THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/28/11 -- Vol. 29, No. 31, Whole Number 1634


 Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
 Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material is copyrighted by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.

 To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
 To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Topics:
        340 Free Movies Online (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        The Color Problem (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        Francis Ford Coppola and 3D (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        The Top Five Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of the '00s
                (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
        SONG AT MIDNIGHT (1937) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
        AGAINST ALL THINGS ENDING by Stephen R. Donaldson
                (book review by Joe Karpierz)        
        Thoughts on Camelot (the movie) (comments
                by Evelyn C. Leeper)
        Raymond Burr (letters of comment by Stephen Spinosa
                and Keith F. Lynch)
        Winston Churchill and King Edward VIII (letter of comment
                by Tim Bateman)
        FLOOD (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
        This Week's Reading (ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND and
                KONG UNBOUND) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

==================================================================


TOPIC: 340 Free Movies Online (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

The Open Culture site has compiled a list of 340 movies, free for
the effort to download.

See http://www.openculture.com/freemoviesonline.

[-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: The Color Problem (comments by Mark R. Leeper)

I notice that the Mexican food you get in the grocery here had
warnings about how spicy it really is supposed to be.  They may put
a little thermometer on it and have it be green if it is mild,
yellow if it is a little spicy, and it works its way up to bright
red if the food is what Americans think up as spicy.  I am trying
to get the grocery to stock the stuff that has infra-red
thermometers.  [-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Francis Ford Coppola and 3D (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

On the99percent.com, Ariston Anderson talks about Francis Ford
Coppola's latest film, TWIXT NOW AND SUNRISE, in "Francis Ford
Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration".  One comment he
made was, "The film even features the latest 3-D technology--but
as a brief dramatic segment that serves the story, rather than the
typical two-hour, multiplex gimmick."  While that is reassuring
from an artistic viewpoint, what it really means is that movie-
goers will end up paying the 3D premium (about $3) for what is
basically a 2D film.  I suspect that of the prospective theatrical
audience for the film, a fair percentage will decide to wait for
the DVD rather than pay the extra, and of those who pay the extra,
a large percentage will feel cheated.

And Roger Ebert just recently published a letter by Oscar-winning
film editor Walter Murch in which Murch explains in technical
detail why 3D is "dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, [and]
alienating": http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html.
[-ecl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: The Top Five Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of the '00s
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)

There seems to have been little notice that a decade has ended just
a few weeks ago.  Most people seem to have fallen into the popular
misconception that the decade started over a year ago with 2010.
At some point I will have to put together a top ten films of the
decade that has closed.  I think, however that I can list the best
fantasy films of the recent decade.  In chronological order the top
films are these.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001-2003)

Let me be clear on this.  I have no particular interest in stables,
clean or dirty.  But if the Augean Stables were cleaned up by
Hercules, I can be really impressed by the job he did.  THE LORD OF
THE RINGS is not a style of fantasy that particularly appeals to
me.  I don't do well with elves.  But whether I am enthralled by
the story or not, I can concede that it must have been a huge and
nearly miraculous task to bring that mammoth novel to the screen in
a way that did not look tacky (at least when there were no Orcs on
the screen).  I count the entire trilogy as a single film released
in three parts and that film is a magnificent job.  Peter Jackson
created a fully realized world that I think that J. R. R. Tolkein
would have loved.  I am not in a rush to see THE LORD OF THE RINGS
again, but I would say it is a phenomenal job of adapting a novel
to the screen.

THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

A medical procedure allows for the removal of painful memories by
erasing them. The hitch is that the memories must be opened and
partially relived as they are being erased.  Screenwriter Charlie
Kaufman's script is demanding--not so challenging as his
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, but demanding.  Still it is delightfully
engaging, intelligent, and even profound.  Charlie Kaufman is
showing that he has not yet reached his peak.  ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF
THE SPOTLESS MIND is still his best script by a sizable margin. The
director is Michel Gondry, but for once it is the screenwriter who
got the deserved attention.  I would like to think this is a movie
that will show the film industry that good writing can do more for
a film than good special effects.  Michel Gondry, by the way, has
been seduced by more standard super-hero films.  Currently he has
in theaters THE GREEN HORNET (2011).

THE PRESTIGE (2006)

Toward the end of the 19th century two rival stage magicians
compete and battle for dominance. This is a thriller, an education
in stage magic, a mystery, and even a bit of a science fiction
film. Christopher Priest's novel is brought to the screen by
co-writer and director Christopher Nolan in a wonderful adaptation.
In spite of the popular THE DARK KNIGHT and INCEPTION I would still
pick this as his best effort.  This is a film that may be more
enjoyable on the second viewing once you know its intricate
secrets.  Where THE PRESTIGE varies from the Christopher Priest
novel it is based on it does something very interesting.  The film
is no less fascinating than the book on which it was based.

THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007)

Years ago Jerome Bixby wrote a Star Trek episode entitled "Requiem
for Methuselah" about an immortal man.  That was really a somewhat
superficial exploration of the concept of immortality and what it
be like to live for a very long time.  It is clear from THE MAN
FROM EARTH that he could not shake the idea and has given great
thought to many ramifications of the idea.

John Oldman is a young-looking college professor who has lived for
a very long time.  He may even be a Cro-Magnon, but at the time he
thought of himself only as one of "the People" and the topography
of his first home has long since changed.  The film is little more
than a stage play, done without flashbacks or special effects.
This film is carried entirely by conversation.  But it playfully
examines humanity's history, civilization, and ideologies.  The
film is constantly challenging and never patronizing to the viewer.
I would be hard-pressed to find a more intelligent science fiction
film.

SLEEP DEALER (2008)

This near-future extrapolation takes place in a Mexico maybe two
decades hence.  The world is much like ours with a few major
differences.  Rudy lives in a small village where the water
resources have been privatized, this is not so farfetched and is
probably based on the real-life privatization of water resources in
Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000 when the water supply was sold to an
international consortium.  Similarly in SLEEP DEALER the water has
been diverted and dammed.  People have to purchase the water that
was formerly theirs for the taking.

With a simple operation people who can afford it can connect
electrical jacks directly to their nervous system so they can
connect their bodies into the Internet.  Their vision can be
recorded or used for virtual reality.  Day laborers can connect to
the Internet from Mexico and have their labor transmitted via
telepresence to robots doing the work.
The film is an interesting near-future extrapolation.  The
networking related scenes are done using a primary color palette
giving a layer of unreality.  Though it is a US-Mexican co-
production, the director, Alex Rivera, and actors are Mexican.
Writer-director Alex Rivera's film is negative on the US but still
gives a very believable extrapolation of the next two or so
decades.

[-mrl]

["Locus" film reviewer Gary Westfahl's take on the "The Ten Best
Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of the Twenty-First Century--As
of December 31, 2010--And A Prediction about Ten Best Lists to
Come" can be found at http://tinyurl.com/void-westfahl-10.
Westfahl looks at box-office winners, explains why this is a poor
metric, and gives his own selections.  -ecl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: SONG AT MIDNIGHT (1937) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: The first fully sound version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
came not from Hollywood but from China.  Weibang Ma-Xu wrote and
directed this adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel.  The film
takes a long time to get going but the last 15 minutes deliver the
action.  The film is available on DVD and can be downloaded off the
net, minus English subtitles.  Expect a version fundamentally
different from Western interpretations of the story.  Rating: high
+1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

The Lon Chaney version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was shot as a
silent film and then re-fitted to have some sound segments.  All of
those scenes, I believe were ones of the singing of opera.  The
earliest all-sound version of the story is one that until recently
has not generally been known in the West.  It is a 1937 film, made
in China, which in English is called SONG AT MIDNIGHT.  This film
is considered a horror film.  But with the exception of just one or
two sequences it was for the most part more just a sad story than a
horrific one. The Phantom's appearance is shocking, but the plot is
much less so.  The film is probably less interesting for itself
than for comparison to other versions of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
There are some elements of the original story and not others.  One
can see what effect this subset of the original elements has.

The story takes place in China and deals with a male opera singer
Sung Dan-ping (Jin Shan), who is in love with Xia (Woo Ping), the
daughter of a powerful warlord.  The warlord suspects Dan-ping of
having connections to his enemy the Kuomintang (or KMT--the rival
political faction led by Chiang Kai-shek).  For that reason and
because he wants to separate Dan-ping from his daughter he has his
minions beat and whip Dan-ping and then throw caustic acid in Dan-
ping's face, horribly disfiguring him.  Dan-ping does not want
Xia's pity and does not want her to see his deformed face.  He
arranges that she be told he is dead, but instead he goes into
hiding.  To fill his time he writes operas and he sings.  In the
dark of night he creeps out and sings to the moon.  Only a handful
of people know who the mysterious phantom singer is.
Now how is this different from the familiar versions of the story?

-- Dan-ping is never the powerful avenging spirit that Erik is in
the PHANTOM.  He is much more a figure of pity and nobility than
the western Phantom is.  He really wants vengeance only against the
man who disfigured him and separated him from his love.

-- The Phantom's survival is not really secret.  While it is not
public knowledge apparently, multiple people seem to know the
Phantom is Dan-ping and still alive.  He just does not want Xia to
know he is alive.

-- He does not have a melodramatic appearance with cape and similar
folderol.

-- The story does not take place in the mysterious innards of a
mysterious building like the opera house of the original.  There is
no dramatic chandelier sequence.

-- The Phantom is reduced from a figure of horror into simply a
sympathetic victim whose goal is to just protect the woman he
loves.

Weibang Ma-Xu both wrote and directed, basing his script on THE
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA by Gaston Leroux.  There are several touches
of the film that seem to imply he based his style on Universal's
horror films of the time or at the very least on the Lon Chaney
version of story.  While the pace of most of the film is slow--it
takes an hour before Dan-ping is deformed.  We have a faster-paced
climax with an angry mob of villagers with burning torches.  Pieces
of (Western) classical music create mood, as does shadowy, high-
contrast photography.  This is much Universal's style.  However
Universal may have returned the courtesy and taken an idea from
SONG AT MIDNIGHT.  In the Chinese film Dan-ping's face is deformed
by caustic acid thrown in his face.  The Lon Chaney version,
accurate to the book, has the deformity a birth defect.  However,
when Universal remade THE PHANDOM OF THE OPERA a second time, in
1943, Claude Rains became the Phantom when caustic acid is thrown
in his face.

This film certainly counts as an adaptation of the Gaston Leroux
novel, and as far as Chinese films go it probably is a horror film.
Still today it would probably be considered more melodrama than
horror.  I rate SONG AT MIDNIGHT a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
6/10.

There is a downloadable version of this film at
http://www.archive.org/details/song_at_midnight.  Sadly, this
version has no subtitles.  However, two very effective sequences do
not need subtitles.  One is the scene where the bandages are
removed from Dan-ping's face and the horribly distorted face
beneath is revealed.  This can be found starting about 0:58:00
minutes into the film.  Then in the last finale minutes of the film
Weibang Ma-Xu tries to outdo Universal in an exciting finale, and
he actually succeeds.  Watch starting at about 1:45:00.

Film Credits:
http://www.imdb.com/find?q=song+at+midnight;tt=on;nm=on;mx 

[-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: AGAINST ALL THINGS ENDING by Stephen R. Donaldson (copyright
2010, Putnam, $29.95, 596pp, ISBN 978-0-399-15678-6) (book review
by Joe Karpierz)        

I don't know what to make of AGAINST ALL THINGS ENDING, the third
book in "The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant".  There are a
couple of ways to describe it.  One is that it is like a driver
that has just gotten his driver's license, and is afraid to go too
fast.  So, the driver goes slow--very slow--until at some point he
figures out that it's okay to then go speed limit, and then after
that off the dial.  The other way is like a song that starts out
slow, then gradually begins to speed up, and finally builds to a
thundering crescendo.

The only problem is that the driver has not reached his destination
nor has the song reached its conclusion. The driver has seen a lot
along the way, and the song has meandered, but we're not there yet.

For example, our characters spend the first *102* pages in the
exact same physical place, Andelain, as they did at the end of the
last book.  Whining, complaining, planning, angsting (is that a
word?), trying to figure out what they're going to do now that
Linden Avery, our female protagonist (I hesitate to call her a
herione), has used all the magic at her disposal to free Thomas
Covenant (yeah, that's right, this series is about Thomas Covenant
but he doesn't show up until the end of the second book) from the
Arch of Time while at the same time awakening the Worm of the
World's End, thus bringing about the destruction of the Earth.  One
of the Insequent, the Harrow, is bargaining with Linden to take her
to the place where her son is imprisoned and held by a croyel.  The
deliberations drag on and on and on and on, and the Harrow says,
basically, "Let's get on with it already!"  Yep, that's exactly how
I felt about the whole thing at that point.

And along with all that stuff is Donaldson once again showing off
his vocabulary, trying to prove to anyone who is still left reading
the Covenant books that he has read and understood the dictionary
from cover to cover, and by God you will be doing that too before
the series is over.

Then a funny thing happened.  He got on with it.

The book started to move.  Stuff started to happen.  It got
interesting, and I didn't know where it was going - at least not
midway through the book.  I went from being completely turned off
*again* to wanting to find out what happens next.  And by the time
the book was finished, it was moving at a rapid fire pace--well,
for a Covenant book, anyway--and Donaldson seems to have left the
37 syllable words far behind.  And really, it was about time.

This book really is all about endings.  Of course, it's about the
impending end of the world.  But Donaldson ties up a couple of
story lines earlier than I expected.  One is that of Covenant and
his wife Joan.  Joan has been causing problems for Covenant the
whole series now, and Donaldson takes care of it in what I believe
is a wonderful way, explaining Joan's descent into madness and
discord in a touching way.  The other is that of Linden and her
quest to see Jeremiah restored to health.  I suspect that both of
these resolutions will play a large part in the end of the series
in the final book, out in 3 years time.

Oh, there are lots of storylines to be played out and tied up.
Covenant's son Roger is still on the loose.  All our favorite
enemies are still out there, and I suspect this thing will end up
with one big mother of a battle to complete the saga.
Problems?  Yeah, there are a few.  There are *way* too many
characters to keep track of in this book, and I suspect Donaldson
had problems keeping track of them as well.  After a while my head
was spinning trying to keep all of them straight.  We're talking
giants, Insequent, Haruchai, Humbled, Ranyhyn, Cords, etc.  There
were some compelling things going on with some of them, but it was
impossible to make all the story lines interesting. AS I already
stated, the early part of the book was a drag to read--it moved too
slowly, not unlike both of the previous two books.

To be honest, I was most of the way through this book before I
actually started to care about what happened.  As I told one fellow
at work, "I realized that I just don't care any more."  What saved
it was the last few chapters, were everything started coming to a
head.  And really, after nine books and 34 years, I'm not going to
give up now.  The book was uneven.  At this point, with one book to
go, Donaldson can either send it out in a blaze of glory or a with
a whimper.  Let's hope it's blazing.  [-jak]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Thoughts on Camelot (the movie) (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)

We watched CAMELOT again recently, and I was struck with how bad it
is--between the musical numbers, the characters, and the scripts, I
found much to dislike.  (Yes, I know one uses "among" rather then
"between" for three or more items, but "among the musical numbers,
the characters, and the scripts" just sounds wrong.)

Yes, everything is too clean, and the make-up and hairdos are all
wrong, and where on earth did Guenevere get that ridiculous-looking
carriage, but go a *little* deeper and there is even more wrong.

What an ego Arthur has, that he thinks *everyone* is thinking, "I
wonder what the king is doing tonight?"  In fact, he's pretty
obnoxious throughout the film--but then, everyone is.

Arthur sings that he is "wishing I were in Scotland fishing
tonight."  Was it called Scotland then?  And when is then, anyway?
Clearly this is Christian England, but it must be somewhere between
when the Romans left and before the Normans arrived. On the other
hand chivalry seems to have been invented already.  Pellinore makes
a reference to Charlemagne, putting this at least in the 9th
century.  So we're pretty much between 800 and 1000.

When her entourage stops to rest, Guenevere asks for tea.  There
was no tea in England then.  (On the plus side, there was a Saint
Genivieve, who was early enough for this.)

Guenevere mentions Mongolia--was it known then?  I wouldn't think
it had that name until the 13th century.

Richard Harris is *really* bad as Arthur.

"By 9PM the moonlight must appear."  How exactly is this managed
when the moon is new?  Or for that matter, in general?  This seems
astronomically questionable.

There is no way Guenevere's wedding train could be splayed so
perfectly if she walked unattended.

The English Channel is labeled as such on Arthur's map, but was not
called that in England until the 18th century.  France wasn't
France until the 9th century, but we established it must be that
late, so this is not necessarily an error

"The knights will whack only for good.  Might for right."  But who
is defining what is good or right?  I mean, I suspect the knights
thought that having the peasants grovel to them was good and right.
(Later Pellinore reinforces this theory when he is having a
Socratic dialogue with Arthur about trial by jury.)

Lancelot du Lac, The Lady of the Lake--what is this thing with
lakes?

The Queen won the May Day footrace--what a surprise!

"I'll barbecue him."  The word was first used in English in 1661.

Well, you get the idea.  When it ran on Turner Classic Movies,
Robert Osborne pointed out it was the last "major studio" musical:
films such as FIDDLER ON THE ROOF were made by smaller production
companies and only distributed by one of the majors.  There may be
a reason for that.  [-ecl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Raymond Burr (letters of comment by Stephen Spinosa and
Keith F. Lynch)

In response to Sam Long's comments on Raymond Burr in the 01/21/11
issue of the MT VOID, Stephen Spinosa writes, "Actually Raymond
Burr played a mobster in the Frank Sinatra film MEET DANNY WILSON
back in 1951 when Frank was hitting the bottom on all sides before
his big comeback in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.  I don't know about any
other roles pre-Godzilla..."

And Keith F. Lynch writes, "As for Raymond Burr, another stfnal
appearance was in the movie AIRPLANE II, about a space shuttle that
goes off course."  [-kfl]

Mark replies, "Burr did a lot of radio work.  The same year as
GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS he was doing the radio series "Fort
Laramie".  But before that year he was a regular on "Pat Novak for
Hire" in 1946 and 1947.  Checking the IMDB, I see in the early
1950s he was in the remake of M, the film noir HIS KIND OF WOMAN,
the science fiction THE WHIP HAND, and the Bob Hope film CASANOVA'S
BIG NIGHT.  But his best known pre-GODZILLA role was as the killer
in Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW."  [-mrl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: Winston Churchill and King Edward VIII (letter of comment by
Tim Bateman)

In response to Evelyn's comments on "Great Man vs. Tide of
History" in the 01/21/11 issue of the MT VOID, Tim Bateman writes:

I have a couple of minor comments and corrections regarding
Evelyn's interesting piece "Great Man vs. Tide of History"

You write of Churchill that "during his time as First Lord of the
Admiralty in World War I, he was responsible for the disastrous
Gallipoli Campaign, and was forced to resign."  Churchill may or
not have been forced to resign, but the responsibility for the
Gallipoli campaign's disastrous nature was not entirely his, the
last time I looked at current historical thinking: Churchill
proposed a naval campaign in the Ottoman Empire's waters, and other
hands made amendments to this Master Plan, converting it from a
horse to a camel.

I also wonder whether he might have been viewed as a divisive
choice, given his role in the General Strike of 1926 and calls for
India to be retained in the Empire throughout the Thirties.

[Evelyn wrote,] "While no one really wanted to keep King Edward IV
on the throne..."  Edward VIII.  When Edward IV was not wanted on
the throne, things became somewhat more lively than a speech on the
wireless."  [-tgb]

==================================================================


TOPIC: FLOOD (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)

In response to Dale Skran's comments on FLOOD in the 01/21/11 issue
of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch writes, "The ship in Baxter's FLOOD
is a duplicate of the Queen Mary, not the Queen Elizabeth.  I
wonder which ship it was that Dale Skran visited."  [-kfl]

==================================================================


TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND: POSTVERNACULAR LANGUAGE & CULTURE by
Jeffrey Shandler (ISBN 0-520-24416-8) has been mentioned by Michael
Chabon in an essay or two, because it takes him to task over his
comments about Uriel Weinrich's SAY IT IN YIDDISH.  This is a
complicated chain of references, so let me explain.

In the 1950s, Dover Books published a series of phrase books for a
couple of dozen languages.  These were the usual travelers' phrase
books, with sentences like "Where is the ticket office?" and "I
would like a double room, please."  In 1958, they published SAY IT
IN YIDDISH edited by Uriel Weinrich (ISBN 978-0-486-20815-2), which
had the same sentences as all the others.  In 1997 Michael Chabon
wrote about it in an essay titled "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts".
Basically, Chabon saw no practical value for the book, while many
others (including Dover's president and Shandler) disagree.
Shandler says that "Yiddish was widely spoken in Israel in the late
1950s, and there were substantial Yiddish-speaking communities in
Paris, Montreal, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and other places."

I am in the middle here.  Like Tevye, I say to Chabon, "You're
right," and to Shandler, "and you're right."  Yes, there were/are
Yiddish-speaking communities, but if someone were visiting these
communities specifically, he probably already knew Yiddish, and if
he did not, the "national" language (Hebrew, French, or Spanish)
would probably be more useful overall, and widely understood in
these communities.  That is, one can probably manage in the
Yiddish-speaking section of Buenos Aires with Spanish, which would
also be useful in the rest of Buenos Aires, while Yiddish would not
be useful outside that community.

That said, I own a copy of SAY IT IN YIDDISH, and I did take it
with me on my trip to Eastern Europe, where I found it to be of no
practical use.  Our conversations in synagogues and Jewish museums
were in English, extremely broken Hebrew, and even in Spanish!

All this is by way of background.  The main thesis of ADVENTURES IN
YIDDISHLAND seems to be that Yiddish is still a living language (in
the sense of having thousands of people who speak it as their first
language and teach it to their children as *their* first language),
but that it is treated by the non-Yiddish world as a dead or dying
language, interesting only as flavoring for English, or as
performance art, or otherwise fragmented.  For example, Shandler
observes that revivals of Yiddish plays are invariably advertised,
introduced, and reviewed in English.  This seems to be part of the
definition of "postvernacularity", so in a sense Shandler seems to
be doing the same thing he criticizes in others.

One "criticism" Shandler has is of the National Yiddish Book
Center, of which he says, "What, after all, is the nation that the
*National* Yiddish Book Center serves?"  He continues, "the naming
of the NYBC as a "national" institution breaks with a precedent set
by older Yiddishist organizations, which more frequently name
themselves as ... international, when they wish to articulate
broadness of scope."  However, I observe that the latest web pages,
etc., of the National Yiddish Book Center list it as just the
Yiddish Book Center.

KONG UNBOUND: THE CULTURAL IMPACT, POP MYTHOS, AND SCIENTIFIC
PLAUSIBILITY OF A CINEMATIC LEGEND edited by Karen Haber (ISBN
978-1-4165-1670-5) is a collection of essays pretty much described
by the title.  Christopher Priest writes about how the introduction
of Production Code affected the film, William Stout talks about the
film's influence on art (and other fields), Robert Silverberg
analyzes the script, and so on.

There are a few slips.  Harry Harrison writes, "[The prehistoric
monsters] were created by Willis H. O'Brien, assisted by a youthful
Ray Harryhausen, who virtually invented stop-motion special effects
for the film."  This makes it sound as though Harryhausen invented
stop-motion special effects--a better way of punctuating the
sentence would have been to use parentheses rather than commas to
set off "assisted by a youthful Ray Harryhausen".  But it's wrong
on a more basic level: Harryhausen did *not* assist O'Brien on KING
KONG.  (Harryhausen was barely thirteen when the film was made--
youthful indeed!)  Harryhausen *did* assist O'Brien on MIGHTY JOE
YOUNG, but that was made sixteen years later, in 1949.  [-ecl]

==================================================================

                                           Mark Leeper
 mleeper@optonline.net


           There are trivial truths, and there are great truths.
           The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false.
           The opposite of a great truth is also true.
                                           --Neils Bohr