THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/25/09 -- Vol. 28, No. 26, Whole Number 1577
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
That Time of Year (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Erasing Memory (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
AVATAR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
9 (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CRAZY HEART (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE YOUNG VICTORIA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN
and LAND OF THE DEAD) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: That Time of Year (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I hate holiday-themed gifts. Can anybody tell me what I am
supposed to do with myrrh? [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Erasing Memory (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
An article I read about Alzheimer's disease made an interesting
philosophical point. It said that patients really lose their
identity. Your identity really is the sum total of your memories.
Or perhaps it resides in your memories. If I lost my memory could
I still do mathematics? Could I still review films? Would I like
sushi? Could I make a joke? Probably not. Everything that makes
you who you are is in your memory. If you change your memory you
change who you are.
One of the two best science fiction films of the decade (in my
opinion) deals with the subject of memory. It is ETERNAL SUNSHINE
OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and it deals with the subject of writing and
erasing memories. (The other of the two best, THE MAN FROM EARTH,
also deals with memories and whether someone's memories are true.
But it is something of a stretch to tie it in here.) The 2004 film
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, written by Charlie Kaufman
and Michel Gondry, involves a patient of a doctor who can use some
strange surgical methods to remove specific painful memories. If
it makes you unhappy to remember a former lover you can have the
surgeon just remove those specific memories from your brain. At
the time I thought that while it was an interesting idea, it was
entirely impossible. One can remove memories, but it could only be
done by crudely destroying brain tissue and then the surgeon could
not discriminate by subject matter. That was what I thought. In
fact, that actually happens in the real world as a result of
stroke. But specific memories on a particular subject can never be
found and eliminated. It is not even clear what form a single
memory takes. And even in the film the point is made that the
operation really cannot be done without brain damage:
Joel: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Howard: Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage,
but it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll
miss.
The film does not actually address the issue of how they could
possibly locate and excise specific memories of a specific person.
For that reason I thought of the film as an interesting fantasy
rather than real science fiction. The only way something like this
might be feasible would be through hypnotism. Folklore says that
hypnotists can tell a subject to forget some subject. I guess
someone adept at brainwashing might be able to give the instruction
"You will forget all about the IPCRESS File."
But what do I know?
It turns out that a common drug, dare I say one I have used, can
erase unpleasant memories. Propranolol, a drug that is generally
used to control blood pressure, seems to have the property that it
targets bad memories and destroys them. In a study published in
the Journal of Psychiatric Research, propranolol seems to select
and wipe out only unpleasant memories.
Merel Kindt and his team from the University of Amsterdam
conditioned a group of subjects to fear spiders. He then had half
have propranolol administered and half had placebos. The group
that had the real drug administered had markedly less fear of the
spiders than those who had had the placebo. But they did not have
other memories removed. It seems the drug worked only on negative
memories as far as the researchers could tell.
Now this is not exactly erasing the memory, it is erasing the
negative reaction to the memory. But in a sense this is erasing
the meta-memory that the response to the memory is negative. It
does make me wonder, as a one-time propranolol user, whether there
were nasty events in my past that the drug has covered up.
Of course, the human mind really does forget pain all on its own.
And that is probably a survival trait. If women remembered the
pain of childbirth nearly everyone would be or have been an only
child.
For more information see:
http://tinyurl.com/erase-mem1
http://www.waleg.com/health/archives/008547.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090311103611
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: AVATAR (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: AVATAR is very much a DANCES WITH WOLVES set on an alien
world. It brings to the screen some great imaginative sequences and
some great lapses in imagination. It is about great evils in our
past, but becomes a simplistic and self-righteous polemic. Like
James Cameron's previous film, TITANIC, there are enough good bits
to make a really great film and enough bad bits to make a real
stinker. Go for what is good and ignore the bad. Rating: high +1
(-4 to +4) or 6/10
Spoiler warning: There are some spoilers in this review.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, what I considered the most
beautiful science fiction images would show up on the cover of the
science fiction magazine ANALOG. An artist named Jack Schoenherr
painted many of these covers. To me science fiction worlds and
alien species looked exactly like Jack Schoenherr painted them.
Science fiction films always fell a little short of creating that
imagery, though I felt his influence in STAR WARS, DUNE, and LOST
IN SPACE. (Admittedly this art was not all by Schoenherr, but it
still showed his influence.) James Cameron is the first director
to create a world in a science fiction film that reminds me of
Analog. AVATAR has the most fully visually realized science
fiction world I can remember in a science fiction film. Cameron
has envisioned a beautiful alien world complete with only semi-
Earthlike creatures. Some of his images could be from ANALOG and
some from Cameron's own film THE ABYSS. There are dragons and
forest predators. There are horses and flying reptiles. The film
is a joy to look at. But it is not an unalloyed joy. The visuals
still had their problems. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The year is 2154 and Earth humans have a mining operation on the
alien world Pandora. Huge machines move the earth operated by men
who must wear masks in this atmosphere. The goal of the mining is
to get even miniscule amounts of the valuable mineral unobtanium.
The mining operation is running into trouble from the local
population, the Na'vi, who are so-called "savages". They are on
about the level of sophistication that the Native Americans were
when the Europeans came to the New World. The natives want the
mining operation to stay out of their sacred lands. To study the
local people Dr. Grace Augustine (played by Sigourney Weaver) uses
Avatars. These are alien-like bodies that humans when asleep, can
project their minds into. The humans basically created alien
bodies for themselves. One human who does this is Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington), a former Marine and now a paraplegic. He no longer
can have a good life as a human so after some coercion he agrees to
project his sleeping mind into an alien avatar. But being able to
put himself in the place of the Na'vi things go much the way they
did in DANCES WITH WOLVES or THE WILBY CONSPIRACY or DISTRICT 9.
He begins to appreciate them as people and to respect their
culture. Each film goes much the same way and makes the same
statement. There never is any doubt that that is what Cameron, who
wrote AVATAR as well as directed, is going to do with this story.
What surprised me was how heavily and pretentiously he lays on this
message.
Now what did I dislike about the visuals? Well, the aliens are
basically human-like with faces and tails like big cats. This goes
back to the imagery described by Edgar Rice Burroughs whose alien
creatures on Mars were chimera-like combinations of Earth
creatures. How likely is it that something would evolve with human
bodies and cat faces? How much different would the story have been
had the combination been pigs with cat faces? We have that "Star
Trek" conceit working for us that almost all aliens look like us.
The females all had luscious bodies that were only minimally
covered. It is convenient that in their culture they have chosen
to cover the same anatomical bits that we do. And there seem to be
loose-hanging bits of their harem-like costumes. Somehow they are
not all scratched up. It makes for enjoyable images, but it does
not take much thinking. The animals of the planet come in shapes
and much like variations on Earth creatures. When we see a native
horse, there is no doubt in our mind that it is a horse even if its
lines are somewhat different. It has six legs, but it still is
obviously a horse. Cameron does not stray too far from Earth
animals on Pandora.
The story is very much like the history of what happened to Native
Americans in our own country, very likely the Lakota of the Black
Hills of South Dakota. The had their sacred lands, and they were
sitting on the their own version of "unobtanium", namely gold. But
there is in the film no one who asks if the situation is not a lot
like how the Native Americans were treated in the Americas and
isn't history's verdict that that was a terrible injustice? It is
possible that a supremely irresponsible government might ignore the
rights of the indigenous population, but that nobody even notices
the parallels needed some serious explanation in the script and it
is just not there. Cameron takes shots at the American military
(or the government) from the Indian Wars up to the Iraq War. He
makes a comment about how we find some resource we want and then
declare the people who have it "the enemy". I may sometimes feel
that was the reason, but it is a bit of an oversimplification.
Even if I agree with Cameron, I respect the alternative view and
not think this particular piece of politics belongs in this film.
Ironically, the same corporation that brings you Fox News produced
the film. The Fox Corporation is so big occasionally pieces it try
to sue other pieces and have to be reminded that a company should
not sue itself.
Some problems could have been fixed. Apparently cigarettes and
attack helicopters will be a lot the same in 2154 as they are
today. So will be phrases like "in *this* economy" and "shock and
awe" that are more from our time than of 2154.
AVATAR is what I call a film of high standard deviation. Parts and
aspects of the film are a lot better than other parts. So with
some ambivalence I give AVATAR a middling rating of high +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: 9 (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This is not to be confused with the film NINE.]
CAPSULE: In the short film of the same title, a world ravaged by
the vicious robots built by a fascist dictator, several small mute
homunculi, each numbered, battle to survive. The Oscar-nominated
ten-minute film is stretched to feature length. There are lots of
fights and the story a little bit extended with more plot. Also
voices of good actors are added to the formerly mute homunculi.
But what worked in the shorter form is not as impressive as a
79-minute film. The film is unusual and visually striking but not
really special as an animated feature film. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4) or 6/10
The doll-like homunculus 9 finds himself in a post-apocalyptic
world laid waste by evil robots. He befriends another homunculus
like himself named 2, and when 2 is captured by a robot 9 decides
to rescue his friend. 9 leads a revolt of doll-people against the
machines. On the way he will learn about what brought the world to
this sorry condition.
When Shane Acker released his mysterious short film "9" it had an
impressive impact and was even nominated for an Academy Award for
animation. It featured a mysterious little mute doll-robot or
homunculus with no name but the number 9. He lived in a ravaged,
post-holocaust version of our world. 9 and his fellows, each
roughly six inches tall, seemed not made of metal and silicon like
the robots outside but of soft materials like burlap cloth and even
a zipper. This was a little pliable thing in a world destroyed by
hard machines with sharp edges--mechanisms of metal and bone. The
short film was a calling card and it bought Acker an opportunity to
expand a ten-minute project into a feature-length film. But the
perfect length for this story and these mute characters is ten
minutes.
The short film version just had to create the imagery and to tell a
very short story. A feature film required a more complete and
complex story. The mysteries of the short film had to be solved
for the viewer. The characters that in the shorter version got
most of their power from facial expression without sound. For the
feature they were given voices of familiar actors. Elijah Wood,
Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Christopher
Plummer and Martin Landau gave voices to the characters. But this
made them less effective and not more.
The feature really needed to be a story as good as the images it
created. Acker faced the problem that after a few minutes the
novelty of the visuals would wear off and the story would have to
carry the viewer. Pamela Pettler extended Acker's story by having
more fighting with more evil robots and by spelling out a whole
political back-story. The mystical whatever-it-is that happens in
the short film happens in the longer one, but that part remains
mystical.
Disturbingly, one can easily tell whether a doll, an animal, or a
machine is friendly or not. Evil robots have one big red eye or
many little red spiderlike eyes. They have sharp claws. If it
looks ugly it is bad and if it look pleasant it is good. This is
the same convention that Disney animation films have followed for a
long time. And that studio has been teaching children to use that
same criteria in real life, where it might not be so good an idea.
There is a lot that is interesting to see in the world created by
Shane Acker but not enough to make the feature film satisfying.
The story is somehow similar to that of THE DARK CRYSTAL, but with
less complexity. The feel of the story is also somehow reminiscent
of the stories of science fiction writer Clifford Simak. One might
have some idea of what was coming considering that among the
producers were Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. The latter
directed NIGHT WATCH, DAY WATCH, and WANTED. It is not a bad
animated feature, but in the general run of animated films these
days the word for it disappointingly is "unexceptional." I rate it
a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0472033/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1205483_nine/
Original short film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v–4QHmjLqa0
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: CRAZY HEART (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, a once-great country music
singer who at 57 is reduced to playing in bars and bowling alleys.
He has one last chance at love with a reporter sent to interview
him. The reporter, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, could use a father
figure for her son and Bridges likes the role. But there is a
reason Bad is screwing up his life. Scott Cooper writes and
directs based on Thomas Cobb's novel. The story is familiar, but
the Cooper gives us characters with texture. Rating: +2 (-4 to
+4) or 7/10
Bad Blake (played by Jeff Bridges) was a country singer who in his
time had something of a following. Many of the current popular
singers owe their style to learning from him. But the show is
ending for Bad Blake. He gets a few paying gigs these days, but
nothing great. He drives his pickup all over the southwest to
rundown bars and bowling alleys that still have a place for him to
entertain their customers. Bad gets his entertainment from the
bottom of a bottle. He prides himself on never having missed a
performance, but too often when he should be on stage his face is
in a trashcan losing his last few drinks. In Santa Fe attractive
reporter Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) interviews him and the
two of them hit it off. He even likes Jean's little boy. The
problem is that Bad and Jean and the bottle make for a crowd of
three and it is one too many. Bad wants to commit, but he cannot
help living up to his first name whenever he passes a bar or sees a
cute young fan in the audience.
Bridges plays the role note-perfectly. He seems to like to play
singers in lots of different genres. He was a stoned-out rock
singer in TIDELAND. Earlier in his career he was a lounge singer
in THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS. He can be a maverick automobile
executive, a mathematics professor, the President of the United
States, or an alien. He will not be typecast and his characters
have depth and authenticity. With Robert Duvall as a bartender and
an old friend of Bad, that makes two actors of that quality in this
film. And the two actors have something else in common. Neither
has much of a singing voice. Bridges does his own singing in this
film, but I do not expect he will cut an album any time soon.
Robert Duvall may be the greatest American actor today (and he does
a mean tango), but when he tries to sing in the closing credits the
results are painful.
Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett wrote the country music. Burnett
is himself a country music legend. In addition he provided music
for O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? and THE LADYKILLERS (2004). Here he
lends a tone of authenticity and style. The film is reminiscent of
Robert Duvall's TENDER MERCIES. It is a sort of old shoe of a
film, comfortable with nothing really fancy. You really care if
these two people will make it together. And there is some nice
scenery that Bad Blake passes as he travels the Southwest. But the
center of attraction is that performance by Bridges.
Some good country music and some people you care about make this
film likable if nothing flashy. But Bridges's characterization is
first rate. I give CRAZY HEART a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1263670/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/crazy_heart/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE YOUNG VICTORIA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Director Jean-Marc Vallee and screenwriter Julian Fellowes
bring us the story of the rocky, early years of what was to become
England's longest monarchy. The film starts with some of the drama
of that other film of another English queen, ELIZABETH. Perhaps
because of the directing or perhaps because of stilted manners of
the late Georgian and early Victorian era the film never again
catches fire as it does in the early scenes. This is a story of
romance, of influence peddling, and of betrayals, played so dryly
that we never strongly care what happens. Rating: low +2 (-4 to
+4) or 7/10
Very early in THE YOUNG VICTORIA we see the future queen (played by
Emily Blunt) just seventeen years old and ill while her stepfather
is browbeating her and she is vehemently resisting. He could be
trying to convince her to take cough syrup. In fact, he is Sir
John Conroy (Mark Strong) and he is trying to coerce her to sign an
order making her mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson),
her regent. That would be making him the de facto ruler of the
United Kingdom. She has power now, even if too young to wear the
crown, and if she gives it up she will probably never get it back.
It is the signature moment of the film. Here is a girl the age of
a high school junior and her family squabbles and her attitudes and
decisions will heavily impact not just her life but also the future
of her country, Europe, and the world. She is a young woman, but
she is the center of a very high-stakes game for power.
This is the story about how Victoria played a dangerous game of
power and tried to find love and fulfillment. Suitors besiege her
in the hopes of winning her hand and her power. Many would wish to
be her advisor. In the next few years she would ascend to the
throne as Queen of England and would have to run her country.
Needing help in playing the game she gets an advisor whom she at
least temporarily trusts, Lord Melbourne. (Melbourne is played by
Paul Bettany who had no easy time--and in fact fails--playing a man
who was forty years Victoria's senior.) One of her suitors is
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg (Rupert Friend). At first he is
obviously a puppet groomed and tutored to attract her with
pretended identical interests, a ruse she sees through immediately.
Once Albert can be himself, the two find that they might just like
each other. Their on-again, off-again relationship might lead the
viewer to wonder if they have a future together (at least if the
viewer has not been to the Victoria and Albert Museum).
As a viewer I was interested in the history, but found this film
frustrating. People of this time period were expected to behave
very properly and to not show a lot of emotion, certainly in
public. That or the acting robs these characters of much of their
interest value. Blunt is charming as Victoria in ways that may not
be expected by most people who have seen the usual rounded and
older pictures of The Old Queen. But the people of this story are
not much more interesting than they would be in a non-fiction
history book. It is worth seeing the late Georgian fashions and
furnishings, but the actors are little more. Bloodless and
reserved, they just never come to life. All the plots against
Victoria are just ever so slightly distressing. There would be
little dramatic tension even if the viewer were uncertain how it
all came out, but the future of this couple and later of just
Victoria is just too well known. Even to the end we are never sure
if she love better Albert or her spaniel. But she was the longest
reigning monarch of Britain, a title she will continue to hold
until she is surpassed on August 20, 2015.
With expectations from films like ELIZABETH, the viewer might be
disappointed at how unexciting the presentation is here. The film
is better as a history lesson, albeit not a reliable one, than as
an exciting historical entertainment. I rate THE YOUNG VICTORIA a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0962736/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/young_victoria/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN (ISBN-13 978-0-553-58580-3, ISBN-10
0-553-58580-0), Kim Stanley Robinson invented the League of
Drowning Nations: nations, mostly small islands, which are
threatened with inundation by rising sea levels. There was no such
organization--then. But a few weeks ago on PBS's "Now", they were
talking about the Alliance of Small Island States. It sounds a bit
less pre-determined than the League of Drowning Nations, but it's
ultimately the same thing.
AOSIS consists of Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize,
Cape Verde, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican
Republic, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Guinea-
Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall
Islands, Mauritius, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
Singapore, Seychelles, Sao Tome and Principe, Solomon Islands,
St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines,
Suriname, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, and
Vanuatu.
Here are some statistics:
STATE MAX ELEVATION
Guernsey 114 m (374 ft) (not a nation)
Qatar 103 m (338 ft)
Kiribati 81 m (266 ft)
Bermuda 76 m (249 ft) (not a member)
Vatican City 75 m (246 ft) (not an island)
Nauru 71 m (233 ft)
Bahamas 63 m (207 ft)
The Gambia 53 m (174 ft) (not an island)
Turks and Caicos Islands 49 m (161 ft)
Cayman Islands 43 m (141 ft) (not a member)
Marshall Islands 10 m (33 ft)
Tuvalu 5 m (16 ft)
Maldives 2 m (7 ft)
And if they take parts of countries, Florida (105 m (345 ft)) and
the District of Columbia (125 m (410 ft)) may want to join.
Note that the elevation is a maximum; even if it is not submerged
in a sea level rise, most of the populated/arable land may be. I
cannot find a table that shows what percentage of land in given
countries is under 5 meters but (for example) a one-meter sea level
rise could flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and reduce its rice-
farming land by 50 percent (according to the UK Royal Society).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_highest_ point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_elevation
I started LAND OF THE DEAD by Thomas Harlan (ISBN-13
978-0-765-31204-4, ISBN-10 0-765-31204-2), set in a world in which
the Japanese reached the Aztecs before the Spanish did. However,
it had two strikes against it. First, it is the third in the "Time
of the Sixth Sun" series. And second, it begins with three pages
explaining the measurements and Mexica ship names, and a long table
of equivalences between military ranks of the Mexica, Nisei, fleet,
and army/navy ranks. An attempt to read it decided it--the first
few pages seemed to assume a knowledge of what had come before that
I did not have. The series may be good, but one apparently has to
start with the first book. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Such is the advantage of a well-constructed
language that its simplified notation often
becomes the source of profound theories.
-- P. S. Laplace