THE MT VOID
01/12/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 28, Whole Number 2310

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 16 (THE MONKEY KING, THE INVENTOR,
ROBOT DREAMS) (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Evolution of TV (comments by Art Stadlin)
INFINITY POOL and Other Films (letter of comment
by Tom Russell)
Greek Drama (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
This Week's Reading (THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER, ATOMIC
DREAMS AND THE NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: THE MAKING OF
"GODZILLA") (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 16 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

This is the sixteenth batch of mini-reviews, all animated films.

THE MONKEY KING (2023): THE MONKEY KING is an animated film in the
style of Pixar rather than Disney. That is, the dialogue is in the
sarcastic style of "Shrek" rather than the somewhat less snarky
style of "Frozen". It is also a prequel to the classic "Monkey
King" legend, "Journey to the West", or perhaps more accurately, a
secret history. The Monkey King is as well-known and recognized in
China as Mickey Mouse is here. Because the film is a prequel, it
requires no prior knowledge of the Monkey King in viewers, though
the final scene assumes some recognition.

(For older audiences, there is definitely an homage to THE COURT
JESTER in the rhyme about which tree is poisoned.) [-ecl]

Released theatrically 11 August 2023. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4), or
7/10.

Film Credits: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8637498/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_monkey_king_2023>

THE INVENTOR (2023): THE INVENTOR is a combination of stop-motion
animation and hand-drawn animation. It is a biopic of Leonardo da
Vinci, but it concentrates more on his scientific pursuits than on
his artistic ones. This seems strange even to the characters in
the film, who in what could be described as "meta-dialogue" keep
asking, "Why can't you be satisfied with just painting pretty
things?" [-ecl]

Released theatrically 15 September 2023. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4), or
7/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5822848/reference>

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

ROBOT DREAMS (2023): In ROBOT DREAMS, a man builds a robot as a
companion. After spending time together, they are separated when
they go to the beach and the beach is locked off with the man on
the outside while the robot is still on the beach. What we see are
a series of the robot's dreams, as well as some less pleasant
realities. What makes this film unusual is that there is no
dialogue or dialogue cards--it is entirely visual. [-ecl]

Released at festivals 20 October 2023. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4),
or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13429870/reference>

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

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

TOPIC: The Evolution of TV (comments by Art Stadlin)

[This originally appeared on a retirees' mailing list; reprinted
with permission.]

I have mixed feelings about the evolution of TV. My experience:

1960's--In the suburbs of Philadelphia we got four OTA VHF channels
(3, 6, 10, 12), and 12 wasn't so clear because their tower was down
in Delaware. We were probably the last on our street to get a
color TV--a 25-inch RCA in a big wooden cabinet. Some UHF stations
started to pop-up (17, 29, 48). We improved on "rabbit ears" with
a Radio Shack antenna mounted in the attic, which really helped
stabilize local channels. It also brought in Harrisburg (8) and
Baltimore (13) when the atmospheric conditions were right.

1970's--In college in Melbourne, FL, we got two Orlando OTA
channels (6, 9). NBC (2) WESH's tower was too far away up in
Daytona. If I recall, sometime during this decade, the FCC gave
permission for WESH to move their tower to the Orlando tower farm
in Bithlo. And back in Philly, the FCC gave WHYY (12) permission
to move their tower to the Philly tower farm on Domino Lane. I
think it was the '70's when Philly UHF 17 bragged about their
5,000,000 watt transmitter. But UHF stations had trouble getting
viewers.

1980's--Soon after moving to Neptune, NJ (to work in Holmdel),
Cable TV came to town. Wow! 36 channels, all with clear
reception!!! And all the NYC and Philly FM stations too!!!
"Cable-Ready" TVs became a thing. the VCR went viral. TBS
(WTBS-Atlanta) was a "super station." CNN was born. MTV played
music! A couple of video disk systems (optical and vinyl) tried but
failed to catch on,

1990's--DirecTV brought even more channels! And in these early
days, did not carry local OTA TV channels. Instead, they supplied
an east and west coast channel from each of the big three networks.
(I don't think FOX had an OTA TV network yet.) I enjoyed the CBS
station from San Francisco.

2000's--Took the Lucent 5+5 offer and relocated to Bradenton, FL.
I bought a card for my Windows tower PC that would allow me to
record video and store MP4 files. Homemade some TV antennas,
mounted them in the attic, and played with TV-DX ("e-skip" and
tropo tunneling). Got some stations over 500 miles away in Alabama.

2010's--The big shift from Analog to Digital TV. We bought our
first flat screen TV ($2,400 for a 46-inch). And High Definition
(HDTV) was defined as anything at least 720 pixels. Verizon FiOS
came to town. Fiber to the home! Discovered Roku and started
streaming stuff. Wife said she would never stream, but then got
hooked on it. Regular Cable TV / FiOS TV gave us hundreds of
channels that we never watched.

2020's--Subscribed to too many streaming services, but my wife
disagrees. She watches something on each service! We downsized to
a condo. Was asked to lead a team to select a new TV / internet
provider for our 207-unit complex. After a "bake-off" with four
potential providers, we selected Blue Stream Fiber, which supplies
IPTV using the TiVo platform. About 150 channels of TV, including
a Sports Tier (with NFL, MLB, etc), two TV boxes, cloud DVR, and
500/500 internet--all for $74/month/unit. Seeing lots of 4K and 8K
drone videos with stunning images on YouTube.

Future--I'm starting to learn about "Next-Gen" TV, which the FCC
approved and is live in dozens of cities. Key points: ATSC-3
(Next-Gen) is *not* backward compatible with ATSC-1 (what we have
now). But rather than a flash cut, FCC is allowing both to operate
in parallel for 10(?) years. Technically, the newer standard
offers better reception / less pixelization, mobile reception,
something about 2-way / internet capabilities. I certainly will be
learning more about this in the coming months. It's not without
controversy. A patent dispute has caused LG to remove Next-Gen
capabilities from their new TVs. And some converter boxes are not
able to decode OTA content protected by copyright encryption. All
sounds way too experimental at this point in time. More here:

<https://www.youtube.com/@AntennaMan>

I started by saying I have mixed feelings about TV's evolution. To
boil it down:

+ I like that we get more and more choices, including lots of FREE
choices.

+ I like the crystal clear video and high resolution.

- I wish it were easier to locate programming I like, but it's
nice to have all these services making "recommendations" for me.

- It will be annoying if it comes to a point in time when my
wonderful 65-inch top-of-the line LG TV becomes a brick because
ATSC-1 is shut down.

- The competition between streaming services appears to be
*raising* prices (as they produce exclusive content).

- I'm annoyed by having to pay streamers to show me ads. (I
canceled my paid subscription to Peacock.)

[-as]

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

TOPIC: INFINITY POOL (letter of comment by Tom Russell)

In response to Evelyn's comments on INFINITY POOL in the 01/05/23
issue of the MT VOID, Tom Russell writes:

"Not leaving the resort is surprisingly common.

Also not getting off the cruise ship, even in the Galapagos...

And not reading anything more than the cruise/resort brochure.
[-tr]

Evelyn responds:

You mean like the people on our four-week tour of China who didn't
read that all the meals in China would be Chinese food? [-ecl]

Tom also writes:

Thanks to the Holmdel (NJ) public library DVD rental selection, and
the Netflix subscription TV service, we saw three science fiction
movies in the last three nights. We liked THE ADAM PROJECT more
than either the Tom Cruise [MISSION IMPOSSIBLE--DEAD RECKONING,
PART 1] or Harrison Ford [INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY]
movies. [-tr]

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

TOPIC: Greek Drama (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)

In response to Taras Wolansky's comments on surviving Greek drama
in the 12/01/23 issue of the MT VOID, David Goldfarb writes:

In vol. 42 #22, Taras Wolansky is quoted, "... we have nineteen
plays of Euripides, because his plays were actually popular." [-tw]

I'm not so sure I agree. There's a lot of luck touching what has
survived from antiquity. Take the Roman poet Catullus: we have 116
poems by him, and they are uniquely identified by a number.
"Catullus 25", "Catullus 98", and so on. Why is this? Because
this is the order that the poems appear in the *one* volume of
Catullus's poetry, of which *one* copy survived to modern times.
It's all too easy to imagine an alternate history in which a
bookworm crawled left instead of right, and Catullus is as lost to
us as Sappho.

So too with Euripides. In ancient times, someone issued a
Collected Works set with plays in alphabetical order: and it just
so happened that one copy of the volume covering eta through kappa
survived. And this is how we still have "Electra", "Helen",
"Heracles", "Children of Heracles", "The Suppliant Women", "Ion",
"Iphigenia in Aulis", "Iphigenia in Tauris", and "Cyclops"--through
sheer luck. "Hecuba" also fits into this sequence, but there is
other evidence that it is part of the "select" plays that were used
as school exercises rather than these "alphabetical" plays.

If we see that seven select plays of Aeschylus survive, and seven
select plays of Sophocles, and nine select plays of Euripides, then
Euripides no longer seems so much of an outlier, I think.

(Nine select plays and nine alphabet plays equals eighteen: one
play that was traditionally thought to be part of the select group
nowadays is thought to be a misattributed later play by someone
else, with the same title as one by Euripides.) [-djg]

Evelyn responds:

This is what I love about the MT VOID readership--the amount of
diverse knowledge they have. So can someone tell me who coined the
term "Year of the Four Emperors"? (And similarly for "five" and
"six".) [-ecl]

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

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

I'm working my way through my
"need-to-get-through-interlibrary-loan" list, so I'm reading a
bunch of random stuff, though perhaps not quite as random as
Marco's reading list in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. (*)

THE DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER by Shaun Bythell (Melville House, ISBN
978-1-61219-816-3) is Bythell's second book about his bookseller
experience in Wigtown, Scotland. One can sympathize with the
issues he has to deal with--including some very peculiar, and often
obnoxious, customers, but he is less than perfect. For example, he
sells books online (as do most booksellers these days), but in 2014
he was, frankly, terrible at it. Apparently if you ordered a book
from him, there was a 25% chance that the order would be canceled
because he couldn't find the book. One hopes he got better at it.

The book is interesting in parts, but there are other parts (e.g.,
having to do with salmon fishing) that I skipped over. This was
somewhat true of the other books as well, so he is consistent.

(Apparently I read and reviewed this about a year ago, along with
two other of Bythell's books, but I guess they all ran together in
my mind, and I hadn't removed it from my ILL list. So I shouldn't
be too harsh on Bythell about misplacing books ...but 25% is still
high.)

(*) These were PRINCIPLES OF MODERN BANKING, HISTORY OF PIRACY,
PAINTINGS OF OROZCO, MODERN FRENCH THEATER, THE JURISPRUDENTIAL
FACTOR OF MAFIA ADMINISTRATION, DISEASES OF HORSES, NOVELS OF JOYCE
CAREY, and ETHNIC CHOICES OF THE ARABS. Alas, these are made-up
titles. Well, there are books titled "Modern French Theater" and
"Diseases of Horses", but those are hardly distinctive titles.

ATOMIC DREAMS AND THE NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: THE MAKING OF "GODZILLA"
(1954) by Peter H. Brothers (CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1-5089-7583-0)
is a self-published book that could use an editor--there were quite
a few misspellings and typos. I also seem to remember at least one
misstatement of fact, but since there's no index, even if I could
remember what it was about, I probably couldn't find it. In spite
of these flaws, the book is highly rated on-line, and indeed, it
has all you wanted to know about the making of the original
"Godzilla" film, and then some. It does not really cover the
American re-edit, though it does include complete shot lists for
both GOJIRA and GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS! (The exclamation
mark is in the title, not my comment on the sentence.)

Brothers has also done similar books about the films of Ishiro
Honda and other kaiju and horror topics. [-ecl]

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

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net

We cannot tear out a single page of our lives,
but we can throw the whole book in the fire.
-- George Sand