THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
04/10/09 -- Vol. 27, No. 41, Whole Number 1540
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Correction
That Ring in My Ears (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The Price of Film-Reviewing (At Least for Me) (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
FOREVER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, KNOWING, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED
PAJAMAS, and ALIEN TRESPASS (letter of comment
by Dan Kimmel)
Hiding in Plain Sight (letter of comment by John L. Sloan)
This Week's Reading (book sales) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Correction
David Leeper should be added to the list of people who got the
correct solution to the puzzle.
==================================================================
TOPIC: That Ring in My Ears (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Ever find that you hear a name or a title and odd images come to
your mind? Somebody mentioned the film AUTUMN IN NEW YORK and if I
just heard the title without seeing it, it sounded like alternate
history in which Turkey had conquered the world. On the other
hand, hearing the name of horror writer Oliver Onions it sounds to
me like something a bartender would ask after mixing a martini.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Price of Film-Reviewing (At Least for Me) (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
I got a piece of mail from someone who wanted to know more about my
reviewing. Do I pay for all the movies that I see? He had this
image of me downloading films to a laptop and sitting in Starbuck's
watching them. He wanted to know if that was an accurate picture.
It probably is a good opportunity to answer his question and at the
same time give readers a better idea of whom it is that they are
dealing with. I may digress a little.
I'll take the easy question first. I never acquired a taste for
coffee. Or tea or alcohol or tobacco for that matter. I was just
never fond of the flavor. And I am too cheap to go to a Starbucks
in any case. For recreation that leaves only drugs. My
recreational drug of preference (and that only one that I have ever
used) is dietary capsaicin. It is legal and actually healthy. And
piquant food gives the same sort of high that runners get from
endorphins. There I go digressing.
Oh, and I don't own a laptop. I have an old HP 200LX palmtop that
I have used so long that I can touch-type on it in a dark theater.
Yeah, a lot of my notes come out garbled that way, but enough are
not that they are usually useful. I have written some spreadsheets
for it to help me organize my notes. But it is no better than I
am at guessing what a garbled note means. So walking out of the
theater I can already be working on my review if I want to.
Usually I will be looking at my notes and trying to figure out what
"buce nysucak" meant, looking to see what keys are near the keys I
typed. (That was a mistyping of "nice musical", if you are
curious.)
Okay, what do I pay for movies? I never go to an evening show.
(Did I mention I was cheap?) I can go to a matinee for $6 to $7.75
in my area. That is if I want to see a current film. I know
people who go to the movies once a week. I don't see that much in
theaters, maybe averaging one every two weeks. Actually I probably
do not even go to that many.
Older films I get through Netflix. I watch and return them soon after
receiving them, so I average less than $1.50 per Netflix film. I
am on the three-disk plan. In addition Netflix gives you free
movies to download to your PC/Mac. I think that brings the average
price down to about a dollar a film. But Netflix is not the
bargain that it once was. Films that are relatively major they
seem to only buy a small number of copies for and then customers
wait in queue for them for a long time. VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA
I have been waiting for since it was released to disk. It has been
at the top of my Netflix queue and yet it never seems to be sent.
Some films just are very hard to get through Netflix, so I just
joined Blockbuster's single film mail plan. They have a smaller
selection, but they frequently have the films I cannot convince
Netflix to send me.
My other source is my town's public library. Some towns lend DVDs
for free. Mine charges a dollar for a three-day loan on
entertainment films. And if they do not have a film to some extent
they are willing to get it from another library in the county
library system. Books that cost considerably more than DVDs and
have less general appeal still go out free, of course. Staff people I
know at the library would like all films to go out without charge,
but the library's board does not want to encourage the library to
get too much into the DVD business. Documentaries and most non-
fiction films are free to borrow and circulate for 14 days. Most
of the documentaries that can be considered politically left or
right wing turn out to be liberal in their selection, but I think
that may be true of documentaries in general. But they would be
more likely to have a documentary about the Trail of Tears than
about the Hanoi Hilton.
Some current films I get to see free. These tend to be more
obscure films. For example FORBIDDEN LIE$ is just being released
this week. (Kind of an interesting film, by the way.) The film
distributor offered me a DVD if I was willing to review it and
thereby help to publicize it. Most reviewers get invited to
special screenings for reviewers. I have seen maybe four films
this way over my whole reviewing tenure. I would have to drive
into New York City and I would end up spending a lot more than if I
were to just wait and see the film in the theater. (I think I
mentioned that I was cheap.) Parking in New York has gotten
ridiculous. And there is one more source of DVDs that I get
because I am a film reviewer. I am part of the Online Film Critic
Society (though I call myself a "reviewer" and not a "critic").
The OFCS votes in January for their annual awards. I get some
disks of major films, but not generally the big studio films, for
my award consideration. Last year I got films like MILK,
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, DOUBT, and HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. I had a DVD of
SLUMDOG MILLIONARE before most people I knew had even heard of the
title, and it went on to win the Best Picture Oscar.
I never get paid in money for my reviews, so it is always an
expense and not a source of income. (Not quite true. Someone
actually did pay me for three of my reviews at one point, but that
was long ago and we are talking about under $10.) But I am
interested in film and can get four hours of entertainment out of
one paid admission. As a rule of thumb I spend about the same
length of time to see a film and to review it.
I was also asked why I did not review the science fiction film
PUSH. I am afraid you cannot expect me to cover all or even most
of the major pictures that come out even in the science fiction
genre. I don't write for a newspaper that tries to cover what
their readers might see. I foot the bill myself and pick what I
see by what looks intriguing; probably a lot like you pick a movie.
If I feel like I have something to say about a movie after seeing
it, I write a review. Pretty much every review of a film you see
from me is something that I went to with positive expectations.
That is why while I say that a +1 is an average film, the great
majority of my film ratings are higher. I try to avoid films that
I do not think will be good just like anyone else does. The
reviews did not make me interested enough to see PUSH. That was
sort of how I felt about KNOWING, but a friend told me it was good.
I did like it and felt I had something to say.
My hobby is only a pain when I am at a loss for what to say about a
film, particularly if I have promised someone I would review a
film. I have currently 1380 film reviews in the Rotten Tomatoes
database and have written a weekly editorial for decades, so you
would think that writers' block would be nothing but a long-ago
memory. Sadly no. Writing is for me a slow and frequently
difficult process. But it is also good mental exercise.
Overall for me, writing about film is really just an inexpensive
hobby. I can do it for a year for a lot less than the cost of a
ski trip. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein (copyright 1959, Ace
Science Fiction, $6.99, 263pp, ISBN 978-0-441-78358-8) (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
So, quite a while back I was given a homework assignment by various
folks here: read some Heinlein and report back. The assignment
covered three novels: METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN, THE MOON IS A HARSH
MISTRESS, and STARSHIP TROOPERS. This review concludes my homework
assignment.
A little while back there was some discussion here in the VOID
about STARSHIP TROOPERS. I purposely did not read that discussion,
knowing that I was about to read the book, and I didn't want to
color my view of the novel. The only thing that could have
possibly affected my opinion, other than the cover blurb which
shouted out at me "The Controversial Classic of Military
Adventure", was the original theatrical movie that came out years
ago. That was so long ago that I didn't remember much of it
anyway, and I what I did remember of it wasn't anything like the
novel itself.
It's pretty obvious by the reaction of many readers to my statement
that I never had read much of earlier period Heinlein that I don't
need to go into too much detail about the novel itself here.
Quickly, the novel follows Juan "Johnnie" Rico as he makes the
choice to go into the military, goes through boot camp, and
participates in the Bug Wars. However, this is less of a story
about a kid going into the military than it is a vehicle for
Heinlein to (apparently) give us many of his political viewpoints
and thoughts, provide some social commentary, and just plain old
tell us how he thinks things ought to be.
Most intriguing to me is the concept of franchising; that is,
unless you go into service and complete a term of duty, you're not
allowed to vote--you're not a complete citizen. The theory, I
guess, is that unless you go out and fight for your country/planet
and experience what it takes to make decisions under pressure and
things like that, you're not qualified to be able to pick your
leaders. Another topic that Heinlein takes on is corporal
punishment. His advocacy of the act would not be popular today by
any means.
Heinlein does spend a bit of time discussing other things as well:
The armored suit that the M.I. (Mobile Infantry) wears and the
dissertation on military tactics and chain of command come to mind.
Heinlein does have a military background, of course, so it
shouldn't be much surprise that he spends a lot of time on this.
My beef with the novel is that nothing much really happens.
Heinlein uses scenes from Rico's development to bridge from one
topic to the next. Quite frankly, I guess I was expecting more
than what I got. No, I didn't expect to get what was in that, what
I now know to be, bad movie. However, less lecturing and more
story would have been nice. I'm surprised that it won the Hugo for
Best Novel in 1960.
Which is a very nice segue. Next time I begin my annual reviews of
the Hugo nominated novels. In particular, I'll be starting off
with Gaiman's GRAVEYARD BOOK. Until then... [-jak]
[And at some point, you may want to read Joe Haldeman's FOREVER
WAR, and then John Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR. (Although you probably
already read the latter.) -ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: FOREVER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann does a photo-essay of the
people who come to Paris's Père Lachaise Cemetery to visit dead
relatives and/or some of the world's greatest artists who are
buried there. Much of the film turns into a study of how the dead
live on and inspire the living. Sometimes this film is on target
and sometimes it is just a little over the top. It is an ambitious
effort that does not always work. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or
6/10
Heddy Honigmann takes an extended look at Life, Death, Art, and
Beauty as viewed from and in relation to the Père Lachaise
Cemetery. This burial ground, also known as the East Cemetery, is
the largest in the city of Paris. Being the cemetery of Paris, it
is the resting place of many of the great artistic people of this
city of art. Some of the luminaries whose graves are found in this
beautiful, ornate burial ground include Frederic Chopin, Oscar
Wilde, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas, Pierre Abélard and Héloïse, Max
Ernst, Amedeo Modigliani, and (in a less classical vein) George
Méliès, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, and Jim Morrison. The
cemetery is now a park for quiet contemplation, and it draws people
from all over the city.
Honigmann interviews visitors many of whom have some special artist
whose resting place they go to. One man initially detested the
writing of Marcel Proust but converted by his wife now presents the
writing of Proust to others in the form of comic books. Others
take inspiration from the tombs of their heroes who are dead. One
man interviewed has a love of Amedeo Modigliani, whose elongated
images of women seem to have an ethereal light about them.
Honigmann finds one after another. In between she shows us nearly
endless images of people caring for graves by pouring water on
flowers from plastic drinking bottles or dusting tombs. Or she
will show one visitor standing in silence for minutes while behind
we hear only the sound of traffic. Someone complains that a grave
of a loved one is too close to that of Jim Morrison and therefore
gets a little too much traffic and noise. Elsewhere we see a
memorial to Paris citizens who were "deported" to Nazi death camps.
The whole feeling is one of admiration of the exquisite beauty of
the cemetery and long interludes of luxuriating in the
magnificence. This is great at first, but presently it becomes a
little oppressive. We go from delicate statuary to stunning
displays of flowers. A little of that goes a long way. Some who
come to this same destination each day seem to "live, like a hair-
dresser, in the continual contemplation of beauty," as George
Bernard Shaw put it describing his vision of Hell.
But the visitors do come to sit in the park, to meditate on the
loveliness, and to visit their dead loved ones. Some talk to the
dead. There are certainly macabre aspects to this film. One
Honigmann talked to was a mortician who daily decorates the dead,
making them up for their last exposure to their family and friends.
He takes his day off among the dead. Elsewhere the camera focuses
in on a spider larger than one would expect in the City of Paris.
The film really starts and ends with Yoshino Kimura, a pristine
young pianist who plays Chopin flawlessly. She visits the tomb of
Chopin and finds motivation from him. He seems to live on through
her and she seems a perfect model of being dedicated to her art. A
little surprisingly, the IMDB lists 41 acting credits for her so
music is at best a part-time pursuit.
At times the film seems a little pretentious, but FOREVER is a
reasonable, not perfect, meditation on art and beauty and the
relation of the living artist with the dead who have contributed to
his art. I would rate FOREVER a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0906743/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10008403-forever/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, KNOWING, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED
PAJAMAS, and ALIEN TRESPASS (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
In response to Mark's reviews in the 04/03/09 issue of the MT VOID,
Dan Kimmel writes:
I liked MONSTERS VS. ALIENS (the lawyer in me keeps wanting to
write MONSTERS V. ALIENS) more than Mark, but I think his other two
reviews are on the mark. I also liked KNOWING, a film that was
largely trashed in the reviews. I give the filmmakers credit for
taking their premise to its logical conclusion, instead of
contriving a Hollywood ending. And I had THE BOY IN THE STRIPED
PAJAMAS on my ten best list, but I think Mark has it right: it's a
parable, and best understood as such. In spite of pulling its
punches and not attempting the depiction of the true horrors of the
Shoah, it nonetheless conveys a powerful message. It's a film well
worth seeing. [-dk]
Mark responds:
I might have preferred MONSTERS V. ALIENS. In fact, that
might have been their best suit. I tend not to think much of
parodies of 1950s SF films. Maybe I don't like to see 1950s SF
ridiculed, though I think I have a sense of humor about them. But
for example, THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA I thought was really
lame. What is the word on the street about ALIEN TRESPASS?
I guess after reading the ratings [of KNOWING] on RottenTomatoes, I
was considering skipping it. I did like it. It really has some
haunting images though. For me seeing the little blackboard was
one of the great screen shocks. I guess I did not see it coming.
How they got to that scene was a little contrived, with the mirror
image, but the scene itself gave me a genuine chill. People were
comparing it to Cage's NEXT and this is a far better film.
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS reminds me a bit of THE DEVIL'S
ARITHMETIC. [-mrl]
Dan replies:
I've seen ALIEN TRESPASS. It's an affectionate spoof. Nothing you
haven't seen before, but done with a true fondness for the films
it's parodying, so perhaps you'll enjoy it.
Don't know if you regularly read the Internet Review of Science
Fiction, but I have an essay this month on "It Came From Outer
Space" you might like: http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10530.
[-dk]
And Mark says:
They claim ALIEN TRESPASS is not a parody but a pastiche. I much
prefer that latter. I was hoping they knew the difference. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Hiding in Plain Sight (letter of comment by John L. Sloan)
In response to Mark's comments on numbers stations in the 04/03/09
issue of the MT VOID, John Sloan writes:
Along the same lines, I've always thought steganography, which more
or less means "hiding stuff in plain sight", was pretty
interesting. An example of this would be encoding a low resolution
image (or any other kind of digital information) in a high
resolution image by altering every 100th pixel. It would be
invisible and almost undetectable in the high resolution image, at
least by visible inspection, but almost trivially extractable.
With all the videos and photographs on the web, it's pretty clear
that one could encode a huge amount of information this way, just
for example in youtube videos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
[-jls]
Mark replies, "There was a rumor that some expert had said that
ebay photos in specific had steganographic messages. Later it
turned out the expert was just saying that could be a place for
such images." [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In January I take advantage of Shop-Rite's "Can-Can" sale to buy
most of my canned goods for the year. In March, I do the same for
books. The three major spring book sales that I go to were
compacted back together in time, with the East Brunswick Public
Library having theirs March 23 to 28, Bryn Mawr March 24 to 29. and
JR Trading April 4 and 5.
We decided not to try to be the first ones in at East Brunswick,
and we still found reasonable stuff. We did not have to fight with
dealers, though it is possible that with higher sale prices and
depressed on-line sales, the dealers have cut back as well. The
prices seem the same as last year, though still at times
inconsistent (at East Brunswick, an ex-library copy of THE YIDDISH
POLICEMEN'S UNION was priced higher than a clean, unmarked copy).
Preview sales are a thing of the past, although Bryn Mawr has done
the "shrinking package" trick. You wouldn't think you could do
that at a book sale, but they did: last year you could fill a
17"x17"x13" box for $10, while this year it is a 17"x13"x13" box.
"And the last shall be first"--last year East Brunswick was last,
this year it was first. The bad news: there was still the reduced
floor space allocated for the sale. The good news: the science
fiction section was *much* better. (Last year it was 90% "Star
Trek" novels--really!)
We found twelve books and one-and-a-seventh Teaching Company
courses for $30. The one-seventh Teaching Company course was Part
IV of a seven-part course ("Classics of American Literature").
Believe me, I looked for the other parts (after all, I knew there
had to be at least three more), but for whatever reason, they were
not there. At least in this course the lectures are relatively
self-contained.
The full course we got was "Medieval Heroines in History and
Legend" (24 lectures; Heloise, Hildegard of Bingham, Eleanor of
Aquitaine, and Joan of Arc), with course books, for $4 total! It
is not necessarily my first choice for a course, but at that price,
how can I go wrong?
We got a couple of old Canada guidebooks for our upcoming trip to
the Maritime Provinces--even if the prices and hours are old, the
history, directions, etc., are useful. There was a book on hot
peppers (mistakenly filed in the fiction section), a really thick
Norton anthology of English literature for $3, and a few science
fiction books. There was a great reference book, Howard Schwartz's
TREE OF SOULS: THE MYTHOLOGY OF JUDAISM, and a Lonely Planet guide
to Puerto Rico. I also picked up a copy in Spanish of a Gabriel
Garcia Marquez book that I may try re-selling after I read it,
since I paid $1 and it sells for something like $20.
At Bryn Mawr we spent our usual two hours there and got 25 books
(four as gifts) for $49. But I did not get to all the categories I
usually do (the main one I missed was history). This may have been
due to the much larger quantity of science fiction, mysteries, and
mathematics than last year; I probably spent a lot more time in
these categories than I did in previous years.
When I go to these sales I take a backpack and a shopping bag. I
saw someone there trying to juggle a huge stack of books of
different sizes. He had just heard about the sale and had not
realized how big it was. I saw him later checking out with three
two-foot stacks of books!
(I use my bags this way: I pick books and put them in the shopping
bag until it is full. Then I sort through it, checking for what we
already have and deciding what else I do not really want. Those I
put back, the rest go in the backpack. Then I repeat. This time
the backpack got so heavy that after I squatted down near the end
to check some boxes on the floor, I could not get up without
removing it first!)
So what did we find? A couple of large-print books for my father,
a couple of Dover mysteries, some mathematics books, some science
fiction, some history, ... The most interesting book was a 24-page
pamphlet, "Kinship Terminology in Jane Austen's Novels". (I want
to know if there is a term for the relationship between my father's
brother's wife's brother's husband, and my brother's step-son's
son. Mark's answer is "acquaintance", but I am looking for
something a tad more specific.) Other books of note were the
omnibus "1066 and All That/And Now All This" (comedic history) and
another omnibus of three mysteries by Kate Wilhelm.
And then afterwards we went to the used bookstore in Rocky Hill
where I found three books, including one I was actually looking
for--the English translation of Jorge Luis Borges's "Six Problems
for Don Isidro Parodi". I have the Spanish version, but I wanted
one that I could read more easily as well.
JR Trading Company is a remainder wholesaler that has sales to
the general public a couple of weekends a year, one in the spring
and one before the winter holidays.
Prices held steady: trade paperbacks $4 each (3 for $10) and
hardbacks $5 each (5 for $20). (Children's books are cheaper;
hardbacks originally priced over $30 are higher.) But we bought
only 9 books, about half what we did last year.
There was still a lot of "The Year's Best X Writing", where X was
"Science and Nature", "Sports", "Spiritual", "Travel", "Non-
Required" (whatever that means), and so on, for the past several
years. There was also still a lot of Tolkien, with several
editions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT. And there was
still a huge stack of Paul Di Filippo's CREATURE FROM THE BLACK
LAGOON: TIME'S BLACK LAGOON, a book I bought last year. Offhand,
I'd say that a lot of their stock is just not moving.
In addition, Mark commented on the huge number of books about
writing, saying that here we were in a warehouse full of books that
didn't sell, and people were buying books telling them how to write
more books.
Last year we got a book on iPods; this year we got one on Mac
applications in general. I found UMBERTO ECO ON LITERATURE (last
year's flat of Eco's HYPERREALITY does seem to have sold). My
attention was caught by the title of Joseph Epsyein's book, IN A
CARDBOARD BELT!, and the essays in it looked interesting, even if
the title was a misquotation.
There were quite a few very narrow-focus academic books from
university presses--too narrow a focus for me--but I did get James
H. Fetzer's PRINCIPLES OF PHILOSOPHICAL REASONING.
I passed up a book titled something like "The Silly Side of
Sherlock Holmes", but did but H. Paul Jeffers's THE FORGOTTEN
ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, based on a selection of the original
radio scripts from the 1930s and 1940s. And having liked the two
"Booknotes" books I had read, I also picked up Brian Lamb's
BOOKNOTES ON AMERICAN CHARACTER.
I now always look at the large-print books, since that is what my
father can read most easily. Unfortunately, the demographics of
the elderly (the primary market, I suspect) are such that most of
them (or at least most of the ones at book sales) are women's
books, and the rest horror novels. My father is just not that
interested in Danielle Steel. So when I do find a book there he
might like, it is a real joy. (I wish that Half.com would allow
one to search specifically for large-print books, but they do not.)
JR Trading does not seem to get any of these, which is not too
surprising--they are not published in large numbers, and so
probably do not get remaindered.
In addition to the book sales, this is also the season for the
Sidewise jury voting and for the announcement of the Hugo nominees,
so with all of those, my reading list has really grown by leaps and
bounds. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know
that he is going to die, but he can never
know that he is dead.
-- Samuel Butler