THE MT VOID
02/16/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 33, Whole Number 2315

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Sending Address: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
All material is the opinion of the author and is copyrighted by the
author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent or posted will be assumed authorized for
inclusion unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to eleeper@optonline.net
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:
The Holmdel Horn
Mini Reviews, Part 19 (POOR THINGS, WONKA,
ALL OF US STRANGERS) (film reviews
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Saturn Awards
This Week's Reading (BEARS DISCOVER FIRE, THE STONE RAFT)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: The Holmdel Horn

CILU, PH and FOHOS via ActionNetwork.org
<info+save-big-bang-antenna-info@sg.actionnetwork.org> reports:

"On Tuesday, January 23rd, Holmdel Mayor Rocco Impreveduto
announced that Holmdel Township has officially acquired the upper
35 acres of Crawford Hill (lots 6 and 6.01) and now owns the
historic horn antenna. The Township Committee also moved to
introduce an ordinance to formally establish "Dr. Robert Wilson
Park". Articles citing the announcement can be found on Patch and
in the Asbury Park Press."

I guess Arno Penzias gets the short end of the stick. [-ecl]

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

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 19 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

This is nineteenth batch of mini-reviews, all films of the
fantastic.

POOR THINGS (2023): POOR THINGS is based on the concepts behind
Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, but it totally separate from it.
(There also seems to be a touch of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU in the
menagerie we see.)

POOR THINGS takes the same cinematographic approach as OPPENHEIMER:
film the past in color and the present (ay least in the early
London environs) in black and white, although Bella's adventures
are in color (perhaps because these are less connected to our
reality). There is also heavy use of fisheye lenses and other
distorting effects.

Bella (Emma Stone) has no filters, and no sense of social
proprieties, so her dialogue is both literal and shocking. Credit
should go to writer Tony McNamara and to Alasdair Gray who wrote
the original novel. The presence of the latter probably explains
at least some of the surrealism, although given that director
Yorgos Lanthimos also directed THE LOBSTER, he certainly
contributed his share. (There's even what may be a Monty Python
homage.) Her creator, Godwin Baxter (a.k.a. God) (Willem Dafoe) is
far more complicated than Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, and his
assistant, Mark McCardles (Ramyi Youssef), has much more substance
than that role usually has in films. There is also Duncan
Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who has his own best laid plans that,
well, go awry; Harry (Jerrod Carmichael), a philosopher; and Madame
Swiney (Kathryn Hunter).

Bella has many guides through her learning experiences: Baxter,
McCandles, Wedderburn, ... And each has a specific ambit, so the
chapters represent not just locations, but states of mind. Many
social and even philosophical concepts are raised and considered,
and one can even see connections to current discussions of
artificial intelligence. [-ecl]

Highly recommended.

(This film comes from some tentacle of the Disney Corporation, so
the full frontal nudity of both sexes, and relatively explicit sex
scenes, may surprise viewers, so be warned.)

Released theatrically 8 December 2023. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4),
or 7/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14230458/reference>

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

WONKA (2023): WONKA is a prequel to WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE
FACTORY (of which there was a 1971 film (with Gene Wilder) and a
2005 remake renamed CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (with Johnny
Depp). This is a musical, but the beginning is also a spoof of the
musical genre. It is also Dickensian with a dash of Victor Hugo.

The basic plot is that Wonka has recipes for chocolate but no venue
in which to sell them. He also seems to know many of the strange
tricks performed by stage magicians, and somehow Wonka's chocolate
seems frequently to combine fresh chocolate with various
mechanisms. He finds a hotel, but his hotel room turns out to be
part of a workhouse. (As someone says, "The greedy beat the needy.
It's the way of the world." But he is also told, "Every good
thing in this world started with a dream."

Some of the music and the design of the Oompa-Loompas is re-used
from the Gene Wilder version of WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.

Released theatrically 15 December 2023. Rating: high +2 (-4 to
+4), or 8/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6166392/reference>

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

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023): In ALL OF US STRANGERS, Adam (Andrew
Scott) is a apparently one of only two residents in a high-rise
black of flats in London. After an encounter with his slightly
menacing neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), he decides to re-visit his
childhood home. He runs into someone he knows, who takes him
"home". The someone turns out to be his father, who seems no older
than Adam, and the same is true of his mother. And the car in the
driveway is an old car. Then we find out that both parents had
died when Adam was twelve years old. From there, things get
stranger.

[SLIGHT SPOILER]

ALL OF US STRANGERS seems a bit like a "Twilight Zone" episode;
this has not one but three episodes it has connections to ("Walking
Distance", "The Trouble with Templeton", and "Of Late I Dream of
Cliffordville", and a Ray Bradbury story to boot). But it's
original in its approach. It's not a "time travel to the past",
and it's not "a visit to heaven". It is, I suppose, a sort of a
ghost story. It is rather an examination of how people relate, and
how sometimes it seems that when one is ready to connect, the other
isn't, and then later the second one is, but the fist has moved on.

Released theatrically 22 December 2023. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21192142/reference>

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

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

TOPIC: Saturn Awards

The Saturn Awards, as given by the Academy of Science Fiction,
Fantasy & Horror, were announced on 02/04/24; the (very long) list
can be found at <https://www.saturnawards.org>. The major awards
(IMHO) are:

Best Science Fiction Film: AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
Best Fantasy Film: INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
Best Horror Film: TALK TO ME
Best Superhero Film: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL. 3
Best Action / Adventure Film: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE -
DEAD RECKONING PART ONE
Best Thriller Film: OPPENHEIMER

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

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

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that if you were looking for
authors whose work was similar to Howard Waldrop's, Terry Bisson
was one possibility. This prompted me to re-read Bisson's classic
collection, BEARS DISCOVER FIRE (Orb, ISBN 978-0-312-89035-3). And
yes, several of the stories seem Waldropian (in some way I cannot
quite explain): "Bears Discover Fire", "They're Made Out of Meat",
and "Over Flat Mountain". Other stories remind me of other
authors; for example "By Permit Only" seems like something Frederik
Pohl could have written back in the 1950s (and also depressingly
possible in our future).

"England Underway" is particularly notable in this regard.
Published in 1993, its premise is that the island of Great Britain
has started moving first south, then west towards America. (As
happens with British politics, when England decides to do
something, it drags Wales and Scotland along with it--this time
literally. These is actually discussion of why Northen Ireland
isn't moving with it, as well as some of the outlying islands.)

But what makes this story notable is that Jose Saramago wrote THE
STONE RAFT (A JANGADA DE PEDRA) in 1986. The plot of this is that
the Iberian peninsula breaks loose from Europe and drifts into the
Atlantic Ocean. However, Saramago wrote in Portuguese, and THE
STONE RAFT wasn't translated into English until 1994. So while it
is possible that Bisson had heard of the book before writing his
story, he could not have read it, and this seems to be just a
coincidence rather than a literary influence one way or the other.
(I reviewed THE STONE RAFT in the 05/15/15 issue of the MT VOID;
the review can be found at
<http://leepers.us/evelyn/reviews/saramago.htm#stoneraft>.)

On 2/18/24 11:28 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
> WONKA (2023): WONKA is a prequel to WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE
> FACTORY (of which there was a 1971 film (with Gene Wilder) and a
> 2005 remake renamed CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (with Johnny
> Depp).  This is a musical, but the beginning is also a spoof of the
> musical genre.  It is also Dickensian with a dash of Victor Hugo.

Roald Dahl's _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ has some highly
disturbing features, yet somehow he gets a pass. A few days ago I was
struck by an item that crossed over elements of Harry Potter and
Charlie, and the former was presented as the one people might not want
to touch.

In the original version of Charlie, the Oompa Loompas were Africans who
were brought over and kept in isolation. They were slaves or close to
it. As I understand it, the new _Wonka_ totally rewrites this story.

Dahl's reaction to Khomeini's murder contract on Salman Rushdie was to
heap contempt upon Rushdie: "This kind of sensationalism does indeed get
an indifferent book on the top of the best-seller list — but to my mind
it is a cheap way of doing so." On another occasion he said, "There is a
trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity."

I'm not saying people shouldn't read his books; it's no longer possible
for him to benefit from their sales. But I find it bizarre that people
give him a pass so easily while spewing hatred on someone who deviates
from the orthodoxy on trans people.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
> On another occasion [Roald Dahl] said, "There is a trait in the
> Jewish character that does provoke animosity."

> I'm not saying people shouldn't read his books; it's no longer
> possible for him to benefit from their sales. But I find it
> bizarre that people give him a pass so easily while spewing
> hatred on someone who deviates from the orthodoxy on trans people.

Careful, or you'll win a (mandatory) free vacation at a DEI
re-education camp. The central orthodoxy of DEI is that every person
consists entirely of the intersection of every group they are a
member of, and that groups can be cleanly divided into oppressor
and oppressed. Since Palestinians are oppressed, that necessarily
means Jews are oppressors, hence that anti-semitism is virtuous.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.