THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/11/13 -- Vol. 31, No. 28, Whole Number 1736
Lone Ranger: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Tonto: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
The New World (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Online Film Critics Society Annual Movie Awards
Academy Award Nominations
My Top Ten Films of 2012 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
DJANGO UNCHAINED (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Eastern Roman Empire (letter of comment by Sam Long)
This Week's Reading (HOPE: A TRAGEDY, WHAT WE TALK ABOUT
WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK, and BORGES' TRAVEL,
HEMINGWAY'S GARAGE: SECRET HISTORIES) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: The New World (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I think I am the victim of wage discrimination. The NRA wants the
United States to put armed guards in guards in all the schools.
Haven't they been reading the news? What about the Aurora
shootings? I think we need armed guards in every movie theater.
Actually in multiplexes we need them in every movie auditorium. It
is the only way we can feel safe watching a movie. And in addition
it will assure the people making PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 5 that someone
is going to be watching the darn thing. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Online Film Critics Society Annual Movie Awards
Best Picture: ARGO
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, THE MASTER
Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, THE MASTER
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, LINCOLN
Best Actress: Jessica Chastain, ZERO DARK THIRTY
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, LES MISERABLES
Best Original Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola,
MOONRISE KINGDOM
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, SKYFALL
Best Editing: Alexander Berner, CLOUD ATLAS
Best Animated Feature: PARANORMAN
Best Film Not in the English Language: HOLY MOTORS
Best Documentary: THIS IS NOT A FILM
The Online Film Critics Society gave one of its three special
awards to Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi to their work on THIS
IS NOT A FILM for their act of protest against the Iranian
government. The second award was given to legendary composer Ennio
Morricone for his amazing and celebrated career in films. The
final special award was given to the "For the Love of Film" program
and Fandor in conjunction with the National Preservation Foundation
for their work this year to raise money for an exhibition of the
restoration of one of Alfred Hitchcock's oldest works, THE WHITE
SHADOW.
[Mark is a member of the OFCS.]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Academy Award Nominations
The nominees for the Oscar for Best Picture are:
- AMOUR
- ARGO
- BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
- DJANGO UNCHAINED
- LES MISERABLES
- LIFE OF PI
- LINCOLN
- SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
- ZERO DARK THIRTY
The entire slate of Academy Award Nominations ("the Oscars") can be
found at http://www.imdb.com/oscars/nominations/.
==================================================================
TOPIC: My Top Ten Films of 2012 (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Somewhere about mid-October, this seemed like it was going to be a
below-par year for films. Again, most of the best films had
releases timed to be remembered at awards time. Some ratings have
been altered from those in my original reviews to reflect my
current feelings about the films.
1. LES MISERABLES
Tom Hooper takes the now classic stage musical and makes of it a
film even more spectacular, sweeping, and poignant. It covers
nearly the entire emotional spectrum possible. LES MISERABLES is a
moving film experience to be treasured. With a story about among
other things class conflict this production of the play by Boublil
and Schonberg is if anything timelier today than when the play was
first produced. That makes this an important film as well as a
very well made one. Any small failings of LES MISERABLES are
overwhelmed by the accomplishment of what was done here that is
directly on the mark. Rating: +4 (-4 to +4) or 10/10
2. LINCOLN
With very interesting release timing and with considerable
historical accuracy, Stephen Spielberg tells the history of the two
great conflicting goals Abraham Lincoln had toward the end of the
Civil War. He wanted both to free the slaves and to end the
fighting. Spielberg does not simplify the issues. Much of the
film is talk. He respects his audience's intelligence enough to
tell the complex story and maintain a great deal of historical
accuracy. The film even looks very authentic to the period. The
viewer may have to work hard to catch all that is happening, but
the task is worth the effort. This is a film for an intelligent
audience. Rating: high +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
3. ARGO
Set during the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, ARGO tells a strange but
true footnote to that history. Six United States citizens whom the
Iranian revolutionary government wants arrested have escaped from
the United States embassy to the protection of the house of the
Canadian ambassador. Now the CIA is charged with extracting them
from Iran against very high odds. One operative devises a cockeyed
plan to remove them by passing them off as filmmakers scouting
locations for a science fiction movie. Ben Affleck directs and
stars. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
4. THE IMPOSSIBLE
THE IMPOSSIBLE is a true account of a family celebrating the
holiday in coastal Thailand that is literally torn apart by the
2004 Christmas tsunami. It is a realistic, on-the-ground look at
the experience of being caught in a Tsunami and the effort
afterward of just finding loved ones. As the wave crashes the film
has a guaranteed six minutes of white-knuckle fear. Juan Antonio
Bayona who directed THE ORPHANAGE an exploration of supernatural
horror now gives us a horror that is only too natural. Rating: +3
(-4 to +4) or 9/10
5. THE MASTER
In the years after WWII Freddie Quell, an unbalanced and misfit
Navy veteran, finds and comes under the sway of an American cult
led by charismatic demagogue Lancaster Dodd. Quell becomes a
fanatic believer in the cult, but can never get the full approval
from Dodd that he desperately seeks. Selective in its appeal, the
film has a lot to say about the nature of religious belief, the
personalities of radical followers and generally the functioning of
cults. Paul Thomas Anderson writes and directs a film that is
cryptic and compelling. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
6. A ROYAL AFFAIR
This is a true story that, I am told, every schoolchild has been
taught in Denmark. A half-witted king with a barely consummated
marriage gives over much of his power to his charismatic doctor.
The doctor has liberal ideas on how the country should be run and
affects sweeping and much-needed political reforms. He also has an
affair with the queen. But his reforms worry the politically
powerful and his efforts become a test of wills. Mads Mikkelsen,
who played the villain of CASINO ROYALE, is the doctor who
oversteps his role in the best of causes. Rating: low +3 (-4 to
+4) or 8/10
7. THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Terrence Rattigan's play comes to the screen adapted and directed
by Terence Davies. Rachel Weisz plays a woman in a tepid marriage
who has an affair with a WWII pilot in the RAF and it transforms
her life, but at the risk of her marriage and her social position.
The plot is very parallel to ANNA KARENINA, also remade this year.
But this film is deeply affecting in just the way that ANNA
KARENINA fails, mostly due to Ms. Weisz's acting in one of the best
performances of the year. Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
8. THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL
Seven English retirees come to a retirement hotel in Jaipur, India,
most unprepared for the culture differences good and bad that await
them. Their five or six different intertwined storylines tell
stories of past love, present love, humor, and pathos. Perhaps
only one of the stories rises above cliche, but they are all told
well with the total being more than the sum of the parts making for
a satisfying and even touching experience. And these seven British
actors would make a powerhouse cast for any film. Rating: low +3
(-4 to +4) or 8/10
9. IN THE FAMILY
A gay man fights to regain the custody of his son who is the
biological child of his deceased life partner. IN THE FAMILY is a
moving film that will remind viewers of the emotional tugs of a
KRAMER VS. KRAMER. This is a very good 165-minute film, but it
could have made a better 105-minute film. The newcomer producer,
director, and star Patrick Wang starts out making one of the best
films of the year. Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
10. SKYFALL
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 than 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: low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: DJANGO UNCHAINED (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Say what you like about DJANGO UNCHAINED, there is a lot
that works and a lot that does not. Quentin Tarantino writes and
directs his homage to the Spaghetti Western. Jamie Foxx plays the
title role as an antebellum slave freed by a bounty hunter, played
by Christoph Waltz, to help find three wanted men. While a little
overblown and overly long, a wide range of people will find at
least something to like here. The pace slows down in the third
quarter, but overall this is an inventive, entertaining, and even
exciting film. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
The year is 1858 and Django (played by Jamie Foxx) is a slave first
seen in shackles being taken to be sold. Their party is met by
Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) a German dentist now making a
career of bounty hunting. The doctor is a man who despite his
pleasant voluble nature should not be trusted. Schultz is looking
specifically for Django as the only man who has seen the notorious
Brittle brothers and whom the bounty hunter can get to go with him
to identify his quarry. In spite of having several hints that
Schultz is not a man to be trusted, Django overcomes his suspicion
and willingly partners with Schultz. Soon the two form a bond.
Django wants to find his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from
whom he was separated by a bill of sale, and the bounty hunter
agrees to help in the search.
The film has more rounded characters than those of Tarantino's 2009
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. The dialog does not really do its part to
make the characters an attraction. There are comic pieces such as
when a racist, proto-Klan mob discovers one of the disadvantages of
wearing hoods. But while at times the Tarantino dialog is amusing,
too frequently it just pads the story out so that this can be a
long film. But a lengthy movie is not necessarily a film of
substance. At 165 minutes, DJANGO UNCHAINED drags at times,
particularly in the third quarter. In that quarter the two bounty
hunters pose as slave buyers. We know it is a pose and entirely
too much time is spent on a ruse that we know is not their real
intent.
Whether or not Django should be trusting Dr. Schultz, it is clear
that Jamie Foxx should not trust Christoph Waltz. Waltz is a
natural scene thief with his precise manner and diction, and in
their scenes together Foxx seems to almost disappear into the
background. Waltz could easily become this generation's James
Mason. Foxx is acceptable as an action hero, but he does not bring
much exceptional to the role. The real villain of the piece is
played by Leonardo DiCaprio as the oily Candie. Samuel L. Jackson
plays a slave looking surprisingly elderly.
For too many films no score is written and instead a soundtrack is
assembled of pre-existing popular songs. Tarantino also compiles,
but he borrows largely from classic Italian Westerns. His
soundtrack is a retrospective of familiar Spaghetti Western themes.
The song DJANGO under the opening titles and elsewhere is the title
song from the 1966 classic DJANGO. That film starred Franco Nero
in the title role, and Nero appears in a cameo as Tarantino pays
his respects to that film. Even flashback scenes of memory are
shot with a grainy saturated film stock evocative of films from the
Spaghetti Western genre.
DJANGO UNCHAINED has been the source of some political controversy.
There have been relatively few films that have taken a realistic
look at the horrors of slavery. Some films, like Richard
Fleischer's 1975 MANDINGO have exploited slavery with
sensationalism and sexual suggestion. Spike Lee suggests that it
is not proper to portray the excesses of American slavery in a film
with so much that is comic and so much that is fantastic
exaggeration. I guess my feeling is that I did not see any way the
slavery was treated that was inauthentic. It was portrayed as
sadistic and inhumane and the crimes of this system should be made
common knowledge.
While we are on the subject of historical accuracy it is odd to see
a title that says "1858--two years before the Civil War." That
scene is shown as cold with men wearing heavy jackets so presumably
was labeled takes place early in early 1858. That would have made
it three years before the war.
While it could have made at better film at a two-hour length, It
still rates a respectable +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/django_unchained_2012/ [-mrl] ================================================================== TOPIC: Eastern Roman Empire (letter of comment by Sam Long) In response to Greg Frederick's review of LOST TO THE WEST in the 01/04/13 issue of the MT VOID, Sam Long writes: On the subject of the Eastern Roman Empire: Mary Reed and her husband Eric Mayer have written a series of mystery novels set in 6th century Constantinople during the reign of Justinian I. The hero is John the Eunuch, Chamberlain to the Emperor, who has to solve crimes and unravel strange events amid the ruthless intrigues of the imperial court and the factions of the City and the Empire. For further information, check out Mary & Eric's website at . Their
publisher is Poisoned Pen Press, and the books have earned critical
acclaim and a pretty good following in the mystery community. And,
if I may say so, they really are quite good, very atmospheric, and
as historically accurate as the authors can make them.
Romilly Jenkins's BYZANTIUM: THE IMPERIAL CENTURIES A.D. 610-1071
is a good history of the first half of the 800-year history of the
Byzantine Empire. Also recommended is also Robert Graves's COUNT
BELISARIUS, a novelization of the life of one of Justinian's great
generals. [-sl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I decided to check out some of the books recommended by THE NEW
YORK TIMES for 2012. Of HOPE: A TRAGEDY by Shalom Auslander (ISBN
978-1-594-48646-3) they said, "Hilarity alternates with pain in
this novel about a Jewish man seeking peace in upstate New York who
discovers Anne Frank in his attic." They also recommended WHAT WE
TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK by Nathan Englander (ISBN
978-0-307-95870-9). The latter is a collection of stories, of
which only the first is "about" Anne Frank, but there does seem to
be either a trend in writing, or a theme in the NYT's choices. I
cannot say that I was bowled over by either.
BORGES' TRAVEL, HEMINGWAY'S GARAGE: SECRET HISTORIES by Mark
Axelrod (ISBN 978-1-57366-114-7) is best summarized by the blurb on
the back: "Mark Axelrod has scoured Europe and the Americas,
photographing products and businesses that bear the great names of
Western civilization and then has recounted the little-known turns
of fate by which our immortals ended in these mundane straits."
(He seems to have scoured some places better than others: out of 45
names, he has six each from Brussels and Paris, and four from
Helsinki.)
The places and products fall into two categories: the accidental
and the intentional. For example, Borges' Travel in Tustin,
California, is probably *not* named after Jorge Luis Borges, but
after a different Borges who happened to open a travel agency. And
I doubt that Fig Newtons were named after Isaac Newton. On the
other hand, one can reasonably suppose that the James Joyce Irish
Pub in Brussels or Virginia Woolf's Restaurant in London were named
after the real authors.
In either case, Axelrod has decided that since the premise is
fantastic, he does not have to accept any rules of time or place.
So he claims that Marx sold the film rights of "The Communist
Manifesto" to Warner Brothers in 1878, which is not only decades
before Warner Brothers, but well before motion pictures. He also
has E. M. Forster selling film rights to Merchant-Ivory in 1931,
and a cafe in that same year serving "macrobiotic sandwiches."
Axelrod has Casanova in Carmel, California, in 1789. He also says
that Casanova lived in "a charming cottage owned by Chenille
Eastwode (a great-great descendent of a former Carmel mayor)."
Descendents are in someone's future; what is meant is a great-great
*ancestor*. (I have seen this mistake other places as well.)
You cannot read this straight through; it has to be read a bit at a
time. And you have to be willing to accept both Axelrod's premise
and also all the impossibilities of his histories. On the other
hand, what may happen to you after reading this is that you will
start noticing famous names everywhere and start composing your own
stories. (It is harder here in suburban New Jersey, where the
cafes, restaurants, an shops are all chains rather than being named
for someone. I'm stuck with purely imaginary names: Romeo's Pizza,
Wendy's Hamburgers, and the Athena Grill.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The chief product of an automated society is
a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
--C. Northcote Parkinson