THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/28/10 -- Vol. 28, No. 48, Whole Number 1599
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
50 Beautiful Posters
Mathematics Department All-Nighter (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Short Reviews of the First Five (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
WHIZ KIDS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST and
HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
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TOPIC: 50 Beautiful Posters
The art of the film poster is becoming a thing of the past. In
this day of home video, fewer film posters get seen. A
retrospective of very striking posters is at:
http://tinyurl.com/4hrpuu
[Thanks to Janice Gelb for pointing this out in her blog.]
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TOPIC: Mathematics Department All-Nighter (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Wouldn't this be a fine triple feature for a mathematics department
get-together:
THE GROUP
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0060479/
THE RING
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0298130/
THE FIELD
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0099566/
(If you don't get the joke, don't worry about it.)
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TOPIC: Short Reviews of the First Five (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We retired our old 32-inch TV and got ourselves a 46-inch HDTV.
When we get a new DVD player or TV we calibrate it with JOURNEY TO
THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. It is partially because we love the film
and partially because the opening credits offer circles that are
useful. Somehow we ended watching three Verne adaptations. These
were the first five films we watched.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959)
This is by far the best adaptation of the Jules Verne novel.
Actually it was a badly flawed film that was saved in the editing
and the editor's fingerprints are all over the film. Two songs to
have been sung by Pat Boone have been excised. They are gone but
not lamented. They are credited in the titles but do not appear
in the film. And you do hear the melodies worked into the score.
There are places where rocks in the background look like sheets of
plastic film. There are a lot of problems in the script, but the
film really clicks. There seems to be a constantly running theme
of serendipity. Most of what happens does so by a happy accident.
Some are as strange as crossing a whole sea and beaching exactly
where Arne Saknussemm did. The original expedition of Saknussemm
required far more courage than the current expedition in the film.
Dressing up lizards to make them supposedly prehistoric animals is
inhumane, but it was never done better than the dimetrodons in this
film.
LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF (1975)
Tyburn Studios was one of a handful of studios made to try to make
films in the style of Hammer Films. They made only three or so
films. This film is about a boy adopted by wolves and who lived
for a while as a feral child. When angered he turns into a man-
wolf that strongly resembles Oliver Reed's look in CURSE OF THE
WEREWOLF. After some time as a sideshow freak he takes a job at a
Paris zoo. He sees enough nastiness that he turns into a man-wolf
frequently. Several of the tangential roles are played by some
good British actors. These include Hugh Griffith, Michael Ripper,
and in larger roles Peter Cushing as a police surgeon well-acted,
and a twitchy Ron Moody as the zookeeper. An unimaginative touch
is to use a red filter for wolf-vision.
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954)
This may be the most faithful film version of a Verne novel and it
is still miles wide of the mark. Probably the most remarkable fact
is that the director is Richard Fleischer, son of Max Fleischer.
Disney and Max were competitor cartoonists and hated each other in
the 40s. Max was famous for Betty Boop and Superman cartoons.
Richard directing this film ended the enmity between the two great
cartoonists.
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)
Take away Ray Harryhausen's creature effects and this would be
fairly faithful to the Verne, but it also would be somewhat
lackluster. The Bernard Herrmann score is a classic. Having
everybody promising to dedicate themselves to peace at the end is a
little condescending.
GORGO (1961)
As far as I know there are only five live-action, English-language
films that feature dinosaurs rampaging in a contemporary city.
Three are directed by Eugene Lourie, including this one. He
directed one with Harryhausen stop-motion, one with O'Brien stop-
motion, and one with a man in a suit. The score by Angelo
Lavagnino is terrific. (I love the sound when Gorgo's mother
topples Big Ben. That probably is about what it would sound like.)
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TOPIC: WHIZ KIDS (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Three students vie to win in the Intel Science Talent
Search, the most prestigious science competition for high school
students in the United States. Tom Shepard follows the hectic
lives of three young students with very different ethnic
backgrounds doing impressive scientific research and learning to
present it under the extreme pressure of competition. The film is
exciting, but is somewhat handicapped by the non-public nature of
the final competition. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
The United States high school student ranks very poorly against
students of a similar age from other industrialized countries.
Sports accomplishment gets far more attention in the US than do
mathematics and science achievement. But our best students get
attention when they compete against each other in the annual Intel
Science Talent Search. Here. high school science students present
areas of their own research and are judged and ranked. WHIZ KIDS
follows three students, each a high achiever in science, each
hoping to compete in the Intel STS for fame and for college
scholarships. Tom Shepard directs this film, which follows three
students hoping to compete in the Intel STS. He documents their
preparation and their success or lack of success. The gold
standard of similar films, documentaries of high school students
preparing for large competitions, is Steve James's film HOOP DREAMS
about two African American basketball players struggling to become
major athletes. That film was well-made but very much a lucky
production since it turned out to be a more dramatic story than the
filmmakers could have expected. More on that film later.
WHIZ KIDS follows three high school students, already research
scientists, who are hoping to be chosen to show their work at the
Intel STS. Pakistan-born Harmain Khan from New York is doing
research into discovering a new way of finding the age of crocodile
fossils to date other fossils found in the same strata of the
earth. Kelydra Welker from Parkersburg, West Virginia, has found a
new approach for removing from water a carcinogenic by-product of
the production of Teflon. This creates some problems for the
family because her father is a retiree from DuPont Chemical, the
company that makes Teflon and is likely leaking the byproduct. Ana
Cisneros Cisneros, whose parents are from Ecuador, is from Long
Island, New York doing research on the communication between
neighboring plants of the same species. But having the ideas
implementing them in experimentation is not enough. The
presentation is of paramount importance. To place high at the
Intel STS requires a heavy workload with strong demands for
students who are already carrying a full workload from school.
That pressure is strong enough to deflect some students from their
planned career paths.
Through the film we are introduced to the three young scientists.
We get to see what their research is, its surprising degree of
sophistication, but we do not see it in great detail. Shepard
seems a little overly shy of going into scientific detail in the
film for fear of losing his audience. We get a little superficial
explanation, enough to whet our appetite for deeper explanation
that we expect to come later, but it never transpires. We could
have had more detail about the three projects and we could have
gotten more information about what the other competing students'
projects were. We get only a sketchy idea. Most of the audience
for such a film was probably brought up on NOVA and perhaps listens
to the T.E.D. Talks and would welcome some well-presented science.
In HOOP DREAMS there is a lot of basketball footage, and similarly
in WHIZ KIDS the science content could have been increased. In
addition much of the judging of the Intel STS takes place behind
closed doors. We see contestants preparing for their time before
the judging and we see them after the judging, but we just cannot
see the really dramatic moments when they are presenting under
pressure. Again, HOOP DREAMS had an advantage being about a very
public competition. And HOOP DREAMS director Steve James was lucky
enough to stumble on what was going to be a very compelling story.
These three candidates in WHIZ KIDS were not destined to be key
participants in the 2007 competition. Tom Shepard says that his
goal was as much to tell a story of the maturing process of the
three candidates he follows as it was to cover the competition.
And, though that aspect is less dramatic, it does become the core
of the film.
Some of the interesting material is about just the mechanics of
creating a presentation for the competition. There is one almost
humorous sequence in which a student is desperately trying to get
his application in much too close to a midnight deadline. The
errant applicant gets guidance of navigating the late-night streets
rushing in an attempt to get his application in just under the
wire.
Even though the subject of this film is much more vital to this
country than was the subject of HOOP DREAMS, WHIZ KIDS is merely
good without being really compelling. We are given three people,
who though they are still in high school are already mature
scientists and are perhaps beyond the level of "whiz kids". I rate
this film a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1303821/
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TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST by Jose Saramago (translated
by Giovanni Pontiero) (ISBN-13 978-0-156-00141-0) is easier to read
than some of Saramago's other works, even though it has the same
quirks: incredibly long sentences and paragraphs, no quotation
marks, and no new paragraphs with each change of speaker. But
maybe Saramago's point of view is what makes it interesting. For
example, when Jesus was serving as an assistant to an old shepherd
named Pastor, Pastor tells him to choose a sheep ("unless you
really are a eunuch"). Jesus is horrified and tells Pastor this is
an abomination. "Then Pastor raised his arms and called out to his
flock in a commanding voice, Listen, my sheep, hear what this
learned boy has come to teach us, God has forbidden anyone to
copulate with you, so fear not, but as for shearing you, neglecting
you, slaughtering you, and eating you, all these things are
permitted, because for this you were created by God's law and are
sustained by His providence."
And Saramago's style is very immediate, as if we were actually
there when everything was happening: "Distracted by these
reflections, which are not entirely irrelevant to the gospel we
have been telling, we forgot, to our shame, to accompany Joseph's
son on the last leg of his journey to Jerusalem, where he is just
now arriving, penniless but safe."
This book is not for everyone. Saramago has his own perspective on
what is important in Jesus's life and what isn't, on what various
events meant, and indeed on exactly what happened (which does not
always exactly match the gospels). But I found it intriguing.
HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED: WHY WE NEED A GREEN REVOLUTION--AND HOW IT
CAN RENEW AMERICA by Thomas L. Friedman (ISBN-13 978-1-607-51627-9)
is a sequel to his book THE WORLD IS FLAT. Just like a lot of
people, he makes the point that "going green" is not going to be
cheap or painless or easy. In one chapter titled "205 Easy Ways to
Save the Earth", Friedman says that people tell him we are having a
green revolution and he responds, "Really? Really? A green
revolution? Have you ever seen a revolution where no one got hurt?
That's the green revolution we're having. In the green revolution
we're having, everyone's a winner, nobody has to give up anything,
and the adjective that most often modifies 'green revolution' is
'easy.' That's not a revolution. That's a party."
Another chapter is "China for a Day (But Not for Two)", where
Friedman says that the one aspect of China's government that he
envies is its ability to "simply order top-down the sweeping
changes in prices, regulations, standards, education, and
infrastructure that reflect China's long-term strategic national
interests." Well, of course one problem with this is that
occasionally (or perhaps not so occasionally) these sweeping
changes are disastrous, such as the "Great Leap Forward" with its
backyard smelters.
But the examples he gives are still thought-provoking. Consider
unleaded gasoline. "America started the process of removing lead
from gasoline in 1973, and it took until 1995 until all gasoline
sold in our country was unleaded. China decided to go lead-free in
1998; the new standard was partially implemented in Beijing in
1999, and by 2000 the entire country's gasoline was lead-free."
And another: In late 2007 The State Council announced that starting
June 1, 2008, no stores could give out free plastic bags.
But why only for one day? Because, Friedman acknowledges, a lot of
these Chinese directives are ignored at the lower levels. In the
United States, we have a system that (according to him) mandates
enforcement. Well, this does not actually seem to be the case--
consider the laws prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants.
But the other problem is that we don't *want* a system where the
government can just mandate whatever it wants without any sort of
recourse by the citizens. It sounds great when you're talking
about banning plastic shopping bags, but what if the next decree
was that no one was allowed to own more than three pairs of shoes,
or that anyone whose house had more than 400 square feet per person
would have to take in enough homeless people to get it down to that
amount? To some extent, the slackness of enforcement in China is
there because there is no discussion of the laws, and the
enforcement of our laws is there because we have more input in the
making of them.
As with most serious books on the environment, HOT, FLAT, AND
CROWDED has some interesting ideas, but (alas) these ideas all have
their problems.
At our godson's confirmation recently, the rabbi told the Hasidic
tale/teaching that everyone must have two pockets into which to
reach from time to time as the need requires: in the one pocket it
shall read, "For my sake were the heavens and the earth created,"
and in the other pocket, "I am but dust and ashes." And I had a
satori (if I may mix religions): one pocket is the "Great Man"
theory, and the other is the "Tide of History" theory. So the
Hasidic teaching seems to be that both are true in their own way.
[-ecl]
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Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
A cynic is a person searching for an honest man,
with a stolen lantern.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff