THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/16/12 -- Vol. 31, No. 20, Whole Number 1728
Sid: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Nancy: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
That's Sophisticated (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Storm Diary, Part 2 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
SKYFALL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (TRIGGERS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: That's Sophisticated (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was leafing through a magazine and they have an ad for--I kid you
not--James Bond 007, a new fragrance for men. And their slogan is
"Dangerously sophisticated." I hate to say it, but that boat has
sailed. I remember kids playing with James Bond guns and James
Bond invisible ink. James Bond has not been a symbol of
sophistication in a long, long time. I can see if they give it a
name that is a French-sounding word that nobody has ever heard that
might be sophisticated. "James Bond" as a name for a fragrance is
one step more sophisticated than calling it "Andre the Giant" or
"Winnie the Pooh". [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Storm Diary, Part 2 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have been asked by several people what my storm status was or
what Hurricane Sandy was like in New Jersey. I am just going to
publish some of my response in the VOID. The last part left me at
the height of the storm and very nearly at its width.
10/29/12 7:52:45 PM
I was trying to look out the patio windows to see if I could see
anything. I could see very little. It is dark out there. As I
started to turn away the wind came up and there was a bang on the
window that shook the house. The wind had picked up a limb of a
tree and throwing against [P.S. or dropping it on] the house. With
a flashlight through the window I could see the tree limb. But it
looked like it was not standing on anything. All I could see of it
was four or more feet off the ground. Evelyn went over and looked
out the kitchen window. The thing is at least 25 feet long and we
still are not sure we are seeing all of it. [P.S. It was a limb of
a tree standing vertically 27 feet and it is about 25 feet wide in
branch spread. It was not floating above the patio, obviously. It
was a horizontal branch off of a vertical tree limb.] Outside the
wind is rising again. On the radio they say the wind is getting up
to 85 mile per hour. 156,000 houses are apparently without
electricity in New Jersey and mine is one of them.
A local radio station has people calling in reporting seeing green
flashes in the sky. Now isn't that a nice WAR OF THE WORLDS-like
touch? I had seen flashes and assumed they were lightning. But I
missed that they were green. Someone else called into the radio
station saying that the green was copper. When a substation copper
transformer overloads and vaporizes and melts down you get a green
flash from vaporizing copper. The green flashes are copper
explosions that are plunging the area covered by the substation
into darkness. There's a pleasant thought. Well, it is all
disturbing. So why does it seem so amazing at the same time.
We spent our time listening to news coverage of the storm. Evelyn
went to bed about 9 PM. If she cannot do anything about the storm
she wants to sleep through it. I keep myself up a bit longer to
listen for damage reports. Just to feel I had done it I open the
door a little way and put my arm out into a genuine hurricane. It
is just a very strong moist wind. I wanted to stay up to the end
of the passing, which they said was 10 PM.
10/30/12
Until this is all over most of our meals will be ones that require
neither heating nor refrigerating. Breakfast after the storm was
cereal with powdered milk I mixed up just for this meal. I will
not keep it to avoid spoilage. Lunch was cold pizza. For a little
extra protein I ripped off the crust and spread it with peanut
butter. Most of my meals will not be even this good. Between
breakfast and lunch I went out back and fed the backyard squirrels.
There were about six, a big crowd for us. They must have been
hungry after what was probably a frightening night for them. An
hour later we went out and pulled the tree limb off the house.
[That's Evelyn and I, not the squirrels and I.] It was big and
heavy, but gravity was in our favor. At least something was.
After lunch we went out to look at the neighborhood to "appreciate
the situation." There was a lot of situation to appreciate. Most
of this was looking at people getting rid of fallen trees. There
was a tree with an 18-inch diameter trunk that had fallen and was
blocking our street. The community association got people out to
cut it up with chainsaws. Surprisingly tall trees have very
shallow root systems. It almost looks like the tree is on a stand
and the stand fell over. The roots must not have gone more than a
foot down. I suppose these days that is considered an okay thing
for a tree to do. In my day, tree roots went down several yards
and then started to spread out. That just does not happen any
more. Today a tree puts down a foot or two of roots and
immediately starts looking for trees to pollinate. They figure
they are too big to fall. Then a strong wind comes, the tree
realizes too late how foolish it has been.
One of our neighbors estimated that power would be out until
Thanksgiving. There is a lot of damage to fix and with a 900-mile
diameter disk of destruction there will be a lot of competition for
people who can do the power repairs.
Meanwhile it will be cold food and no refrigeration.
10/31/12
This was supposed to be Halloween. The Governor has stepped in and
said that Trick or Treat night will be Monday, November 5. For us
this means that we still may be called upon to share our Halloween
candy with the little brats who come to the door. Just nothing is
going in our favor.
Any Witches' Sabbaths scheduled would also get equally delayed.
That is with the approval of a lower authority. But most of those
are Walpurgis Nacht, April 30 anyway.
Breakfast was half a can of Heinz vegetarian baked beans. I find
the perfect way to serve them is right from the can at just at
precisely room temperature. (That was irony.)
So there I am on Halloween more or less a prisoner of my house. I
will continue next issue. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SKYFALL (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: James Bond is after a stolen list of MI6 agents who have
been placed in terrorist cells. At the same time all of MI6 is
under attack from someone who has access to the inside of the
organization. Bond is fighting an enemy that has his knowledge and
skills. This is a strong, fast, and sexy action story that gives
us something different from the Bond films we have seen before.
SKYFALL has a darker tone than we have seen in the past from the
series. Sam Mendes directs a script by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade,
and John Logan.
Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
DR. NO had a flamboyant villain plotting a spectacular crime--
toppling US rockets--and James Bond got in the way. GOLDFINGER had
a flamboyant villain plotting a spectacular crime--destroying the
gold in Fort Knox--and James Bond got in the way. THUNDERBALL had
a flamboyant villain plotting a spectacular crime--holding Miami
for ransom with a nuclear device--and James Bond got in the way.
That is a plot, repeated so many times in Bond films, is a standard
template for a film in the series. But notice I skipped a film.
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE had SPECTRE trying to get a cryptographic
device and to embarrass the British Secret Service. While the
story was progressing the first-time viewer was not sure where it
would be going. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE Bond was just living by
his wits and trying to keep himself and a Russian cipher clerk
alive. That was a believable plot for an adult spy thriller.
Because it avoided the standard plot it was considered one of the
best Bond films. It was a story that was easy to believe. Few
Bond films depart from the template story, but in SKYFALL there is
no giant spectacular crime for Bond to avert. The villain has the
capability to do great damage, but he has something else in mind.
Carrying out a vendetta is more what he wants. That does not
require much suspension of disbelief from the viewer. It helps to
make SKYFALL one of the more intelligent Bond thrillers. SKYFALL
is Daniel Craig's second Bond story (his first two films comprised
a single story) and the writers chose to again avoid the overworked
spectacular crime plot and instead to give us a story with an
unpredictable arc.
Opening the film is a very long chase set in Turkey and featuring
motorcycles and trains. Bond is trying to recover a computer hard
drive that contains a list that could prove very damaging to MI6 if
released publicly. And that is just what his enemy is doing in a
manner like WikiLeaks. Soon Bond finds he is facing a new kind a
villain, a foe who has all of Bond's training and ability and who
additionally is a master of hacking in cyberspace. This man
strikes at the very heart of MI6 with grudges that hit very close
to home.
Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis writing CASINO ROYALE
thumbed their noses at even the most established tropes by having
Bond ask if he looked like he would care if his martini was shaken
or stirred. For me, anyway, that was the best line in an entire
series that always prided itself on its bon mots. It suggested
that a lot of the Bond formula nonsense was going away. SKYFALL
brings even more distance from the pop-art Bond of the 1960s and
1970s. Bond gets only two gadgets from the new and incidentally
very youthful Q. He gets a gun that only he can fire and a radio
for tracking. Gone are the days when Bond was in some strange
situation and he by luck happened to have just the right tool in
his pocket, a tool he never had before and would never have again.
These "just the right weapon" contrivances are mostly gone from the
formula.
One thing that does need to change but has not is Bond's most
useful weapon, the almost supernatural luck Bond could always count
on. In GOLDFINGER, Bond overhears just the right phrase that Bond
can use to save his life. In THUNDERBALL, Bond just happens to run
into people involved in stealing a nuclear device. The super-luck
plot contrivances should have been dropped overboard like the
gadgets and the martini preferences. In SKYFALL, Bond cracks the
whole case because he happens to find a gambling chip and guesses
that it is important. Much more of the plot is still driven by
Bond's overwhelming luck. And the writers have gotten so blasé
about the whole matter that early in the film Bond is apparently
killed, and then without bothering to give any explanation, the
script calls for him just to be alive again. The script never
bothers to tell us how he escaped death. He just lucked out.
Bond's over-reliance on writer-provided luck has always been a
serious flaw of the series. And even James Bond's luck could not
prevent Daniel Craig from aging six years since CASINO ROYALE.
There are several comments that Bond is getting older and slowing
down. A lot of Bond fans will be disappointed when Craig is too
old to play an effective Bond.
Just to create some continuity with the series there are numerous
memory jogs from the older Bond films. Names like "Moneypenny"
appear again, and Bond's old Aston Martin plays a large role in
this film. That is fine. Bond films are allowed to borrow from
themselves. However, the film also does a lot of borrowing from
other films that had previously copied Bond. The opening chase
sequence, twenty minutes in length, is strongly influenced by the
Bourne films. Javier Bardem is a very different villain for the
Bond films, but his mannerisms and bizarre speech borrow a lot from
Bardem's Anton Chigurh in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Even more odd,
the final act of this story seems to crib from Sam Peckinpaw's
STRAW DOGS.
Daniel Craig cements his reputation as the best and the most
ruthless of the screen Bonds. But we see him facing really
different situations. A large middle section takes Bond to an
exotic and challenging locale that Bond has never seen before, the
London Underground at rush hour. Dame Judy Dench (sadly losing her
eyesight and heading toward retirement) is given her juiciest role
in any of her Bond films. Ralph Fiennes seems to have a minor and
dispensable role in the story, but it is clear by the end of the
film why we see so much of him. Albert Finney is almost
unrecognizable in a role that did not require an actor of his
talent. On the other side of the camera Daniel Kleinman had
created all the title sequences from GOLDENEYE to SKYFALL with the
exception of A QUANTUM OF SOLACE. His style does lend an air of
class to the proceedings.
I like the new Bond, who is a more believable character than the
previous Bonds. He would have no place in a John le Carré story,
but he is serious, and I like my Bonds serious. This is not a
perfect Bond film, but it is one of the best. I rate SKYFALL a
high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/skyfall/
With each new Bond film I give my ordering of films in the series
from the best to the worst. This may not be consistent with my
previous listings since my opinion of films varies with time.
1 CASINO ROYALE (2006)
2 FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
3 SKYFALL
4 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
5 QUANTUM OF SOLACE
6 THUNDERBALL
7 DR NO
8 LICENSE TO KILL
9 GOLDFINGER
10 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
11 FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
12 YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
13 THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
14 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
15 OCTOPUSSY
16 TOMORROW NEVER DIES
17 GOLDENEYE
18 DIE ANOTHER DAY
19 DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
20 THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
21 A VIEW TO A KILL
22 MOONRAKER
23 LIVE AND LET DIE
[CASINO ROYALE (1967) and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN are not listed
because they are not part of the Bond series.]
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
TRIGGERS by Robert J. Sawyer (ISBN 978-1-937007-16-4) was the
discussion book planned for our group this month. The meeting was
re-scheduled, but since I had already read the book, I'll publish
my comments now.
TRIGGERS has an intriguing premise, but one that does not bear much
thinking about. In a hospital, a psychiatrist is using a machine
to access and affect a patient's memories at the same time that the
President of the United States is being operated on one floor
below. Some sort of electromagnetic pulse affects the machine and
produces a field in a sphere with a radius of sixteen feet.
Everyone in that field is equally affected; everyone outside is
untouched. Problem 1: Fields do not work this way.
The field links people's minds together, but not reciprocally or
transitively. That is, A can access B's memories, and B can access
C's, but B cannot access A's, nor can A access C's. Problem 2:
There is no explanation for why it should work in this highly
artificial way. And this connection is on-going; memories formed
after the pulse are equally accessible. Problem 3: There is no
explanation for this, either.
The FBI goes to a terrorism suspect's house where they find a
computer screen with a Word document on it relating to the crime.
What is the first thing they do? Well, one of them decides to find
the directory the file is in, see if there is a backup copy there,
and open the backup copy. Problem 4: The idea that the computer of
a terrorist might have hidden detectors to wipe the disks (or melt
the computer or even blow up the house) if someone tries to do
something unauthorized, or that the last access time of a file
might be important, does not seem to occur to them.
And without going into detail on the rest of the story, let me just
say that I found the ending both unexplained and unsatisfactory.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, that is not paid
with moan; for we are born in other's pain, and
perish in our own.
--Francis Thompson