THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/06/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 49, Whole Number 1496
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
British Horror Stamps
Ouch! (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The United States' Best Kept Travel Secret (part 2)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE LIFE I LIVED (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
(letter of comment by Bobbi Fox)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL,
Information, and "The Cold Equations"
(letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
The Iliad (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
This Week's Reading (DON'T EAT THIS BOOK and HEART OF
LIGHT) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: British Horror Stamps
http://www.esplatter.com/news.php?id=626
"In the UK, June 10 will see the release of Hammer horror-related
stamps. The U.S. honored Elvis and Star Wars with their own
stamps--now the UK is doing the same thing for Chris Lee and Peter
Cushing."
===================================================================
TOPIC: Ouch! (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Hillary Clinton, who conceded that she will not get the
nomination, has said that she is a fighter. She says she may
stumble, but she gets back up. That is exactly what I do not like
about our current President. When he stumbles he gets right back
up there. It is the rest of us who are left bloodied and broken
on the ground, but he still gets up just fine. I want a President
who gets up less because he or she stumbles a whole lot less.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The United States' Best Kept Travel Secret (part 2)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last week I was describing my trip to Southern Utah. I described
Zion National Park. We are up to Tuesday and our second National
Park. This is Bryce Canyon National Park. Wind and water have
created very different sort of textures here. The rock is sandy
and you get little cracks in it near the canyons' edges. The
cracks get bigger and more exaggerated and worn down so you get
strangely shaped columns of rock. The predominant color is red,
but there are lighter and darker shades of it going from one
column to the next. The softer layers of the columns are more
worn away so the spindles get narrower at the same height from
one column to the next. They are so regular that they give the
impression of having been carved by the hand of some artist.
Some places they look like armies of soldiers. Other places they
remind me of Hindu temples. But they are there in their
thousands. The columns are dozens of feet high.
http://tinyurl.com/3kmzzj
http://tinyurl.com/42jv57
Now I am not sure why this sort of topography is so different
from that at Zion National Park. The two parks are not very far
apart. But the quality of stone may be a little different and
the elements may have hit a little differently.
I don't know why the rock formations remind me so much of
temples. Some structures in Canyonlands which we did not see
this trip reminded me of Greek temples. You have an upper layer
that remains intact and a lower layer that is worn into almost
columns that look like pillars in the temple. Then the gravel at
the base looks like steps leading up. An example of this, a
little more eroded than the examples I am thinking of can be seen
in the following.
http://utahpictures.com/images/Moab2/smCanyonlandsMR77.jpg
However, analogies to classical architecture are not original
with me. When a rounded cliff face is broken into these
columns--they are called hoodoos--you get what is called an
amphitheater. That is somebody's analogy to the seating in an
ancient Greek theater. The picture below shows you one such and
also gives a feel for the scale of these sites.
http://tinyurl.com/6nxhdt
Wednesday of our trip we were in Capitol Reef National Park.
Unlike Bryce, there is not any single sort of rock formation that
can be said to be typical of what is found in Capitol Reef.
Instead, there is a very large variety of immense rock
formations--almost all entirely different from what we have seen
before. There is a very long line of cliff faces that seem to
stretch on for dozens of miles. Here the pressures underground
pushed up a large layer of ground and pushed some underneath in a
fold nearly a hundred miles long near the Fremont River. In
cross-section there was a sort of an S-shape about 7000 feet from
the top to the bottom. The ground broke, leaving a very long line
of rock cliffs exposed. Where there were collapses there were
up-juttings like what we see in this picture:
http://www.mackies.org/anne/3160RoadAtMajorCliff.jpg
This area probably has the greatest variety of shapes. Actually
it is called a reef not because it was a reef at one point in
prehistory, but just that it was something that was very hard to
pass by wagon. It is Capitol Reef because one of the structures
looked like the United States Capitol.
Of the parks we saw I think that Zion impressed me most just from
the sheer scale. Everything in Capitol Reef is very big, but not
as big as what we saw in Zion and we were right up next to the
rock faces on the road. My mother's favorite was Capitol Reef, I
think because of the spectacular variety of structures. On our
first trip Bryce was Evelyn's favorite, but she is less sure now
because we saw different views of the parks this trip. But next
week I will talk about the sights at Arches and at Canyonlands
which are spectacular in their own ways. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE LIFE I LIVED (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Ben E. Solenberger writes and directs this story of a
small town contractor who little by little became a racketeer.
On the day that Bill Cacchiotti is leaving both his legal and
illegal business, he thinks back about how he came to be a
criminal and what it did to him and his family. The production
values are amateurish and too many of the minor actors cannot
deliver lines, but the story is involving and probably will not
disappoint fans of THE SOPRANOS. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or
6/10
THE LIFE I LIVED has the feel of a rough draft of a better film
yet to come. With better photography and a little more
atmosphere this could have been a film that would attract
attention. I think that in a few years writer/director Ben
E. Solenberger may have more talent and will be able to do this
story in a more accomplished form. Solenberger filmed his
screenplay with little art beyond the art of storytelling. But
even as it stands, THE LIVE I LIVED is not a bad crime film.
Bill Cacchiotti (played by Richard Bennett) is nominally a small
town electrical supplies dealer and the head of a tiny local
crime syndicate. On the day he is retiring he thinks back on his
life. It is not such a wonderful life. He can be pretty nasty
by nature and sometimes he breaks the law in small ways, but some
of his poker-playing buddies convince him that it is more fun to
break it big.
As the story progresses he thinks about innocent incidents, like
a stranger in a cowboy hat introducing him to what would be his
favorite Scotch. But his memories increasingly involve breaking
the law to get what he wants. Even before he realizes it he has
become a small mob boss involved in killings. The more he
retreats from legitimacy into more profitable crime the deeper he
gets into alcohol and the more his family relationships suffer.
Killing becomes easier for him and dealing with people becomes
harder. Bill even has his own personal burial grounds for
enemies he has shot. Though he has no connection with the Mafia,
he is in every other way a sort of a small town version of Tony
Soprano. He even shares Tony Soprano's ample build and his
anguish. Bill is certainly not proud of what he has become and
even less of what it did to his wife and his son.
Solenberger's off-beat dialog falls a little short of the PULP
FICTION standard, but it has its moments. At least by look the
actors are all believable. In fact the cast may look more
realistic than the cast in the Godfather movies. But once you
get past the two or three main actors, the acting talent becomes
very spotty. Some line readings sound like they are taken from a
first run-through on the script. Set dressing is generally a
bare minimum.
It is hard for me to watch this film without picturing the same
story done with a better production values and a more polished
visual style. In the extras of the DVD Solenberg looks to be
little more than of college age. My advice to is to hold on to
his script and remake this film with a better budget, a better
look, and some more uniform acting talent. I rate this film a
high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
There is no IMDB entry; information on the film is at
http://www.myspace.com/thelifeilived
THE LIFE I LIVED was released directly to DVD on May 27, 2008.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (letter
of comment by Bobbi Fox)
In response to Mark's review of INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF
THE CRYSTAL SKULL in the 05/30/08 issue of the MT VOID, Bobbi Fox
writes, "Perhaps the H. L. Mencken quote is supposed to clue me
in as to whether you were writing the following tongue-in-cheek:
'Karen Allen is back as Marion Ravenwood and is well-preserved
enough to still be attractive.' Well-preserved?
WELL-PRESERVED? Karen Allen is gorgeous in her role. I should
ever have looked so good!" [-bf]
[People will have to decide if she is gorgeous. She certainly
looks pretty good for 56. -mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL,
Information, and "The Cold Equations" (letter of comment by Taras
Wolansky)
In response to a variety of things, Taras Wolansky writes:
A veritable orgy of nitpicking -- I loved it!
[Re INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, 05/30/08]
I think the last scene of INDY 4 should have been: Irina Spalko
(Cate Blanchett) as a specimen in an intergalactic zoo. Too bad
they killed her off: she was a rather likable villain.
By the way, I happened to look up INDY 4 co-star John Hurt on
IMDB, and I see he's returning to one of his best roles: Quentin
Crisp.
[Re useful information from corrupted sources, 05/09/08 and
05/16/08] Some time ago I made a mental note: if somebody wanted
to see Wikipedia at its worst, look up the entry for Sen. Barbara
Boxer. It reads like a campaign puff piece (or it did a few
months ago). I looked at the discussion page and discovered this
is because of what I decided to call a Wikitroll: a fan (or
employee?) who watches the site and deletes anything that is less
than adulatory.
I recall that the article on the Bush-Gore Florida 2000
controversy was also an interesting case. (I'm too lazy to look
it up again!) If you read it carefully, you learned that when a
newspaper consortium continued the recount that the Supreme Court
stopped, Bush won anyway. However, the chart put purely
hypothetical recounts, never begun and under different rules
which were never used, at the top, apparently because Gore ended
up ahead by a handful of votes.
Another thing I've seen: somebody posts something on his website,
and then goes to Wikipedia and edits in a link to what he just
posted.
[Re "The Cold Equations", 05/23/08] There's one thing about the
Sci-Fi Channel version of "The Cold Equations" that I still
remember. The astronaut and the stowaway come up with solutions
to their conundrum--solutions that *would have* worked, had they
come up with them sooner, earlier in the spacecraft's orbit. I
was very surprised to see such a sophisticated idea in such a
low-grade venue. [-tw]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Iliad (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
In response to Evelyn's comments on the Iliad in the 05/30/08
issue of the MT VOID, David Goldfarb writes, "[You said,] 'For
some reason all the characters are called by their Roman names
(Ulysses, Jupiter, Minerva, etc.)--except for Paris (whose name
was Alexander in the Roman form).' This is not really true as
stated. The name 'Alexander' is not a Roman form, the way
'Ulysses' is a Roman form of 'Odysseus'. Both 'Paris' and
'Alexander' occur in the original Greek of the Iliad as names for
the same man; in fact the narration calls him 'Alexander' rather
more often than 'Paris'. How do I know this? Well, I'm currently
about halfway through reading the epic right now. In Greek."
[-dg]
Evelyn replies, "Mea culpa. I think of 'Alexander' as the Roman
form because when I was reading Samuel Butler's translation, he
used that along with all the Roman names for the gods. I have
also read the Iliad in Greek, but that was over thirty-five years
ago, and my memory for which names they used is obviously weak."
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I recently listened to DON'T EAT THIS BOOK: FAST FOOD AND THE
SUPERSIZING OF AMERICA by Morgan Spurlock (ISBN-13
978-0-143-05731-4, ISBN-10 0-143-05731-6) (read by Morgan
Spurlock). In this book he briefly describes the inspiration and
making of his film SUPERSIZE ME!, but spends most of his time
attacking "Big Food" (e.g., Kraft, McDonalds, etc.), which he
compares in power and effect to "Big Tobacco". While on the
whole I agree with him, he makes enough errors in fact or logic
to make it hard to endorse the book wholeheartedly.
For example, he says that he suddenly realized at one point that
during his month-long McDonalds diet he would not be eating any
fresh fruit. "No peaches. No pears. No lemons. No limes." (I
may have the exact fruits and/or order wrong--it's really hard to
flip back through an audiobook to get an exact quote!) But I'm
not sure that is true. If McDonalds serves tea, they may very
well have lemon wedges for it. (Then again, they may have just
pouches of lemon juice. However, I don't go to McDonalds often
enough to check before this appears.)
He also uses "soda" and "soft drink" to mean sugared cola. For
example, when he says someone has a soft drink, he talks about
how much sugar and phosphoric acid (found only in colas) they are
getting. He does say that some people ask, "What about sugar-free
sodas?" but then goes on about how bad aspartame is. But what
about (for example) root beer, lemon-lime sodas, or ginger ale?
If he means colas he should say colas.
He also responds to critics who say that what he did was extreme
by saying what he did was consistent with people's eating habits.
This is based on somewhat questionable logic. For example,
because some people eat at McDonalds several times a week, he
extrapolates that they must be eating junk food all the rest of
the time. But this is not necessarily true. For example, in my
town I see a bunch of mail tracks clustered around Wendy's at
lunch time. It's a fast, convenient place to eat, and one that
one can get a large group to agree on. This does not mean when
these mail carriers go home they eat junk food. They may very
well eat wonderfully at home. (To some extent, I think Spurlock
has a skewed view of all this because 1) he lives in Manhattan,
and 2) he works by himself and on his own schedule.) And I still
think that always supersizing when asked is cheating. Let's face
it, while it may be true that there are people who do, clearly
not everyone answers "yes" when asked.
[He cannot be assuming that some people eat junk food all the
time. When he ate junk food for a month he got some unusual and
unexpected medical symptoms. If there were people who ate the
same food all the time the symptoms would be neither unexpected
nor unusual. -mrl]
Spurlock criticizes the food lunch program for serving what big
agriculture is pushing rather than what is healthy, but I do find
his negative attitude toward milk a little peculiar. He seems to
think that schools should not be serving milk. Yes, milk, though
he thinks it's great that schools have vending machines that sell
bottled water. If you want to look at a useless "food product"
that's been pushed onto consumers by "Big Food" advertising, you
don't have to look any father than bottled water.
In another example of how Spurlock seems to have been taken in by
the very advertising he decries, he speaks of not eating red meat
more than a couple of times a month, and then talks about how
good pork is, as if it were not red meat.
One problem with audiobooks is that expressions which look okay
on the page don't always sound good. Spurlock uses a lot of
"mmm" (meaning "yummy") constructions ("Pesticides in your food?
Mmmm!"). As I said, these look fine on the page, but read aloud,
they sound very lame. It's possible that a better actor could
deliver the lines better, but I wouldn't count on it.
A few weeks ago, I quoted the beginning of Jeffrey E. Barlough's
BERTRAM OF BUTTER CROSS as an example of how a book can grab me
in the first couple of paragraphs. HEART OF LIGHT by Sarah
A. Hoyt (ISBN-13 978-0-553-58966-5, ISBN-10 0-553-58966-0)
begins:
"What is wrong?" Emily asked.
She sat, naked, on her bridal bed, the waves of her dark
hair falling like a dusky veil over her golden shoulders
and small breasts. Over it, wrapped around her, she clutched
a multicolored flowered shawl, a legacy from her Indian
grandmother.
Nigel, her husband of ten hours, stood at the foot of the
bed, trying to arrange his blue dressing gown with shaking
hands and only managing to twist it, so it hung askew and
displayed a portion of his pale muscular chest.
Far from grabbing me, this overripe romance prose made me want to
grab it--and hurl it across the room. However, this was a
library book, and I did need to read it in my capacity as a member
of the Sidewise Awards panel, so I "soldiered on." While the rest
of the book was not this appallingly bad, it had a whole series of
flaws. First, it seemed very much inspired by Naomi Novick's
"Temeraire" series; set in what is basically our world in the 19th
century, but with (Chinese) dragons and magic. (Hoyt sets her
story in late Victorian times, while Novick sets hers in the
Napoleonic Wars.) But everything in this book is far too similar
to our timeline (more so than in "Temeraire"): Victoria is Queen,
Albert is dead, there was a Chinese Gordon and Mahdists, and so
on. This *can* work, but it requires a deft touch; Esther
Friesner did it reasonable well with DRUID'S BLOOD, for example,
but here it fails to convince me.
There is also far too much feminist preaching: every few chapters
Emily muses on her condition as a wife who is under the legal
control of her husband, who cannot do anything on her own, who
envies the Masai woman who is independent (and how likely is
that, one wonders?), and so on. And of course there is the
obligatory display of racist attitudes by the Europeans (and how
wrong they are).
Oh, and it is the first of a series. With no warning of this on
the cover or the back cover. Only inside the front cover does
one see "Look for Sarah A. Hoyt's next fantasy" and a picture of
the cover of SOUL OF FIRE, clearly book two in the series. (And
an excerpt of SOUL OF FIRE at the end of the book confirms this.)
I've said before what I think of publishers who do this, and have
not changed my opinion since then. Ptui! [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I figure you have the same chance of winning the
lottery whether you play or not.
-- Fran Lebowitz