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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 02/02/90 -- Vol. 8, No. 31

MEETINGS UPCOMING:

Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are on Wednesdays at noon.
LZ meetings are in LZ 2R-158. MT meetings are in the cafeteria.

_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C

02/14 LZ: Science Fiction and Romance
03/07 LZ: THRICE UPON A TIME by James Hogan (Affecting the Past)

_D_A_T_E _E_X_T_E_R_N_A_L _M_E_E_T_I_N_G_S/_C_O_N_V_E_N_T_I_O_N_S/_E_T_C.

02/10 Science Fiction Association of Bergen County: Ellen Steiber
(editor from Cloverdale Press)
(phone 201-933-2724 for details) (Saturday)

HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 834-1563 hocpa!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell LZ 1B-306 576-6106 mtuxo!jrrt
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 957-5619 mtgzx!leeper
HO Librarian: Tim Schroeder HO 3D-225A 949-5866 homxa!tps
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 576-3346 lzfme!lfl
MT Librarian: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 mtgzy!ecl
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 957-2070 mtgzy!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.

1. Bill Forsyte is a Scottish director with a subtle but often very
funny sense of humor and a talent for creating very good
characters. The next leeperhouse festival will feature two of his
better comedies. On February 8, at 7 PM, we will be showing:

Forsyte Comedies
LOCAL HERO (1983) dir. by Bill Forsyte
COMFORT AND JOY (1984) dir. by Bill Forsyte

In _L_o_c_a_l _H_e_r_o Peter Reigert plays a somewhat bewildered and
inexperienced oil company representative who is sent to buy a
Scottish village where his company wants to build a refinery. And
the village is only too happy to sell out ... well, sort of. _L_o_c_a_l
_H_e_r_o is a whimsical and well-observed comedy.

THE MT VOID Page 2

_C_o_m_f_o_r_t _a_n_d _J_o_y is about a popular Glasgow disk jockey going
through mid-life crisis when his girlfriend leaves him. ("She left
the washing machine. D'ya think that's a good sign?") Then
suddenly his mind is taken off his problems as he is plunged into
the middle of a _G_o_d_f_a_t_h_e_r-style gang war over ice cream. Peculiar
and often very funny.

2. The Old Bridge public library is sponsoring a discussion group
on Walter Miller's _C_a_n_t_i_c_l_e _f_o_r _L_e_i_b_o_w_i_t_z at 8PM Wednesday February
21. Contact me or them (679-5622) if you need further information.

Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 957-5619
...mtgzx!leeper

Two men look out through the same bars;
one sees mud, and one the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde

MY 10 FAVORITE FILMS OF 1989
A film article by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper

1. THE ABYSS -- A science fiction and adventure film that just misses
a +4 rating. Alistair-MacLean-type action combines with 2001-type
vision to make a whale of a film that blows _B_a_t_m_a_n right out of
the water. Rating: high +3. If only it had more interesting
science fiction ideas. Rumor has it that there is a lot more to
the film that will be coming out on cassette, but which was
deleted from the theatrical release so as not to have a film too
long. Under-appreciated, this film by itself advanced the science
of undersea exploration. The face masks designed to allow the
camera to see who was behind them actually were much preferred by
divers over standard designs for the increased vision.

2. FIELD OF DREAMS -- A complex and witty fantasy film that features
great performances by James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner. Even if
you do not like our national pastime, this film about ghosts of
the White Sox and a quest is a solidly entertaining fantasy.
Rating: low +3.

3. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY -- The true story of Ron Kovic who
started a gung-ho super-patriot and remained so even after the
Vietnam war left him a paraplegic. But eventually he turns into
an anti-war activist. The film is done very realistically but it
seemed Kovic didn't have very good reasons for taking either point
of view. The sequence of his trip to Mexico could have been
trimmed down, but whatever your feelings about Kovic this is a
good film. Rating: low +3.

4. PARENTHOOD -- Several stories about styles of parenting are a
single story. Because each story is on different approaches to
raising children, the whole is better than the sum of its parts.
Diane Wiest gives a stand-out performance. Rating: low +3.

5. THE BEAR -- A simple and pure and wonderful little film about a
short period in the life of a young bear. It is too short at 90
minutes, particularly because it feels much shorter. Those
"hammy" animal sounds are the real thing, by the way. A few of
the scenes are among some of the most moving moments of film this
year. Rating: low +3.

6. ROGER & ME -- A biting documentary about the destruction GM does
by closing plants in Flint, Michigan. It is razor-sharp and
bitter. Moore's film is a compilation of footage he took and
pieces from stock footage, documentaries, television, etc. Moore
rarely has to use narration to tell the audience the point of a
sequence; the point is clear from the footage he chooses. The

Top Ten of 1989 January 25, 1990 Page 2

film has a very effective documentary style. Rating: high +2.

7. BLAZE -- Not as well-hyped as other films this holiday season,
_B_l_a_z_e is still a front-runner for plaudits with a solid
performance by Lolita Davidovitch managing to steal the show from
Paul Newman. Rating: high +2.

8. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE -- Forget that Indian thing.
This is the *real* _R_a_i_d_e_r_s _o_f _t_h_e _L_o_s_t _A_r_k _I_I. Slightly more
realistic than _R_a_i_d_e_r_s, a little more concentration on character,
and less on chases, this is a solid action adventure film putting
the series back on track. George Lucas needs a hit and for the
first time since _R_e_t_u_r_n _o_f _t_h_e _J_e_d_i he deserves one. Rating: high
+2.

9. DO THE RIGHT THING -- With one film Spike Lee goes from being a
one-film director to being a major Hollywood talent. This is a
realistic film of insight, intelligence, and even some wit, but no
easy answers. [Minor spoiler follows.] A likable "street film"
turns into _A_n_a_t_o_m_y _o_f _a _R_a_c_e _R_i_o_t. Rating: high +2.

10. GLORY -- Excellent Civil War film of the first black regiment and
the prejudice they faced. At times it seems a little over-
idealized, but no more so than most films about World War II.
Realistically photographed by Freddie Francis and well acted,
particularly by Morgan Freeman. Rating: +2. This film is tied
with _H_e_n_r_y _V as the film people are most likely to still be
watching in the year 2000.

HENRY V
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper

Capsule review: Kenneth Branagh shows that there is
more than one way to play Henry, though his way does not
always seem convincing. Visually the film is splendid.
Rating: +2.

The advantage of the longbow over its shorter predecessors is, of
course, range. It is entirely feasible to create a shower of falling
arrows that your enemy must enter before he can even come near you,
provided you have brought enough arrows along. This is _p_r_o_b_a_b_l_y the
reason that the English at the Battle of Agincourt were able to kill
what is quoted as ten thousand French while losing only 29 of their own
numbers. Bill Shakespeare's script for the current _H_e_n_r_y _V tends really
to downplay the technological advantage the English had at the battle,
implying the imbalance in casualty figures can be attributed instead to
the fact that Old Hank really knew how to give one heck of a good pep-
talk. Well, song-writers tend to glorify song-writers, and film-makers
like to make films about film-makers, so it isn't surprising that
Shakespeare's stuff tends to glorify wordsmiths. Even though the actual
casualty numbers were probably closer to 200 and five thousand,
Shakespeare still seems to over-rate Henry's speech-making.

That technical issue aside, how is _H_e_n_r_y _V anyway? I do not claim
to be a judge of Shakespearean acting and presumably the main virtue of
this film is Branagh's much-vaunted interpretation of Henry. I can tell
you that in the early scenes he delivers his lines with very little
expression at all. I am sure this is intentional, but after a supremely
dramatic entrance he strikes the viewer as being a sort of a cold fish.
As time goes by he puts more emphasis in his words, and by the love
scenes at the end he seems not just human but positively likable. One
gets the impression that henry was a wild teenager who rises to his
office as king while we watch. Still Branagh seems only a good actor
who has the audacity to cast himself in a great role. He may become a
Rupert Pupkin of Shakespearean actors.

This is a Shakespeare for the late Twentieth Century, with far more
dramatic visual images than in previous versions. Notable particularly
are Henry's entrance and a scene of Henry on a rearing steed at "the
breach," back-lighted by fire. The battle scenes are beautifully
filmed, somewhat in the style of _E_x_c_a_l_i_b_u_r. Ironically, the narrator
tells the audience to work hard to picture the scene while the audience
have only to sit back and let it flow over them.

While they did not remove the line to tell the audience to work to
visualize the scene, some liberties were taken. Flashback scenes were
added to show Henry's past with Falstaff. Presumably Branagh undertook

Henry V January 25, 1990 Page 2

to write these himself in a Shakespearean style. There was a deletion
to references to the English killing French prisoners which probably
would not play as well on modern audiences as it did in Shakespeare's
time.

This is a memorable film and probably one that will be playing on
PBS in 2010 when most of the rest of this year's films are forgotten.
My rating is a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

LES MISE'RABLES by Victor Hugo
Signet, 1987 (1862c), ISBN 0-451-52082-3, $5.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper

As a boy I used to watch a program called "The G. E. College Bowl,"
which was basically a quiz show with teams from American colleges. It
may well have had the most interesting questions of any quiz show I have
ever watched. One that stuck out in my mind at the time was "What novel
is over 1400 pages and includes extended essays on ...?" He must have
listed about four subjects of which I remembered only "the Battle of
Waterloo" and "the sewers of Paris." The answer was _L_e_s _M_i_s_e'_r_a_b_l_e_s by
Victor Hugo. I think I had seen the film with Frederic March and
Charles Laughton. We had read a short story in school called "The
Bishop's Candlesticks" which we were told was actually an excerpt from
_L_e_s _M_i_s_e'_r_a_b_l_e_s. Being used to 200-page novels I could not imagine how
someone could sit down and write a novel so long it required essays on
subjects such as the sewers of Paris.

More recently my father much enjoyed the Royal Shakespeare
production based on the book and sent me a tape of the music. I did
like the music, but was curious what the characters were talking about.
I wanted to know the story. So it was that I started the 1463-page
unabridged edition.

My initial impression that here is a writer who must have been paid
by the word may have been correct (or by the newspaper installment) ,
but also this is a story well worth the telling and the length is
welcome if for no other reason than to extend the reading time. This is
a novel I enjoyed reading, not just having read. The more pages, the
more reading.

I would hope it would not be necessary to tell the reader the basic
story, but to outline the first third in a little more detail than would
be common knowledge: Jean Valjean as a young man steals a loaf of bread
and is sentenced to prison. On his release he is a desperate man whom
nobody will help. When a good bishop gives him lodging for the night,
he steals from the bishop. He is caught by the police, but the bishop
lies to the police to protect Valjean. The bishop then tells Valjean to
return to virtue. Valjean steals once more, but finds he now cannot
steal without deep remorse for betraying the bishop, so through
necessity devotes his life to virtue. Meanwhile the police want him for
this last crime and for not showing the yellow passport that tells
people he was a convict.

He builds a new identity for himself devoted to helping others. He
becomes mayor of a town and there meets Fantine, who has given all she
has to support her illegitimate daughter Cosette, who is being raised in
virtual slavery by the blood-sucking The'nardier family with whom Fantine

Les Miserables February 2, 1990 Page 2

foolishly entrusted Cosette. To pay the The'nardiers, the once beautiful
Fantine has had to sell her jewelry, her hair, and her eye teeth, and
finally turn to prostitution. Valjean agrees to rescue Cosette.
Unfortunately, at this point the police arrest a man wrongly identified
as Valjean and the real Valjean must turn himself over to the police to
save the innocent man. In doing so he fails to restore Cosette to the
now dying Fantine. The real Valjean is sent back to prison, but escapes
to a life of trying to raise Cosette as a father and evade the wily
police inspector Javert. This is all told in just the early part of
this novel, against the background of France in the turmoil of the
Restoration monarchy of Louis Philippe.

Now, are the essays really there? Yes, they certainly are. There
is a 58-page essay in the chapter on "Waterloo"; only the last page
actually advances the plot. The rest is just there for texture. Hugo
spends twenty-one pages on the history and philosophy of the sewers of
Paris and whether their contents can be turned to profit for the state.
You will also find a history of convents and a discussion of the argot
of the criminal classes. I do not begrudge Hugo the self-indulgence of
these digressions; though these essays are of spotty interest, they help
to put the novel into an historical context.

The subject of _L_e_s _M_i_s_e'_r_a_b_l_e_s is human injustice. Perhaps part of
the reason for the length of this novel is simply to space out the
injustices so that it is not so much a tear-jerker or at least a soap
opera. I will say it is an emotional novel, but almost purely by plot.
We are rarely actually told anyone is unhappy or told the emotional
state at all. Usually, the characters are told very matter-of-factly.
Through most of the book Hugo does not describe what his characters are
feeling. At one place in the play Jean Valjean protests that he stole
only a loaf of bread and tells Javert that he is the stronger of the two
men. The Valjean of the book would never boast or ask for sympathy or
threaten. His style is to get along with people. When he cannot evade
Javert he allows himself meekly to be arrested and then escapes during
an opportunity presented to him when saving another man's life. Part of
the idea is that to a man who is virtuous enough, God will provide
opportunities.

Hugo describes a world in which one is not really punished for bad
deeds oneself, others are. Good deeds are almost always rewarded but
bad deeds result only in great misery for others. Those who feel no
remorse and are only callous toward the misery of others seem to go
unpunished. To some extent that makes it a tear-jerker and I have to
say it is the only book I have ever read that genuinely did bring a tear
to my eye. (I will spare you a description of which scene it was.) But
I consider that no small feat in a book that so avoids letting you know
what the characters are feeling and which concentrates only on what they
are doing.

The Wilbur/Fahnestock/MacAfee translation is actually fairly
readable, an absolute necessity in a book of this length. Occasionally

Les Miserables February 2, 1990 Page 3

they carry across Hugo's long sentences, which tend to obscure the
material. Page 834 has a sentence 144 words long talking about "The
blind clairvoyance of the revolution"--whatever that is. That sort of
thing tends to slow the reading temporarily, but the pace soon picks up
again. One device Hugo used both here and in _T_h_e _H_u_n_c_h_b_a_c_k _o_f _N_o_t_r_e
_D_a_m_e is that he will introduce a character, talk about the character for
great length--in _L_e_s _M_i_s_e'_r_a_b_l_e_s perhaps better than a hundred pages--and
then tell you that this is in fact one of the major characters from
earlier in the novel, but under a different name. Usually you can tell
whom the character was, but occasionally it leads to confusion.

But in short, if you want (as the song says) to "find a good book-
-to live in," _L_e_s _M_i_s_e'_r_a_b_l_e_s is one of the best books for escape I have
read over the past decade. I would probably say I consider it one of
the "great books."

Capsule review: Upbeat but not saccharine tale of
Christy Brown. Paralyzed with cerebral palsy so that he
has control only over one foot, he becomes an artist and
an author. The film perhaps over-emphasizes his romantic
life over other aspects that could be more interesting,
but it is a superb performance. Rating: +2.

Christy Brown was born with cerebral palsy to a poor Dublin family.
Paralyzed so that he has control only over one foot, he used that foot
to write and paint, distinguishing himself in both until his death in
1981. This is his story from birth to his late thirties, told as a
series of flashbacks as he thinks about his life one afternoon. This is
not just his biography, but also a portrait of living conditions for the
poor in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. We see not just his life but
also his times. His father was a heavy drinker and a bully. Some of
the early scenes of Brown as a child trapped in this household and in a
body he cannot operate have a nightmarish quality most fictional horror
films cannot approach. We cower with a terrified Christy when his
father goes on drunken rampages. People call him an idiot to his face
and he has no way to respond or prove them wrong. We struggle with
Christy the first time he tries to communicate, scratching on the floor
with a piece of chalk between his toes, answering an arithmetic problem
that his father had missed a few minutes before. Like many people with
communications disabilities, he is assumed to be profoundly retarded
when in fact he has a very quick mind.

This sort of film could easily have become sentimental
inspirational muck. In fact, it has more of the feel of Daniel Keyes's
_F_l_o_w_e_r_s _f_o_r _A_l_g_e_r_n_o_n. As Christy raises himself, his world perspective
changes. At times he is not very likable and often he is manipulative.
Where the story falls short of _F_l_o_w_e_r_s _f_o_r _A_l_g_e_r_n_o_n is that it lacks the
drama of the fall or that book's awe at intellectual achievement. And
like the aborted stage version of _F_l_o_w_e_r_s _f_o_r _A_l_g_e_r_n_o_n, the peak of
Christy Brown's achievement is that he "gets the girl," nothing more
profound. In spite of the film's apparent emphasis on the importance of
Christy's love life, it is one of the better portraits of the life of
the handicapped on film.

Daniel Day Lewis is good as the adult Christy, as has been noted by
other reviewers. I have seen little credit given, however, to what I
consider even better performances by Ray McAnally as Christy's
swaggering, ruffian father and especially by Hugh O'Conor as the young
Christy. At age 13, O'Conor turns in the best performance in a well-
acted film. The screenplay was written by Shane Cunningham and the
director, Jim Sheridan. My rating is a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.