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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 11/26/99 -- Vol. 18, No. 22
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. Frankly like most of the American public I have a dislike of
Health Maintenance Organizations. Just about everybody else who
deals with them has the same distrust and loathing. I think they
are taking health care out of the hands of the people who need it,
making it effectively unavailable. The way they do this is largely
by creating so many procedures, so many automated telephone
answering systems, so many forms, that many people give up in
disgust rather than get the health care they need. This is on top
of the questionable health decisions they have made and that have
received so much media attention.
I do have to play Devil's Advocate on this issue. however. HMOs
have courageously (or perhaps stupidly, but I doubt it) put
themselves in a very vulnerable position legally. As a result HMOs
are asking for immunity from being sued for making questionable
medical decisions and while I don't agree, I grudgingly have to say
there is some merit to the argument. Health care costs are very
strongly affected by advances in medical technology. Consider a
hypothetical case in which Procedure A may be 90% effective in
diagnosing an ailment. Another and very much more expensive
Procedure B may be 92% effective based on clinical experience. If
they go for Procedure B all the time it could become a great sink
of funds. The HMO sees its first responsibility to its
stockholders and that 2% difference may not seem like it is worth a
lot of extra investment. This is particularly true since spending
the money here means either not spending it elsewhere or raising
fees.
But we are talking about a life and death decision. And when
somebody gets Procedure A and it falls, as it will do 10% of the
time, there will immediately be the question of whether the more
expensive Procedure B would have been more successful. Of course
nobody will never know and that is what makes lawsuits. And
lawsuits are decided by people. And ever more frequently they are
made by people who will have had to deal with the HMO bureaucracy.
And even if that were not the case all the best emotional arguments
run against the HMOs and unfortunately when it comes to dealing
with juries, emotional arguments are much more powerful than
logical ones. If I have to have a case decided by a jury I would
rather have two good emotional arguments than four good logical
arguments.
No HMO will ever be trusted unquestioningly with such a life and
death decision. It is hard enough for a personal doctor to make
such a decision and few doctors are thought of as having to please
stockholders. This dilemma of choosing procedures and gambling on
high cost for a little more certainty is part of what sent the
price of medical care skyrocketing in the first place. The simple
fact is that technology is improving potential healthcare. The
cost of medical research and certification is high. Even if it
were not you have Adam's Smith's Invisible Hand. The market will
pay top dollar for a better chance of cheating death. That means
the prices would be high even if they wouldn't otherwise have to
be. If the HMOs do not pay these higher prices they are
withholding the best care to save money. If they do they have to
pass the price along.
It is a serious and costly dilemma. The HMOs have a conflict of
interest that is inextricably entwined into their business. A
conflict of interest really is their business. And the conflict
will probably will not be resolved strictly on the basis of ethics.
That will put them out of business.
Next week I will have a related article on what I expect the
affects of this conflict of interest will be on the future of
health care. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. SLEEPY HOLLOW (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
CAPSULE: This is much more a tribute to than an
adaptation of the Washington Irving story that
has become a children's Halloween classic.
SLEEPY HOLLOW is an exquisitely sepulchral
horror adventure involving witchcraft and a
head-hunting Hessian headless horseman from
hell. This poetic and beautifully realized
film surpasses all of director Tim Burton's
earlier work but THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE
CHRISTMAS. Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to
+4) Spoiler warning: the review is followed by
some comments on the film intended for people
who have already seen the film, one of which
could be a serious spoiler.
One of the greatest horror films ever made is Edgar Ulmer's 1934
THE BLACK CAT. It is a delightful black comedy, an exercise in
mordant horror starring both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in their
first film together. It claims to be based on the classic story by
Edgar Allan Poe, but one can search for hours through the film and
not find anything that Poe would recognize. One could hardly call
it a retelling of the Poe. It is a little easier to find elements
of Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in Tim Burton's
new SLEEPY HOLLOW, but it is amazing to see how many people are
calling this a retelling of the Irving. It most certainly is not.
Instead the story has been disassembled and many of the pieces have
been used in telling the story of what might be a supernatural
killer bringing sleepless nights to the little New York State
village of Sleepy Hollow in 1799.
Ichabod Crane (played by Johnny Depp) is an enlightened police
detective and reformer from New York City. He is excited about the
coming of the new century. (He calls it a new "millennium,"
indicating that there must have been a bunch of people working on
this film who did not realize that new centuries and new millennia
do not always come at the same time. So not everything scary about
this film is intentional.) Though Crane himself is afraid of the
sight of blood--and seemingly even his own shadow--he believes that
new scientific methods will revolutionize police detective work.
He even has invented for examining evidence a set of instruments
that would do David Cronenberg proud. However, his methods are not
welcomed by the local constable and burgomaster (cameos by Alun
Armstrong and Christopher Lee). Crane is sent by carriage upstate
to investigate some recent mysterious killings in Sleepy Hollow.
Three decapitation murders have taken place in the little village
and Crane is to report to prominent citizen Baltus Van Tassel
(Michael Gambon) and begin his investigation. And if scientific
methods can be employed, so much the better.
Physically, Depp is all wrong to play the gangly Ichabod Crane.
However the queasy detective shows great internal dissonance when
the strength of his enlightened ideas push against his physical and
psychological weaknesses. And he tries to hide his distress, not
very successfully, with his cold-fish demeanor. The strain of this
police case eventually is really too much for him and he finds he
is cracking under the strain. It is a delightful change to have a
vulnerable hero who has self-doubts and weaknesses. Perfectly
matching the spirit of the film is a terrific Michael Gambon. He
must have spent hours in front of a mirror achieving just the
perfect facial expression for each of his scenes, frequently
conveying at the same time disdain, disgust, and fear. His
daughter, Katrina Van Tassel, is Christina Ricci who in spite of
her buxom appearance still looks a lot like Little Wednesday from
THE ADDAMS FAMILY. Perhaps that is a mold she will take a long
time breaking. Miranda Richardson quietly plays Van Tassel's wife,
but is clearly the source of most of Van Tassel's strength. When
the Hessian is given his head he is played by Christopher Walken
who appears to be having a grand time of it. Rumor has it that Tim
Burton is so introverted that he wants to deal with as few new
actors per film as possible. As a result many of his actors get
used over and over. Familiar faces include Depp, of course, but
also Jeffrey Jones and Lisa Marie, all from Ed Woods's entourage.
There are more familiar faces including Michael Gough, Ian
McDiarmid, and Casper Van Dien.
Tim Burton is as much a visual stylist as a director. His
particular visual style is recognizable and goes back to his
amateur film FRANKENWEENIE. In this film he uses that style a
little less, but it is still recognizable. The visual aspects of
this film are, in fact, its greatest attraction. This is a nice
film to look at. Frequently large mattes are used to create
scenes, but in a departure, they are not intended to be realistic.
Instead they are either obvious paintings of idealized nature or of
smoke-filled scenes of villages setting a tone for the film.
Sleepy Hollow is an area of mists and darkness. The few sunny
scenes are memories of the past and again at the end of the film
when normality returns. Burton intentionally lifts images from
classic horror films. The film opens with an image of dripping
blood spattering borrowed from the Hammer film (THE HORROR OF)
DRACULA. Later an image is borrowed from THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.
Washington Irving might not have thought much of SLEEPY HOLLOW.
But for a horror film, it is poetic and surprisingly pleasurable.
As it rarely does when I am watching a film it occurred to me at
about the halfway point that I was really enjoying the film. Even
with all its faults, this film is fun. I give it 8 on the 0 to 10
scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
SPOILER WARNING... SPOILER WARNING... SPOILER WARNING...
There are several points I would fine-tune with this film
including: 1) The birdcage on the disk is always filmed as if it is
right side up including at the end when it is filmed from both
front and back. Seen from the front the cage and bird should be
upside-down if the user sees it right side up. 2) The ending of
the film is completely given away much too soon by the voice of the
witch in the woods. Anyone who saw the very good TV-movie MERLIN
will have heard the same false voice used extensively. 3) Toward
the end of the film a clue is presented and interpreted. Crane
says that a dead body will not bleed. And starting a short time
after the death of the body that is true. But if the filmmakers
were aware of that fact, why did they have the earlier pregnant
victim's body bleed when it was dug up? They should have known it
could not do that. [-mrl]
===================================================================
3. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
CAPSULE: Pierce Brosnan's third outing as James
Bond, while less flamboyant than his previous
two, is the best spy story of the three.
Brosnan is almost to the point where one can
think of him as Bond. This is a low-key
outing, but a story with some ambiguity and
intelligence of a higher level than one usually
finds in a Bond film. Michael Apted is an odd
choice for director, but he does fine. Rating:
6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
There is a spectrum of styles for the plots of Bond films. On one
hand you can Style I in which you have comic book super-villains
who are trying literally to destroy the whole world; you can have
women with dirty-joke names (e.g., Pussy Galore); you can have
clues that fall into Bond's lap by coincidences or by villain
over-confidence, so it looks like Bond always knows what he is
doing; Bond always has just the right gizmo to get out of a nasty
situation; Bond never gets injured or always heals in seconds; and
the villain destroyed when Bond pulls one conveniently located
switch. DR. NO started this trend and it is not surprising that it
seems childish. Ian Fleming actually wrote the plot of DR. NO
first for Captain Jamaica his planned childrens television show.
When Captain Jamaica did not sell he rewrote the story as a
supposedly adult spy novel in his then fledgling James Bond series.
On the other hand you can have Style II spy story. That puts Bond
into the shadowy half-world of international espionage where he
wants to get a microfilm that tells with whom Iraq is making secret
treaties; Bond does not know who his friends are and who his
enemies are; when a bullet hits his arm it is out of action for the
rest of the story; Bond has to think very fast frequently; and
occasionally Bond makes very wrong decisions. FROM RUSSIA WITH
LOVE was an effort to move in that direction, though John LeCarre
or Len Deighton writes more in that style. There are people who
just love the Style I Bond films and they are an easy formula to
write. I prefer the latter and subjectively placing a Bond film on
this spectrum is how I judge if it is a good film or not. THE
WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH has been released with much less hype than most
Bond films, and while it is still closer to the unrealistic style
of story, it still is more realistic than most Bond films.
In Spain James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is picking up a stash of money
recovered from a mission that killed an MI6 agent. He is betrayed
and nearly killed, though his life is saved by the intervention of
a mysterious sniper. Bond returns the money to its industrialist
owner only to find out the money was booby-trapped to explode and
kill its rightful owner. Explode it does rather spectacularly
giving rise to an impressive boat chase. The money had been ransom
for the industrialist's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau). Bond
realizes that the means to kill the industrialist required not only
the money and an assassin a short distance away to trigger it, it
also required that the industrialist be wearing a special doctored
lapel pin. This implies that the victim must have been betrayed
from within his own organization. Bond immediately realizes that
anyone who would use such an arcane, inconvenient, and telltale
mechanism to try to kill someone and still get it to work must be
impressive indeed. That implies that his next victim might be
Elektra who slipped through the assassins fingers once already.
Elektra is continuing her father's project to build an oil pipeline
across Western Asia. Bond discovers the terrorist who kidnapped
her is an ex-KGB agent whom a bullet in the brain has left unable
to feel pain This makes the assassin, Renard stronger every day.
Bond dons a cover as a businessman and goes in to protect Electra
only to have her see through his cover in seconds. She is a
strong-willed woman and highly capable woman with no intention of
cooperating with Bond. But he still determines to protect her.
This film makes several concessions to realism previous Brosnan
Bond films would not. Bond gets hurt several times in this film
and at least for a short time it slows him down. He also makes
mistakes trusting the wrong people. Bond deduces that the
briefcase of money is a trap, but it is not soon enough to prevent
the murder plan from going through. Hence Bond is more fallible
than in previous films. The villain's plan is more flamboyant than
simply embarrassing the British Secret Service and killing Bond as
it was in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, but the plotter and the plot are
far less exaggerated than Hugo Drax and his plan in MOONRAKER.
This also is an improvement. And more than in recent films it
takes Bond a while to sort out good guys from bad guys. The ending
is more tense than spectacular. These criteria do not guarantee a
good Bond film, but certainly it is more intelligent than Bond
films have been of late.
Traditionally Michael Apted's documentaries have been much better
than his fiction films. But here his touch does nothing but good
for the Bond series. Either Pierce Brosnan is starting to get the
hang of being Bond or I am just starting to think of him that way,
but he seems more natural than he has in the past. Robert Carlyle
as the assassin Renard is acceptable in a role very different from
his in THE FULL MONTY or TRAINSPOTTING. He did not need the bullet
in the head gimmick to be a good villain. Sophie Marceau and
Denise Richards are acceptable in their roles. Some critics have
found it unrealistic to have Denise Richards with shorts and bare
midriff as a nuclear scientist disarming warheads. To me that just
means the critics are more out of touch with the world than are the
filmmakers. That job would probably be taken by someone just out
of graduate school and Richards is reasonable in the part. Less
reasonable is John Cleese as R, the buffoon successor to Q.
Casting Cleese is a step in the wrong direction. The series
already has plenty of chuckles and needs more credibility.
Usually the best part of a Bond film is the artistic opening credit
sequence which used to be done by Maurice Binder. The visuals in
this one are on the theme of oil and seeing women in the crude in
the nude has all the taste of women mud-wrestling. Most Bond films
take place in exotic settings which serve as product placement for
tourist destinations. Even Istanbul seems unromantic in this film
and Azerbaijan is not vying very hard for tourist dollars.
Overall this may not be the most memorable entry in the series, but
it is the best in recent years. I give it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale
and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Just so the reader can know what my values are in Bond films I
would rate the Bond film best to worst as:
1. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
2. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
3. THUNDERBALL
4. DR. NO
5. LICENSE TO KILL
6. GOLDFINGER
7. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
8. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
9. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
10. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
11. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
12. OCTOPUSSY
13. TOMORROW NEVER DIES
14. GOLDENEYE
15. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
16. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
17. A VIEW TO A KILL
18. MOONRAKER
19. LIVE AND LET DIE
MINOR SPOILERS... MINOR SPOILERS... MINOR SPOILERS... MINOR
SPOILERS...
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH uses a lot of the trademark Bond touches.
Somehow the gun-sight opening at the beginning of a new Bond film
still always packs a bit of a thrill. In this film Bond is once
again a womanizer, which probably was some of the fun of the
earliest Bonds. Traditions I could do without include the extended
skiing sequences and the tiresome running gag that Bond is so often
caught having sex in the final scene. Ideas in this one that seem
foolish include a pair of special glasses whose power seems
ridiculous. I am not an expert but it would take some convincing
for me to believe the loss of one source of oil would so badly
affect Britain. They do have sources in a lot of other places,
including the North Sea. It would take even more convincing that
anyone would want to hold a half-grapefruit-sized hemisphere of
weapons-grade plutonium in their bare hand. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
Cat's motto: No matter what you've done wrong, always try to make it look like the dog did it.
-- Unknown