THE MT VOID
11/24/23 -- Vol. 42, No. 21, Whole Number 2303

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Middletown (NJ) Public Library Science Fiction Discussion
Group
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in December
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Completist Actors (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE GLASS BOX by J. Michael Straczynski (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
Science News (comments by Greg Frederick)
This Week's Reading (Greek dramatists)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Public Library Science Fiction Discussion
Group

The only local meetings left are in Middletown, and they are
in-person. The best way to get the latest information is to be on
the mailing list for it.

Dec 7, 2023, SLEEPER (1973) & novel "The Sleeper Awakes"
by H. G. Wells
<https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12163>
Jan 4, 2024 ARRIVAL (2016) & "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang
<https://tinyurl.com/Chiang-StoryOfLife>

===================================================================

TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in November (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)

A DOG OF FLANDERS is the best little-known film of the month. Here
is what I said back in 2009:

CAPSULE: A rare but truly fine family film has finally made it to
DVD. A Flemish boy is held back from his dream of becoming an
artist by his extreme poverty. But then he makes two friends. He
finds a dog, beaten and abandoned, and adopts the dog even less
fortunate than him. But more important is the relationship he
forms with the artist in town who tries to teach the boy the
meaning of being an artist. The story has been adapted to silent
films and to Japanese anime, but a standout performance by Theodore
Bikel makes this the best of the three sound and live-action
adaptations. This film is a personal favorite of mine. Rating:
+3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10

One of the great double features of my youth was 20th Century Fox's
pairing of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH with James B. Clark's
A DOG OF FLANDERS. I came away liking the co-feature as much as
the film I had gone to see. (Okay, almost as much, but I was a
*real* science fiction fan.) Over the years I have looked several
times to find it on video. It was available only on a rare VHS
tape. Finally it has been released to DVD, digitally re-mastered,
and I could not be more pleased.

So why would a film that outwardly looks like it is just a boy-and-
his-dog story set in Belgium be such a find? First of all, the dog
story is just a sub-plot. The film is more about the struggles of
an impoverished boy to dedicate his life to creating art. But
there is something more about it that is very unusual. It is
honest in a way that very few family films ever are. Life is very
hard for its main character and the film does not pull its punches.

This film is not sugarcoated. (Admittedly the ending is not as
grim as the ending of the book.) There are themes in this film of
cruelty, of loss, but also of love and of the redemptive power of
art. Does that sound like a lot to put into a single film, a
family film? It is there and it all works.

Nello Daas (played by David Ladd, son of Alan Ladd) lives with his
grandfather (Donald Crisp), the town milk deliveryman in a Belgian
town. Nello's one obsession is art. He is fascinated by the local
painter Piet van Gelder (played by the wonderful Theodore Bikel).
The boy has tried doing his own art using what little he has--
iodine and charcoal, which are far from ideal materials. Nello
knows that there is supposed to be a magnificent painting in the
local cathedral, a work of Peter Paul Rubens, but the painting is
behind a curtain and the cathedral charges a franc to see the
painting. Grandfather knows how unlikely it is that Nello could be
a successful artist and has planned a very different career for his
grandson. One day Nello and his grandfather find a dog that had
pulled a cart, but is now collapsed from overwork and mistreatment.

Nello adopts the dog in spite of the fact that he and his
grandfather barely have enough food to keep themselves alive. But
the heart of the film is in the relationship that Nello forms with
the self-doubting artist van Gelder.

This is a classic and one of the best family films every made. It
is moving and says a very great deal about life and about art.
Some major changes were made from the original story, but it does
not tell children that life is never hard. I rate the 1960 version
of A DOG OF FLANDERS a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10.

Though never said, the town is really the City of Antwerp and the
cathedral is the Cathedral of Our Lady. The great Rubens painting
the boy wants to see is Rubens's The Elevation of the Cross:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Paul_Rubens_068.jpg>

We see the actual city, cathedral, and painting in the film.

The title dog, named in the film Patrasche, is played by Spike, who
also played the title role in OLD YELLER. The screenplay was
written by Ted Sherdeman who co-wrote the screenplay for another
famous animal film, THEM!

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0052745>

[A DOG OF FLANDERS (1935), Tuesday, December 12, 6:00 AM]

[-mrl]

And some comments on some other films:

CLOUDS OVER EUROPE (1939): Also known as Q PLANES, it involves
experimental aircraft. Mark wrote in 2016: "Okay, you 1960s spy
film fans, TCM is running something like a James Bond film crossed
with a 1960s Avengers story. (I am talking about the Avengers
John Steed and Emma Peel, not Marvel Comics.) 1939's CLOUDS OVER
EUROPE, a.k.a. Q PLANES, looks like it bears the same relation to
James Bond films that FORBIDDEN PLANET bears to "Star Trek"."

TEVYA (1939): The original non-musical version of Sholem Aleichem's
stories of Tevya the Dairyman, later made into FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.
It was thought lost until 1978.

FLIPPER (1963) and FLIPPER'S NEW ADVENTURE (1964): Perhaps
marginally science fiction.

NETWORK (1976): This seems more and more like reality these days.

TOPPER (1937): Based on a Thorne Smith novel. These days drunk
driving is not usually a subject for comedy.

THE GREAT RUPERT (1950): An early George Pal "Puppetoons" film.

LADY IN THE LAKE (1947): In keeping with my Raymond Chandler
reviews, I'll mention this one, shot entirely from the point of
view of Philip Marlowe.

SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON (1964): Remade in 2000 by Kiyoshi
Kurosawa as SEANCE.

[-ecl]

Other films of interest include:

FRIDAY, December 1
2:30 PM Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

SATURDAY, December 2
4:30 PM A Christmas Carol (1938)

MONDAY, December 4
8:00 PM Cabin in the Sky (1943)

WEDNESDAY, December 6
7:30 AM Clouds over Europe (1939)

FRIDAY, December 8
9:00 AM Blithe Spirit (1945)

SATURDAY, December 9
2:00 PM The Night of the Hunter (1955)
11:15 PM Tevya (1939)

SUNDAY, December 10
2:30 AM Chimes at Midnight (1967)
1:45 PM The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
10:00 PM Bananas (1971)

TUESDAY, December 12
9:00 AM Flipper (1963)
10:45 AM Flipper's New Adventure (1964)

WEDNESDAY, December 13
8:00 PM Network (1976)

THURSDAY, December 14
2:30 AM Altered States (1980)
4:30 AM Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)
12:00 PM Sinbad the Sailor (1947)
2:15 PM Treasure Island (1934)

FRIDAY, December 15
11:45 AM On Borrowed Time (1939)

SATURDAY, December 16
12:00 AM Topper (1937)
2:00 AM Suspicion (1941)
4:00 AM North by Northwest (1959)
11:30 AM Star in the Night (1945)

SATURDAY, December 16
8:00 AM Alias St. Nick (1935)
8:00 PM The Great Train Robbery (1979)

SUNDAY, December 17
1:30 PM King of Kings (1961)

MONDAY, December 18
1:15 AM Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

MONDAY, December 18
5:00 PM The Great Rupert (1950)
6:45 PM A Christmas Carol (1938)

TUESDAY, December 19
2:00 AM The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
5:45 AM Star in the Night (1945)

THURSDAY, December 21
1:30 AM Lady in the Lake (1947)

THURSDAY, December 21
8:30 AM The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
10:00 AM The Rocking Horse Winner (1949)

FRIDAY, December 22
4:30 AM Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
2:00 PM A Carol for Another Christmas (1964)
5:30 PM The Lion in Winter (1968)

SUNDAY, December 24
7:30 AM Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
9:00 AM The Great Rupert (1950)
11:45 PM A Christmas Carol (1938)

MONDAY, December 25
8:00 PM Vertigo (1958)
10:15 PM Rear Window (1954)

TUESDAY, December 26
12:15 AM The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
2:30 AM Rope (1948)
4:00 AM Strangers on a Train (1951)

WEDNESDAY, December 27
8:00 AM East of Eden (1955)
10:00 AM Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
12:00 PM Dial M for Murder (1954)
5:45 PM A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
11:00 PM The Body Disappears (1941)

THURSDAY, December 28
12:30 AM The Invisible Boy (1957)
3:45 PM Wait Until Dark (1967)
5:45 PM Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

FRIDAY, December 29
4:15 AM Blow-Up (1966)
8:00 AM The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
9:30 AM Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book (1942)

SATURDAY, December 30
2:00 PM Five Million Years to Earth (1968)
4:00 PM The Birds (1963)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Completist Actors (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Yes, David Suchet played Hercule Poirot in all the Agatha Christie
"Poirot" stories (with a bit of fudging on the stories from THE
LABOURS OF HERCULES). But Clive Merrison played Sherlock Holmes in
all 64 of the Doyle stories, as well as another 16 original
stories. The fact that Poirot was on television, and the Holmes on
the radio probably had something to do with this. However,
Merrison was also in a Sherlock Holmes adaptation on television, as Bartholomew Sholto in the 1983 British "The Sign of Four".
(Michael Williams played Watson in all the radio Doyle stories as
well, though not in the original ones that followed.) [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE GLASS BOX by J. Michael Straczynski (copyright 2024
(January 9,2024), Blackstone Publishing, 350p., ISBN-13:
979-8212007795 (hardcover edition), ASIN: B0CD9PJNNY (Kindle
edition)) (book review by Joe Karpierz)

The Wikipedia entry for J. Michael Straczynski says that he is a
film maker and a comic book writer. While he is certainly a film
maker, and a good one at that, I feel that comic book writer is too
limiting a term. He has written for a significant amount of
television series and movies, as well as the aforementioned comic
books. In fact, I would say that he is an "writer", with many
credits to his name. JMS, as he is known (and I will refer to him
here as that since it's a lot easier than typing out Straczynski),
is probably best known for writing *92* of the 110 episodes of the
science fiction television show "Babylon 5". But I would suggest
that even though he is mainly known for writing genre works, he has
a talent for writing books that are not genre, such as the novel
TOGETHER WE WILL GO and the autobiography BECOMING SUPERMAN. His
latest novel is THE GLASS BOX, and while it may be marketed as
science fiction, I don't think it's sf at all. In fact, I'm not
convinced that it's completely fiction.

Riley Diaz is a resistance fighter, raised by her parents to
question authority and not be quiet about it. You might almost call
her a professional protester. She works with an organized group of
protesters who know what they're getting into every time they step
out on the front line. If they are not careful, they will be
arrested even if their protests are lawful. She views the
government as something that is not to be trusted, and the
government has pretty much earned that lack of trust. The powers
that be are cracking down on the freedoms that all citizens have
become accustomed to, but especially the freedom to gather
peacefully in public. And this rankles Diaz and her colleagues to
no end.

At the latest protest, Diaz is arrested and taken to one of the
many American Renewal Centers (ARCs) for what amounts to mandatory reeducation. And getting into an ARC was part of the plan, as the
idea was to get inside and find out exactly what is going on at the
shadowy ARCs. What she didn't count on was not being able to get
out once she was in there. The "patients", if you will, are
incarcerated for six months, and, based on a points system that no
one but the people who run the ARCs knows, could be let out early
or detained for a longer period of time. Diaz, the freedom fighter
that she is, doesn't give in to the system. She resists the
authorities there, and her fellow patients don't trust her very
much. In fact, with all of them wishing to get out and at the same
time facing a "if one of you does something bad, you're all going
to suffer" situation, they shun Diaz at first. Slowly but surely,
by her actions, her fellow inmates (lets call them what they really
are) begin to trust her and work with her to fight the system and
hopefully eventually find a way out. Diaz also finds an unlikely
ally in the form of a character nicknamed Frankenstein. She is the
only person there able to break through to him, and they form a
bond that is touching and heartfelt. As you might expect,
Frankenstein becomes important to the plan for breaking out of the
ARC Diaz is in.

What's frightening about THE GLASS BOX is that it's easy to see
that this sort of thing could happen today. A government that is
interested in staying in power, invoking a decades old law, and
doing everything it can to put down and silence protesters, is
something that should terrify everyone, whether here in the U.S. or
anywhere around the world. THE GLASS BOX portrays a very real and
scary scenario, where it takes courage, persistence, and valor to
fight back and beat the system. I found myself rooting for Diaz as
the novel went on, as it became clear that there were very sinister
things going on all the way up to the top.

THE GLASS BOX is a thriller, a great read, and a frightening and
thought provoking look at what a government could become if it is
not held in check. I feel as if JMS was writing with some
insider's knowledge, and he does a terrific job from beginning to
end in the novel. While he may have made his name in other areas
of entertainment, such as television, movies, and comic books, I
believe that he is growing stronger as a novel writer. I eagerly
look forward to his next novel. [-jak]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Science News (comments by Greg Frederick)

The supermassive black hole of M87--also known as M87*--has a mass
equal to around 6.5 billion suns. It especially came to the
public's attention in 2019 when an image of M87*, captured by the
Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)

Two years after the release of the image of the supermassive black
hole in M87, in 2021, the EHT Collaboration released a second
stunning look. The newer image showed, for the very first time,
polarized light around a black hole. (Polarized light has a
different orientation and brightness than unpolarized light.) The
2021 data also revealed the direction of oscillating (vibrating)
electric fields, providing the first hint that magnetic fields
around M87* are strong and ordered.

See the image at
<https://www.space.com/first-black-hole-image-polarized-m87>

SpaceX had it's second test launch yesterday; all 33 booster
engines did fire continuously and the hot stage separation was
really good but yes the booster blew up and the Starship was
eventually lost…..some successes but new problems too. But with
each launch they learn and improve the rocket.

SpaceX’s gargantuan deep-space rocket system, Starship, safely
lifted off Saturday morning but ended prematurely with an explosion
and a loss of signal:

"The Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft successfully
separated after liftoff, as the Starship lit up its engines and
pushed away. That process ended up destroying the Super Heavy
booster, which erupted into a ball of flames over the Gulf of
Mexico. But the Starship spacecraft was able to briefly continue
its journey.

The Starship system made it much farther into flight than the first
attempt in April. The rocket and spacecraft lifted off the
launchpad at 8 a.m. ET, with the Super Heavy booster igniting all
33 of its Raptor engines. Even during ground tests, SpaceX has had
a hard time getting all of those engines, clustered together at the
base of the rocket, to power on consistently at the same time."

More at
<https://www.yahoo.com/news/spacex-loses-rocket-spacecraft-over- 142845952.html>. [-gf]

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

On a recent podcast discussing THE FROGS by Aristophanes, one of
the podcasters asked the others if any of them had read any of the
other dramatists named in THE FROGS besides Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides. I noted that if they had, they should alert the
media, because those three are the only ancient Greek tragedians
who have any plays that have survived intact.

I have been reading a couple of books about ancient historians and
histories, and discovered that what we have of Ammianus and of
Tacitus' ANNALS are each due to the survival of a single
manuscript--well, in Tacitus' case, two non-overlapping
manuscripts, and we still lost some of his work. Those manuscripts
can join that of BEOWULF in the "sole survivor" category. So it
isn't that surprising that Greek dramatists as a whole fared worse.
Of three hundred or so known tragedies, only about thirty have
survived intact. And all are by the "Big Three".

Why? First, Attic Greek (500 B.C.E. - 300 B.C.E.) never had the
audience Latin did, or even Koine Greek (300 B.C.E. - 600 C.E.).
Second, at the time, manuscripts of plays were not distributed as
widely as works of history, philosophy, or science. And later
copyists added works of theology to what they were prioritizing.
The copyists were busy copying Plato and Aristotle, and the New
Testament, and Herodotus and Thucydides (with a side of Xenophon),
and why copy pagan dramas anyway? So one could conclude that
(e.g.) the seven surviving Sophocles plays were the best (by some
metric) of the hundred and twenty that he wrote. Again, I don't
think any of the thirty surviving plays had only a sole surviving
manuscript (at least I've never heard this).

(All this is my theory; I could be totally off.)

Oh, and of the comedies, the only ones surviving are all by
Aristophanes.

What if 2300 years from now, all that remains of 20th century
English-language drama are seven plays of Andrew Lloyd Webber
(words only, no music), six plays of Tennessee Williams, and
eighteen plays of Eugene O'Neill? [-ecl]

===================================================================

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net


There's nothing wrong with being shallow as long as
you're insightful about it.
--Dennis Miller

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