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Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 18 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
CONCLAVE (2024): I don't want to say a lot about CONCLAVE, since there are a lot of twists and turns and surprises. However, I will say that I didn't find the end quite as affirming as many reviewers did. Oddly, the people I would expect to be most comfortable with the philosophy expressed are the least, and vice versa.
I will say that I really enjoyed this film. It was classic filmmaking: an emphasis on script and character, no special effects (well, perhaps a couple of understated effects), and an attention to detail. It's true that some of the characters are more fleshed out than others, but that is often true in films. The film focuses on Ralph Fiennes's character, and some of the others end up less developed. But all of them are played by excellent actors and worth watching.
Released theatrically 25 October 2024.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
RUMOURS (2024): RUMOURS is Guy Maddin's latest film, and may be the most normal Guy Maddin film I've seen. This does not mean it is a normal film.
The setting is a G7 meeting where the leaders spout puerile phrases they think are profound, but then cannot remember what they said when the notes are lost. One of the suggestions is a solution for a sexually dysfunctional marriage, which one of the leaders suggests should be in the preliminary papers, along with plans for Europe's largest sundial.
At some point, everyone other than the seven disappears, and of course there is no cell coverage in their remote location.
Add to this that archaeologists are excavating bog people, and that the G7 leaders start seeing and being attacked by bog people, and you see how not-normal this may be.
Meanwhile, they do word association while trying to escape to a ferry, and the bone in one person's leg seems to dissolve, just as the bones of the bog people did. Then they find a giant brain, and one of their (non-Swedish) associates speaking in Swedish about a Belgian attack.
There's also a subplot about a chatbot designed to catch pedophiles
And it "ends" with the leaders getting bags of G7 snacks and swag, and then one of them giving a totally vacuous speech, apparently to no one, while in the distance, we see what may be the AI Apocalypse.
I was going to ask if the President of the United States would wear a United States flag as a bib, but then I thought about it, and decided that alas, it was not that unlikely after all.
Released theatrically 18 October 2024.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
MICKEY 17 (2025): MICKEY 17 is yet another film with clones who die and are reprinted/resurrected/reincarnated over and over. But it does make one good point, when a character (Kai) asks one of the iterations what it feels like to die. She wants to know how her friend Jennifer felt right before she was crushed by an avalanche. Mickey says that it probably was not what he feels, because he dies so often, and Kai responds, "Because you know you're going to wake up again, right?" That is, he knows he will just be reprinted with all his memories.
But the logical continuation of that is that humans who believe in Heaven shouldn't be afraid of death, and the humans who believe in reincarnation/samsara shouldn't be afraid of death either. And while that is true of many sincere believers in either of those belief systems, a lot of people fear death, avoid death, and in general would prefer to stay alive. From a logical point of view, this doesn't make a lot of sense. And in fact Mickey says that he always feels scared. (It's not clear how he knows this, since the recording of his memories is not done in real time, so he should not be able to remember the last seconds/minutes/hours of his lives.)
My other comment is that Marshall (the leader of the space colony where Mickey lives (and dies), played by Mark Ruffalo) is so over-the-top, and yet so accurate to the person he is clearly meant to be, that it is scarier to watch than a lot of films actually presented as horror films. And Toni Colette as his partner Ylfa is wonderful also; her character was invented for the film and was not in the book by Edward Ashton.
[And speaking of reincarnation, CTV News reports that the Dalai Lama has "suggested that there may not be a successor in the storied line of spiritual leaders to hold his title and the line may end with him." He has also said there would be a successor, so the whole question of what happens when the Dalai Lama achieves nirvana and does not reincarnate is up in the air.]
Released theatrically 7 March 2025.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
ETERNAL YOU (2024): ETERNAL YOU is a documentary about a technology that creates AI simulations of dead people (using all the general AI training that has happened, and only a few small inputs about the specific person). Given recent developments with Grok, nothing could possibly go wrong with this, right?
(There is a long section about a case in Korea in which everyone is speaking Korean, and there is no subtitling. How is this informative?)
Towards the end, one of the creators of this technology says of how it was intended to work with people simulating their dead friends, relatives, and lovers, "It's about how to lose them better, not how to pretend they're still here." Somehow, though, that's not what happens. Christy Lemire describes this as a "deeply creepy documentary," and she's not far off.
For more information on this technology, and the commercial aspects of it, do a search on-line for "Project December".
Released streaming 24 January 2025.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
What others are saying: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/reference
[-ecl]
Where I Find Movies (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Someone asked me where I get all these movies I comment on, especially since the only streaming service I have is Netflix. My snappy answer was, "Off the shelves in my den," which is true for a lot of the older films. Certainly it is true for pretty much all the "neglected gems" films.
Of this week's batch of reviews, I got CONCLAVE and MICKEY 17 on DVD from my public library, and watched RUMOURS and ETERNAL YOU on Kanopy through my public library. Of the ones I mentioned briefly last week, THE LORD OF THE RINGS (the extended version) and four of the Churchill films were on my shelves; THE GATHERING STORM was $4.35 from eBay (and worth it, because the commentary was excellent, and one doesn't get a commentary on streaming services).
I've also been watching "pairings" lately. I watched both versions of THE BIG SLEEP (1946 and 1978), the older one off my shelf and the newer one on Kanopy (and re-read the book), and similarly for CHINATOWN and THE TWO JAKES (sans book). THE QUIET AMERICAN (1958) was on TCM; the 2002 version was on my shelf, and I also had the book.
I suppose I should do THE PAINTED VEIL next, as I have both versions on the shelf, and a copy of the book. But then I'll just want to watch TRIO, QUARTET, and ENCORE, three anthology films of Somerset Maugham stories (taped off TCM six years ago), and that will make me want to read the four volumes of his collected stories again (and I just read them last about a year ago). This is a real rabbit hole.
(Hoopla is another service through my library, which also has ebooks and audiobooks.)
[-ecl]
Origami X-Wing Fighter and Rodan Instructions (designs by Mark R. Leeper):
The instructions on how to fold Mark's X-Wing Fighter design are at http://leepers.us/Origami_X-Wing_Fighter_Instructions.pdf (No diagrams, alas.) The instructions on how to fold Mark's Rodan/pterodactyl design are at: http://leepers.us/Origami_Rodan_Pterodactyl_Instructions.pdf (This has photos, though a couple are split over page boundaries.) Feel free to disseminate these as long as you credit Mark for the design. [-ecl]
More on Interstellar Object 3I Atlas (comments by Gregory Frederick):
[This is in reference to the interstellar object described in the 07/11/25 issue of the MT VOID.]
This third and current interstellar object (3I Atlas) is stranger than Oumuamua our first interstellar object seen in 2017. The more astronomers study it the more unusual it seems to be. We now know it is probably older then our Solar System, and is traveling faster then any comet or asteroid we have ever seen in our Solar System. It has a major hyperbolic path meaning it diffidently comes from far outside of our Solar System and scientists now know it comes from the central disk of our Galaxy. It is not known for certain if it is a comet or an asteroid. Though it has a tail like a comet, its tail does not stream outward away from the Sun which most comets will do; because the solar wind pushes it in that direction. It has a tail but its tail is pointed toward the Sun. It is also much larger than any interstellar asteroid or comet object we have detected. There are many comet and asteroid chunks in the Kuiper belt which is at the edge of our Solar system near to interstellar space and they tend to be smaller. There is a great video link below explaining more about this unusual object. And no one in this video is saying it's an alien spacecraft or probe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDD2FI9Thr0
[-gf]
Vera Rubin Observatory (letter of comment by Peter Trei):
In response to Gregory Frederick's comments on the Vera Rubin Observatory in the 07/18/25 issue of the MT VOID, Peter Trei writes:
One of the neat things about the Vera Rubin observatory is that virtually all the data it collects is released to the public after 80 hours.
The delay is to obfuscate the orbits of US spy satellites. [-pt]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
A CITY ON MARS by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (2023, Penguin, ISBN 978-1-984-88172-4) has come in for criticism as being too negative on space colonization. Personally, I think the Weinersmiths are just being realistic. And something is certainly needed to counteract the super-Pollyanna attitude of Elon Musk and his ilk.
For example, the Weinersmiths note that "Elon Musk has said [in 2022] we will have boots on Mars in 2029." We will only if we put them on the rover scheduled to be sent to Mars in 2028. "... and a million-person city is possible by twenty or thirty years later." How we are going to get a million people to Mars in twenty or thirty years is unclear; that's over 30,000 people a year for the longer-term date, or 100 people a day, every day. (Okay, theoretically one could assume that he'll be sending only women, with a giant sperm bank, and that they each would have a child every nine months. Assuming no deaths, they would have to send only about 600 women a year to achieve a million people in thirty years. (If my math is off--and it probably is--I'm sure someone will tell me.) I leave it to the reader to decide how likely this plan is, either in getting people to agree to it, or in creating a fully self-sustaining city when almost all the inhabitants are either children or permanently pregnant women.
Musk does add the qualifier "if launch rate growth is exponential." This assumes 100,000 people transferred during each launch window; Musk sets a million people as what is needed for a self-sustaining civilization, and seems to assume that is also sufficient. The logicians among you know that "necessary" and "sufficient" are not at all the same; if Forth Worth, Texas (a city of a million people) were somehow transported to Mars in a protective bubble, everyone would starve fairly quickly, assuming they didn't run out of oxygen first. How Musk thinks a highly technological civilization can be self-sufficient on Mars in forty years is a mystery.
The Weinersmiths are not negative on space colonization, but they do think that many of the rationales for it are foolish (instead of terraforming Mars, why don't we just work on cleaning up the earth?) or overly optimistic (we're not going to be colonizing exo-planets in anything resembling the near future). And they definitely think that many people have too rosy a view of how easy space colonization will be, partly based on people like Musk, but also--let's face it--partly based on believing what they had read in science fiction books as a child, or see in movies and on television shows. They believe in the spaciousness of the Starship Enterprise rather than the cramped quarters of the ISS. [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
Einstein: "God does not play dice with the universe."
Hawking: "Not only does God play dice with the universe,
but sometimes He throws them where they cannot be seen."
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