THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/24/10 -- Vol. 29, No. 26, Whole Number 1629
Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Superheroes and the Law
It Ain't Necessarily So (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Year End Mini-Reviews: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS,
PART 1; THE TOWN; HEREAFTER; DOWN TERRACE (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
TRUE GRIT (2010) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
This Week's Reading (THE RESTORATION GAME, "The Nest", and
TYPEWRITER IN THE SKY) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Superheroes and the Law
There's a new blog about superheroes and the law at
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/. Sample topic: "Gadget"
Superheroes and Federal Arms Control Laws.
The "New York Times" has an article about the blog at
http://tinyurl.com/void-superhero-law.
==================================================================
TOPIC: It Ain't Necessarily So (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I would say that before we start requiring United States citizens
to carry proof of citizenship, we should require anyone singing
that it is "oh what fun" to ride in a one-horse, open sleigh to
present proof that they have experienced such a ride. Let me tell
you, particularly if it is snowing and the wind is blowing, it is
darn cold. And it is not too great on the horse either. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Year End Mini-Reviews (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I am a member of the On-line Film Critic Society which each year
has its own awards, not unlike the Academy Awards, with Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and so forth. That means in
late November and early December we have to watch a lot of what are
likely films to receive awards. Particularly with a slow writer
like myself, that means I will spend a lot of time writing about
the new films I have seen. I just do not have sufficient time to
write about as many films as I would like to review. So there are
a lot of interesting films which I let get by me and I do not
review. This year I hope to remedy that situation by at least
giving short reviews of major films I have seen.
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1
One major fantasy film of the year is HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY
HALLOWS, PART 1. Normally I review the major fantasy films each
year, but this one I am going to skip. I have an excuse. I have
seen every Harry Potter film, once each. And I read the first
book. Generally that has been sufficient for me to follow what was
going on. However, this year's entry is really full of Potter
jargon and assumes that you have seen and remember the previous
films. I more of less thing that a film should be self-explanatory
or the patron should be handed an explanation card to explaining
all the previous information the patron might have missed. Or at
least the film should start with a quick summary montage with a
narrator saying "Previously in the Harry Potter Series..." There
was none of that. I had the feeling that others around me knew
what was going on. For me the film was a nice light show. There
were a lot of magical visual images. I was not bored. But I like
in a film to know what I am seeing. People round me seemed to be
enjoying it and understanding it, so I decided the problem was with
me. It was too much like being back in Sophomore French (which did
not do much good for my Grade Point Average). So that is my review
of a film that I am not going to review. Am I going to review any
of the films that I Am going to review? Sure.
Rating: 1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10
THE TOWN
Ben Affleck directs a screenplay that he coauthored with Aaron
Stockard. The same could be said of the 2007 film GONE, BABY,
GONE. Both films are set in Boston. The previous film might have
somewhat have been inspired by Clint Eastwood's MYSTIC RIVER
(2003). I have to say that those are three very good crime films.
They have some action, but they are strong on character too. THE
TOWN is not quite up to the other two. Those two hung really on
interesting moral dilemmas. I did not see this film taking the
same sort of chances challenging the viewer, but it is a good
story, nonetheless. Affleck plays in the film. He is one of a
group of four friends who rob banks together. Affleck's character
befriends a young bank manager who does not recognize him as the
robber who in mask was threatening her just a few days earlier.
Much of the film hangs on will the manager recognize Affleck as the
robber, or will an inquisitive FBI agent get him first. Affleck
gives the film an authentic feeling for the texture of his setting.
Rating: 2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10
HEREAFTER
Speaking of Clint Eastwood, he is one film director who can
generally be relied upon to turn over a good piece of work. This
year he tries a film very much unlike what he has done in the past,
but he is outside his zone of expertise. In the first place this
is a fantasy, a field he has visited as director only rarely in the
past. I suppose there is some fantasy to SPACE COWBOYS and
arguably with HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and PALE RIDER. None of them has
as strong a fantasy element as HEREAFTER. There are three threads
apparently disconnected except that each has something to do with
life after death. Like Robert Altman he has the three threads come
together at the end of the film, but unlike Altman would do it,
they do not come together in a particularly interesting way. The
film's centerpiece is a filming of the life after death experience
complete with going into the light. However, a much better fantasy
film, RESURRECTION (1980), got there first and had a much better
story to boot. I suspect what attracted Eastwood to this material
is he is feeling his age and thinking about death.
Rating: 1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10
DOWN TERRACE
This is actually a comedy, though it takes a long time for the
initiated to realize that it is supposed to be funny. A crime
family seems to be just regular blokes talking to each other about
now very much at all. But it turns out that they have fallen on
hard times and the police seem to be catching on to them. Someone
in their midst is singing to the police, and different people have
different ideas who it is. Very subtly they decide that they have
to eliminate the bad apple and so they start knocking each other
off. It sounds like it could be the basis for a very exaggerated
sort of farce, but the humor of the situation is so understated
that one never gets much of a clue when to laugh.
Rating: 1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10
Hey, this is fun. I will do a few more next week. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: TRUE GRIT (2010) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Coen Brothers remake one of the classic Western
films--a John Wayne Western yet. Their work was cut out for them,
remaking a well-liked film, but they manage to make the characters
more real and even to give the story a little more edge. Jeff
Bridges gives one of his best performances and Hailee Steinfeld
more than holds her own against the other leads. Matt Damon sort
of fades into the background. It is not clear we needed another
adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, but the production is first
rate. It has more texture and more edge. Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4)
or 8/10
Far more remakes are made in the film industry than the public
needs. Though filmmakers like to re-film stories that were
popular, it is rare that a remake that stands up well to comparison
to the original. A filmmaker is obliged to make a film that is
still worth seeing even if one remembers the earlier version well.
Even Martin Scorsese tried making his own version of someone else's
film. The Hong Kong film INFERNAL AFFAIRS (2004) he remade as THE
DEPARTED (2006), and at least to my mind failed to improve on the
original material. But Joel and Ethan Coen fared even worse when
they tried to remake the classic Ealing comedy THE LADYKILLERS
(1955) with their own 2004 version, a lamentable misfire. So it
was surprising when they returned to the remake game with their
version of the 1969 TRUE GRIT directed by Henry Hathaway. That
film starred John Wayne and Kim Darby as "Rooster" Cogburn and
Mattie Ross. The new version stars Jeff Bridges and Hailee
Steinfeld in the same roles.
Though you would not know it from the billing on either version of
the film, the main character is the fourteen-year-old Mattie. To
say she had pluck would almost be an insult. She has the mind and
will and sense of an educated adult and is less a character than a
force of nature. She apparently never got used to losing an
argument and never has to. You do not argue with her, you get out
of her way. We learn that her father was killed by an
acquaintance, Tom Chaney (played by Josh Brolin). Chaney then fled
to Indian Territory where the law was afraid to follow. Mattie is
not satisfied with the legal process so she hires the meanest
marshal she can find, Rooster Cogburn. Rooster has a bad
reputation for turning fugitives into corpses and that suits Mattie
right down to the ground. A Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt
Damon) is also looking for Chaney and joins them. The three go off
into dangerous country to track down the killer. The Coen Brothers
know how to develop characters through dialog and here they do an
excellent job. Perhaps the bickering becomes a little tiresome,
but that is part of the point. Charles Portis's novel does not
give them a lot to choose from. Both versions are close to the
novel, so they are not really two different from each other. The
new film's approach is less sentimental and more realistic.
In the 1969 version John Wayne was basically John Wayne with an eye
patch. In the new version Jeff Bridges is Rooster Cogburn--
original and unique (thank goodness, you would not want more than
one). Bridges is not playing any character he has ever been before
and even here he is barely recognizable as Bridges. I suspect that
if the audience did not come in knowing it was Jeff Bridges on the
screen, they might not even recognize him. He just falls into the
character the first time we see him and all that is left showing is
Rooster Cogburn. It is just an old marshal who is grizzled,
crusty, and very mean. You know where you stand with John Wayne
from his other westerns. You are less sure with this bad-tempered
stranger. As far as I am concerned that is a win for the Coen
Brothers. This film has more of an atmosphere of realism. It has
a good feel for the period. If you want to know which film trusts
its audience more, compare how each film ends. The first TRUE GRIT
is still a very good film, but the Coen Brothers have aced it.
In most years this film would have been a well-above-average entry.
This year its competition is mostly fairly weak so that makes this
one of the best films of the year. I rate it a low +3 on the -4 to
+4 scale or 8/10. If the hymn that Carter Burwell's score is built
around sounds familiar, it was the same hymn that the venomous
Robert Mitchum sings to lull people off their guard in THE NIGHT OF
THE HUNTER.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403865/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/true-grit-2010/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (letter of comment by Dan
Kimmel)
In response to Mark's comment on THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI in the
12/17/10 issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes:
It's a film I've seen many times because I use it in my film
history class "From Silents to Kane". Last spring I got a most
enthusiastic response to it. One girl ended up doing her term
paper on German expressionism. And then on the midterm when I ask
them to discuss techniques from the early films and to give a
modern (in their own lifetimes) example of that same technique
being used, several students discussed Caligari in the context of
"Shutter Island."
I would explain why, but I know how you feel about spoilers. :-)
[-dk]
Mark adds:
I also noticed a connection to THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI in
SHUTTER ISLAND and mentioned CALIGARI in my review of SHUTTER
ISLAND. I will explain in rot13 below. It can be decoded easily
at http://www.rot13.com/index.php.
Obgu svyzf gnxr cynpr va gur zvaq bs n zragny cngvrag. Gur ranpvat
qbpgbe vf ernyyl abg zranpvat ng nyy ohg vf gelvat gb uryc gur
cngvrag. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
When you read the first page of THE RESTORATION GAME by Ken MacLeod
(ISBN 978-1-841-49647-4), you think you know exactly what this book
will be. "FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER: MARS, 2248 A.U.C." Ah, you say,
it's an alternate history, with Rome never falling and now, in what
would be the late 15th Century on our calendar, it has arrived on
Mars.
Then on page 3, you discover there is a computer simulation
running: "Millions--billions!--of fully conscious simulated humans
living a history where .... I don't know. Something didn't
happen. Something changes everything. The history's still far in
the past, thank heavens--a millennium, perhaps. But almost
unrecognizable. The City's in ruins, the population tilling the
soil and ruled by warrior chiefs, their minds dimmed by some death
cult." Okay, you say, that simulation must be our world.
And sure enough, in a few pages we are in our world. Oh, there do
seem to be a few anomalies, but they are just the sorts of things
one would find in a normal novel--a street name that doesn't exist
and such. Or are they?
Luckily, this sort of whipsawing does not continue (though one
wonders what a book would be like if every two pages the world in
it was completely re-written). Most of the rest of the book is a
straightforward story set in our world (although the McGuffin is
based on the underlying premise). The problem is that there is no
real pay-off to the premise, and the story just kind of ... ends.
A pity, since up to that point it was pretty good. (In fairness, I
should say that others have found the end satisfying, but it did
not work for me.)
There is also a ten-page diary extract that has all the
abbreviations and vague allusions that a real diary would have. It
is realistic, but it is also very hard to read.
I also have an annotation and a mathematical quibble. The
annotation is that the Borges story referenced on page 150 is "The
Sect of the Phoenix". The quibble is that MacLeod writes, "There
is no such place as Krassnia. If you were to draw it on a map,
right where the borders of Russia, Abkhazia and Georgia meet, and
then fill it in, you'd need a fifth colour." On a basic level, if
one describes an area as where the borders of three countries meet,
it is implied that there are no other countries that meet as well,
so choosing a color different from that of Russia, Abkhazia, or
Georgia would be sufficient. On a more philosophical level,
though, saying that adding a country would require a fifth color
implies that it will make the world topologically different than it
is. Even China Mieville's Beszel and Ul Qoma don't do that. It is
a striking image that MacLeod creates, but it also seems typical of
the sort of statement made by an author in a field with which he is
unfamiliar.
In "The Nest" (SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES, July 1953), Poul
Anderson somehow managed to put one over on the editor. The story
is set in a time in the Oligicene (I think) where people from all
different times have been picked up and plopped down.. So you have
Neanderthals, conquistadors, Romans, etc. And at one point one of
the conquistadors cries out, "¡Chinga los heréticos!" For those of
you who don't know Spanish, let's just say that "chingar" is not a
verb one would see used in a 1950s magazine--or even most magazines
today. But somehow the editor did not seem to know this. (Or
maybe he did and just figured that no one who recognized the word
back then would care.)
TYPEWRITER IN THE SKY by L. Ron Hubbard (ISBN 0-88404-933-7) is one
of those classics that nobody has read. Well, okay, not *nobody*;
Tim Powers is quoted on the jacket as saying, "I don't think Philip
K. Dick would have written his novels if he had not read TYPEWRITER
IN THE SKY." However, since its original publication in UNKNOWN
FANTASY FICTION in 1940, it has been reprinted only three times:
Gnome Press (1951), Popular Library (1977, in an omnibus with
FEAR), and this edition from Bridge Publications (1995).
Ironically, its closing lines are among the best known in science
fiction:
Up there--
God?
In a dirty bathrobe?
But in spite of its influence on Dick and others, and in spite of
the interesting (and Dickian) ideas behind it, the story itself is
not that good. Part of the problem is that because of the premise,
the story *cannot* be very good. (Actually, the premise of the
story was not original with Hubbard either. One could claim that
Chuang Tzu was the first to express it, thousands of years ago, in
his dream of being a butterfly.) Still, as long as you can read
the book keeping this in mind, it works reasonably well, though it
does drag at times, and might have been better told at a shorter
length. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
An apology for the Devil: it must be remembered
that we have heard one side of the case. God
has written all the books.
-- Samuel Butler