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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 12/11/98 -- Vol. 17, No. 24
MT Chair/Librarian:
Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-5619 mleeper@lucent.com
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2E-530 732-957-5087 jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 732-949-7076 njs@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist:
Rob Mitchell MT 2E-537 732-957-6330 robmitchell@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-2070 eleeper@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society
meets irregularly; call 201-652-0534 for details, or check
http://www.interactive.net/~kat/njsfs.html. The Denver Area
Science Fiction Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of
every month at Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
1. URL of the week: http://www.lewiscarroll.org/carroll.html.
Lewis Carroll home page. (No, he isn't personally maintaining it!)
In celebration of the centenary of his death. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. Did you know that CNN Headline News's reporter at the Kennedy
Space Center (and space editor) is named Miles O'Brien? Really!
[-ecl]
===================================================================
3. I had a very interesting dream last night. I think it told me
something about the nature of how the senses work in dreams.
Normally anything that happens in a dream is bizarre and cannot be
relied upon for telling you anything about reality. But that is
because people are looking at the content of the dream. That is
not exactly what happened to me. What happened was frustrating
enough that it woke me up. Now let me tell you about it. It is
sort of the brain's equivalent of a minor operating system error.
I don't remember what I was doing in the dream, but I was charging
something over a telephone. And of course what I had to do was
read off my credit card number over the telephone. But I had a
problem. I would read these groups of digits and then go back and
double check them. Well the problem was that I really could not
double check them. I could remember what was said and I could look
at the card, and they were not the same. And why not? Well,
because I suspect the numbers I was reading off did stay in my
aural memory, I cannot be sure even that was correct, though I
think that it was. But as my eye drifted over the credit card, my
visual center was creating what it needed to create as I saw it.
But it was not the numbers it had put in that position the first
time. The frustration that I could not read the numbers off
consistently woke me up. In computer terms I essentially had a
dream that terminated due to an operating system error. I was
getting a mismatching between a visual memory that was not better
than it had to be and an aural memory that was somewhat better. I
just happened to have a dream that would compare the two.
Now, what does this really tell us about dreams? Well... even a
dream is a complex production. You have a lot of random sparking
of neurons and your mind working to create order from them. At
least that is one model for dreams. And it seems likely that your
aural memory functions much like it would in a wake state. And
while this is happening the visual centers put up wallpaper so you
don't end up looking at the backs of your eyelids. They arrange it
so that in whatever direction you look, they have a freshly created
visual image. And it is always freshly created. That is what my
dream seems to indicate. In my dream I could read the numbers off
the card, look away, and look back. But when I looked back the
numbers were not pulled from memory, they were freshly painted.
But not with the numbers that were originally in those positions.
Ordinarily as long as I had visual continuity around the edges of
the mental picture, that is enough so that my mind does not catch
an inconsistency. There is nothing particularly jarring if there
are subtle changes in the scene the second time the dreamer sees it
in most dreams. But in this dream the soundtrack recorded what
numbers I was seeing and it was different values from subsequent
viewings. I just had a particular dream that allowed me to match
one form of memory against the other.
At least that is my interpretation.
The problem with dreams is you never really are sure of your
conclusions. I mean perhaps I really did have an operating system
error that terminated a dream. But perhaps I just dreamed I had
problems reading some numbers off my credit card. [-mrl]
===================================================================
4. GODS AND MONSTERS (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: A gardener comes to have a deep
relationship with James Whale, the gay director
of the first two Karloff Frankenstein films and
THE INVISIBLE MAN. Through Whale's memory
flashbacks we come to understand him, and the
internal storms that came to inspire his best
films. The film has a great performance by Ian
McKellan and a decent one by Brendan Fraser.
Rating: 8 (0 to 10), low +3 (-4 to +4)
New York Critics: 18 positive, 0 negative, 1
mixed
One of the finest directors of the early sound era was James Whale
whose best-remembered credits include FRANKENSTEIN, THE OLD DARK
HOUSE, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and SHOWBOAT.
At the same time he was one of the few Hollywood directors who were
openly gay. In GODS AND MONSTERS we get a glimpse of the latter
days of James Whale in this adaptation of Christopher Bram's novel
FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN.
Some time around 1955 Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser) is the
gardener at a modest home near Hollywood. In the house an elderly
man (Ian McKellan) lives nearly alone with only his devoted
housekeeper for company. The reclusive owner, an artist, wants to
meet Boone, and when he does he wants to sketch Boone. Boone soon
finds out this is James Whale, a famous director. He also finds
out the man is gay. We see the relationship that develops
alternatively from both Boone and Whale's points of view. McKellan
gives a great performance as a man whose happy moments and whose
terrible experiences are intertwined. He struggles desperately to
recreate the joyful moments, but for the most part he is successful
only at recreating for himself the terrible ones. With a deft hand
writer and director William Condon theorizes on the connection
between Whale's World War I experiences and the themes in his
horror films, especially those of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. In
some ways the film is quite insightful. We see that just as the
trench soldier had to augment his body with non-human equipment
like gas masks in order to escape death, the Frankenstein Monster
is brought back from the dead only by becoming a mixture of human
and non-human electrical parts. Just as the film's Dr. Pretorius
entraps Frankenstein into diabolical experiments, Whale tries to
entrap the straight Boone into a sexual relationship playing little
cat and mouse games.
Whale is surprisingly unhappy with the adulation that his horror
films receive. We see him interviewed by a rather gauche fan who
has no interest in any but Whale's horror films. Whale impishly
invents a game that could be called "strip interview" to punish his
unwelcome guest. Whale laments that even among his horror films he
prefers his INVISIBLE MAN, but people are drawn to FRANKENSTEIN and
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, the films that really made a star of
Karloff, whom Whale deems the "dullest man imaginable." We see a
major part of Whale's whole career in flashes of his memory.
Included are the details of a love affair with another soldier in
World War I, "The Great War." Condon does less to flesh out Boone
who drifts through life, recovering from his relationship with
alcoholic parents.
Ian McKellan gives one of the most enjoyable performances of the
year as James Whale. So seamlessly does McKellan integrate the
complex aspects of Whale's life--his homosexuality, his macabre
sense of humor, his horror films, his graphic arts--that McKellan
can almost be accused of over-simplifying the man and making him
too comprehensible. Meanwhile the character of Boone is left a
little neglected in this study of Whale. Also somewhat neglected
is the enigmatically protective housekeeper Hanna, played by Lynn
Redgrave.
Condon does a great job of making his vision of a waning career in
1950s Hollywood seem authentic. Condon begins the film playing on
audience expectations. We see what appear to be the thick heavy
shoes of the Frankenstein monster as the owner puts them on, only
to discover that they are simply the work shoes of the gardener
Boone. And in some ways the film draws parallels between the
guileless Boone and the innocent artificial human. Also, whether
or not they are intentional there are strong plot parallels to
SUNSET BLVD.
GODS AND MONSTERS is a most enjoyable portrait of a film pioneer
and of Hollywood in the 1950s. I rate it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale
and a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
While GODS AND MONSTERS is better in this regard than was ED WOOD
JR., not all the historic details presented are necessarily
accurate. This fictionalized Whale takes credit for the design of
the characteristic look of the Universal Frankenstein monster.
Most film historians have said the person who gets the credit
really should be Jack Pierce, the makeup artist who created most of
the classic monsters of the 1930s. Whale consulted and contributed
ideas, but Pierce is thought to have done most of the creation and
proved his abilities many times in Universal films. [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. [Last week's review of BABE: PIG IN THE CITY had truncation
problems at the ends of paragraphs, so here it is in its entirety.
I don't want to point any fingers at whose fault it was, and I
certainly don't want to get her mad at me.]
BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: The second BABE film is more creative
than the first, but it is also darker in tone.
We are back in the world where animals talk to
each other, but never to humans. Babe is taken
to the big city in an attempt to save Hoggett
farm. But Babe gets separated and has
adventures with a whole menagerie of animals.
The art direction of this film is almost as big
a feature as the animal animatronics, but it
may be confusing for younger children. Still,
parents will find that they will have to go a
long way to find a film so enjoyable both
adults and for children. Rating: 6 (0 to 10),
high +1 (-4 to +4). A minor spoiler follows
the review.
The second Babe film, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, had plenty of room to
repeat what was good about the 1995 BABE. Co-writer and director
George Miller really did not need to change the film's approach.
But Miller was not content to rest on his laurels. The sequel is
quite a different film and gives the audience much that is new and
quite different to enjoy. Is it as good as the first film? To my
mind it is not quite as good. The story is a little less a
coherent story and the big climax of the film is more slapstick and
less subtle excitement. Like BABE this is family entertainment,
but I think it offers a little less for the children and perhaps a
little less for the adults also. The tone is definitely darker and
more disturbing. But like BABE, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY is probably
the best family film of its year. And it is one of the rare family
films that may well be better appreciated by adults than by
children.
The Hoggett Farm is certainly having its ups and it downs. After a
series of adventures related in the first film Babe has won
international fame as the pig who is a sheep dog. Things are going
well until Farmer Hoggett is disabled in a freak accident. (Note:
the scenario of this accident was a joke told as early as the Fred
Allen radio program in the 1940s and has appeared other places
since. It may even be older than that. But to the best of my
knowledge, this is the first time anybody filmed this strange
sequence of events.) With Mr. Hoggett unable to care for his farm
it falls on hard times and the bank is ready and anxious to make
the times even harder. Mrs. Hoggett takes the famous pig to
display him at a fair. But events conspire to maroon Mrs. Hoggett
in the city with her pig and then to leave her pig all alone. Babe
finds himself the new animal in a house full of animals with
dubious human supervision. Among the animals Babe meets is a
Damon-Runyan-esque pit bull, a family of chimpanzees, and a
taciturn orangutan.
The film is told in the same style as the first Babe film but
differently. Again the story is divided in chapters whose titles
are read to us by the trio of singing mice. The Classical and
popular music is back including the theme from Saint-Saens's Third
Symphony. Miller has managed to get the same cast back, though
James Cromwell has a much more limited role as Farmer Hoggett and
Magda Szubanski has a much larger role this time continuing as Mrs.
Hoggett. Again the comedy is genuinely funny and sometimes very
funny. The acting and voicing seems to have all the same people in
the same roles. The major characters are all present, even if
their roles are much foreshortened. And as with the first film,
the animals are frequently three-dimensional characters with
interesting personalities. But the city Babe visits is not so much
a city as a Disneyland-modified city-concentrate. It seems like a
Frankensteinian grafting together of many of the great cities of
the world. Looking out a window, Babe sees landmarks of cities all
over the world. The interior of the city is an expressionist
wonderworld looking like something out of Disneyland. While the
first film had some physical comedy, this new film has a long
slapstick sequence that seems out of character for the person
involved.
This is more expensive and a cut below its predecessor, but it
still is a good outing for the whole family. I give this film a 6
on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler...
Spoiler...
Like ANIMAL FARM, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY may have many allegorical
meanings and perhaps even religious overtones. Babe wins over his
enemies with kindness and feeds his flock, but then allows an
enforcer to stand over feeding and no animal is allowed to partake
of the food without thanking Babe, under apparent threat of
violence. What begins looking like an allegorical Christ turns
into more a Huey Long allegory. [-mrl]
===================================================================
6. A BUG'S LIFE (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: Our second animated ant film of the
season edges out the first for humor and actual
animation style. A BUG'S LIFE has a mediocre
story-line, seemingly derived from Kurosawa's
SEVEN SAMURAI, but its animation will dazzle
the eye. This film offers adults a little less
plot and characterization than did ANTZ, but
the visuals are better and jokes are funnier.
Don't miss the closing credit sequence.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
Let's get the expository lump out of the way at the beginning. All
bugs are insects but not all insects are bugs. Bugs have tube-like
mouthparts and wings that are joined to the body in a sort of
thickened area. Scientists call them "Hemiptera." Ants, walking
sticks, and certainly spiders are not bugs. And to further
correct, ants have six legs as we saw in ANTZ (well, sort of), not
four as portrayed in A BUG'S LIFE. And speaking of inaccuracies,
in my review of ANTZ I said that Pixar and Disney might have to
look to their laurels to match the animation quality of ANTZ. Well
I was wrong; Pixar and Disney are doing just fine, thank you. A
BUG'S LIFE actually is the more visually sophisticated of the two
animated films, but each has far surpassed TOY STORY. There may be
more animated figures in some scenes in ANTZ, but Pixar has the
edge on life-like animation and in giving a three-dimensional look.
They have also made some perceptive improvements in digital
representation light and surface texture. Facial animation is also
better. In fact looking at the faces of the grasshoppers as they
talk, they really have more texture than a camera would pick up
looking at a real grasshopper. They have gone into a kind of
hyper-reality, much like the saturated Technicolor of musicals of
the 50s created a sort of hyper-reality. But since people get a
little squeamish looking too closely at real insects, Pixar seems
to reserve this over-texturing for the villainous grasshoppers and
there to make them a somewhat more repulsive foe.
Where A BUG'S LIFE has a problem is that it has a less
sophisticated or interesting plot than either TOY STORY or ANTZ.
The plot is directly or indirectly a rehash of the late Akira
Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI. The ants of Ant Island could live very
well if they were not obliged to pay a heavy tribute of food each
year to a ferocious band of grasshoppers. In the colony ant Flik
has many ideas how to do things differently-he even has ideas for
how to deal with the grasshoppers. The catch is that none of his
ideas seems to work very well. Flik's idea for how to deal with
the grasshoppers is to get bigger bugs to fight for the ant colony.
So the colony decides to send someone to find defenders. And who
do they choose? The ant they can most spare, Flik. Our intrepid
ant finds defenders, but does not realize that they are not
fighters but flea circus performers. With Flik's ideas and with
the aid of what they think of as fighter insects, the colony
prepares to defend itself against the cruel grasshoppers. The
grasshopper leader is the nasty Hopper, voiced with real menace by
Kevin Spacey.
It is tempting to compare this film's weaker plot but impressive
visuals with the current trend of sci-fi films being taken over by
special effects. But many respected classic films did much the
same. Busby Berkley musicals had real visual style but had
relatively bland and cliched plots. Then as so frequently now the
entertainment was in what the audience saw, not what the film said.
It is worthwhile to see A BUG'S LIFE just to see how the animation
technology is progressing. If the story-line is weak at least there
are moments of really good humor, though many are in the closing
credits. It would be interesting to know if ANTZ eats into the
profits of A BUG'S LIFE. ANTZ seems to have been timed to do just
that, but if so it may have been a miscalculation. The two films
dealing with the one non-conformist ant in the colony could co-
exist at the box-office much like DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON have.
I would rate A BUG'S LIFE a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on
the -4 to +4 scale. There are a few scenes that could be
frightening to younger children.
This film has been released with the short film "Geri's Game" which
won Pixar an Oscar. It is a funny little short of an old man
playing chess with himself in the park. It humorously makes the
point that playing chess with yourself as an opponent is not really
like playing a different person. Actually it could almost be a
study of schizophrenia, though I think that is reading more into
the short than Pixar intends. One of the more interesting aspects
of "Geri's Game" is to see how far Pixar has progressed in
representing computer animation of human figures. It is one thing
to represent in animation toys and insects with their rigid
surfaces, but it is harder to represent humans realistically.
Human characters were kept to a minimum in TOY STORY and are not
present at all in A BUG'S LIFE.
I have one question about the closing credits. (Hopefully this
will be meaningless to anyone who has not seen the film.) How
genuine is what we are hearing? The joke is obviously that the
visuals are false, but the audio track may be genuine. [-mrl]
===================================================================
7. The 1998 Toronto International Film Festival (film reviews and
commentary by Mark R. Leeper) (part 10 of 10)
ANTZ (United States)
CAPSULE: The story is okay in a Disney sort of way, but the star is
the state-of-the-art computer animation in this film that shows
life in an insect colony from the Dreamworks. The mass scenes are
impressive and the individual ants are expressive. Voices include
Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone, and Gene Hackman. Rating: 7 (0 to
10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
Directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson.
- Voices also include Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken, Danny
Glover, Dan Aykroyd, and Anne Bancroft. Part of the game is
in recognizing the voices.
- Story involves a worker ant who does not want to be one of a
sea of ants, he wants to be an individual. Masquerading as a
soldier ant he sees war first hand. Meanwhile the general of
the soldier ants is making plans to massacre the whole nest
and go off to found his own colony.
- Do not believe any entomology you see represented here. Most
is wrong. I believe male ants basically fertilize the queen
and die. The termites don't look like real termites. They
look less like real termites than the ants look like ants.
- There is some irony in the ants all deciding en masse that
they are individuals.
- In some ways this is STARSHIP TROOPERS as seen from the other
side.
- Most of the animation sequences seem more complex than TOY
STORY, though the story is not really as good perhaps. This
could spark a race for most complex scenes. There is a
tremendous amount happening in some of these scenes as a sea
of ants, each individually animated, swarm onto the enemy.
Pixar and Disney may have to look to their laurels.
- Could be frightening for younger children.
We did not have tickets for anything until the midnight show. We
decided to try the rush line for the two theaters showing THIS IS
MY FATHER. We could not get a pair of tickets, but there was a
single ticket offered. Everybody in the line was couples. Evelyn
suggested I take the single ticket and she would see me at the
midnight film. I did.
THIS IS MY FATHER (Canadian/Irish)
CAPSULE: An American schoolteacher (James Caan) travels to Ireland
to trace a father he never knew. In uncovering the story he finds
the story of a good simple man and a tragic story of lovers kept
apart by prejudice and intolerance. Aiden Quinn stars, his brother
Paul directs, and brother Declan photographs. Rating: 7 (0 to 10),
low +2 (-4 to +4)
- Production of the Quinn Brothers based on the story of their
own father.
- Mournful score by Donal Lunny.
- Kieran Johnson (James Caan) is an unpopular English teacher
voted among the most boring by his class. His life at home is
equally bad with a rebellious son and a bed-ridden mother. He
decides to take time to go to Ireland and find out about his
father Kieron O'Day (Aidan Quinn). The story he is told puts
his own life and his problems into perspective.
- Kieron O'Day is a simple farmer with a hard life. He romances
Johnson's mother, played at this age by Moya Farrelly. The
arouses the ire of both the local priest (Stephen Rea) and of
the mother of the woman he loves.
- Priest is an intolerant man who curses O'Day from the pulpit,
delivers fire and brimstone sermons, and chases a man from the
confessional yelling after him "Get out and don't come back to
the church until you stop doing that."
- One happy night when out with is love on a beach, Airplane
lands with Life Magazine photographer (John Cusack) wanting to
rest the night and looking for someone to play American
football.
- Nice representation of Irish village life.
Coming out, there was Evelyn standing there. They had come through
offering a single ticket for the other theater. Again everybody in
line was couples but Evelyn so she took the ticket and saw THIS IS
MY FATHER on the other screen. People forward of us in line were
unhappy that they had not taken single tickets when they were
available. We both saw the same film, but on different screens.
Also we both had to sit to the side in the front row, which was a
minor inconvenience. But we ended up both seeing the same film at
the same time, so we could discuss it. Then off to our final film
of the festival. This one everybody knew was going to be bad, but
it was sort of a last night joke.
[to be continued] [-mrl]
MIGHTY PEKING MAN (Hong Kong)
CAPSULE: A wild jungle woman and an 11-story gorilla are discovered
in Tibet and taken to Hong Kong where the gorilla escapes and
causes havoc. This is a laughable 1977 rip off of KING KONG
(1976), itself a rip-off. Production values are low and audiences
seem to like the film mostly for derisive laughter. Rating: 2 (0
to 10), high -2 (-4 to +4)
- Directed by Ho Meng-Hua.
- This film is provided to be a sort of laughing stock to finish
the festival.
- An earthquake uncovers an 11-story tall gorilla in the
Himalayas. A hunter, chosen because he just broke up with his
girl and is at loose ends, gets sent to find the ape and finds
a sort of female Tarzan who controls the ape.
- Evelyne Kraft is the jungle girl in a leather bikini that she
is pasted into so she always looks on the verge of bouncing
out of.
- Gorilla actor has no idea how gorillas move and suit is
terrible. Nice miniature effects, however.
- Has almost a music video inside it of jungle girl playing with
animals like Chi-chi the leopard.
- Several places there is narrative that is nearly incoherent as
if there are missing scenes and the viewer has to guess what
happened in the interim.
- Actual location shooting in Mysore. Ape shown badly matted
behind temple.
- Combining of images usually pretty bad. Incompetent matching
of film stocks.
- Stock footage frequently used.
- Gorilla brought to Hong Kong by greedy entrepreneur who really
abuses the ape before it escapes and tears things up real
good.
From there it was a walk back to the room. We put on channel 10,
which was covering the film festival for our last remnants. And so
ended our Toronto International Film Festival. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
What science can there be more noble, more excellent,
more useful for men, more admirably high and
demonstrative, than this of the mathematics?
-- Benjamin Franklin
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