Rocksolid Light - rec.arts.sf.fandom - MT VOID, 12/22/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 25, Whole Number 2307

THE MT VOID
12/22/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 25, Whole Number 2307

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Sending Address: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 14 (BLIND WILLOW SLEEPING WOMAN,
THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT) (film reviews
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL and India (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Streaming Problems (letter of comment by Hal Heydt)
This Week's Reading (Christmas stories) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 14 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

This is the fourteenth batch of mini-reviews, this week animated
fantasy.

BLIND WILLOW SLEEPING WOMAN (2022): BLIND WILLOW SLEEPING WOMAN is
based on several stories by Haruki Murakami. Katagiri is a failing
salaryman in Japan who one day finds there is a giant frog that
talks and sings to him. This is actually a fairly common theme in
animated films from Japan, along with the theme of the natural as
supernatural, which also appears frequently in Japanese folklore.

There is also a young man whose girlfriend is fixated on watching
television reports of the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. There is
a teenager who is dissatisfied with with her life. There are also
UFOs and sex. The stories intertwine, but there are several
different animation styles used to tell them. [-ecl]

Released theatrically 14 April 2023. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or
6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9320184/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_willow_sleeping_woman>

THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT (2023): THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT, based on
Newbery-Award-winning author Kate DiCamillo's classic novel, is an
animated family film about Peter, who is looking for his sister,
and is told by a fortune teller to "follow the elephant". He has
to perform three impossible things to get the elephant (though not
necessarily before breakfast). All in all, a fairly standard
story, but that is what a younger audience wants, not a revisionist
fairy tale.

[I keep wanting to type "The Magician's Nephew--I can imagine why.
:-)]

[-ecl]

Released theatrically 10 March 2023, streaming 17 March 2023.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2560092/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_magicians_elephant>

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL and India (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)

I was watching THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL and I found myself
fascinated by its depiction of India. But I found myself thinking
that when I went to India I had hoped to see the India that Douglas
saw or even that the Evelyn of the movie saw, while the India I
found was more like that of Muriel (who is old and cranky, but at
least eventually open to new experiences) or Jean (who has very
specific ideas and won't change them). Was it because I was more
like Muriel or Jean? There may be some of that, but I'm not sure
how Douglas or Evelyn would have reacted how they had cow sh*t
thrown on their shoes two days in a row. [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Streaming Problems (letter of comment by Hal Heydt)

In response to Mark's comments on streaming films "stuttering" in
the 12/08/23 issue of the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:

Possible--inexpensive--solution. Get a Raspberry Pi and use that
to stream the film to your large screen. (I'd suggest the latest
version, the Pi5, for best results.) [-hh]

Evelyn responds:

The only time we have this problem streaming with Chromecast seems
to be during screener season. (Maybe we just don't Chromecast all
that much the rest of the year to notice it.) So we're not
looking for even an inexpensive solution, but a free one. Not to
mention I have no idea what a Raspberry Pi is. Dropping the
resolution sometimes helps--and sometimes not. [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Excerpted from my review of THE BEST OF FREDERIK POHL in the
09/04/09 issue of the MT VOID:

"Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus": If "Day Million" seems to have a lot
of its ideas fixed in the past, "Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus" seems
depressingly prescient, with the commercialization of Christmas
gone amuck. All those people who keep telling us that everyone
should have the Christmas spirit and *love* all the store
decorations et al should read this. I mentioned this a few years
ago in conjunction with China Mieville's "'Tis the Season". In the
latter, I wrote, "The worst fears of the Religious Right have come
to pass, and the celebration of Christmas is prohibited. No
parties, no holly, no mistletoe, no trees, .... But it is not
political correctness gone wild. And it has nothing to do with the
First Amendment and the separation of church and state (in part
because Mieville is British, writing for a British audience). No,
it's because all of these things have been trademarked and so you
can't have a Christmas tree, you must have a Christmas Tree(tm) and
pay a license fee for it. The same with Holly(tm), Mistletoe(tm),
and so on. 'It felt so forlorn, putting my newspaper-wrapped
presents next to the aspidistra, but ever since YuleCo bought the
right to coloured paper and under-tree storage, the inspectors had
clamped down on Subarboreal Giftery.' Frankly, Mieville's
'nightmare future' seems far more likely to me than the nightmare
future of Christmas being forbidden because of political
correctness. After all, one cannot now sing 'Happy Birthday to
You' in public without owing royalties on it! The Mieville and the
Pohl get added to 'Newton's Mass' by Timothy Esaias in my mental
list of stories that *I* would put in a Christmas anthology, were I
ever to undertake such an unlikely task. [-ecl]

===================================================================

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries.
--Stephen King

Subject	Author
MT VOID, 12/22/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 25, Whole Number 2307	Evelyn C. Leeper
MT VOID, 12/22/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 25, Whole Number 2307	Gary McGath
MT VOID, 12/22/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 25, Whole Number 2307	Dorothy J Heydt

Would that my hand were as swift as my tongue. -- Alfieri

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