THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/07/13 -- Vol. 31, No. 49, Whole Number 1757
Harry: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Sally: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
More on Changing Your Email Address (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I Could Never Do That Again (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
More on Ellipses and the Earth (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (film review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
End of Season SF TV Roundup (television reviews
by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
FRANCES HA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
1-900-TONIGHT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Hugo vs. HUGO (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
Writing Styles (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
This Week's Reading (FOUNDATION'S EDGE and ALIVE!)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: More on Changing Your Email Address (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
A further explanation on changing your email address:
I had said that you can just send an email to
from the new address.
That is true, but then you need to be sure you respond to a reply
asking you to confirm this address. If your spam filters (or your
ISP's filters) block this confirmation request and so you don't
reply to it, your new address won't get added. I would like to
think this is a rare occurrence, but who knows.
The safest thing is probably still to email us that you're trying
to add yourself. Then if we don't see notification that the new
email has been added, we can try to follow up on it in the logs.
You can also go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mtvoid/join and
join there.
To remove the old address, you can still mail us, or send an email
to from the old address.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: I Could Never Do That Again (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have a sort of joke I do when I listen to the Will Shortz weekly
puzzle on NPR. He will be giving clues for the home puzzle and I
will be pretending to solve it and forcing what I get as a
solution. I may end up looking for a place name that starts "Tz"
and I will insist to Evelyn that the solution is Tzennessee or
something like that. This week the puzzle was:
Shortz: Take a word that starts with "g".
Me: GIANT!
Shortz: Change the "g" to a "t" ...
Me: TIANT!
Shortz: ... and rearrange the letters to make a word that means the
same thing as the first word.
Me, a little astounded: "Titan".
Apparently without even knowing what I was to do with the word I
had picked at random only knowing the first letter was the right
word. Now I am going to try flipping a coin and see if it lands on
its edge. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: More on Ellipses and the Earth (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I wrote a few weeks ago about ellipses (05/24/13) and a surprising
result that just looking at the behavior of the loci of the ellipse
drops you into the same formulae, the Lorentz transforms, which
define the behavior of particles traveling at relativistic speed.
I got a question from the erudite Fred Lerner asking, "Why is the
orbit of a planet around its star an ellipse rather than a simple
circle?"
Good question. And let's say that with my two years of college
physics I might not be the most qualified person to answer it. I
would say the answer to your question is "initial conditions."
With perfect initial conditions a planet could travel around its
star in a perfect circle. A circle is a special case of an
ellipse. It is an ellipse in which the two foci are each the
center of the circle.
I think the best way to see what is happening is to picture a
gravity well. We live in an enlightened age in which it is easy to
picture a gravity well. A lot of science museums have a large
plastic funnel-like surface to show the workings of gravity.
Perhaps you have seen one.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicknormal/4997730734/
You roll a ball or a coin from the outer edge and it goes around
and around the funnel. As it loses energy it goes in smaller and
smaller loops until it is finally captured by the hole in the
center. This is a good simulation of an object orbiting the sun
until it loses energy due to friction and goes spiraling into the
sun. Planets orbiting a star loose very little energy as they
orbit so it can take a very long time, perhaps on the order of
trillions of years, before they fall into their suns. Suppose you
throw a ball just perfectly just inside the outer edge of funnel.
It would go almost in a perfect circle. It would be a perfect
circle except that it is losing energy by friction. You would see
the ball or coin fall into the hole at the center. If it is a coin
you have just contributed to the museum. Get a receipt.
Now a five-year-old comes along, and he wants to play too--you know
five-year-olds. He throws a ball and it goes much nearer to the
center, but still goes by it. Then it starts up the far side, but
can go only so far. It loses momentum and starts falling back
toward the center. It is still too high on the side to fall into
the center. It comes back up the near side for a while and loses
momentum and starts falling back toward the center again. If it
was losing very little momentum to friction it would continue
tracing nearly the same ellipse with the hole at one focus. It
would not be traveling in a circle, but it would be traveling in an
ellipse.
So the answer to the question is if an object had just the right
momentum in the right direction it could circle the star in a
perfect circle. But the probability of that happening is nil.
Nature throws matter like a five-year-old does. Both balls would
be traveling in ellipses, but only in very special conditions,
conditions that really have probability zero of happening by
chance, would the planet go in a perfect circle.
But let me ask a related question. Throw a ball up in the air (but
not straight up) and it will fall back to earth following the
trajectory of a parabola. Throw that ball hard enough and fast
enough and the curvature of the Earth becomes a factor. When it
falls down the Earth has curved down out of its path and it goes
around the Earth. It is circling the Earth in orbit. (Maybe a
more accurate verb would be "ellipsing" the Earth, since it
probably is not going in a circle.) That is what orbiting is, it
is just perpetually falling past the edge of the Earth. So when
the ball falls down if the Earth extends that far or not determines
if it will fall to Earth or go into orbit.
Now comes the trick. The Great Mystic Leeperini (GML) can predict
almost immediately if when the ball comes down later will it just
hit the Earth or will it be beyond the edge of the Earth and fall
into orbit. How does the GML do it?
You can tell by the curve that the ball follows if it is an arc of
an ellipse or an arc of a parabola. If it is an arc of a parabola
then the ball will hit the Earth. If it is an arc of an ellipse it
will miss the edge of the world and go into orbit around the
planet. I just have to study the curve that it is following to
know if it is tracing a parabola or and ellipse.
Is something wrong with that logic? It sure sounds like it. The
GML admits that the trick is flawed.
Actually, I claim that when you throw the ball it always follows an
ellipse. It is just very close to being a parabola. Sorry, my
apologies to your physics teacher who taught you it travelled in a
parabola. It is nearly a parabola. As an object moves
horizontally, the direction of straight down changes very little.
But it changes. If gravity was always pulling the ball straight
down that spheroid really would follow a parabola. But that could
happen only if the pull was toward a point mass at infinity. Then
the pull of gravity would always be in exactly the same direction.
The vectors of pull would always be parallel to each other. But
that is not the world we live in. This is all sort of a thought
experiment.
If you throw the ball hard enough and fast enough the ball will go
into orbit. And gravity would always be pulling it straight down,
but it would have gone far enough that you have a different
straight down. The direction gravity pulls will always be toward a
point mass at the center of the earth, but you will have traveled
far enough that straight down will no longer be parallel to what
straight down was when you threw the ball. Every orbit the
direction of "straight down" will rotate around the ball 360
degrees always pointing at the center of the earth.
When you throw the ball it is essentially orbiting a point-mass at
the center of the Earth and it is traveling in an ellipse. What
stops its orbit is the planet clumsily gets in its way. In a
sense, if you had an ellipse and pulled one of the foci off to
infinity, the curve would become a parabola as a limiting case.
Incidentally, Dale Skran points out that it is highly unlikely that
1) you could collect enough data to distinguish a parabola from an
ellipse like I describe above and 2) that the velocity would tell
you whether the ball would go into orbit or not. True on both
counts, but I am doing this in sort of a thought experiment world
where you are given a formula for the exact position of the ball at
any moment and this is all being done on an idealized planet whose
mass is exactly some M. Here I am making an observation about the
relation of parabolas and ellipses rather than engineering a
practical solution that anyone could possibly use. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (film review by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
J. J. Abrams returns with an all-new and improved second "Star
Trek" movie--STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. I like the second Abrams
outing better than the first--the movie mercifully lacks the
sophomoric humor of the first, i.e., Scotty trapped in the water
filled tube scene. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto perfectly capture
the spirit of Kirk and Spock, with the rest of the cast doing a
convincing imitation of an alternate universe "Star Trek" crew.
Rather like IRON MAN 3, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS starts out leading
the viewer on the path that we are watching another warmed over
version of Bin Laden, but instead we are treated to a new take on
someone who may be the fan favorite "Star Trek" villain.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS looks fantastic in 3D--filled with
wonderful alien vistas and gorgeous technology. The plot is plenty
complex to fill the time but never veers into over-complication.
I've seen two complaints about STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS that I'd
like to rebut. The first is that the movie does not feel like
"real Trek" but has a few scenes and bits inserted to please the
fan base. I'm not sure what movie this critic watched, but the
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS I saw was Trek from start to finish. The
same reviewer also opined that it is odd that the leadership of
Starfleet would gather in an undefended room on a tall tower. This
is on the same level as saying it would be odd for the United
States military leadership to meet in the Pentagon on September 11.
See--the US military meets in their headquarters all the time, and
they don't generally expect that one bright sunny day there will be
a surprise attack. They don't ring the Pentagon with troops,
missiles, and guns because we were not at war (or at least so they
thought--Bin Laden had a different view!) and until September 11,
nobody had ever attacked the building.
Another complaint I've seen is that STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is not
a good name. Although STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS may not be the most
original name, it is highly appropriate. There are multiple levels
of meaning as applied by Abrams. First, it refers to the voyage
into space, literally, into darkness. Second, it refers to the
journey of the main villain, who, although with understandable
intentions, makes a personal descent into darkness. Third, it
refers to the actions of a faction inside Starfleet, who, with
similar good intentions, move to the deepest darkness of all, and
become a force of pure evil.
I rate STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS a strong +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
This is a must-see summer movie that pretty much everyone except
for small children will enjoy. There is considerable violent
action, and a couple of scenes of underwear-clad women that you
could see on any beach.
=========== Spoiler Alert ===========
Since a good bit of the fun of INTO DARKESS comes from several plot
twists, I am warning those who don't want spoilers to stop now.
The returning villain is none other than our old friend, Kahn
Noonien Singh, genetic superman of the 1990s, played marvelously by
Benedict Cumberbatch. This is a somewhat darker, more desperate,
and less grandiloquent version of Kahn who has been enslaved by an
evil faction of Star Fleet to produce weapons for a future war with
the Klingons. As in his first "Star Trek" appearance in the
episode "Space Seed" (1967), Kahn is a brilliant military leader
and engineering genius with amazing fighting abilities. In the
original episodes, Kahn is bested, barely, by an older James
T. Kirk, who downs him with what amounts to a dirty trick. In
DARKNESS, Kahn has no trouble beating a younger Kirk, but is later
pitted against Spock in a true battle of the supermen.
One significant departure from "Space Seed" has Kahn with
remarkable re-generative powers, such that others can be cured of
virtually any disease using his blood. The Kahn of "Space Seed"
could have had such blood, but it is simply not mentioned. In
"Space Seed" Kahn is often referred to as product of selective
breeding, but in STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS it is implied that he was
the product of genetic engineering. This is more a result of
scientific progress in the real world since "Space Seed" was made
than anything else. Since technically genetic engineering and
selective breeding can achieve the same results, this is also a bit
of a distinction without a difference, although selective breeding
is almost certainly the slower approach. It is physically
impossible for a selective breeding program on Earth to have
produced supermen in the 1990s unless the program had been in
secret operation for centuries. This fact is reflected in that in
the Kahn-related 3-episode arc from the STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE
television series and in the various Kahn "Star Trek" novels
selective breeding is replaced with genetic engineering.
I found the Kahn of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS more convincing as a
superman--when having nothing to do, he sits silently, gathering
his energies, and then snaps into frenzied action. He is less
given to speechifying and more to action than Ricardo Montalban.
Quite a bit of time in "Space Seed" is devoted to lionizing Kahn,
both via the viewpoint of the female Enterprise crewmember who is
fascinated with him (Marla McGivers), and via the bridge crew that
admit that although he was "a dictator who ruled much of Asia" he
was the "best of them." "Space Seed" is more ambiguous on eugenics
than I remembered. Although the weakness of the enhanced humans
seems to be that superhuman abilities lead to superhuman ambition
and constant infighting, the final judgment to pardon Kahn provides
him and his 72 surviving crew a planet of their own to develop.
This suggests that the writer was ambivalent about human
enhancement, and that although it may have led to warfare on the
earth in the 1990s, there was some hope that given a fresh start,
something good might come of it.
As is typical in Trek, SSTAR TREK INTO DARKNESS does not deal with
the technology that created Kahn and his wonder-blood at all,
leaving him and his crew once again in cryogenic capsules, no doubt
to return in a future Abram's movie for a rematch with Kirk and
Spock. It is virtually impossible to imagine that the Federation
would make no effort to understand and replicate the restorative
properties of Kahn's blood once it became known, but this willful
blindness is true to Roddenberry's vision. Although the "Star
Trek" universe features all manner of amazing physical
technologies, including warp drive and teleportation, the medical
science seems only marginally advanced over our own, something best
made explicable by an off-camera system of repression preventing
research into life extension and genetic engineering. This is
rendered more plausible by the all-encompassing cocoon of the TREK
lifestyle, which seems completely controlled by the Federation
bureaucracy. The ultimate irony of "Star Trek" is that while
superficially bold, it is in reality inward and backward looking,
having no place for anyone, such as Kahn, who has their own vision
of things.
For a contrasting vision of the future created during the same
period as original STAR TREK, I recommend James Schmitz's "Hub"
stories, and especially DEMON BREED. The Hub is the opposite of
the Federation, a vast anarchic wilderness very lightly controlled,
led by an invisible elite of supermen, busily focused on improving
the human kind via free choice. The rulers of the Hub would not
care if Kahn conquered a planet or two--they don't manage things at
that level. Most or all of Schmitz's Hub stories are available in
a paperback collection, THE HUB: DANGEROUS TERRRITORY. This
includes DEMON BREED and another story starring the same major
characters, TROUBLE TIDE. DEMON BREED is sometimes available with
the title THE TUVELA, which is what the "mythical" superhuman
rulers of the Hub are called. Schmitz is known for creating female
lead characters in adventure stories long before it became
fashionable, and Nile Etland and her two genetically enhanced
otters are among his best creations. Although Schmitz wrote many
more Telzy Amberdon stories, I always liked Nile Etland better.
Telzy is so powerful she is the Superman of the Hub, while Nile is
more along the line of Batman with two otters, not looking for a
ring. Enjoy!
P.S.: This ending is a reference to Mark Leeper's humorous parody
of LORD OF THE RINGS, which he encapsulates as "Three Otters in
Search of a Ring." I apologize for the inside joke, but I could
not resist! [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: End of Season SF TV Roundup (television reviews by Dale
L. Skran, Jr.)
It's that time again--the end of the regular TV season, and the
start of the summer season. Time to lasso the SF TV shows and
examine how the season went! First, however, I want to note that
ALPHAS (SyFy) has not been renewed for a third season. This
happened a while back but somehow escaped my notice. I liked the
first ALPAS season a lot, but the second season was weaker, and I
guess the network execs noticed. My main issue with the second
season lay in the tactical action as executed by the ALPHAS team.
I know they are not (for the most part) trained professionals, but
time after time they would do something really stupid, on the level
of walking around a haunted house calling out "Here, kitty, kitty."
At some point credulity is strained to the breaking point. It's
too bad, because there were some good second-season episodes, and I
like most of the characters.
LOST GIRL (SyFy) remains a guilty pleasure, but also remained a
show that had just enough gross ick and sex to deny it a wider
audience. It's not bad, and the second season is similar in
quality to the first, but I don't think it is going to become
super-popular or break much new ground.
WAREHOUSE 13 (SyFy) has started a new summer season, and about
three episodes in it seems to be staying the course--good acting,
fun moments, absurd but vaguely plausible plots as the agents
struggle to save the world from the next evil artifact.
The new CW show ARROW concluded with a bang as Green Arrow (a
massively muscled and frequently shirtless Stephen Arnell) fights
Merlyn to the death against the backdrop of a Starling City
threatened by earthquake bombs. I like this show a lot. It
features understated superhero adventures involving a whole bunch
of DC characters you probably haven't heard of (Huntress, Slade
Wilson, Deadshot, and so on) none of whom have actual super powers.
ARROW provides an imaginative and plausible back story for how
Oliver Queen, rich playboy, became the Green Arrow, a super-tough
fighter, who, as he says, "does not need the bow" to do this.
ARROW is one of the best TV superhero shows yet--better than
SMALLVILLE, NO ORDINARY FAMILY, or THE CAPE. It lacks the sweep
and cast of HEROS, but is well worth your time. Each episode has a
main plot, but there are reqular flashbacks that gradually unfold
Oliver's adventures while marooned on a remote island. ARROW has
been renewed for a second season starting in the fall, and I'm
looking forward to it.
NIKITA's (CW) third season held my interest well. Few TV spy shows
take their premise as seriously as NIKTA, or keep up the suspense
as well by allowing anything to happen. NIKTA is light SF on the
techno-thriller side, but the fourth and probably final season will
set our intrepid band of heroes against "The Shop," a group of
unethical scientists that provided Division with its bleeding edge
technology, promising more hi-tech fun and games with the world at
stake. Watch for a final shortened fourth and final season of
NIKITA that will start mid-season in 2014. If you like chick
super-spies, NIKITA compares favorably to ALIAS.
Sam and Dean have just finished season eight of SUPERNATURAL (CW),
and I understand two more seasons have been contracted for. The
major change of season eight is that an entire new strand of secret
history is introduced via the means of Sam and Dean's grandfather
in a time-travel episode. It turns out that they were both
destined to be part of a secret organization called "The Men of
Letters," who operated out of a magical art deco hideout near a
dam. This introduces new villains like the Thule Society, a gang
of Nazi necromancers, and new heroes, for example, a team of Jews
that used Golems to fight the Nazis. There were some surprisingly
good episodes, including the "found footage" werewolf episode, and
two new episodes featuring every fanboy's favorite gamer, Felicia
Day, a refugee from EUREKA, as Charlie Bradbury. SUPERNATURAL
remains entertaining if not profound, so I'll be sticking around
for the next season. My son Sam is a fan as well, but it could
just be that one of our two heroes is named Sam! Just a reminder--
SUPERNATURAL is one of the more violent/horrific shows on TV,
although some new series like THE FOLLOWING (which I am not
following!) are probably more violent.
J. J. Abram's new REVOLUTION (NBC) remains an incomplete thought.
I seem to have missed a key episode that explained more about why
the power has been turned off, but it has something to do with
flooding the world with nanites that both curtail the flow of
electricity and also enable the healing of certain diseases. This
may be impossible or even absurd, but it's not obviously silly, so
I'm still watching. Episode to episode REVOLUTION works well as a
tale of post-apocalyptic warfare. One group of our heroes are on
quest to turn the power back on by reaching something called "The
Tower," which appears to have, among other things, what is no doubt
a nanite infused monster in the basement. The second group is
leading the revolution against the sadistic and increasingly
desperate General Monroe, who now has the ability to locally power
up weapons, and is deploying things like nukes and weaponized
anthrax. A continuing theme is how far to go to win a war in which
everything seems to be on the table. If I've written this much, I
must be still interested, so I'll be back for the second season
(REVOLUTION will be returning in the fall with a full 22 episodes),
although I'm not yet at the point of strongly recommending the
show, which is probably of greatest interest to war gamers and fans
of military SF.
DEFIANCE (SyFy) comes to us all new and shiny from the SyFy
channel, and it has the look and feel of an epic SF tale.
Certainly the special effects are impressive. The Earth has been
forcibly "terraformed" by aliens, and then colonized by a vast
array of different species, transforming our Earth into something
new and completely different. The TV show apparently has tie-ins
to a video game as well. Sadly, however, DEFIANCE appears more as
a horse opera than anything else. It is possible to re-envision
everything that happens with cowboys, Indians, Mexican soldiers,
outlaws, a tough ex-military sheriff and so on, with about zero
change in the plot. The attempts to introduce aspects of different
alien cultures are for the most part not interesting, and a lot of
the plotting is cribbed from GAME OF THRONES. I wanted to like
DEFIANCE, but can't recommend it. I'll watch some more episodes,
but I don't expect much.
I'll reserve the best for last--CONTINUUM (SyFy). This Canadian
show is the best new SF TV show I've seen in a long time. It has
it all--time travel, time war, moral ambiguity, political
speculation, engaging characters, interesting technology, police
procedural action, SF murder mysteries, and a complex plot. Season
Two starts in early June, and you are cordially invited to come
aboard. You can probably catch up on-line, or by ordering the
season one DVD from Amazon. I'm about half done re-watching season
one on DVD with my wife, and it has improved in the second viewing.
I'm convinced that small cuts made for the TV broadcast sometimes
significantly alter the apparent quality of the program. I was a
bit concerned that the early episodes were overly maudlin, but the
second time around I found the balance appropriate. The main
character would naturally be initially overwhelmed with a sense of
loss, but as time goes on she would increasingly come to see that
she has to go on--either her timeline is lost forever, or she can
return to it--she has to find out by actually seeking to go back
(or more accurately, go forward to her own time). Season Two
promises to be interesting, and it appears that the writers are
going somewhere with the story. It is always possible that
stupidity will follow, but so far, so good. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: FRANCES HA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: There is not a lot of plot to this account of a dancer in
her late twenties looking to better her existence by being
connected to professional dancing and find an appropriate place to
live and someone to live with. This is very minimalist
storytelling much of which feels improvised in front of the camera.
The film is more of a character situation than a character story.
Greta Gerwig stars and co-writes with director Noah Baumbach.
Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
What can you say about a film in which the warmest and most
enjoyable sequences are those scored with Georges Delarue's music
for KING OF HEARTS? I don't remember what was happening at the
time, but the music was better than the story.
Greta Gerwig plays Frances, who is entering her late twenties and
for the first time is finding out that her dreams of being a great
innovative artistic dancer just are not going to happen the way she
had planned. The rubber is just starting to meet the road. For
the first time, she does not get a part in a show she wants. Her
lifelong best friend and occasional lover Sophie (played by Mickey
Sumner) is going to move out of the apartment they share and is
going to live with a boyfriend. Until now Sophie was someone she
could run through the Manhattan streets with and could urinate on
subway tracks with. (Charming.) Now all the cotter pins that held
Frances's life together are being pulled out and the life is
falling apart.
Frances is looking for financial stability and a chance to use her
skills as a professional dancer. The model for the film seems to
be Woody Allen's MANHATTAN. Like MANHATTAN the film is shot in
monochrome. The plot is not strong, but the dialog seems to be the
film's focus. Instead of a cute Woody Allen we have Gerwig whose
charm is present more in theory than in actual fact. The character
is in her late twenties and her personality is mostly likable but
verges on the obnoxious and has perhaps intentionally just an edge
of desperation. Certainly her cuteness seems a little strained
when it is so often tracking shots of Gerwig running on the street.
Director Noah Baumbach (THE SQUID AND THE WHALE) says he tries to
tell a big chunk of the story with each scene, but that is not that
useful if overall the story does not progress. Too many of her
gags end with the viewer asking what was the point of that scene.
In one sequence Frances is taking a male friend to dinner and when
she goes to pay, the card is rejected. She leaves her friend at
the table and runs out to find an ATM machine. It is hard to find
so we have a lot of Gerwig's trademark running through streets.
This causes her to fall down, and when she returns to the
restaurant she finds she is slightly bleeding. So she takes care
of her injury. I was first saying to myself "And ...?" When we
move on to the next sequence and this one does not seem to impact
anything I now am left asking "So ...?" The idea seems to be that
we are so entranced by Gerwig that we want to know everything that
happens to her. Perhaps it need not come together for the Tweet
generation. We are expected to just be enough entranced by
Gerwig's physical and floppy graceful style that that is
sufficient. I rate FRANCES HA a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
5/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2347569/ combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ frances_ha_2013/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: 1-900-TONIGHT (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Two lonely people and the walls they build around
themselves are the subjects of this comedy-drama written and
directed by Michael Di Jiacomo. John Turturro plays Leroy, who
does not get out much when not on his job as a bicycle courier.
One night Leroy calls a phone-sex line and is connected with Patti
(Katherine Borowitz), who is equally neurotic. Through a series of
phone calls they open up to each other and form a tenuous bond.
The acting is good but the viewer has a hard time emotionally
investing in their relationship. Because the overwhelming majority
of the film is just phone conversation, this material almost could
have been better served by being a radio drama. Rating: low +1
(-4 to +4) or 5/10
Leroy (a.k.a. Wooly, played by John Turturro) is a marginal human
being. He is a bicycle courier by day and at night he hides in his
room from the world. One night he calls a phone-sex line and
chooses Patti (Katherine Borowitz) as the least objectionable of
the candidate voices at the other end. Knowing little more about
Patti than that she shares his taste for fish sticks, he requests a
call from Patti. When he gets it she has no interest in phone sex,
but does go into rambling conversations. Though they do not hit it
off immediately, now that Patti has Leroy's phone number she calls
him repeatedly. The conversations do little more than give us
tragic but also perhaps whimsical views of the two people. Leroy
can draw off of Patti's emotional balance, but soon it becomes
clear that she has severe problems of her own behind the calm
façade.
We are never really sure why the two lonely people are doing what
they are doing, and getting to know them through subsequent
conversations does not help a lot. Most of what we know about the
characters is only subtly implied. In one conversation Patti
refuses to talk unless Leroy is talking. When he pauses, she
pauses. She is playing a game with Leroy that seems pointless.
Soon she gives up on this behavior--what she calls "an old
behavior"--and moves on to her next idiosyncrasy never to repeat
this one. Each is not so much a person, but a collection of
strange behaviors. Leroy is floored by what he hears coming over
the phone, but is oddly charmed by Patti and half attracted to her.
It is hard to take Patti as being more than just a set of contrived
eccentricities. Even if we do take her seriously we wonder if
Leroy really should be attracted to her. Any long-term
relationship of the two is doomed by her fighting her own personal
devils. For the film to have any charm the viewer needs to be
invested in their rapport and writer/director Michael Di Jiacomo
has not created a relationship the viewer has much interest in.
Ninety percent of the film is just the conversations on the phone
relieved with very little and usually mundane action. With little
modification this could have been done as a radio play. The story
takes a long time to develop into much and the ending in a
contrivance.
Ashleigh Brilliant drew a cartoon of a turtle saying, "I am glad I
am going slowly, because I might be going in the wrong direction."
That relationship between Patti and Leroy may develop slowly. but
they really may not be right for each other. 1-900-TONIGHT (a.k.a.
SOMEWHERE TONIGHT) is a quirky romance that is never quite
satisfying. It never really works. I rate 1-900-TONIGHT a low +1
on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034293/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/somewhere_tonight_2012/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo vs. HUGO (letter of comment by Kip Williams)
In response to Evelyn's error in transcribing Kip Williams's letter
of comment in the 05/31/13 issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams
writes:
Error in transmission--I love the plot twists in Hugo, as in Victor
Hugo. My comment was not intended to address the movie HUGO, which
I liked, but not to the same extent.
I may be repeating myself, but anyone interested in a radio version
of LES MISERABLES, a little over three hours in length, starring
and supervised by Orson Welles, that's at archive.org. [-kw]
Evelyn responds:
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I'm so used to people
sending movie titles sans capitalization or quotation marks that I
automatically read "Hugo" as a movie title. Clearly in the context
(LES MISERABLES) that was completely wrong. [-ecl]
Mark adds:
I have to say that I also recommend the Welles six-part
dramatization of LES MISERABLES. It is one of the best adaptations
of the novel I have heard/seen/experienced. Find it at
http://archive.org/details/OrsonWelles-LesMiserables1937
or find it with lots of other radio drama at
http://www.mercurytheatre.info/. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Writing Styles (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
In response to Evelyn's review of THE UNITED STATES OF ARUGULA in
the 05/24/13 issue of the MT VOID, Jim Susky writes:
Some like the sound of their own convoluted sentences. This edit
took less than a minute--which sounds better to me--with a little
work it might even sing a bit. "-ing words" should be used only
sparingly. Mouthfuls should be split up using periods. (Wonder if
Kamp eats that way, too?)
[Original:] "In 1976 when she was still only twenty-three, Piper
opened up her own place in Madison, L'Etoile, which was, if
anything, an even greater triumph than the Ovens of Brittany, its
dedication to local foods inspiring the food press to posit Piper
as a Midwestern analogue to Alice Waters."
[Re-write:] "In 1976 when she was still only twenty-three, Piper
opened her own restaurant in Madison. L'Etoile was an even greater
triumph than the Ovens of Brittany. Its dedication to local foods
inspired the food press to posit Piper as a Midwestern analogue to
Alice Waters."
[Just] a nod of agreement with your wife on writing that is too
"structural". Except for substituting "restaurant" for "place", I
used all of his words, but arranged them more serviceably.
I wonder, how does a "real" editor, one paid by a publisher,
influence an author under contract to *use periods*--to tighten his
prose?
Would Kamp be insulted by the reconstruction I offered? Style is
tricky. Some readers (many of which, are writers I imagine) seem to
love those kinds of super-structures (though, I'm not one of them).
It's been a long time since I read Asimovian fiction--but I've
recently read two of his longest works--Vol 2 of his first
autobiography and his big Guide to Science (1960, 1965, and 1984
editions). Asimov's prose sounds like he talking to you--either in
a lecture situation or in a speech. Kamp's sounds like a class
I'm going to drop. [-js]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I recently (again) listened to the BBC adaptation of Isaac Asimov's
"Foundation Trilogy" and was inspired to continue by re-reading
FOUNDATION'S EDGE by Isaac Asimov (ISBN 978-0-553-29338-8). You
know how when someone asks on Usenet in what order to read the
"Foundation" series, the answer is almost always, "Read the
Trilogy, then stop"? Well, they're right. And why are they right?
Let me count the ways.
Asimov wrote the initial trilogy over nine years, from 1942 to
1951. Then thirty-two years went by before he wrote FOUNDATION'S
EDGE. In the interim, a lot happened, including "Women's Lib".
Asimov felt he had to update his series to have more women in
positions other than loving wife or precocious teenager. This
might have worked, but when he tried to retro-fit it to include
Preem Palver's wife, it just seemed very forced. And he seems to
have forgotten how to write strong female characters. Harla Branno
is just not convincing in the way that Susan Calvin was.
In addition, Asimov decided he needed be explicit in tying all his
novels together in a single "Future History". So he wrote hooks
for the robot novels, and even for THE END OF ETERNITY.
(Admittedly, the novels THE CURRENTS OF SPACE, PEBBLE IN THE SKY,
and THE STARS, LIKE DUST already contained passing references to
Trantor et al.)
At first glance, ALIVE! by Loren D. Estleman (ISBN 978-0-7653-3331-
5) appeared to be an alternate history in which Bela Lugosi did not
turn down the role of the Monster in FRANKENSTEIN and Rudolph
Valentino became a private detective. In fact, the picture and
references to Lugosi as the Monster on the cover refer entirely to
the ten minutes of test footage of his that was shot and then lost,
and Valentino (no first name is ever given) is a "film detective"
working for the Film Preservation Department at UCLA. When a
friend of Valentino's is murdered and it turns out to involve the
lost footage, Valentino starts investigating. There's even a
character patterned after Forrest J. Ackerman.
Estleman makes a couple of mistakes. He says the town of Tarzana
was named by Edgar Rice Burroughs after his jungle hero. Burroughs
named Tarzana Ranch (which he then subdivided and sold as a whites-
only community under a restrictive covenant; it was ten years later
that the residents named the town Tarzana.
And he mistakenly refers to "As it was with the DRACULA star's
signature accent, one had only to assume Karloff's stiff-legged,
groping-armed walk to tell people ... whom he was imitating." But
the groping arms came about in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN when
the Monster was supposedly blind (from a bad blood transfusion),
and that was well after Karloff stopped playing the Monster. And
who was playing the Monster in that film? None other than Bela
Lugosi, meaning that ironically it is Lugosi's performance that
people imitate to portray Karloff!
All in all, ALIVE! Is an okay mystery, but clearly aimed (along
with the rest of the series) primarily at film fans. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
That famous writers block is a myth as far as I'm
concerned. I think bad writers must have a great
difficulty writing. They don't want to do it. They
have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It
must be a great strain to them to make marks on a
page when they really have nothing much to say, and
don't enjoy doing it. I'm not so sure what I have
to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.
--Gore Vidal