@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 03/28/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 39, Whole Number 2373
Table of Contents
PSA: Delete Your DNA from 23andMe:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-delete-your-data-from-23andme/
"DNA-testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, which means the future of the company's vast trove of customer data is unknown. Here's what that means for your genetic data.
...
As uncertainty about the company's future reaches its peak, all eyes are on the trove of deeply personal--and potentially valuable--genetic data that 23andMe holds. Privacy advocates have long warned that the risk of entrusting genetic data to any institution is twofold--the organization could fail to protect it, but it could also hand over customer data to a new entity that they may not trust and didn't choose.
California attorney general Rob Bonta reminded consumers in an alert on Friday that Californians have a legal right to ask that an organization delete their data. 23andMe customers in other states and countries largely do not have the same protections, though there is also a right to deletion for health data in Washington state's My Health My Data Act and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Regardless of residency, all 23andMe customers should consider downloading anything they want to keep from the service and should then attempt to delete their information."
The article includes instructions on how to go about deleting your data. [-ecl]
Middletown (NJ) Public Library Science Fiction Discussion Group:
April 3, 2025: MAROONED (1969) & "Marooned" by Martin Caidin (1969)
https://archive.org/details/marooned0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up
Picks for Turner Classic Movies for April (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
THURSDAY, April 10, 3:45 AM, The Dybbuk (1938) [see Mark's review below]
MONDAY, April 28, 2:45 PM, The Mysterious Island (1929) [see Mark's review below]
TUESDAY, April 29, 1:30 PM, Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982) [not the recent Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter version]
THE DYBBUK (1938) (film review by Mark R. Leeper):
[This review was first published in 1989. THE DYBBUK is running on TCM Thursday, April 10, at 3:45 AM.]
CAPSULE: Paydirt! A Yiddish film made in Poland in 1938 turns out to be a little-known gem. The film lacks a lot of what we might consider high production values, but besides being an unintentional artifact of the culture of Eastern European Jewry wiped out in the Holocaust, it also turns out to be a haunting horror film that deserves to be seen by all fans of 1920s and 1930s horror films. At least one sequence, a grotesque dance, ranks this film up with some of the best of German Expressionism. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4).
Watching the 1938 Polish-made Yiddish film THE DYBBUK, one is only too aware that the film is flawed. Much of the acting is exaggerated as it would be in a silent film. Some of the photography seems poor, as well as some of the editing. At least once the film cuts from a quiet scene to a loud scene and the sudden sound causes the audience to jump. It is true, however, that in retrospect most of the faults seem hard to remember. The strongest memories of the film are beautiful images, some haunting and horrifying. And while taken individually many of the scenes were less effective for me than they may have been for THE DYBBUK's intended audience, this is a great mystical horror film, perhaps one of the better horror films of the 1930s.
[Spoilers follow, though as with a Shakespeare play, one does not see THE DYBBUK for plot surprises.]
Sender and Nisn have been very close friends since their student days. Now they see each other only on holidays. To cement the bond of their friendship they vow that if their respective first children--each expected soon--are of opposite sexes then they will arrange a marriage of the two children. Sure enough, Sender has a daughter Leyele, though he loses his wife in childbirth. Nisn has a son, Khonnon, though an accident claims Nisn's life before he can even see his new son or conclude his arrangement to marry Khonnon to Leyele.
Years later Khonnon, now a Talmudic scholar, meets Leyele and they fall in love. Neither knows about the vow they would be married and Sender does not know whose son Khonnon is. The intense Khonnon is already considering giving up his study of the Talmud to study Kabalah, the great book of mystical knowledge and magic. Sender three times tries to arrange a marriage with a rich but rather sheepish young man. Twice the plans fail and Khonnon believes his magic has averted the arrangement. The third time, however, an agreement is reached. Khonnon calls upon dark forces to help him but is consumed by his own spell and found dead. The day of Leyele's marriage--in fact, during the marriage ceremony itself--Khonnon's spirit returns from the grave as a dybbuk, a possessing demon, and takes over the body of the woman he was denied. Leyele is taken to a great and pious Rabbi, now nearing the end of his life and torn with self-doubts, who alone may have the knowledge to remove the demon.
If some of this smacks of William Peter Blatty, it should be remembered that this is a 1938 film based on a pre-World-War-I play. THE DYBBUK by S. Anski (a pen name for Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport), along with THE GOLEM by H. Leivick (a pen name for Leivick Halper), are perhaps the two best remembered (and most commonly translated) plays of the great Yiddish Theater. While Yiddish folklore has many dybbuk and golem stories, and the play THE GOLEM was based on an actual legend ("The Golem of Prague"), THE DYBBUK was an original story involving a legendary type of demon. The film retells the story of the play, but remains very different. Other than plot there is not much of the play carried over into the film.
All too commonly constraints of budget and even what appears now to be inappropriate style rob some scenes of their effect. Much of the acting is exaggerated in ways that might have been more appropriate to silent film or to the stage. In fact, in some ways this feels like an entire film done in a style much like the early, good scenes of the 1931 DRACULA. Director Michal Waszynski could well be excused on the grounds that he was making the film for a very different audience. However, just occasionally, a scene will be really supremely well done. The best sequence of the film is when Leyele, just before her marriage, is called upon to dance with the poor of the town, as is traditional. Leyele is reluctant and the dance turns into a grotesquery culminating with Leyele dancing with a figure of death. The film is a showcase for Yiddish songs, cantorial singing, and dancing, both traditional and modern. Much seems out of place, but this one dance creates one of the most eerie and effective horror scenes of its decade. THE DYBBUK stands as more than a good horror film. It is also an artifact of pre-Holocaust Yiddish film and of Eastern European Jewish village life. Curiously, for a Yiddish film some of the stereotypes that appear could be interpreted as being anti-Semitic. We see a miser with exaggerated Jewish features counting and recounting his coins. We see what is intended to be a great Rabbi looking pompous, fat, sloppy, and apparently lazy. Why a Yiddish film would have such images is open to question. Still, it is a pity that this film is not better known. It deserves to be thought of as a major film of its decade. I rate it +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. Congratulations to the National Center for Jewish Film for restoring this film. [-mrl]
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929) (film review by Mark R. Leeper):
[This review was first published in 2010. THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is running on TCM Monday, April 28, 2:45 PM.]
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929) is the first film version of the Jules Verne novel. Well, sort of--Verne's novel did not have dragons or duck people. THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is a bizarre adaptation of the Jules Verne. No film adaptation is much like the book, which would resemble ROBINSON CRUSOE with just a touch of science fiction. In this version Lionel Barrymore plays Count Andre Dakkar (alias Captain Nemo) on an island where he studies deep seas. On the ocean floor he finds a race of what TCM calls "fish men," but I would say they look more like they are wearing duck suits. It has early two-strip Technicolor and sound sequences, but it is really mostly a pre-sound film. MGM was slowly moving to sound. The film may be more interesting as an artifact than as a rip-snorting science fiction film.
(Note: MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is generally considered the literary sequel to 20,000 LEAGUES. If you read the books you realize that Verne makes the dates irreconcilable between the two novels. 20,000 LEAGUES is strictly post-Civil War. MYSTERIOUS ISLAND begins during the Civil War. Nemo supposedly found his island after the events of 20,000 LEAGUES and lived there six years before the balloon landed. That would be 1859, but at the same time after events of 1866.) [-mrl]
COCOON (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey):
In response to Evelyn's comments on COCOON in the 03/21/25 issue of the MT VOID, Scott Dorsey writes:
[Evelyn wrote,] "Aliens come to Earth and give a bunch of people immorality, and that's not science fiction? [-ecl]
Scott Dorsey commented:
That sounds more like STARSHIP EROS, the fine Danish SF porn film.
[-sd]
To which Evelyn can say only, "Ooops!! Proof that spell-checker catches only misspelled words, not the *wrong* words!" [-ecl]
[Although I think STARSHIP EROS is actually French, not Danish: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269603/reference. -ecl]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY: ONE MAN'S HUMBLE QUEST TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION'S ORIGINAL MEANING by A. J. Jacobs (Penguin Random House, ISBN 978-0-593-13674-4) is a sequel of sorts to his THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY. And he makes the same "mistake" here that he made in his earlier quest: he treats everything that is allowed as being required. In THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY, he talks about eating locusts, because they are listed among the permitted foods. As I noted, so is duck, but Jacobs did not seem to make sure he ate that.
And there is a quote from William Blake that Jacobs says applies to both the Bible and the Constitution: "[We] both read the Bible day and night /But thou read'st black where I read white."
One of the problems with "living constitutionally" versus "living biblically" is that the latter consists of following a lot of rules written primarily for the average person. Yes, there are a lot of rules about Temple sacrifice that applied to only priests and don't apply to anyone now, but there are hundreds of rules that Jacob should be sure to follow ("don't eat pork", "don"t work on the Sabbath", and so on). But the Constitution isn't like that. There aren't hundreds of rules, and most of what is there is how the government is structured, not rules. True, the Congress is forbidden to pass ex post facto laws, but how is Jacobs going to follow or break that rule? Almost all the main part of original articles is not something Jacobs can "live". And even many of the amendments that he could presumably interact with get no mention (e.g., V through VII).
The first book suffered from trying to make something millions of people already do seem quaint and weird. This one suffers from trying to live according to something that was never designed as a handbook to life.
But he does make a good point when he says that the literalists and the originalists need to pay more attention to the Preamble, in particular, to the phrase "promote the general Welfare." [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole
world of new questions.
--Susanne K. Langer
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