest in space satellites. The film he made was THE
WAR OF THE SATELLITES. The film's concept is that to prevent
humans from venturing too far into space aliens have put an
invisible barrier around the Earth. Spacecraft that collide with
this barrier break up like they hit a brick wall. Once humans
understand the barrier they smash through it and are ready to go
into deep space. Brin made his sphere bigger and encompassed the
entire solar system, but otherwise the concept is very close to
the same. Maybe it is just coincidence and maybe David Brin
knows a good idea when he sees it over popcorn. As far as I
know, nobody but your humble servant has ever noticed that Brin's
"Crystal Spheres" and his "Uplift" are both re-uses of ideas from
much older stories, pieces from dramatic science fiction. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Bharat Nalluri directs the story based on a novel by
Winifred Watson of a luckless and now jobless governess who
manages to cheat her way into a position as a social secretary
for an attractive but scatterbrained actress. Pettigrew, who
never had much luck managing her own life, finds she is perfect
in this job and can use it to help guide the actress to a better
life. The story uses too many contrived coincidences and has too
many major characters we just do not care about. The cast is
good, but the material lets them down. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or
6/10
We are in late 1930s London, a city still in the clutches of the
Great Depression and just weeks away from entering World War II.
Guinevere Pettigrew (played by Frances McDormand) is in the
clutches of her own personal depression. The widow seems unable
to hold a job as a governess. Out of work and alone, she haunts
soup kitchens to get what food she can. When she hears of a job
working for an actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams) she steals the
calling card with the address and tells the actress that the
agency sent her. Little does she know that in hours this job
would thrust her into the glamorous world of the beautiful
people.
This all could have been done with a Frank Capra sort of feel.
But there were small problems with the script. For me overall
the writing did not quite work. First there are multiple
important coincidences that occur to drive the plot. This leaves
the story with a contrived feel. And whatever good things come
to Pettigrew would not if she did not have enormous good luck.
We may be happy for her, but we do not feel her betterment came
from her personal virtues but because by chance she was lucky.
Still, the Capra-like plot might have worked if the characters
were appealing. Their being decent people would be their chief
virtue. Francis McDormand's Miss Pettigrew schlemiel does have
our empathy at the beginning, but by the middle of the film she
no longer seems the same Chaplinesque quality. Once her luck is
working for her and she seems a different character. Much of the
initial empathy wears off as she seems to know just the right
thing to do. Having better luck could have been a matter of
chance, but her savoir-faire seems to come out of no place. Even
Pettigrew seems puzzled that things start working out for her.
Her talent is neither explained nor motivated. Her new
capabilities are used to the benefit of Delycia. I Pettigrew
loses empathetic values Delycia never really has them in the
first place. In her scatter-brained way Delycia is managing to
string along three men for her own purposes and is getting
professional advantage using sex. Miss Pettigrew is helping her
to get what she wants out of life and the viewer may be less than
sure she deserves it. The smart set on London society never have
come off as so liberal in a film before. Immediately they seem
to accept Pettigrew as one of their own, even with her in her
mousy brown lower class clothing. Nobody gives her appearance
another thought.
Francis McDormand in the title role is a good actress and is
sufficiently convincing as a Londoner even being familiar from
American film, particularly those of the Coen Brothers going back
to their first film BLOOD SIMPLE. She is quite believable in the
part until the script calls for her to be beautiful. She is not
the traditional image of Hollywood beauty. That description
could to Amy Adams as Delysia. Most of the audience will
remember Adams for ENCHANTED. I missed that film, but she was
very good in 2005's JUNEBUG. Her character was a bit irritating
here, but that may be right for the character and she plays it to
the hilt. John de Borman's camera plays up her attractiveness
and repeatedly manages by just micro-millimeters to preserve here
modesty in scenes in which she is obviously nude. Ciaran Hinds
as seems to show up in a lot of films these days. In the last
few months he has been in MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, THERE WILL BE
BLOOD, and IN BURGES. In our household, however, his signature
role was as Julius Caesar in HBO's ROME miniseries. Here as Joe
Blumfield he plays the only character whose gravitas seems to
match Pettigrew's. Rounding out the roster of familiars is
Shirley Henderson whom we see in a lot of films, but is probably
best known as Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter films.
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY is a fluffy little comedy that
calls heavily on its actors to make its characters amiable.
Somehow the characters never manage to make it all the way to
likable. This film works as a quick throwaway comedy, only 90
minutes long, but is likely to be quickly forgotten. I rate it a
+1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0970468/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: JELLYFISH (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Three intertwined stories of three women in Tel Aviv
make for an effective, short, and economical piece of filmmaking.
We get a mix of comedy, tragedy, and some mysticism. The stories
are strange and offbeat and just matter-of-factly seem to drift
into magical realism. Respected short story writer Etgar Karat
co-directs with scriptwriter Shira Geffen. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
or 6/10
Three dramas about three women take place in Tel Aviv in this
film. Each story lightly touches the other two, but wends its
own way. Batya (played by Sarah Adler) is a waitress at a
somewhat sleazy catered banquet hall. We see her in the days
after losing her boy friend and her job is not going well. The
managers are nasty, the food preparation not very clean. Batya
herself is tightly bound to her own unpleasant past. But then,
as if to take her out of herself, a young girl in a swim ring
comes out of the sea. The little girl has no parents around and
seems to have come out of nowhere. She also has a strange
unworldly air about her. Batya wants to help the mysterious
little girl find her family, but that will be harder than she
thinks. Keren (Noa Knoller) had a wedding reception was at the
same bad banquet hall where Batya worked. For her life is
beautiful and she is ready for her honeymoon. Then she finds
herself locked in a restroom stall and has to climb out, breaking
her leg in the process. This destroys her honeymoon plans. Her
new husband wants to find her a nice hotel in Tel Aviv, but one
room after another is just not very good. To make matters worse,
the hotel they choose does have a nice suite, but there is a
woman staying in it and Keren's new husband seems to take an
interest in the woman that Keren finds uncomfortable. In the
third strand, the joyless Joy (Ma-Nenenita De Latorre) is in
Israel trying to find work, but her heart is back at home in the
Philippines with her son. She is looking for a job caring for
babies where her lack of Hebrew language will not matter, but the
employment office keeps giving her elderly and unpleasant women
to care for. Making matters worse she speaks some English and
her own language from home, but none of the women speak either
language.
Each of these women is having an unpleasant time. They are not
in control of their lives but are buffeted by the currents of
chance like ocean currents buffet jellyfish. Their lives will
each somehow connect with the magical renewing power of the sea.
Co-director Etgar Keret has an international reputation as a
short story writer. His stories are bizarre and frequently
enigmatic and that is the style of this film. There are threads
that seem to wind through the film, but do not add up to much.
There is a charity drive going on and seems to touch all three
stories, but that thread never seems to go anywhere.
The production values of JELLYFISH can best be described as
sufficient. The photography is not highly polished. It is not a
work of art. But it gets the job done. JELLYFISH may not be an
easy film to find. It is not the kind of film that one generally
sees even the art house circuit. Currently it is playing at film
festivals where it is picking up prizes. It will have an opening
in New York City starting April 4.
This is a calm, gentle, yet pointed little film with strong
characters. The viewer is not always sure he understands what is
being said, but the overall effect is pleasant. I rate JELLYFISH
a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0807721/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: WAIT UP HARRIET (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A religious message in the form of a little story of how
one man solves his personal problems by turning to God and
returning to living his life. This is a film for a select
audience, probably including church groups who will respond to
its message. This is a simple religious film shot with simple
production values. Australian Angus Benfield both stars and
directs based on a script by Hanna Eichler who also directs. The
film is a United States/New Zealand co-production. Rating: low
+1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
These days Sunday morning religious programs are mostly of the
format of some televangelist giving a sermon. Back in the 1960s
Sunday morning would bring short religious dramas. Generally,
they were about an hour long and they all built to some religious
lesson. You always knew where they were going. Somebody has
deep personal problems and the answer is accepting God and
religion. They were a little pat, but they were entertaining in
a timeslot when they did not have a whole lot of competition for
video attention. I have not seen one of little dramas in years,
but WAIT UP HARRIET brings them all back and is a return to that
tradition. It is a parable in the form of a little drama. The
narrative style is a little more complex with an 86-minute
runtime, but the production values may even be a little more
simple.
Jack (Angus Benfield) is a man who lives in the past. He had a
beautiful, loving, attentive wife Harriet (Melanie Cannan). When
Harriet died young, Jack all but died also. He had been an
enthusiastic firefighter who enjoyed getting together with others
in his fire company, and they all accepted Harriet as one of the
guys. When Jack lost Harriet he became nearly a recluse. As we
see him he rarely leaves leave his house and more rarely sees his
old friends. Instead he eats out of cans and lives in memories
of how he met Harriet and how he married her. Jack ignores his
son Todd by a previous marriage (Mitch Potts) and bickers with
his first wife.
Then all of a sudden there is a new woman who blows into Jack's
life and not entirely a welcome one. Marty is not a romantic
interest. She is just a friend, but she wants to be just what
Jack needs. Her bright red wardrobe and slightly gaudy jewelry
attest to her attitude accepting herself and of living life.
Marty went to the same church with Harriet and they were good
friends. Marty knows what has happened to Jack and now wants to
lead Jack out into the living world again as part of her life-
affirming Christian philosophy.
The story is simple and the production values are equally simple,
appearing to be as effective as a small budget could allow. They
get the job done, but show minimal style. The film looks shot on
digitally with straightforward lighting and camera work.
Reportedly it was shot in ten days for about $20,000. The score
by Rob Gilmour seems done on a single guitar, occasionally
accompanied by singing. The storytelling is a little slow and
introspective.
WAIT UP HARRIET will be released to DVD on April 28, 2008. I am
not the target audience and not the sort of viewer who would get
full value from a film of this sort. For my tastes I would rate
WAIT UP HARRIET a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1151002/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Overly Frank People (letter of comment by Bill Higgins)
In his comments on science fiction as a literature of discontent
in the 03/14/08 issue of the MT VOID, Mark said of people in the
hotel lobby at a science fiction convention, "The 'beautiful'
people are just there by chance. The people who look a little
strange or unkempt or who dress differently or who have a weight
problem or a peculiar posture are probably there for the
convention. They are bright people, but they look odd. (I am
sorry if I am being overly frank. Maybe I should call fans
'non-conformist'.)"
Bill Higgins writes, "The people who are being overly frank are
*also* probably there for the convention." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This month's science fiction discussion book was THE SIRENS OF
TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut (ISBN-13 978-0-385-33349-8, ISBN-10
0-385-33349-8). The point of the book is the pointlessness of
human existence, and so far as I can tell, Vonnegut tried to
demonstrate this with the book. Very little seems to happen, and
one doesn't get very involved with the characters either.
And it is good that Vonnegut is not an author who attempts to
predict the future: "According to figures released by the Bureau
of Internal Revenue, Fern was the highest-paid executive in the
country. He had a salary of a flat million dollars a year--plus
stock-option plans and cost-of-living adjustments." Magnetically
suspended furniture, rocket travel, etc., yet executives make
less than a million dollars a year. Oh, if only it were so.
A TALENT TO DECEIVE: AN APPRECIATION OF AGATHA CHRISTIE by Robert
Barnard (ISBN-13 978-0-892-96911-1, ISBN-10 0-892-96911-3) is an
analysis of Christie's work. Unlike many books about Christie,
this is no mere recounting of plots, but a look at the techniques
she used, how her style and characters changed over the years,
and so on. In short, it is a book worth reading.
And I want to note one chapter in particular, because some of
what it says relates to my comments on various Christie stories
over the years. In the chapter on Christie's thrillers (as
opposed to her mysteries), Barnard talks about Christie's racial
slurs against various groups, particularly the Jews. "These
references were never removed in later editions, any more than
the even more offensive allusions in Dorothy Sayers have
disappeared from Gollancz editions to this day [1980]. Christi's
American publishers, however, have silently edited them out,
which may conceivably be good for race relations but is bad for
the social historian." This is, of course, precisely what I have
been saying.
But Barnard also notes that "things did change over the years.
In the novels of the 'twenties one can be fairly sure that any
Jewish character will be ridiculed, abused or rendered sinister.
Even as late as the early 'thirties Christie can perpetrate a
remark such as: 'He's a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent
one.' However, as she records in her AUTOBIOGRAPHY, about that
date she had a meeting in the Near East with a German Director of
Antiquities whom she describes as ideally kind, gentle and
considerate--until the mention of Jews, at which 'his face
changed and he said: "They should be exterminated. Nothing else
will really do but that."' The remark came apparently as a
complete shock: 'It was the first time I had come across any hint
of what was to come later from Germany.' A more politically
sensitive person might have sensed the rise of organized anti-
Semitism earlier; might even has expressed shame at her own
unthinking acceptance of repulsive attitudes. But at any rate
from that date offensive references to Jews cease in her novels."
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life.
I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy;
I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
-- Bertrand Russell