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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/10/94 -- Vol. 12, No. 50
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Middletown 1R-400C
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
06/22 Hugo-nominated short stories
07/13 GLORY SEASON by David Brin (Hugo Nominee)
08/03 MOVING MARS by Greg Bear (Hugo Nominee)
08/24 VIRTUAL LIGHT by William Gibson (Hugo Nominee)
Outside events:
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the second
Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call 201-933-2724 for
details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society meets on the third
Saturday of every month in Belleville; call 201-432-5965 for details.
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2G-432 908-957-5087 j.j.jetzt@att.com
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 r.l.mitchell@att.com
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 n.j.sauer@att.com
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen HO 2C-318 908-949-4156 l.f.larsen@att.com
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 m.r.leeper@att.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 e.c.leeper@att.com
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. At this writing we are just back from Baltic Europe and I
thought you might find of interest some comments I made on my last
trip, to India when I went to see a sort of horror film in Hindi.
During the Great Depression when people were working long hours for
small rewards, the film industry decided that people need glamor in
their lives. Movies became more glamorous and movie theaters
became movie palaces. You paid your few cents for a ticket and you
entered a world of opulence. Most of the palaces are now history
or falling apart. In India, however, where the world's largest
film industry still thrives, the concept of the movie palace is
still going strong. The Raj Mandir in Jaiput is the second-best
theater in all of Asia according to the Lonely Planet guide. It is
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an impressive building, with mirrored interiors, pink decor, and
rounded rampways to higher floors. The theater's capacity is about
1300 people. As we approached, a huge movie board announced it was
showing Kumar's KHAL-NAAIKAA. For as little as Rs7 for the front
row to Rs18 for the Diamond Box, you can see a film on the big
screen (about twenty-five feet high and fifty feet wide). [A rupee
is about three cents.] We each got into line. They have separate
lines for men and women. No hanky-panky in line! The women's line
went faster so Evelyn bought the tickets. We went inside and
admired the interiors for a while, then the lights dimmed.
KHAL-NAAIKAA is about two-and-a-half hours long and the plot was
not hard to follow even if it was entirely in Hindi. What helped
especially was what Evelyn pointed out how familiar the plot
actually was. This was Bombay's two-and-a-half-hour musical remake
of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE. Now we never bothered to see
this film, but we did hear what the plot was and it was pretty much
all there, including the governess's weird motive for her evil and
even a greenhouse murder that exactly repeated the scene in the
coming attraction for the American film. Just why anyone needs a
greenhouse in India would be anybody's guess. Mr. Kumar is not one
to take only partial advantage of the unenforcibility of copyright
law. He is a very thorough thief. But what about is this about it
being a musical? Well, just about all Indian films are musicals
regardless of subject matter. This was the very first psychotic
killer musical we had ever seen, but we bet others in the audience
had seen more than enough psycho-killer musicals. Before I get to
the film itself, I want to mention one more thing about the theater
itself. The ceiling of the screening room is highly fluted and
apparently at least two birds were nesting there and at inopportune
times would fly in front of the screen. Kumar was often very
creative in how he put in his production numbers. The heroine is
singing a production number on television at one point and the
villainess reaches into the television screen and pulls out the
heroine and the two sing together. A second grab at the heroine
causes her to fall back into the screen. All during this scene the
Venetian blinds, which are white on one side and red on the other,
flash from red to white and back. Rececca DeMornay is fairly
attractive and the part calls for her to be seductive. The Indian
woman who plays the same role does fill the bill.
One of the things that helps the understanding is that there is a
lot of English language used in the film. Scenes in a doctor's
office are in English and a fair number of English phrases are used
at odd moments. People say, "I love you," in English. It seems
odd to come to Jaipur to see a version of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE
CRADLE, but you do learn a fair amount about Indian culture from
the experience and it is a comfortable and pleasant three hours.
===================================================================
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2. VAMPIRES AND VIOLETS by Andrea Weiss (Penguin, ISBN 0-14-
023100-5, 1993, 184pp, US$12.50) (a book review by Evelyn C.
Leeper):
Subtitled "Lesbians in Film," this work is obviously written for
the academic audience. Though its lengthy discussion of female
vampire films might initially attract a less intellectual audience
(I admit I was first interested in it because someone said it
contained a long section on Hammer's vampire films), passages such
as "One way the narrative structure enforces these cultural myths
is by closing down the range of possible, alternative
interpretations that spectators can read from the film" are likely
to warn off the casual reader who was expecting another book on
horror films aimed at the teenage reader. And in fact the vampire
chapter is only one part of _V_a_m_p_i_r_e_s _a_n_d _V_i_o_l_e_t_s, which begins with
a look at the portrayal of lesbians in the silent and early sound
cinema, continues through the 1930s (focusing primarily on Dietrich
and Garbo), post-World-War-II films, and art and independent
lesbian cinema.
Not surprisingly, many of Weiss's observations and interpretations
deal with the role of women in general in film. She frequently
discusses the intent of the studio to attract and please the male
(heterosexual) viewer while also pointing out the director's or
female actor's or even lesbian viewer's attempts to subvert this
intent. Dietrich in _M_o_r_o_c_c_o may dress in a tuxedo and kiss a
female nightclub patron as part of her character's attempt to
seduce a man, but viewers can also read the kiss as being the real
Dietrich momentarily showing through her character.
The basic text for people interested in gay and lesbian images in
film remains Vito Russo's _C_e_l_l_u_l_o_i_d _C_l_o_s_e_t. (And indeed Weiss
frequently quotes Russo and gives him special acknowledgement.)
But Russo's book deals more with the portrayal of male
homosexuality in film than female. For example, Dietrich gets two
sentences in Russo's 276-page book versus a dozen pages as well as
additional mentions in Weiss's 180-page one. This is due more
likely to the dearth of archival material on films with female
leads than to bias on Russo's part. (Weiss discusses some of the
difficulties she had in viewing some of the films, or in finding
subsidiary material, so this is not unlikely.) On the other hand,
it is reasonable to assume that Russo would be more likely
subconsciously to write about the films he was most familiar with,
and those would be those dealing with male homosexuality. (The
basic text on vampires in Hammer's films, by the way, would be
David Pirie's _H_e_r_i_t_a_g_e _o_f _H_o_r_r_o_r.)
_V_a_m_p_i_r_e_s _a_n_d _V_i_o_l_e_t_s is a book that will appeal only to a
specialized niche audience, and for its audience it serves its
purpose moderately well. There are no amazing new insights or
revelations here. Weiss chooses to analyze a few films in detail
THE MT VOID Page 4
rather than to provide a list of films with lesbian images. She
succeeds in that, I believe, but in doing so does not write for the
masses.
===================================================================
3. THE BLUE KITE (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule review: The life of one Chinese family
through fourteen years of political upheaval is
chronicaled in this moving but very downbeat film.
It was censored in China, not too surprisingly. The
film lacks focus at times, but many of the
situations are haunting and the film is a moving
indictment of politics out of control in Maoist
China. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4).
_T_h_e _B_l_u_e _K_i_t_e is the fictional autobiography of the first fourteen
years of Chen Tietou's life in Mainland China. The story goes from
Tietou's parents' marriage in 1953 up through the start of the
Cultural Revolution in 1967. Tietou remembers himself as having
been a particularly difficult child, but the problems he caused
were small next to the family's political troubles. Tietou's
family is perfectly loyal to the country and is not particularly
political, yet it still torn apart repeatedly and eventually
destroyed by the vagaries of a powerful, repressive and capricious
political system. Much of what happens in the early parts of this
film will remind Americans of McCarthyism. Yet the fact that these
are just ordinary people, not celebrities or people in the public
eye, reminds the viewer at how much pervasive the drive for
political correctness was in China than it ever has been in the
United States. The Chens are loyal enough to the government that
they feel impelled to bow to the picture of Mao at their wedding
and sing patriotic songs. It is very clear these of not political
activists. They are good hard-working people who believe in Mao and
his policies for China.
Encouraged by a government policy anxious to root out its own
problems, Tietou's father is willing to discuss with friends what
things needed change. When this Hundred Flowers policy is replaced
by a government stance more paranoid, local officials turn
viciously on Tietou's family. Repeatedly we see people's loyalty
to the government betrayed. The country is so anxious to root out
supposed traitors that they give the weapon of political ostracism
to anybody who finds it convenient to use it. In one chilling
sequence schoolboys are tired of school so they accuse their
teacher of being a counter-revolutionary and have her humiliated
and dragged away. It takes little to be accused of being disloyal
and once accused there is little chance of being vindicated.
THE MT VOID Page 5
The film is 139 minutes long and follows Chen Shujuan, Tietou's
mother, through three marriages and many life experiences, mostly
ending in misery either because of the system's inadequacies, and
its political paranoia.
Some aspects of this film would have played better to a Chinese
audience. An important part of this film, presumably, are the
political slogans and posters one sees as in the background of many
of the scenes. Only occasionally are the signs translated in the
subtitles, but the viewer gets the feeling that a lot was missed.
Still there is the compensation that we get a view into town life
in China that is probably more of interest to Westerners than to
Chinese. I would give _T_h_e _B_l_u_e _K_i_t_e a low +2 on the -4 to +4
scale.
===================================================================
4. WIDOWS' PEAK (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule review: The peace of a small post-WWI Irish
village is shattered by the feud of two women in
this picturesque comedy. As with many recent
British films, the setting is the real star of this
film. The plot twists are not as mysterious as they
were intended to be. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4).
WARNING: A VERY HEAVY SPOILER FOLLOWS THE REVIEW.
In the 1920s, Kilshannon, Ireland, is a town dominated by rich
widows. The hill at the center of the town has been given over
entirely to the women and has been dubbed "Widows' Peak" by the
locals. Of the elder female contingent, first among equals is Mrs.
Doyle Couniha (played by Joan Plowright). The one non-widow on
Widow's Peak is Katherine O'Hare (Mia Farrow) who was adopted by
the other widows after an indiscretion earlier in her life. O'Hare
is a quiet mousey woman who uncharacteristically takes an immediate
dislike to newcomer Edwina Broome (Natasha Richardson). Even
before Broome's arrival O'Hare is finding reason to hate her and
soon the two women are constantly at each others' throats, quite to
the bemused amazement of Kilshannon.
The screenplay of _W_i_d_o_w_s' _P_e_a_k was written years ago for Maureen
O'Hara to play O'Hare and for Mia Farrow to play Broome. Time
passed and Farrow took the role originally written for her mother.
It is really a pity it was not cast that way since O'Hara had the
fiery personality of O'Hare. One side effect is that Farrow has to
sound Irish and Richardson has to sound American. It would not
have been nearly as difficult for Farrow to sound American and her
mother to sound Irish. Also, Farrow is far too quiet and
introspective for the role. Richardson has a teaspoonful more
personality, but neither actress can wrest the audience's attention
THE MT VOID Page 6
from Plowright. Adrian Dunbar of _H_e_a_r _M_y _S_o_n_g is present but a
real disappointment in a role that gives him little chance to
fulfill the promise he showed in that film.
One odd note, the film steals a joke from _C_a_s_a_b_l_a_n_c_a. In a film
set after 1943, it would have been considered a film allusion.
_W_i_d_o_w_s' _P_e_a_k is set in the 1920s and that makes it a theft.
John Irvin directs taking maximum advantage of the small Irish town
location. He builds texture into the film showing us scenes around
the town, taking us to a local dance and to the town's regatta. He
almost has Bill Forsyte's ability for making the town itself the
star, but his town does not have quite enough personality to be
really interesting. Now and again he does get off a clever piece
of local color, like a fairly witty scene of all the widows in town
visiting their husbands' graves at the same time, but it is not
quite enough to make the town really engaging.
This is a film that is never so tricky as intended, but it is
always watchable and usually quite fun. I give it a high +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale.
SPOILER...SPOILER...SPOILER...SPOILER...
THE MT VOID Page 7
What I found to be the greatest flaw in this film is what was for
me almost its utter predictability. I knew that there were
surprises coming, admittedly, but I have to say I figured the
entire plot before we even saw the character of Mrs. Broome. I saw
Miss O'Hare behaves peculiarly negatively about the coming of Mrs.
Broome, I thought of the demographics of the area, and I knew
exactly what was happening. Even then it seemed to me that
Richardson was giving too much away by making Mrs. Broome a
terrible actress. (Okay, there were details about what was going
on that were not available until later, but even there I was well
ahead of the script.) In would not be fair to downrate the film
because I guessed too early what was happening, but I think they
could have done a better job of misleading me once I knew.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
m.r.leeper@att.com
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