THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
12/16/11 -- Vol. 30, No. 25, Whole Number 1680
Ollie: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Stan: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material is copyrighted by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
The latest issue is at http://www.leepers.us/mtvoid/latest.htm.
An index with links to the issues of the MT VOID since 1986 is at
http://leepers.us/mtvoid/back_issues.htm.
Topics:
No Longer Science Fiction
Trailer Breaks (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
HUGO (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
"Falling Skies" (Season 1) (television review by Nick Sauer)
Armed Services Editions (letter of comment by Kip Killiams)
Gannibal and Hannibal (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
Young People and Books (letter of comment
by Daniel M. Kimmel)
This Week's Reading ("All about Emily" and THE CLOCKWORK
ROCKET) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: No Longer Science Fiction
Tom Russell sends the following URL to a video from Aircraft
Owners and Pilots Organization: http://tinyurl.com/void-jetman.
==================================================================
TOPIC: Trailer Breaks (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (December 16, 2011)
Robert Downey is back as the comical Sherlock Holmes directed by
Guy Ritchie turning him into a physical action hero as well as a
genius. I believe Holmes was supposed to be an adept boxer, but if
he had the agility that the Downey films gave him he would
presumably have used it more often in the stories. In the new film
they seem to not play up his athletics as much, but they make him
as much a buffoon and I cannot see Holmes as a buffoon. Overall
for revisions of Holmes, the new BBC SHERLOCK series is far
preferable.
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (December 23, 2011)
Steven Spielberg's next film, due two days before Christmas, is an
animated version of the Tintin stories. Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg,
Andy Serkis, Nick Frost, Jamie Bell, Cary Elwes, and Toby Jones
will provide major voices. That is a polite way of saying if
Steven Spielberg beckons, you come. The animation is very
lifelike, much more so than Pixar's humans. The story seems
unexciting: Tintin is looking for the treasure of a sunken ship.
The animation is great but nobody will come because they are
intrigued by the story. Initial reports say this one is supposed
to be quite good.
RED TAILS (January 20, 2012)
Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox bring you ... no, not a "Star
Wars" film. It does have war but no really big stars. It is a
heavily special-effects-laden retelling of the story of the
Tuskeegee Airmen. Basically the Army discovers to its surprise
that blacks can be very good fighter pilots. Anthony Hemingway
directs. The special effects remind me a lot of FLYBOYS. That is
they are as good as is needed, but you get an itch that what you
are seeing is all special effects. Featured are Cuba Gooding, Jr.
and Terrence Howard, but since they are billed as "with", I do not
feel we will be seeing much of them. Unfamiliar actors Nate Parker
and David Oyelowo have top billing. If they are the main
characters, at least they did not give the familiar actors top
billing.
THE WOMAN IN BLACK (February 3, 2012)
I saw the play by Jane Goldman in London. I believe it is one of
those plays that have run nearly forever. It was not a greatly
original or creative ghost story. It had a somewhat tense story
punctuated with the sound of unexpected door slams. When the stage
is dark and there is a sudden door slam you jump. It is an
effective strategy but should not be confused with good writing. I
am not certain this sort of scare will translate well to film.
Daniel Radcliff stars and among the producers is the revived Hammer
Films. The trailer is certainly atmospheric and that may
compensate for the sudden loud noises.
JOHN CARTER (March 9, 2012)
Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs have hoped for years that someone
would do justice to his Mars series. It would require advanced
special effects and a lot of visual imagination. That can be done
now and Disney is adapting the Martian series starting with JOHN
CARTER. The trailer is a real disappointment. I could be wrong
but I think we have seen so much visual imagination on the screen
by now that an accurate version of the Burroughs novel will be
under-whelming. The trailer is just not exciting. Sure, there are
some odd-looking flying machines and we get a look at a green,
tusked Martian, but it is no big deal. I hope I am wrong. Andrew
Stanton of FINDING NEMO and WALL-E directs.
BRAVE (June 22, 2012)
The trailer for BRAVE does not tell a whole lot. This is a Disney-
Pixar adventure set in a mythical Scotland. For once Pixar is
doing humans as the main characters. They are still not making
humans look human. In this case the main character looks like a
doll. She is Merida (voiced by Kelly MacDonald) apparently a
teenager with flaming red hair and a nasty bow and arrow. Not much
else can be seen from the trailer, but there does seem to be a
Tinkerbell-like character who glows blue and floats through the
wood.
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (July 20, 2012)
I had not realized that Christopher Nolan was making his Batman
films a trilogy. The trailer is a teaser so there is not much to
be gleaned from it. The film seems cut from the same piece as THE
DARK KNIGHT. Christian Bale is Batman and Anne Hathaway is
Catwoman. Catwoman is one of the sillier villains and she may be a
mismatch with Nolan's dark tone for the series. Nonetheless Nolan
has worked miracles already with the series.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: HUGO (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[Spoiler Warning: This is a film with a major complication about
half-way into the story. I admit it will do the film a major
disservice for me to not discuss the film in its entirety, but I
will not spoil the film. However, I have included a spoiler
section after the end of the review proper, and even there I have
tried to be discrete.]
CAPSULE: There is a phantom haunting the Paris Train Station.
Twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of the station and
maintains all the mechanical clocks. This film is about him, but
also about a lot more. This is much more than a children's film
about a little boy. Beautifully filmed in 3D it, turns into an
education for the viewer on a subject near and dear to director
Martin Scorsese's heart. This may be more Scorsese's film than
GOODFELLAS or CASINO was. He has made a beautiful tribute to his
favorite art form. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
HUGO is a film about a resourceful twelve-year-old boy and his
relationship with an adult. It is sweet and sentimental but still
uses a lot of special effects. HUGO is educational, and above all
it is a film with heart. All this goes to say that the sort of
film that Steven Spielberg is criticized for making, Scorsese is
being praised for.
The setting is Paris in the 1930s. A boy mechanical genius, Hugo
Cabret (played by Asa Butterfield), lives in the walls of the Paris
Train Station. His self-selected avocation without pay is to keep
all the clocks working. He survives by stealing food from the food
venders and also stealing mechanical parts for the clocks and for
his goal in life. His goal is to fix an automaton his father found
discarded in a museum. Hugo has no idea what the humanoid machine
does. The secret is in the automaton's clockworks, which Hugo
struggles to understand.
Hugo's source for machine parts is the grumpy old toymaker Georges
(Ben Kingsley). Georges at once despises the boy who steals from
him, but also has to admire Hugo's mechanical aptitude. Georges
has a ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), a beautiful goddaughter
about Hugo's age. She and Hugo have adventures together like
sneaking into movie theaters where they both admire silent film.
Together they try to solve the secret that seems to link Georges to
the automaton.
That is a fair description of the first half of HUGO but the film
transforms into a lot more than that. It is a piece of a project
very near and dear to Martin Scorsese's heart. To reach his goal
he has given us a superbly visual film. Using digitally created
crane shots he sweeps us through the Montparnasse train station,
into the walls, right into the mechanical workings of the clocks.
The clockworks in 3D would make even clockwork enthusiast Guillermo
del Toro's mouth water. Scorsese seems to know all the pitfalls to
avoid as well as the capabilities of the 3D process to keep the
viewer hypnotized. He orchestrated the depth in his 3D images so
objects have a continuum of depth. As tribute to other film
effects he has a clockwork mouse animated in what is almost
certainly stop-motion.
Scorsese complemented his direction with some very nice casting.
Chloe Grace Moretz is appealing as the young Isabelle, and Sacha
Baron Cohen's station inspector is a good villain, well matched to
his Doberman companion. (There are also dachshunds, which for me
are always a plus.) Christopher Lee is present more for his
connection to cinema than because he could bring a lot to this
particular role. Emily Mortimer (CITY ISLAND) is fetching as a
Montparnasse flower seller. Jude Law is always likable though a
little too English for this role.
Scorsese has made one of the most remarkable films of the year by
surprising us and at the same time telling his story with a perfect
poetry. I rate HUGO +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10. Now will
HUGO win a Hugo?
Spoiler ... Spoiler ... Spoiler ... Spoiler ...
-- The reference to the heels of ladies' shoes is said to be false.
It was actually the heels of army boots--a little more forgivable
considering the circumstances.
-- In the 1930s few people were thinking in terms of rockets as we
do today. What Hugo's father saw he would probably call a bullet
or a projectile, not a rocket.
-- To the best of my (admittedly incomplete) knowledge Georges was
never surprised by a large audience's tribute as shown in the film.
I have previously heard that that was actually an incident in
Buster Keaton's life. Keaton assumed that with the coming of the
sound era his films had been forgotten. When asked to appear
before an audience he was certain he would be talking to a handful
of polite but unenthusiastic film fans. That was not the reaction.
Great film is timeless, which is part of Scorsese's point.
Similarly Jack Arnold only discovered toward the end of his life
that he had a large admiring fandom.
-- The trailer spoiled the surprise for me. It showed papers
blowing around a room and we see the sketch of the man with the
plumes of steam coming out of his head. I had seen that sketch
before and recognized it immediately.
-- There really was an automaton like the one shown that could do
some rudimentary drawing. It drew nothing so complex as we see.
And it is stretching credulity a bit far to claim this could be the
work of the same man. It is like claiming Albert Einstein was
coincidentally also the world's greatest impressionist painter.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970179/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/search/?search=hugo
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: "Falling Skies" (Season 1) (television review by Nick Sauer)
"Falling Skies" is a new genre series put out by TNT. The story
begins six months after an alien race known as the Skitters have
successfully invaded our planet and, follows a group of survivors
who have formed a militia known as the 2nd Massachusetts. The
series stars Noah Wyle as Tom Mason and Will Patton as Captain
Weaver.
This show had three strikes against it out the gate with me.
First, Steven Spielberg was involved with it and, I'm not as
enamored with his work as everyone else seems to be. Second, it is
an alien invasion story. Saying these have been overdone is a bit
of an understatement. Finally, the promotional material for the
series really made it look like an attempt by TNT to cash in on the
success of AMC's "Walking Dead". Surprisingly, the show managed to
overcome enough of these obstacles to create an above average genre
series.
The show takes place in Boston and opens six months after the Earth
has been invaded by a race of aliens known only as the Skitters,
which is the slang name we have given them. We learn in the pilot,
which is actually just the first two episodes played back to back,
that the world's governments agreed not to fire upon the incoming
alien ships once they were detected. Given that we have at least
nine countries capable of launching nuclear weapons into space and
how "well" they seem to get along with one another, I found this a
touch implausible at first myself. However, it becomes obvious
fairly quickly that part of the Skitters arsenal that they used to
wipe out the planet's militaries includes an EMP type weapon so,
even if a country did launch something at the aliens without
telling, it wouldn't have worked anyway. This attention to detail,
along with solid writing, is really what makes this show work so
well. In fact, it would not surprise me one bit if the scenario I
described above would ultimately be revealed in a later season
given the thought the writers clearly seem to be putting into the
show.
These two factors also contribute greatly to the characters in the
series. The 2nd Mass has a military commander named Weaver and a
recently promoted second in command (Tom Mason) who was promoted
from the civilian population being guarded by the militia. As a
result, Tom is in the interesting and often taxing position of
balancing the needs of the civilians versus the needs of the
military personnel to protect them. There are not a lot of easy
answers here and the show does a great job of presenting this
conflict. Another factor in this sort of environment is that you
see people forced to work together who would otherwise never do so.
This is another topic that "Falling Skies" handles remarkably well
in my opinion. The characters are all very real human beings with
their own unique sets of idiosyncrasies learning to live with each
in a manner that keeps the society, such as it is, cohesive and
functional.
The series is not entirely character-driven; there is a good deal
of story, as well. The story does have the standard survival plots
one would expect. This includes some dealing with other groups of
survivors that don't go that well. In fact, I was pleasantly
surprised by one of the directions these story lines took as it is
not something I would have expected given Spielberg's involvement.
The other part of the story is the people trying to learn about the
Skitters and what they are up to. One of the first things the
invaders did was to capture children and enslave them with devices
called harnesses. The harnesses seem to give the Skitters complete
control over the children who they use for manual labor. Over the
course of the series, the nature of this enslavement takes on some
interesting and complex turns that makes it clear it's not as
simple as it first appears. A physician character is also
introduced who not only studies the Skitters but is also
experimenting with techniques to de-harness children. There are
some surprising turns that are taken with this character, also.
Given what I have seen so far, it looks to me like "Falling Skies"
is heading in a very different direction than "Walking Dead" so,
perhaps the early advertising was showing excerpts from the series
to specifically target "Walking Dead"'s audience.
The writing in "Falling Skies" is one of its key strengths. The
huge problem I have with alien invasion scenarios is the logic of
the overall situation. If you have developed the technology and
power sources necessary to push tons of material through
interstellar space, it seems to me that any problems your society
could be subject to would be solved by far more efficient
application of that science than interstellar invasion. Given what
I have seen so far, I am cautiously optimistic that the writers
will already have answers to address this in future episodes. I
hadn't really appreciated how much I had bought into the whole
story line until the final episode. A situation arose where the
two main characters had an opportunity to lash out at the aliens
and I found myself verbally encouraging them to do so. Mason and
Weaver didn't follow my advice, which is a good thing as it
probably would have ended badly for them. In any case, the point
was made to me that I was obviously more engaged with the series
than I had previously appreciated.
While "Falling Skies" is good, it is not perfect. There are
occasional things that happened that pegged my bullshit meter. In
particular there was an insanely lucky shot made by Tom during the
final episode. I was able to write it off in that he could have
easily achieved the same effect by just firing at the rigid
structure as opposed to the moving target but the fact the show
forced me to go through that thought process annoyed me. I realize
they were clearly shooting for coolness factor here but I felt it
had the opposite effect. The series also started a little slower
than most people would like. Once the story got rolling the pace
definitely picked up but I'm wondering how many viewers stayed with
the show long enough to get to that point. Once the story engaged,
I was as eager for the next episode of this series as I was for the
other shows I was watching at the time.
"Falling Skies" was one of three new (sort of) genre shows
introduced this summer. While Alphas was the clear winner, I would
say that "Falling Skies" was definitely worth looking into and
would be at about the same level as Torchwood: Miracle Day for me.
The season conclusion was good and, given the overall quality of
the first season, I will definitely be checking out the second.
[-ns]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Armed Services Editions (letter of comment by Kip Killiams)
In response to Evelyn's comments about Armed Services Editions in
the 11/25/11 issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Those wartime paperbacks for soldiers are indeed delightful. They
fit into pants pockets (I was surprised to find that regular pocket
books did the same, way back when) and are in two columns for
quicker eye scanning. My copy of TIMBER LINE by Gene Fowler is,
sadly, lacking half of one page. I need to find the missing text
and set it on a piece of paper to stick in the book [note to self]
sometime.
Even more interesting is an original volume called SOLDIER ART,
apparently a catalog for an art exhibition. Much of it was mundane,
but it included a rather compelling piece by Pfc Arthur M. Kraft
out of Santa Ana AAB in California, entitled "The Dust is Whirling
in the Dust." I've searched online for a photo of it. Finding
none, I scanned the one in the book:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kipw/5209424702/. [-kw]
Mark responds:
It reminds me of the style of Boris Artzybasheff:
http://tinyurl.com/leeper-boris.
You might want to look through this web site for more of Kraft's
artwork: http://www.divinejourneyguide.com/. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Gannibal and Hannibal (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
In response to Evelyn's comments on Pushkin in the 12/09/11 issue
of the MT VOID, Steve Milton writes, "Is Gannibal the Russian
version of Hannibal?" [-smm]
Evelyn responds, "Apparently, since 'Hannibal' is given as a
variant name for him." [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Young People and Books (letter of comment by Daniel
M. Kimmel)
In response to Mark's comments on Ray Bradbury in the 12/09/11
issue of the MT VOID, Daniel M. Kimmel writes:
I don't claim my daughter is a representative sample, but I think
you ought to speak to some tweens and teens before deciding they're
not reading anymore. In fact, YA fiction is one of the hottest
commodities out there right now. My fifteen-year-old, who has to
work through some issues with a mild dyslexia, is now devouring
books. She told me she's read fifteen books outside of class just
since the start of the current school year and at one point
complained, "I'm running out of books to read," because she had
read every thing she had on hand. In fact she's got plans this
weekend to go to the local children's bookstore (with a big YA
section) with a friend to buy some new stuff to read.
Books aren't dead yet. Ask any teens you cross path with if
they've read the Harry Potter books, or the "Twilight" series, or
"Hunger Games" and its two sequels. You may be pleasantly
surprised. [-dmk]
Mark responds:
I think Bradbury was confusing the concepts of books and reading.
With the current e-readers reading is not disappearing but books
are. Bradbury was sorry to see the reading experience change, but
it has changed before. In his own time reading went from hardbacks
to mass-market paperbacks. They change the reading experience
also. E-readers are a threat to the reading experience as Bradbury
has known it, but if anything they increase the amount of reading.
E-readers are a mixed blessing for fans of reading. They change
the experience from that of book reading, but they still make the
writing available. They facilitate reading. Bradbury was mostly
wrong about us moving toward more government censorship.
On the other hand, reading does seem to be of less importance it
once was among younger people. And we fogies do not really get
much of a vote in whether younger people are going to read or not.
Some young people are just not valuing the reading experience and
are only participating when forced. The trend seems to be that
there will be fewer people who want to read, but e-readers will
make writing more available to people. But there may be just fewer
people taking the time to read in the future. Right now a big
piece of younger people's reading are a few blockbuster series, and
I would be curious how many of your daughter's friends have read
much that has not been in a series. You daughter and her close
circle of reading friends are, I suspect, probably atypical.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This is my week to be picky. (I know, many of you think I'm picky
every week.)
First up on the firing line is "All about Emily" by Connie Willis
(in ASIMOV's December 2011 issue). My complaint may give away too
much of the plot, so if you don't want spoilers, skip to the next
paragraph. I like all the classic film references and the basic
premise/conflict. I just think the resolution is completely
unrealistic, and as evidence I will point out that you don't see
American farm workers picketing and signing petitions to *allow*
illegal immigrants to take jobs here--and the illegal immigrants
are actually human. The idea that we would see such support for
non-humans strikes me as being impossibly Pollyana-ish. In other
words, this is your typical Connie Willis Christmas story.
And my other nitpick is with THE CLOCKWORK ROCKET by Greg Egan
(ISBN 978-1-59780-227-7). Egan is so rigorous in his science that
it is hard to believe I could nitpick this book, but in part that
is my complaint. It takes place on another world--indeed, in a
different universe--and so Egan creates no units of measure derived
from a base-12 system, and then gives you a table of these in an
appendix. For time, we have flickers, pauses, lapse, chimes,
bells, days, and stints, each twelve times as long as the previous.
For length, there are scants, spans, strides, stretches, saunters,
strolls, slogs, separations, and severances. All this emphasizes
the difference, the alien-ness of the world. However, this is
completely undercut on page one by references to gamboge, saffron,
goldenrod, and wheat. (I give him a pass on jade and viridian,
because conceivably those chemical compounds could exist even in
this alien universe. Or maybe not, but I do not understand the
science of the universe enough to know.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be
like a mathematical system that only concerns
itself with positive numbers.
--Paul Klee