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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 11/12/99 -- Vol. 18, No. 20
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, 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. Our Australia and Aussiecon Three logs are available at:
http://www.geocities.com/markleeper/australia.htm
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/austral.htm
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/a3.htm
===================================================================
2. Last week I was saying that white males are frequently the
villains in films these days. When there are conflicts in films,
the white or the male seems most frequently to be in the wrong.
Let us get some hard data and compare. Let's take the top 15
grossing films and list the conflicts that cross gender or race
barriers. There may be other conflicts in the film, but we will
ignore them. That is white male against white male we will ignore.
Asian female against Asian female we will also ignore. I will
express them as an ordered pair, (bad guy(s); good guy(s)). For
example TITANIC has Billy Zane and David Warner as the bad guys and
Kate Winslet as a good guy. We ignore conflicts that do not cross
race or gender barriers. Remember we are counting only the
conflicts between people of different genders or races.) Let us
see how many cases we have a white person correct against someone
of another race. How often is a man correct in the right in a
conflict with a woman? (My memory could be faulty on some plot
points.
1. TITANIC: (2 men bad; 1 woman good)
2. STAR WARS: (2 men bad; 1 woman good) (the bad men are mostly
Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin, they conflict with Princess
Leia.)
3. ET: (multiple men bad, one little girl good.)
4. JURASSIC PARK: (1 man bad; 1 young woman good) sort of
questionable
5. FORREST GUMP: none
6. LION KING: none
7. RETURN OF THE JEDI: (multiple men bad; 1 woman good)
8. INDEPENDENCE DAY: none
9. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: (multiple white men bad; 1 woman good,
1 black man mostly good)
10. HOME ALONE: none
11. JAWS: none
12. BATMAN: none
13. MEN IN BLACK none
14. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: (multiple men bad; one woman good)
15. TWISTER: (multiple men bad; one woman good)
I am not sure that fifteen films, even the highest grossing films,
are statistically significant, but it does argue for what I am
saying that in most popular films when a male and female are in
conflict, the female has been scripted to be right. We have one
case here where there is almost an exception. In FORREST GUMP
there is a woman who is self-destructive and a man who tries to
save her. However her victim is only herself, unlike the other
cases above. This data is insufficient but the majority of films
where there are conflicts between races; the Caucasian is scripted
to be wrong. Among what I think of as art house films that I saw
at Toronto the same holds pretty much true though there were more
counter-examples, for example DANCING AT LUGHNASA, where there is
conflict the script generally has you siding with the men.
But it is better if people just look for themselves at films they
have seen, think about whom the script favors and whom it doesn't.
The conclusion I have drawn for myself is what I said in my
PLEASANTVILLE comments above. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. THE BONE COLLECTOR (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: A surprisingly uninteresting psychotic
killer film with a very predictable yet absurd
solution. Philip Noyce knows how to give the
film a lot of style, but the story is an utter
waste of time. People who enjoy seeing blood
and pain on the screen will have a good time.
For the rest is it a festival of cliches.
Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)
Thomas Harris did a lot that was original with the novel RED
DRAGON, later made into the film MANHUNTER. He established or at
least revitalized the entire sub-genre of stories of police and
psychotic serial killers. This sort of story had been made before
but he upped the ante by making the killers more interesting and
dangerous. Today the novel would not be as good because so much
has been plundered for use elsewhere. Had THE BONE COLLECTOR come
out at that time, it would have been a much more intriguing film.
But by now most of what it offers is familiar. Phillip Noyce is
not new to psychotic killer films. His DEAD CALM is one of the
best because it is as much a sea adventure as a murder plot. Now
he demonstrates just how important it is to do something creative
with the genre by giving us a thriller does just about everything
else right and still makes for a very mundane film. THE BONE
COLLECTOR gives the ready-made audience who want to see another
violent psychotic thriller film a film to see, but does no
interesting playing with the genre. The attraction of dealing with
a killer who thinks differently than a sane person should be that
he is unpredictable. But just about everything about THE BONE
COLLECTOR is mechanical and done by the numbers. The killer
always leaves a clue to his next crime and the heroes always figure
out what the clue means and exactly where the crime will occur down
to a street address.
The team of investigators seems to have been pulled from a
checklist of ethnic types. We have a beautiful white patrol
officer unsure she wants to do forensics. Then there is a black
forensic genius confined to a bed and suffering from seizures that
he hopes will soon kill him rather than become a vegetable. And
finally there is a Latino forensic science researcher. Of course
the team of investigators have to contend with a police department
dominated by the stupid and incompetent white males. This gutsy
team races the clock and bucks the power structure finding clues
that nobody else in the police department can see. This could
almost be a TV pilot it is so formulaic.
Lincoln Rhyme (played by Denzel Washington) is the forensic expert
who literally wrote the book that defines police detective work.
Now he is bed-ridden and subject to seizures that any time may
leave him a human vegetable. Before that happens he wants to
arrange his own death. Emily Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) is a plucky
young patrol officer. When she answers a report about a dead body
found she has to stop a train in order to prevent it from rolling
over a clue. This brings her censure from her superiors, but earns
her the respect of Lincoln Rhyme. Over her own objections she is
drafted to help do the detective work to track the killer. The two
quickly discover that they are dealing with a psychotic killer who
in the best traditions of Batman villains always leaves a puzzle
clue to what his next crime will be. The team is rounded out by
Eddie Ortez (Luis Guzman), a genius at materials analysis. There
is something wrong with the script when with no additional clues
the audience gets way ahead of the experts in guessing the killer.
About a third of the way through I had a very short list of
suspects. But then there were no clues whatsoever until it is
revealed who the killer is. When at the end one does know the
killer and the motivation it too seems more out of Batman than
reality.
Cinematographer Dean Semler does a lot of obvious things to create
the feel of the film. Scenes are kept dark and oppressive. When
the plot shifts a setting into the sunlight the lens is heavily
filtered to give an unwholesome look to the street and sky.
Outdoor distance shots try repeatedly and without subtlety to
establish that this is Manhattan while close-ups, those that do not
take place in the basements and bowels of the city, do not look a
lot like New York and in fact are filmed in Montreal.
Denzel Washington plays his role with entirely too much vitality
for the man on the brink of death. I am told in the book Rhyme is
middle-aged, which would have seemed more believable. Here he
happily pokes fun at his own seizures, which seems entirely a wrong
gesture for a man in his supposedly depressed state. Angelina
Jolie, daughter of Jon Voigt, does little to make the character of
Emily Donaghy her own and dozens of young actresses could have been
snapped into the same role like interchangeable parts. Luis
Guzman, recently of THE LIMEY, is certainly watchable. And Queen
Latifah as Rhyme's caregiver matches Washington's amiability.
THE BONE COLLECTOR is an extremely forgettable TV-pilot level
serial killer film. Only real fans of the sub-genre will enjoy it.
I give it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[-mrl]