@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society 09/18/26 -- Vol. 45, No. 12, Whole Number 2450
Table of Contents
Mini Reviews, Part 25 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I love Christopher Guest's mockumentaries but I also sometimes find them too painful to watch. And often that is due to one actor who is to me like nails on a blackboard--Fred Willard.
For example, the last time I tried to watch WAITING FOR GUFFMAN (1996), I had to give up. BEST IN SHOW (2000) is mostly highly watchable, though I often fast-forward through Fred Willard's scenes. (I also fast-forward through Dogberry's speeches in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.)
I last saw FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (2006) three years ago, and I don't recall if I found any parts painful.
This was all triggered by Channel Thirteen running A MIGHTY WIND (2003), which I was able to watch without cringing, but again, I did fast-forward through Fred Willard.
And while not a mockumentary, THE BIG PICTURE (1989) skewers trying to make an independent film in the way his later mockumentaries would look at other show business aspects. It was actually Guest's directorial debut, and obviously a harbinger of things to come (an ur-mockumentary, if you will), and is not as well known as his later films, but it is wonderful, and I highly recommend it.
And I discovered that there is one I hadn't seen (yet!): MASCOTS (2016). And at $150 for the DVD on eBay, I was so happy that it's on Netflix!
One "problem" with MASCOTS is that Guest does not have the two actors that many considered the "anchors" of his stable (to mix a metaphor). Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy were working on SCHITT'S CREEK and not available. And of the rest, many were unrecognizable to me after seeing them in A MIGHTY WIND, made two decades earlier.
(I am reminded of showing FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to a teenage Sean Connery fan in 2008. At one point she asked us when we would see him, and we had to tell her that he was the person in the center of the screen in that scene, and that he had been heavily featured up to that point.)
Guest's characters are familiar, as I said: Catherine O'Hara as the woman who keeps referring to her "slutty" past and Eugene Levy as her husband who seems sometimes oblivious to and sometimes uncomfortable with this, Jane Lynch as the woman with the strange business sense (in BEST IN SHOW she starts a magazine for lesbian dog owners), and of course, the Fred Willard character, who is always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. (Actually, for most of what he says, there wouldn't ever be a right time.)
[-ecl]
EDGE OF TOMORROW / LIVE, DIE, REPEAT (letter of comment by Kip Williams):
In response to Evelyn's comments on EDGE OF TOMORROW / LIVE, DIE, REPEAT in the 09/11/26 issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Sounds like people have figured out the plot of ROGUE MOON by Algis Budrys, which more or less predicted the experience undergone by the lead character in a first-person shooter, and then thought about it a little more. [-kw]
THE FLY (1986) (letters of comment by Dan Kimmel, Peter Trei, and Gary McGath):
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE FLY (1986) in the 09/11/26 issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes:
You make some interesting points about THE FLY but on one of them I strongly disagree. You write "David Cronenberg's 1986 remake doesn't have that romantic element..."
Well, not in the same way as the '58 potboiler, but the romance between Seth and Veronica is absolutely crucial to the plot. One gets the sense that he hasn't had much of a social life and here is this beautiful, intelligent woman who is fascinated by him and his work. When he misunderstands her relationship with her ex [it] is the jealousy he's not mature enough to handle that leads him to the fatal experiment. And his feelings for her provide most of the motivation for him thereafter.
I consider this one of the outstanding films of the '80s (not *just* among SF films). If you have a copy of my book JAR JAR BINKS MUST DIE, you can check out my essay on the film, "Nerds in Love." [-dk]
Evelyn responds:
I guess I am using "romantic" in a more sentimental sense, as opposed to a (possibly sexual, possibly intellectual) attraction. [-ecl]
Peter Trei addresses a different aspect:
[Evelyn wrote,] "In the 1986 version, there is only one resultant creature, which starts out as overwhelmingly Seth, but gradually is taken over by the fly, or at at rate, the fly becomes a much more important component. One interesting result is that the voice recognition security that Seth used on his computer no longer recognizes his voice--a warning that biometric security has its own drawbacks. (As an aside, I would suggest pre-adolescent boys *not* use voice recognition as their only security into their computers. And for that matter, accidents can damage your fingerprint, or your retina.)" [-ecl]
There's another reason not to place valuables behind voice recognition security.
A few days ago, in a call with one of my brokerages, I was asked if I wanted to switch to voice recognition for use authentication.
I demurred. AI voice cloning has reached the point where a small sample of recorded speech will allow your whole voice to be copied. Per-site security questions are more secure.
Similarly, when answering the phone to an unknown number, never use the word 'Yes', since you're just making their work easier. [-pt]
Gary McGath asks:
Is there anything special about "yes" as opposed to, for instance, "hello"?
The idea that someone can paste a recording of you saying "yes" to create a binding contract is a myth. But I agree that deepfaking people's voices is a growing problem. [-gmg]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I've been listening to the audiobooks of Ellis Peters's "Cadfael" series. Hoopla (from my library) has the first fifteen on unabridged audiobook read by Patrick Tull. After that it gets a bit dodgy: there are several "abridged" books read by Derek Jacobi, but this run starts with number seventeen, and skips another three of the later books as well.
After the unabridged versions, the abridgments seem a little insubstantial, and Jacobi's voice is not as engaging as it is in THE DAUGHTER OF TIME (his other audiobook I am familiar with).
Peters has apparently done her research on church hierarchy, rules, etc., but she makes at least one common mistake about medieval life: she has rooms lit by torches. Medieval historians has pointed out that torches were too difficult and time-consuming to make to use dozens every night to light rooms, too smoky to use indoors, and lasted too short a time to be used for room lighting for an entire evening. (The historians also point this out as an error everyone makes, especially in movies.) What were used were candles, mostly from tallow, with beeswax saved for churches and special occasions.
But the real "problem" is the same problem all detective series have: if they're successful enough, pretty soon the reader finds themselves thinking, "I wouldn't want to live in *their* town."
This is a real problem when the detective lives in a small town. As Wikipedia notes, "Fletcher lives ... in the town of Cabot Cove, Maine, 03041. Based on the number of murders that occur in a given season of the series, the town seems to have probably one of the highest murder rates of any town or city.This has even been remarked on in the series by the town sheriff, ..., who notes to Jessica Fletcher that in his first year in Cabot Cove, he had to deal with five murders and nicknames the town the 'death capital of Maine.'" (Cabot Cove is said to have a population of 3,560; estimates of the number of murders that took place in Cabot Cove in the twelve years of the series was sixty.)
Sherlock Holmes worked in London, a very large city, and a lot of his cases were elsewhere in England, or even outside England. Hercule Poirot was also in London, again with some cases elsewhere. Even Miss Marple investigated murders outside of St. Mary Mead--well, having them all in a really small town would have been stretching credulity.
So when Brother Cadfael has to investigate all the murders within a couple of day's walk of the abbey, it's a problem. The twenty books cover a decade during The Anarchy (1135-1145), but very few of the murders are caused by the warfare of the time, except peripherally. Shrewsbury is probably larger than Cabot Cove, with a estimated population of "several thousand". But since there seem to be a couple of murders per book, that makes Shrewsbury a murder capital as well.
I'm sure there is a term for something that seems fine in the close-up, but fails in the big picture. Detective series set in small towns sound like a great idea at the beginning, but if they're successful, they can't sustain a long series without expanding the geographic range. [-ecl]
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
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