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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 03/19/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 38
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-957-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-957-2070, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@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 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. Some of you may have noticed the new colophon last week. (Then
again, maybe not.) There have been quite a few changes lately, and
we wanted to get up-to-date with them.
First, our previously listed Holmdel chair hasn't been in Holmdel
for years. Though he is returning soon, so is our Middletown
chair, who is the real chair.
Our long-time Holmdel librarian has moved to Crawford Hill. The
books, however, will remain in Holmdel, where they will be merged
with the Middletown library when it moves over in a couple of
months. At that point, everything will be available for check-out
for Lucent members (via inter-office mail to those members not in
Holmdel). A list of our holdings will be put on a web page for
easier browsing. Thanks to Nick Sauer for many years of service
(including boxing up the books at the end!).
And finally, the New Jersey Science Fiction Association appears to
be relatively defunct and I have no current contact information for
it. [-ecl]
===================================================================
2. I may be admitting my age here, but when I was just a young lad
almost all public air travel was on propeller planes. I guess the
military had jets, but the commercial airlines did not have them
yet. I would see jets on TV in programs like "Captain Midnight"
and my mouth would water. Then little by little the airlines
started getting planes with jet engines. I remember my father
would go on business trips and my mother would take him to the
airport. I was still too young to be left at home, so my mother
would take me along while she was taking him. I saw the early jets
taking off and voraciously wolfing down the altitude. I mean
propeller aircraft did not have a very steep ascent. They just did
not have the power for it. I seem to remember these early jets
going up at about a 30-degree angle. My jaw just dropped. "Boy,
I'd sure love to be in one of those jets," I thought. This was
what the future would be like with people flying around in these
graceful, powerful planes. It was the low end of what it would be
like to ride spaceships. "Commando Cody" had me wanting to fly
spaceships. But flying jets was something I dearly hoped I would
be doing in my lifetime. And you know I was right, at least about
the fact many of us would be riding jet aircraft. And I suppose my
first ride in a jet aircraft was pretty exciting to me. That first
time seeing the ground drop away so quickly was fairly exciting.
I flew again a couple weeks ago. I could not see out the windows
of the plane. The windows are a lot smaller these days because
most people don't want to be reminded that they are off the ground
and there is nothing below them but air. Basically you are betting
your life that aerodynamics work and will keep a really heavy plane
up in the air. (Side thought: I wonder if birds ever get
acrophobia. Do they ever worry about the fact that they are waving
their wings to keep aloft because if they stop they will plow into
the ground at terminal velocity leaving a large bird-shaped hole in
the ground. Does a bird ever think the bird equivalent of "what
the heck am I doing up here?")
But I was flying United Airlines. I will even name the airline.
United used to be one of the leading airlines. These days it is
still a leader, but mostly in how effectively can they can
sacrifice customer comfort for their own profit. (I am not even
talking about the food.) As I was saying I strapped myself into my
seat. The seats you get riding coach these days are designed to be
about six inches narrower than the average width of a human being.
And they pack in more rows. You are playing elbows with the person
beside you while the person ahead of you has his head in your lap.
It gives new meaning to "Fly the friendly skies of United." It
wouldn't be me if I wasn't using hyperbole slightly, but I
challenge anyone who has recently flown coach on a United 757 to
say I am misrepresenting the situation. I was flying the Redeye
back from San Francisco to Newark and United had combined two
redeye flights for fear that anyone could stretch into an unsold
seat, get some rest, and not leave the plane with red eyes.
Well, we got off the plane at the end, sighed with relief, got to
our car, and drove home. In the car on our cassette player we are
listening to episodes of "X Minus One." That is a science fiction
radio show from the 1950s. Every show they start "Countdown to
blast-off. X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one, blast
off." And I always listen with awe and think to myself, "boy, I'd
sure love to be in one of those spaceships." But what am I really
saying? Boy, I would love to be confined to a small, uncomfortable
room for months or years on end. Maybe at the beginning and end of
the flight there might be a nice view, but other than that there
would be not much to see but a dark sky. Like flying the jets, or
going down in a submarine, or riding the Orient Express these
things always look a heck of a lot better from the outside than
they do on the inside.
I guess the dreams I had as a kid are a lot nicer than the reality.
So if I got the offer would I really choose to fly in a spaceship?
Would I be willing to go through all that discomfort just because
it was sexy-looking from the outside to fly a real rocket ship.
Would I really choose to go? You bet I would. Like a shot. When
I start answering that question with a "no," I will know I am
getting old. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR is a Chinese
folk tale moved to the 1600s to resonate with
the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the rise of
the Manchus. The cinematography is terrific,
the story is okay, but the dialog and the
fighting scenes are the usual Hong Kong hokum.
This would have been a better film if it had
been more about the history. Rating: 6 (0 to
10), high +1 (-4 to +4) (Also included are
comments about THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR II)
The historic backdrop for THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR by itself would
have made a better film than THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR did. What
makes this an interesting film is something that will be missed by
viewers of the film with little knowledge of Chinese history. The
fantasy is the story of Yi-Hang who appears in the film as a friend
of Wu San-kuei. They are two men who will react very similarly in
different but parallel struggles. Each will betray people who
depend on him and in each case it will be for the love of a woman.
Supposedly the story of the film is an old folktale, but to play up
the thematic similarities to actual history it is set in the 1640s
with only a few brief references to what was happening with Wu
San-kuei. Here is a quick summary of what was happening.
For too long the Ming Dynasty had ruled selfishly and had sown the
seeds of their own destruction. A whole class of hangers-on--
60,000 people all claiming to be part of the royal family--were
supported at public expense, impoverishing the peasants. They did
little for their keep but collect taxes. Whole families would go
first into debt and then into slavery in their own villages.
Public suicides were common. In 1628 there was a famine in the
Northwest and out of it rose a rebel leader, Li Tzu-ch'eng. The
people could take no more, and a peasant army rose up under the
leadership of Li Tzu-ch'eng and captured Northern China in 1642 and
Beijing in 1644. The Ming Emperor committed suicide, but his army
for the most part stayed loyal to the Mings.
Both Wu San-Kuei and his father had been military commanders for
the dying Ming Dynasty. They had been charged with repelling the
powerful Manchus, the descendents of the Mongols, wanting to sweep
back into China. What was stopping the Manchus was the Great Wall
and the tactical difficulty of getting past its army defenses.
But Li's rebel army had captured Wu's father to hold as a hostage.
Then adding to Wu's pain they captured his favorite concubine. So
the peasants, the Manchus, and the Mings were each trying to take
control of China. Li offered a Wu San-kuei a truce with the Mings
and an alliance to push back the Manchus. But Wu's hatred was so
great now he wanted no part of an alliance the peasant army. Li
attacked Wu. Wu made his alliance with the Manchus. He opened the
Great Wall gates at Shanhaikuan and allowed the Manchus to enter
China on the promise they would help defeat Li's rebellion and if
they had power would allow the elite to retain their privileges.
Perhaps Li felt he could control the Manchus or perhaps his hatred
of the peasants who captured two people he loved was just too
great. But he let the Manchus into China, and it was like ringing
the dinner bell. The peasants held Beijing for just a month before
they were crushed by the combined might of the Mings and the
Manchus. Then suddenly it was just the Mings and the Manchus vying
for the country. Soon the Ch'ing Dynasty of Manchus were China and
they remained China for 267 years until 1911. Wu San-kuei had
indeed changed the course of history, but only to open the door for
one dynasty to defeat another.
THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR is purportedly based on an older
folktale, but is retold against the backdrop of the falling of the
Ming. Wu San-kuei shows up briefly in both THE BRIDE WITH WHITE
HAIR and its sequel, THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR II. His story runs
simultaneously and parallel to that of Yi-Hang who would be called
a traitor to the eight good clans who form the Wu Tang. He would
be accused of unleashing the forces of a very different evil.
Yi-Hang was just a young boy, but already a student of martial
arts, when he was chased and nearly killed by wolves. What saved
his life was a girl about his own age who seemed to have the
ability to command the wolves. For years she remained just a
memory. In typical martial arts film fashion Yi-Hang (Leslie
Cheung as an adult) grows up frequently getting into trouble
usually through no fault of his own. But his virtue and his
martial arts skill get him out of any problem. He becomes the best
fighter of the eight Wu Tang clans. But there is trouble for the
eight clans coming from an evil rival clan, the Chi Wu Shuang, led
by a somewhat unique pair of evil sorcerers. What they are I will
not describe, but clearly magic was involved in their origins since
it is a biological impossibility. But their secret weapon is a
third and powerful sorcerer, the beautiful woman, Lian Nichang
(played by Brigitte Lin) who uses her hair to entangle her enemies.
Yi-hang finds Lian bathing in the woods and recognizes her as the
wolf-girl of his youth. He falls in love with her, or realizes
that he has loved her since she was a child. But she is of the
rival clan threatening to destroy the Wu Tang. We have a sort of
Romeo and Juliet story of the love between these two martial
artists.
The story does not have a lot to offer that we have not seen
before. And the martial arts fighting is augmented by special
effects and by modifying the camera speed. So the fighting we see
is about as believable as the story. What makes this film worth
going out of ones way to see is the photography. In spite of the
fighting and the blood, this is something of an art film just for
the stunning visuals. Director Ronny Yu apparently wanted to give
this film a unique look that is a visual feast. The film's rich
use of colors, the beautiful costuming, and the art direction are
just terrific and make up for a multitude of other sins. The
cinematographer is Peter Pau and he did more to create this mythic
film than anyone else involved. THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR really
deserves to be seen for the rich visual imagery. I rate it a 6 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR II continues the story ten years later.
But the relationship it bears to its predecessor is a lot like SON
OF FRANKENSTEIN bore to THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It has the same
director, it even has the same actors, but the creativity is all
gone. Instead of being about mythic characters, the film is about
people who know the mythic characters. Lian Nichang is no longer a
three-dimensional character but has been reduced effectively to
being a monster (again parallel to the FRANKENSTEIN films). I do
not know who the cinematographer was but I could bet that it was
not Peter Pau. Blue filters are over-used to try and recapture
some of the look of the first film, but too much of the magic has
gone out of the story. I rate THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR II a 4 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
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