THE MT VOID
01/13/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 29, Whole Number 2258
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Update to Science Fiction Discussion Groups (NJ)
The Latest Travel Information
Mini Reviews, Part 10 (MARRY ME, BROS, BULLET TRAIN)
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE ILIAD (letter of comment by Peter Rubinstein)
This Week's Reading (THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA, THE PURCHASE
OF THE NORTH POLE, THE HILLS OF HOMICIDE)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Update to Science Fiction Discussion Groups (NJ)
n the 01/27/23 issue, we wrote, "Meetings are still fluctuating
between in-person and Zoom. The best way to get the latest
information is to be on the mailing lists for them."
That is not quite true. Currently, all Middletown meetin gs have
returned to be in-person at the Middletown Public Library. The
next several Old Bridge meetings will still be Zoomed, partly to
accommodate distant members, and partly because for the winter
meetings, driving is always iffy.
The second sentence remains true, however. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Latest Travel Information
"How to travel to space, Earth’s hottest new destination" from the Washington Post:
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/01/09/
space-tourism-travel/>
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 10 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
This is the tenth batch of mini-reviews, all comedies:
BULLET TRAIN: The people who see BULLET TRAIN are going to have
problems following it if they haven't taken the Evelyn Wood speed-watching-and-listening course. The dialogue is delivered
really fast, as are the action sequences, and with five assassins
trying to various people (mostly each other), there is a lot of
action. But even if the film is a little hard to follow, what you
can follow makes this film a lot of fun. Brad Pitt is an actor who
does comedy as well as he does drama, and I find his performance
here reminds me of his brilliant job in BURN AFTER READING.
Released theatrically 05 August 2022; now streaming on Netflix.
Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12593682/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bullet_train_2022>
MARRY ME: MARRY ME is a musical romantic comedy with mathematics.
She's a pop star, he's a math teacher and the coach of the math
team. There are short sequences with the math club, but much
longer dance numbers; I would have preferred it the other way
around. After all, the love song will last something like five
years and then won't be remembered. At the same time the math in
the math club will last forever and ever. When she finds out her
celebrity fiance cheated on her, she impulsively marries the math
teacher instead. One might think that if this happened in real
life there would be millions of people protesting how immoral this
is, but this seems to be how a lot of reality shows work.
The Barbra Streisand film THE MIRROR HAS TWO SIDES represents
mathematicians as if they were some sort of weird bug. It is nice
to see mathematicians and entertainment people supporting each
other and to heck with Streisand.
(It's an odd choice to put your main characters on the screen when
you also have dogs because dogs are real attention getters and will
take attention away from your main characters while they are on the
screen. But at least they use a math competition as the climax
rather than a lambada contest.)
Released theatrically and on Amazon Prime streaming 11 February
2022. Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10223460/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marry_me_2022>
BROS: BROS is a standard rom-com plot set in the LBGTQ+ community.
It is notable in that all of the principal actors are LBGTQ+, and
there are many comments in the script about how Hollywood always
has straight actors playing the gay main characters in movies such
as BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. (And also how
Hollywood insists on an unhappy ending for them.)
One can argue that you are seeing exaggerations and stereotypes
here, but I don't think anyone would claim that (e.g.) BRINGING UP
BABY (1938) is a realistic, unexaggerated portrayal of straight
people. The interactions between the various subgroups may be
exaggerated, but there is undoubtedly some truth to them, since
these are found in all groups that appear homogenous to someone
outside the group (hence the saying, "Two Jews, three opinions," or
Emo Philips' Baptist joke).
This definitely has a high level of raunch, but so do a lot of
straight rom-coms (e.g., THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY), so if
you're okay with the latter, this shouldn't be a problem.
Released on Peacock streaming 30 September 2022. Rating: +1
(-4 to +4) or 6/10
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9731598/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bros_2022>
[-mrl/ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE ILIAD (letter of comment by Peter Rubinstein)
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE ILIAD in the 01/06/23 issue
of the MT VOID, Peter Rubinstein writes:
[Evelyn writes,] And these are the good guys?
Well, no, they aren't. It's been a while since I read THE ILIAD,
but I never read it to say that they were the good guys. Perhaps
that's just my bias showing. [-pr]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In all the descriptions and recommendations that I heard of THE
MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA by Ray Nayler (Picador, ISBN
978-1-250-87227-2), I don't recall any of them using the term
"octopus intelligence" or I would have read this a while ago. The
idea is that climate change and/or pollution have caused a speed-up
in evolution of octopuses and they are now fighting back against
humanity. We are not talking about the giant octopus of IT CAME
FROM BENEATH THE SEA, but ordinary size octopuses. Whether the
progression of inter-species communication is accurate or not is a
bit questionable, but it is certainly a well-thought-out effort.
In THE PURCHASE OF THE NORTH POLE by Jules Verne (Project
Gutenberg), someone unilaterally decides to auction off the North
Pole area to a single country and distribute the proceeds to all
the other countries with an interest in the area. I'm not sure
whether this is even more unlikely than the plan to then fire giant
cannons to change the Earth's angle and make the Arctic more
temperate (and much of the rest of the Earth uninhabitable or even
submerged). In any case, it is definitely proto-cli-fi.
THE HILLS OF HOMICIDE by Louis L'Amour (Bantam, ISBN
978-0-553-24134-1) is not typical of L'Amour's writing--rather than
be a Collection of Western stories, it is a collection of
hard-boiled detective stories (although at least one is set in the
Western landscape). While perhaps not as good as Chandler's or
Hammett's writings in that genre, these do give a different look in
L'Amour's ouevre. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print
such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers
don't object to.
--Hannen Swaffer
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