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Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 26 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
THE PEOPLE'S JOKER (2022): THE PEOPLE'S JOKER played at the Toronto Film Festival. It showed once in the Midnight Madness track, but then the subsequent scheduled showings in more reasonable slots were canceled, supposedly due to "rights issues". Now apparently that has been resolved (with the help of a long statement at the beginning about how this is fair use as a parody and blah, blah, blah...)
No one is going to think this is in any way connected with Warner Brothers or any serious Batman version. It's a weird combination of live-action and animation, the semi-autographical coming-of-age story of trans writer-director-producer-actor Vera Drew, set in a Gotham which Batman has made into a dystopian world run by corporations where comedy is banned and Smylex keeps everyone smiling, even when they're not actually happy.
Obviously, the more familiar the viewer is with the whole Batman world, the more references they will get. (I have no idea what the aside to Frank Miller about how girls can be cat burglars means.) It has gotten very hood reviews, but maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the Batman mythos to appreciate it.
CITY LIGHTS (1931): CITY LIGHTS is more s series of short sketches, only loosely tied together by a framing story. It was made in the transition period between silent films and sound, although frankly, Chaplin was about the only major filmmaker at this point making silent films. 1931 was the year of some major sound films: Universal's FRANKENSTEIN in the United States, and M and THE THREE-PENNY OPERA in Germany. Chaplin's concession to sound was a synchronized musical track, with some sound effects. His MODERN TIMES (1936) also had some talking sequences. Not until 1940 did he make what most consider to be his first true sound film, THE GREAT DICTATOR. After this, silent mainstream films were rare, the two best-known examples being Mel Brooks's SILENT MOVIE and THE ARTIST.
I suppose that these days someone would probably find fault with its portrayal of a blind person as causing all sorts of havoc: throwing water on someone, unraveling a piece of clothing--though that is very close to what The Tramp does when he accidentally eats a streamer thinking it was a piece of spaghetti.
One of my uncles at least once entered one of these boxing competitions knowing he would lose, but apparently the loser was given a steak dinner, and this was during the Depression.
THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL (1965): Back in the day, Mark and his friend Dave played a game they called "Genre Vollyball". One would name a film--science fiction, fantasy, or horror (hence the "genre" part of the name)--and the other had to name another such film with an actor from the first film. Then the first person had to name a third film that shared an actor with the second, and so on. Repeats were not allowed.
Why do I mention this? Because this inspired me to start my own version, generating my watchlist in the process. Okay, it seems ludicrous, but there are worse methods.
Anyway, a few dozen films down the line I found myself watching ZULU DAWN, coming in via Bob Hoskins, and leaving with a Burt Lancaster film. I could have chosen SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, or ELMER GANTRY, or THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, but I look for more upbeat films these days (ZULU DAWN notwithstanding), so I opted for THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL.
THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL is incredibly funny, but also incredibly politically incorrect. However, it's politically incorrect in the same way that BLAZING SADDLES is--very aware that it *is* politically incorrect (even though that term did not come into use in the modern sense until five years later). For example, there is clearly no intent that Martin Landau in any way represents an actual Sioux. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing because it is so funny.
Most of the humor is in the delivery of the lines and the visuals (Burt Lancaster's smile in the bathtub is a gem), but this excerpt from the voice-over narration will give you a hint of it: "Indians did not read newspapers. It's a matter of speculation, therefore, just how they did hear of the whiskey cargo. There were couriers, of course, and there was the smoke signal, first used by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. How the Indians acquired it from them is of no importance here, but they did."
[-ecl]
WHY NOBODY UNDERSTANDS QUANTUM PHYSICS by Frank Verstraete and Celine Broeckaert (book review by Gregory Frederick):
WHY NOBODY UNDERSTANDS QUANTUM PHYSICS is an ambitious attempt to explain one of the strangest areas of science to readers who don't have advanced mathematical training. Frank Verstraete, a leading quantum physicist at the University of Cambridge, teamed up with writer Celine Broeckaert to make the subject more accessible. The book is a mixture of scientific history, explanation, and discussion of modern quantum physics.
The greatest strength is its breadth. Rather than concentrating only on the familiar subjects--Schroedinger's cat, the uncertainty principle and the double-slit experiment--the authors take the reader through the development of quantum physics and into more modern subjects such as entanglement, quantum computers, symmetry, superconductivity and tensor networks.
Another strength is that Verstraete doesn't present quantum physics simply as a collection of bizarre tricks. He tries to show why our everyday intuition fails at the quantum level. Classical physics trains us to think that objects have definite properties and that causes produce predictable effects. Quantum physics requires a fundamentally different way of describing nature.
The book also emphasizes something important that popular accounts sometimes overlook: quantum physics isn't merely a philosophical curiosity. It is responsible for much of modern technology and is fundamental to understanding matter, chemistry, electronics and emerging quantum computing.
The title may lead some readers to expect an extremely simple introduction. It isn't. Although the authors deliberately avoid requiring sophisticated mathematics, some of the concepts remain difficult simply because there is no easy everyday analogy for them. Several readers have commented that the book is very readable in places but becomes considerably more challenging when it reaches the deeper physics. And actually an important point about the book: removing the mathematics doesn't necessarily remove the difficulty.
For example, you can explain superposition without writing down an equation, but understanding what superposition actually means is still extraordinarily difficult. The same is true of entanglement and the quantum measurement problem.
A worthwhile popular-science book for someone who is genuinely curious about quantum physics, particularly if you're willing to occasionally reread a section and accept that you won't understand every concept on the first pass. It is more successful at giving you a feel for quantum physics and its history than at giving you complete mastery of the subject. [-gf]
A Shrinking Mercury (pointer to article):
"Mercury is shrinking faster than we thought. What's going on inside of it?
"Wrinkles on the surface of Mercury have revealed that the closest planet to the sun is shrinking faster than scientists thought.
"New research suggests that Mercury is shrinking between 10% and 30% faster than had been previously estimated. The team behind this research calculated that the planet has lost nearly 12 miles (19 kilometers) of its total diameter since it formed.
"The researchers think that the extremity of this shrinking has gone unnoticed previously because bombardment from space rocks over time has created craters that obscured the evidence of this process.
..."
Full article at:
Belgian World Hypnosis Conspiracy and the Belgian World Hypothesis (letter of comment by Garth Spencer):
In response to the 09/04/26 issue of the MT VOID, Garth Spencer writes in OBDURATE EYE #67:
MT Void Sept. 4, 2026, from Evelyn Leeper evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com. More book and movie reviews and critiques than I can shake a stick at. No mention of the Belgian world hypnosis conspiracy, again. [-gs]
Well, okay, then. Belgian world hypnosis conspiracy. There, I've mentioned it.
It is not to be confused with the Belgian World Hypothesis, the proposal by Belgian Georges Lemaitre in 1931 that put forth the idea of an expanding universe, originating in a single event, which took place in "the day without yesterday" (as he phrased it).
The Belgian World Hypothesis eventually became known as the Big Bang, thanks to Fred Hoyle, who coined the term in 1949 in derision, since he supported the "steady-state model" of the universe.
In 1995, Hoyle commented on the phrase, saying, "Words are like harpoons. Once they go in, they are very hard to pull out." [-ecl]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
THE HABSBURG EMPIRE: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION by Martyn Rady (Oxford, ISBN 9780198792963) gives a brief overview of the Habsburg Empire, which I had learned as the Hapsburg Empire, which goes back to 1273 and has had a ridiculous number of names--Habsburg monarchy, Austrian monarchy, "Danubian monarchy", "Dual monarchy", Austrian Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Austro-Hungarian Empire, among others--before it was finally dissolved in 1918. The politics of itv all are as confusing as the names, and I can't say I followed everything in Rady's explanation.
But Rady also promulgates a common misconception: that the indigenous peoples of the Americas had not invented (or discovered, if you prefer) the wheel, and that it was introduced by the Europeans. In fact, there is archaeological evidence of wheels--on children's toys, for example--before the European arrival. (Well, okay--I'm not sure if these toys pre-date the Vikings in Newfoundland, but in general the discussion is about the Inca, the Maya, and the Aztecs.)
So why do people say that the indigenous peoples of the Americas had not invented the wheel? Because these people had not employed the wheel in any way that supported the economy. For example, there were no wheeled wagons to transport food or materials. Why not? Well, there were no roads that could support wheeled wagons, and given the terrain, especially in the Andes, there was no way to build such a road. And even if you had such a road, you had no draft animals; no horses, no oxen, no donkeys, no goats. There were few dogs, and in the northern part of the Americas, they pulled sledges over snow and ice, where wheels would be useless. [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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