THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/20/12 -- Vol. 30, No. 30, Whole Number 1685
Ollie: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Stan: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Philcon 2011 Convention Mini-Report (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Old TV Horror and SF Shows (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Omnipotence (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
UNHAPPY FEET (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
WAR MADE NEW and Book Reviews (letter of comment
by Fred Lerner)
This Week's Reading (IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR? and
translations) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Philcon 2011 Convention Mini-Report (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
My Philcon 2011 convention mini-report (without panel descriptions)
is available at:
http://www.leepers.us/evelyn/conventions/phil11.htm
==================================================================
TOPIC: Old TV Horror and SF Shows (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I see that the fabulous archive.org and youTube sites have episodes
of some rare and interesting old TV horror shows.
13 DEMON STREET: A Swedish produced horror series hosted by Lon
Chaney, Jr. Until now I have never been able to see episodes.
http://tinyurl.com/mtvoid-13-demon-street
WAY OUT: This was a bizarre and creative TV horror show adapting
stories by Roald Dahl.
http://tinyurl.com/mtvoid-way-out
You can also find episodes of the old classic Science Fiction
Theatre--I believe this was the first adult science fiction series
on TV--at:
http://tinyurl.com/mtvoid-s-f-theatre
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Omnipotence (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
We live in a frustrating Universe. Einstein claimed God does not
play dice with the universe. It turns out He does but He reserves
the right to play with loaded dice. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: UNHAPPY FEET (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
It was a sad holiday season for a lot of people at the at the Dr. D
Studios. For those who are uninformed, Dr. D Studio is a digital
production studio whose big project last year was a digital
animation film to be released at holiday time. That film is HAPPY
FEET TWO. The staff of 700 had labored mightily under the
assumption that the world was waiting to see a sequel to the
animated dancing penguin film HAPPY FEET (2006). The first film
returned $384,300,000 from a movie with a budget of $100,000,000.
That is a reasonable return. It was released mid-November 2006, so
it got holiday crowds. There were enough people who either liked
the film or were curious about it or wanted a film that it was safe
to show to the kids while the parents holiday shopped. It probably
seemed like the right time of year to release a film set in ice and
snow. Anyway, after the success the decision was made to make a
sequel and release it for another holiday season.
So a sequel, HAPPY FEET TWO was made, released five years and two
days later. And in its first week it made about $30,000,000. For
the benefit of the uninitiated that is a disastrously tiny return
for a feature film these days. After one week in the theaters the
management of Dr. D announced that they would downsize from a staff
of 700 to a staff of 100. Six hundred people would not have a
happy holiday. I got a chance to see the film free for awards
consideration (my assessment: fat chance), but I see in the film a
lot of reasons for the bad turnout. (Hey, isn't hindsight easy!)
If one looks at the publicity it really appears as if the
filmmakers were expecting a big hit. I think that looking at the
film it should have been obvious that it just would not grab
audience.
I am not going to review the film, but I have some suggestions
where it went wrong. Hopefully it can be a lesson for other
animated film producers. I am not singling out this film so much
as using it as an example of what makes the difference between a
good and a bad animated feature.
This film was pure formula filmmaking. They have an image that is
intended to be a grabber. You have enough penguins to fill several
football fields dancing in perfect unison. Now when you see the
Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall you have twenty women on a stage
dancing in unison. That must take a lot of practice. In the "Happy
Feet" films you have a whole lot more dancers dancing in perfect
synchronization. That does not take any practice at all. These
are computer-generated images. They all dance in unison for the
same reason that all (first-generation) photocopies of a book page
all look about the same. If as a viewer you saw the effect in the
first film, it has little value here. Lesson 1: Give the audience
something new, not just more of the same.
This film is a continual homage to singing and dancing. I don't
know about other people but when I was a kid the singing and
dancing in a film did very little for me. I wanted a story. I
wanted to move ahead with the plot. Even before my time in the
"Road to ..." movies when Bing Crosby was crooning, Bob Hope would
stick his head in an tell the kids they could go to the snack bar.
There was some truth to that, certainly for me. I would rather go
get candy than listing to Bing Crosby croon. I cannot speak for
others but on the Mickey Mouse Club, I disliked the musical
cartoons. Even today in HAPPY FEET TWO I am mostly just waiting
for the songs to get over. The music is not even original. The
musical track was assembled from pop songs rather than composed.
That saves a lot of effort, but at a heavy cost. If you are using
pop songs you are not giving the audience anything new. (I will
say the little piece from "Madama Butterfly" was welcome among all
the pop songs.) Lesson 2: Know who your audience is and whether
they want the kind of music you are using. It is a good idea to
write your own score so it fits the moods of the film.
A score would have been a good place to spend their funding.
Instead, I think a lot of it went to paycheck for big celebrities
doing the voices. I guess I enjoy hearing a voice and saying to
myself I know whose voice that is. Maybe I play a guessing game
trying to identify where I have heard a voice before, but it does
little to enhance the film. This film had Elijah Wood, Robin
Williams, Hugo Weaving, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Hank Azaria, and
Anthony LaPaglia doing voices. That soaked up a lot of budget,
kept unemployed a lot of talented but little-known actors, and did
little to enhance the film. Who remembers what Hugo Weaving's
voice? Lesson 3: Have at most three familiar voices and be sure
the audience will recognize those voices.
But the most serious problem is the writing. Characters here were
too often cute rather than interesting. The film had a weak plot
that did not engage the viewer. Part of the problem was that
instead of telling mostly one story, they had a lot of minor
characters in little separate stories, none developed enough to be
interesting. If the viewer does not really care about what comes
next in the film he/she will not be recommending the film to other
people. Rare is the film that can succeed if not everything about
the film is in service to telling a good story with good
characters. UP had people crying in the audience from the strength
of the story. If anyone cried in HAPPY FEET TWO, it was children
wanting to go home. Lesson 4: Tell a good story with compelling
characters. Lesson 5: Tell a good story with compelling
characters. Lesson 6: Tell a good story with compelling
characters. Lesson 7: Be sure you are following Lesson 5.
I think these are mistakes that other animated films are making. I
suppose I am just armchair quarterbacking. But it seems to me I
see the same problems in films time and again. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL (film review by Mark R.
Leeper)
CAPSULE: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL still does not have the
hang of what made the TV show so good. Instead of an intelligent
puzzle for the viewer, it offers mindless excitement in one action
stunt from Tom Cruise after another. But given that it is a Tom
Cruise vanity piece and a mindless action film, it is one of the
best mindless action films of 2011. Considerably better than the
previous entries of the "Mission Impossible" series formerly
animation director Brad Bird gives us quite a ride in his first
live-action film. The film is a mixed bag of elements, but some
are very good. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
To start off I object to the "Mission Impossible" films on general
principle. There once was an intelligent television program called
"Mission Impossible" that told what I call "Mission Impossible"
sorts of stories. That is one in which a team of experts are
called in to solve a problem. Every one of the team brings a
recognizable talent that he or she is expert in. Then each member
of the team starts doing his part and so far none of they are doing
makes sense. Each team member is doing something mysterious but
that probably few other people could do. The game is to figure out
how these pieces all fit together. Then the plan is executed and
the viewer has one "ah-ha!" experience after another seeing how the
pieces fit together. In other words, to fully enjoy one of these
stories the viewer has to think. And strangely enough, I am
convinced that people like stories that make them think. So the
series had a recognizable name and something of a following.
When the Tom Cruise film series started it was "Mission Impossible"
in name only. It wanted to exploit the popularity of the TV show
without telling its sort of stories. They abandoned doing this
kind of think-story and just had a lot of action sequences that the
viewer could sit and vacuously watch. The film series was built
around Tom Cruise's stunts. The films were designed to show off
Tom Cruise doing many of his own stunts and create a series to beat
the James Bond films at their own game. What Cruise does is
impressive but rarely mysterious. The filmmakers were just not
into doing puzzle stories. (Incidentally, one film series that
does show that what I call "Mission Impossible" stories are alive
and well is the OCEANS 11, 12, and 13 series.)
Instead of challenging the viewer, the "Mission Impossible" films
challenge (and show off) Tom Cruise. Cruise is a real-life
daredevil doing his own stunts for the camera. As producer of
these films, Tom Cruise the actor has little fear that Tom Cruise
the producer will tell him some stunt is too dangerous and hence
would endanger the production. So the series is not presenting
puzzles but high-tone framing for Tom Cruise doing physical stunts
for the camera--some admittedly very impressive. And the scripts
call for him to be the kind of genius who thinks of a hundred and
twenty ways out of every tight spot and immediately knows the best.
But one gets tired of seeing Ethan Hunt be the hero of every scene
he is in, which is almost all of the film. In this film he does
have a team of three other people, and they give him nominal
support but nothing impressive. Benji Dunn, played by Simon Pegg,
does serve as comic sidekick. But Cruise and his stunts almost
always are the main attention. It is impressive what he can do,
especially because July 3 of this year will be his 50th birthday.
He is starting to look a little old to have his supernatural
recuperative powers. I mean, in one scene he can be fed through a
meat grinder and formed into patties. But you know he will be
recovered and ready for action in the next scene.
The plot of this chapter is complex and pits Cruise's character
Ethan Hunt against Kurt "Cobalt" Hendricks (played by Michael
Nyqvist, star of the Swedish versions of the "THE GIRL ..."
trilogy). Cobalt manages to completely destroy the Impossible
Mission Force except for four agents. Those last remnants, led of
course by Ethan Hunt, battle Cobalt who it turns out is a very
James-Bond-film sort of super-villain. He wants to trigger a
nuclear war in some logic-free plot to destroy the world in order
to save it.
The screenplay by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec has one advantage
over Bond films. Hunt gets out of problems with physical strength
and thinking while most of his films Bond depends much too much on
luck and coincidence. Also Bond makes his victories seem almost
effortless. I will credit this film for having a lot of Hunt's
plans just failing leaving him to quickly improvise.
More on the comparison of this film with the Bond films: Both use
gadgets a lot, but in the "Mission Impossible" films we do not have
something like the Q scene with the expository lump explaining all
the gadgets. Instead Cruise just pulls out a gadget and uses it.
Also the IMF gadgets are given to failing at the most inopportune
moments. But you can always count on Hunt to have another plan
that does work. Actually, there is a nice scene where Hunt is
asked how he knew one of his quickly hatched plans would work. He
responds that he did not know. He just tries something. That is a
rare piece of vulnerability from Hunt.
And many of the set piece sequences in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST
PROTOCOL are more imaginative than one usually finds in Bond films.
That said, they are not always realistically executed. In the
centerpiece sequence of the film, Ethan Hunt is hanging onto a
structure a long, long way above the ground. There should be huge
winds, but they are somehow absent. There is a chase in a haboob
or sandstorm. Clever idea, but there is no sand in this haboob.
The storm is portrayed as a sort of yellow fog. There should be
sand and dust everywhere including places it will be very hard to
remove it from. There is nothing.
Director Brad Bird had not directed a live-action film before, but
he directed the animated THE INCREDIBLES, which worked fine as an
animated action adventure. He knows what he is doing. And perhaps
the virtues of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL are those that
come directly from animated film where characters can easily defy
gravity and other laws of physics. In any case, this is actually a
fairly good action film if one does not think too much about it. I
rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0638824/
What others are saying: http://tinyurl.com/void-mi3
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: WAR MADE NEW and Book Reviews (letter of comment by Fred
Lerner)
In response to Greg Frederick's review of WAR MADE NEW in the
01/13/12, Fred Lerner writes:
In his review of WAR MADE NEW: TECHNOLOGY, WARFARE, AND THE COURSE
OF HISTORY, Greg Frederick wrote: "One of the key ingredients,
which the author considers to be very important to success, is a
military bureaucracy that allows for new advances in warfare to be
made available for its military." I have long been fascinated by
the Navajo code talkers of World War II, and I've read books on the
subject and even seen the historical display on the code talkers at
Kayenta, Arizona. But none of these sources provides the answer to
a question that has intrigued me ever since I first learned of the
code talkers: how did such an unconventional idea get translated
into reality quickly enough to be implemented before the war ended?
Perhaps there was some institutional memory of previous successes
in using Native American languages as unbreakable codes. I've read
that in World War I a young lieutenant in the Oklahoma National
Guard, overhearing some of his troops conversing in their native
Choctaw, got the idea of using them to exchange field reports over
telephone lines that were being tapped by the Germans. Did word of
that success find its way into military signaling doctrine? Was
that young lieutenant a grizzled senior officer in the Second World
War? (But then how did his innovation get translated form the Army
National Guard to the Marine Corps?) Someday I'll have to see if
this part of the story ever made it into the public record.
By the way--it would be helpful if book reviews in MT VOID included
the name of the book's author or editor, the publisher and year of
publication, and perhaps the ISBN. [-fl]
Evelyn responds:
I always make sure reviews include title and author, and my column
always includes ISBN (unless there is none--or I fotget :-) ). Joe
Karpierz is probably the most complete in his bibliographic
information. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR?: TRANSLATION AND THE MEANING OF
EVERYTHING by David Bellos (ISBN 978-0-86547-857-2) covers a lot of
familiar ground. Bellos's contention is that it is wrong to say
that "poetry is what is lost in translation" or that "a translation
is no substitute for the original." His complaint about the latter
statement seems to be based on a literal meaning of the statement--
as he points out, a translation is *precisely* a substitute for the
original. But even he admits that what is usually meant is that a
translation is not as good as the original, so why does he spend so
much time quibbling over the literal meaning? This is particularly
ironic when he spends so much time explaining why literal word-for-
word translations are often the worst.
But Bellos also ventures into areas not usually discussed in books
about languages and translations. For example, Bellos spends more
time than most authors on the question of translating films. One
fascinating example of the problems of translation that he
discussed was the film THE GREAT ESCAPE. A key moment is when
someone trying to pass as German is tricked into speaking English
when a German officer speaks English to him. What they say is not
important--how they says it is what counts. So a subtitle would
have to say "The German is speaking English" and "The Scot responds
in English." But if you are *dubbing* the movie, you have a real
problem.
Bellos also discusses subtitling, citing accepted rules such as:
- A moviegoer can read fifteen characters a second.
- You cannot put more than two lines on the screen (to
avoid obscuring the picture).
- You cannot put more than thirty-two characters on a line
if you want it to be readable on a television set.
- A subtitle cannot "bleed" across cuts (e.g., the subtitles
for a character talking in a courtroom cannot be held on
the screen if you cut to a scene at the bus station).
According to Bellos, the result is that films for foreign audiences
tend to have less dialogue and longer shots. As he says, "Ingmar
Bergman made two quite different kinds of films--jolly comedies
with lots of words for Swedish consumption, and tight-lipped, moody
dramas for the rest of the world."
Bellos does make an egregious mathematical error, though. He gives
the number of books translated between all pairs of seven different
languages (English, Chinese, Hindi, French, German, Arabic, and
Swedish) between 2000 and 2009. He notes that "nearly 80 percent
of all translations done in all directions between these seven
languages ... are translations from English. ... Translations from
English are all over the place; translations into English are as
rare as hen's teeth." What he does not give are the number of
books actually published in each language. To give an extreme
example, if the other six languages each have one hundred books
published each year, and English has ten thousand, it would not be
surprising that there would be far more translations from English
than into it. The total numbers are more even than that, I
suspect, but Bellos gives no information on them at all. (All his
numbers are based only on books that have been translated.)
Instead he makes reference to the number of people who speak the
various languages, hardly a meaningful figure in this context.
Coincidentally, the Johnson blog on language (named for Samuel
Johnson and written by the staff of "The Economist"), recently
dedicated an entry to "true untranslatability".
Johnson begins by summarizing: "Roman Jakobson, a linguist, is
credited with the notion that languages differ not so much in what
they can express as what they must express. The common trope that
language X has no word for Y is usually useless (it usually means
language X uses several words instead of one for Y). But languages
do differ significantly in what they force speakers to express."
The problem I have is that Johnson's examples also seem more in the
category of "needs more words to express" than "cannot be
expressed."
For example, Johnson cites the sentence "I am loved." In Spanish
and other Latinate languages, Johnson says, the speaker must
declare their sex: "You soy amado" or "Yo soy amada." (One comment
said that in written Spanish one is starting to see sentences like
this rendered as "Yo soy amad@" (unpronouncible, apparently).
However, "Me amada" (or "Me amadan") seems a perfectly viable
alternative: "He (or she) loves me" or "They love me". Lest you
argue that this is too different, this is a whole series of buttons
saying "I am loved" in various languages, and the Russian is "Menya
lyubyat"--"They love me."
Then Johnson says that the common Russian verb of motion "requires
you to express whether you're going by vehicle or foot, one-
direction or multidirectionally, and in the past tense, makes you
include an ending for your own gender. So 'I went' would, in one
Russian word (khodila, say), express 'I [a female] went [by foot]
[and I came back].'" Therefore, Johnson concludes, "I went" is
untranslatable into Russian.
I don't know Russian, but I would bet there is some way to express
"I went" without most of those specifics. (The gender of the
speaker may be the biggest obstacle.) "I was in this place and
then I wasn't", for example, seems to mean something very close to
"I went".
Someone in the comments gave the example of Chinese relationship
words--he can say "elder brother" or "younger brother", but not
just "brother". But can he say "male offspring of my parents"?
I will agree that some of the translations might be awkward, but
that is not quite the same as untranslatable, so in that I guess I
agree with Bellos. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Education: that which reveals to the wise,
and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of
their knowledge.
--Mark Twain