From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom
THE MT VOID
03/06/26 -- Vol. 44, No. 36, Whole Number 2422
Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
All material is the opinion of the author and is copyrighted by
the author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent or posted will be assumed authorized for
inclusion unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
The latest issue is at <
http://www.leepers.us/mtvoid/latest.htm>.
An index with links to the issues of the MT VOID since 1986 is at <
http://leepers.us/mtvoid/back_issues.htm>.
Topics:
Late-Breaking News about Movies on TV (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Mini Reviews, Part 08 (MURDER IN THREE ACTS (1986),
THREE ACT TRAGEDY (2010), AGATHA CHRISTIE'S
SEVEN DIALS) (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Ray Harryhausen Films, Part 04 (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS,
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON) (film comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Herbert Hoover as Author (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
"Through Gates of Garnet and Gold" by Seanan McGuire
(audio book review by Joe Karpierz)
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and STAR OF THE UNBORN
(letter of comment by Andre Kuzniarek)
WHO?, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, Ken Burns' AMERICAN
REVOLUTION, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot,
Conventions, Cli-Fi, Aztec Alternate History,
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Oedipus and Jocasta,
Homo sapiens and Neanderthals (letter of comment
by Taras Wolansky)
This Week's Reading (HEART OF A DOG) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Late-Breaking News about Movies on TV (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
First I will note that Turner Classic Movies is *not* showing THE
LOST WEEKEND in March; it was pre-empted by TENDER MERCIES, no
doubt part of a tribute to Robert Duvall.
This is probably a good time to note that I put together the
article for TCM in the MT VOID a few days ahead of the start of
the month, and it runs in the last MT VOID before the start of the
month. But they sometimes have last-minute changes (even in a
given month), so I can't guarantee my recommendations will be run.
Second, Channel Thirteen in the New York area is running
"Remembering Leonard Nimoy", a 57-minute documentary from 2017, on
Saturday, March 14, at 11:20PM. (Channel Thirteen doesn't get
their program guide up until practically the last-minute--or
later.) And for "Count of Monte Cristo" fans, they are beginning
an eight-part mini-series based on THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO on
"Masterpiece" on Sunday, March 22, at 10:00PM. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 08 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This time, three Agatha Christie films (of varying quality):
MURDER IN THREE ACTS (1986): MURDER IN THREE ACTS (based on THREE
ACT TRAGEDY by Agatha Christine) stars Peter Ustinov as Hercule
Poirot and he does a quite acceptable job. Jonathan Cecil as
Captain Hastings is a casting mistake, though--his unusual
appearance works against the concept of him as representing the
average man, let alone the romantic character he often is in the
novels.
I understand why the producers thought Acapulco more exotic than
Cornwall, and it apparently provided a better opportunity to have
young women in skimpy bikinis walk through the scenes, but in my
opinion, it works against the sort of atmosphere Christie was
aiming for. (It also makes the evidence of a passport meaningless,
because no passport was needed between Mexico and the United
States.) And many of the characters have been changed.
Satterthwaite becomes Hastings, the English actor becomes an
American movie star, an American actress has been added, and so
on. The motive has been changed as well. Only the barest skeleton
of the original has been kept.
I realize one should judge a film on its own merits, but on its
blind faithfulness to its source. In that regard my complaint is
that I found Tony Curtis as Cartwright annoying. Maybe he is
supposed to be, but still...
Released theatrically 30 September 1986.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091572/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/
agatha_christies_murder_in_three_acts>
THREE ACT TRAGEDY (2010): THREE ACT TRAGEDY (based on the Agatha
Christie novel) is part of the "Agatha Christie's Poirot" series
with David Suchet as Poirot. This does a better job of introducing
the various characters than MURDER IN THREE ACTS. It does drop
Satterthwaite, but does not replace him with Hastings. More to the
point, it is a much more faithful adaptation of the novel,
(Apparently the producers learned their lesson after having gotten
flak for making massive changes to earlier episodes, notably
APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH.)
Released broadcast 19 June 2011.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1469899/reference>
AGATHA CHRISTIE'S SEVEN DIALS (2026): AGATHA CHRISTIE'S SEVEN
DIALS is a TV mini-series based on THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY by
Agatha Christie (duh!). This is one of Christie's lesser-known
novels (for starters, no Poirot or Marple), so I suppose the
filmmakers decided they could make some fairly major changes. (On
the other hand, they made major changes to at least one Poirot
novel in the David Suchet series, so I suppose they didn't need an
excuse.) The main problem was that it was obvious pretty early on
who the villains were, and the series seemed more an excuse to
have a bunch of period settings and costumes than to make a murder
mystery.
Released streaming 15 January 2026.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31974288/reference>
What others are saying: <
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/agatha_christies_seven_dials>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Ray Harryhausen Films, Part 04 (film comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963): When Tom Hanks presented an
honorary Oscar to special effects artist Ray Harryhausen, he said:
"For some people, it's CITIZEN KANE (1941) or CASABLANCA (1942)
but, for me, I say JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) is the greatest
movie ever made."
This was marketed as a family film, and it is, as far as it goes.
But adults familiar with Greek mythology will know what comes
after the "happily ever after"ending. There are also a lot of
scantily-clad dancing girls with seductive movements and poses.
(Claiming a happy ending for this is like the "happy ending" of
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, in which all the poorer people of Bedford
Falls throw in their life savings to save George Bailey by making
up the money that the richest man in town stole and gets to keep.)
Jason may be brave, but he's also stupid: he announces to some
random guy he meets that he is there to reclaim the throne from
the evil King Pelias. Even if he weren't talking to Pelias, he
could be talking to a supporters of Pelias. It's as if someone
went to Occupied France in 1942 and told some random passerby that
he was a member of the Resistance.
Harryhausen uses the same techniques to show Jason on Olympus with
the gods (and later with Poseidon) as he used in THE 3 WORLDS OF
GULLIVER to portray Gulliver with Brobdingnagians. But the falling
rocks are now done with high-speed photography rather than stop
motion.
The crayon drawings for the credits are back, and the story takes
place largely on the sea, which has become another trademark. Only
EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, and VALLEY OF
GWANGI avoid the sea altogether.
Talos is impressive, but in at least one way it was probably
easier to animate than most of Harryhausen's, because it does not
need the fluidity of motion a living creature would, and also
won't have problem with fingerprints in the fur or some such
(although Harryhausen says it was difficult to get the appropriate
jerky motion when up until then he had been trying for smooth
motion).
Note that Hylas dies because he was holding the brooch pin that
Hercules had stolen. Clearly the "curse" was upon whoever had it
rather than whoever stole it, sort of like everything in the horde
had a homing beacon on it.
The scene of Sinbad fighting a skeleton in THE 7TH VOYAGE OF
SINBAD was clearly just a trial run for the scene here with three
people and *seven* skeletons.
Released theatrically 13 June 1963.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057197/reference>
What others are saying: <
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1010939-jason_and_the_argonauts>
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964): FIRST MEN IN THE MOON begins with a
United Nations landing on the moon. This seems odd, since by 1964,
the space race was on, and the UN wasn't part of it. But the
newscaster describes the first man to step on the moon as "a farm
boy from Indiana". In this they were fairly prescient, being off
by one state: Neil Armstrong was a farm boy from Ohio, right next
door to Indiana.
However, having the UN mission land exactly where Cavor's mission
had landed and planted a flag seventy years earlier really is
stretching the willing suspension of disbelief.
The modern-day framing sequence was added because Schneer didn't
think people would accept the story set entirely in the 19th
century. While Harryhausen's first three films with Schneer were
all set in the then-present, the next four were set in ancient
Baghdad, 18th or 19th century England and various islands, 19th
century America and an unknown island, and ancient Greece.
Admittedly, the moon voyage would bring comparisons to the
then-current space race, but it is not clear why this would be a
problem.
There is a nod to THE TIME MACHINE (1960) in that the Selenites
drag the space capsule into a giant structure, leaving behind a
pair of drag tracks, and closing some strong metal doors behind
them.
Released theatrically 20 November 1964.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058100/reference>
What others are saying: <
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/first_men_in_the_moon>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Herbert Hoover as Author (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In response to Hal Heydt's comments on Herbert Hoover in the
02/13/26 issue of the MT VOID, Evelyn responds:
[Hal Heydt wrote,] "The two works I'm familiar with are 'The Naval
War of 1812' by Theodore Roosevelt and the English translation of
Agricola's 'De Re Metallica' by Herbert and Catherine Hoover. It
took both Hoovers to do the job as a lot of the Latinized mining
terms had changed radically within a century of the original
publication in 1545. Herbert was a mining engineer and Catherine
was a Classical scholar." [-hh]
I got to the library and checked: The Hoovers (or even Hoover
alone) are not among the Presidential authors covered. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: "Through Gates of Garnet and Gold" by Seanan McGuire
(copyright 2026, Macmillan Audio, 4 hours and 33 minutes, ASIN:
B0F6G4FTW8, Narrator: Cynthia Hopkins) (audio book review by Joe
Karpierz)
"Through Gates of Garnet and Gold" is the eleventh entry in Seanan
McGuire's award winning "Wayward Children" series. I've read (or
listened to) each of them, and while I find them (mostly)
enjoyable, their quality is uneven. Those of you who read my
reviews are probably aware that I'm generally not a fan of long
running series, or, maybe more appropriately, of an endless number
of books in a universe that are repetitive and don't break new
ground, or at least do something different (see Martha Wells'
"Murderbot" series--sacrilegious, I know, but there it is). I
have a different relationship with the "Wayward Children" series.
It's longer running, for sure. And the stories are different each
time, so it has that going for it. The issue I have is that each
entry in the series is message driven, so much so that it does
grate on my nerves. On one hand, the messages are necessary, but
on the other hand, McGuire is preaching to the choir. If you're
reading the "Wayward Children" series, you're familiar with and
agree with the messages that are present in each story. You know
what you're getting yourself into. "Through Gates of Garnet and
Gold" has its own messages of friendship, belonging, and helping
people in need. But it's told in such a way that I don't feel
beaten over the head with it.
This story is a reunion of sorts. Nancy, a favorite character who
was introduced in the first book, makes a return here. If memory
serves, she was in the Halls of the Dead, found her way back to
Eleanor's school for wayward children, and left again to go back
to the Halls of the Dead. Nancy lives her life as a statue, moving
very slowly, if at all. She is alive, as are all the rest of the
statues. However, things have gone awry, as the truly dead have
invaded the halls where the statues are and are killing the
living. The Lord and Lady of the Halls are powerless to stop the
onslaught, so they send Nancy on a mission to find friends that
can help them stop the dead from killing the living. Nancy ends up
back at Eleanor's recruiting her friends to help her with her
mission--her quest, as it were. Quests are forbidden by Eleanor
except under unusual circumstances, and this one apparently
qualified. So Kade, Christopher, Sumi, and new girl Talia, along
with Nancy head back to the Halls of the Dead to try to deal with
the situation. And the situation is more complex than it seems, as
the dead have a legitimate gripe against the Lord of the Dead (who
is setting himself up as a god of sorts), and the instigator of
the attacks is yet another old friend from one of the earlier (and
one of my favorite) books in the series.
For me, this is one of the better books in the series. There is
more action and plot, and less of the pontificating that had
started to take over the series the last several novellas. Stuff
happened, and that's the way I like my stories. Readers new to the
series should not start here, though, since appreciation for the
story requires familiarity with earlier entries in the series.
McGuire does a nice job at the beginning of the book describing
the background and mechanics (if that's the word I want use) of
the doors. I'm not sure it's necessary here, but it's a nice
refresher and I appreciate it.
All in all, "Through Gates of Garnet and Gold" is a good entry in
the "Wayward Children" series, and I do recommend it. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and STAR OF THE UNBORN (letter of comment
by Andre Kuzniarek)
In response to Evelyn's comments on MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and STAR OF
THE UNBORN in the 02/27/26 issue of the MT VOID, Andre Kuzniarek
writes:
While also being a fan of the book, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND shares the
top of my list of comfort movies (along with JOURNEY TO THE CENTER
OF THE EARTH) for its wild-and-woolly never-a-dull-moment pace,
cool animation and settings, and awesome Bernard Herrmann score
(in both movies). I grew up seeing these every year on local TV so
I was kind of indoctrinated, but the scripts are sharp and hold up
to this day so I can't recommend them enough.
You mentioned STAR OF THE UNBORN and the only reason I recognize
that title is the book-tuber Bookpilled
(<
https://www.youtube.com/@Bookpilled>) lauding it as possibly his
favorite book, or certainly one he features a lot in his rankings
and recommendations, while being fairly rare as well. I enjoy his
channel and critiques, despite his apparent bias towards new wave
SF writers, where I tend lean more in the classic direction. Might
we get a review from you? Would love to compare takes! [-ak]
Evelyn replies:
I haven't read STAR OF THE UNBORN for decades (at least since I
started keeping a reading log in 1992), so I would have to re-read
it to comment on it. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: WHO?, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, Ken Burns' AMERICAN
REVOLUTION, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Conventions, Cli-Fi,
Aztec Alternate History, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Oedipus and
Jocasta,
Homo sapiens and Neanderthals (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
In response to comments on a lot of items in several issues of the
MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
The movie, WHO? (1973) sounds interesting. I see it's an
adaptation of Algis Budrys' 1958 novel of the same title. I
remember seeing a copy of the paperback at a convention, though I
never read it.
In ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty funny as
a drugged out ex-revolutionary who can't remember the passwords
and contacts he once depended on.
The film has been described as an "Antifa wet dream" (an alternate
history, kind of), but it's actually more complex than that.
Teyana Taylor strikingly portrays a revolutionary leader whose
name should have been a warning: Perfidia. In short order, she
abandons her baby daughter; kills a security guard during a
botched robbery; captured, betrays her comrades to get into
witness protection. Clearly, for her the revolution was no more
than an excuse to indulge her love of violence. (Curiously, the
reviewer for the NEW YORKER completely missed the betrayal, as
though his idea of the film overrode what was actually on the
screen.) The film's weakest point is Sean Penn's cartoonish white
supremacist.
I loved Ken Burns' AMERICAN REVOLUTION, but it made me a little
bit uneasy because it seemed to fall short exactly on the parts of
the story with which I was most familiar.
For example, the crewman [that] John Paul Jones killed (before the
war, when he was still John Paul) was a mutineer; he fled because
the mutineer's family had too much influence with the court.
His ship in his battle with the SERAPIS, the BONHOMME RICHARD, was
an old East Indiaman with garbage cannons. His victory against a
newer and better-armed ship was not just luck, but came from his
risky decision to build a "fighting top", essentially a pillbox
full of snipers elevated above the deck. Thus, with the ships
locked together, the British guns dominated below the deck, while
the American fighting top cleared everything above. This
permitted one of Jones' men to crawl out on a yardarm and toss a
grenade into the British gun deck, setting off a great deal of
powder and causing the British captain to strike his colors.
Burns' documentary also seems to try to soft-pedal accounts of
Native American atrocities, which played a significant role in the
war. (I've not heard anyone else make this connection, but when
I read about the October 7 atrocities in Israel, they struck me as
eerily familiar.) Unable to split up his army to protect hundreds
of frontier settlements, Washington sent Gen. John Sullivan to
burn Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) granaries so the warrior bands
attacking American settlements would have to go home to hunt, to
feed their families.
I, too, think of Joan Hickson as the definitive Miss Marple. She
reminds me of the coolly intelligent, elderly nuns who were the
principals of the various parochial schools I attended as a kid,
five of them between 1st grade and 12th. It's like the way David
Suchet is the definitive Hercule Poirot, or Alastair Sim, the best
Scrooge. Unfortunately, while elderly characters on the page
never get any older, the actors portraying them do.
Mercifully, I caught only a few minutes of Tony Randall's grotty
Poirot. (Freudian slip: I actually wrote Inspector Clouseau
before I corrected it!)
To my surprise, I've been to more conventions than you have,
apparently. I figure it's about five conventions a year for 40
years. But then, I went to some conventions you wouldn't have; for
example, anime.
Cli-fi: Do "global cooling" stories from the Seventies qualify?
(Global temperatures had flatlined ca. 1940-1970.). Wilson
Tucker's ICE AND IRON is, er, warmly remembered.
The film, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, may have started out as a global
cooling screenplay, reworked into a clumsy "warming causes Ice
Age" story line. Or maybe it was simply that global warming is
less photogenic: people standing around, mopping their brows.
Esther Friesner actually wrote an alternate history short story in
which the Aztecs conquered Spain. Which doesn't work because the
Old World diseases to which they had no resistance would have
wiped out the Aztec forces like H. G. Wells' Martians. This is
wrongheaded even aside from that: compared to the Aztecs, the
Conquistadores were the good guys -- which is why all the
indigenous nations oppressed by the Aztecs eagerly joined up with
the Spanish to fight them.
I've never seen Nigel Kneale's 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. Of course, every generation thinks of the
book as applying to its own time; but it is really about Stalin
(whose minions in Spain murdered independent leftists and nearly
killed Orwell), and Stalin's many English friends (who blocked the
publication of Orwell's ANIMAL FARM for years).
On Oedipus and Jocasta's ages, it's possible that the AI, grasping
at digital straws, made an estimate based on the actors who have
played the two roles over the years. If I had to make a realistic
guess I might posit that Jocasta married at the typical Ancient
Greek age of 15, and gave birth to Oedipus at 16. Then she might
have been around 40 when she married her son.
[And a comment not in reference to anything in previous MT VOIDS]
QUEST FOR FIRE had it right: "When our species and Neanderthals
interbred, it may have been mostly female Homo sapiens and male
Neanderthals that mated." [-tw]
Evelyn responds:
The last is referring a paywalled article at <
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517239-when-we-interbred- with-neanderthals-they-were-usually-the-fathers/>
It begins:
"When our species and Neanderthals interbred, it may have been
mostly female Homo sapiens and male Neanderthals that mated.
That's the conclusion of a study of the genetic traces left in
both populations by the intermixing.
"It isn't clear why this sex-biased mating pattern would have
happened. It may be that male Neanderthals preferred female H.
sapiens over females of their own species, or that female H.
sapiens females preferred Neanderthal males, or both. There is
also no way to determine whether the matings were consensual or
forced."
And as for Oedipus and Jocasta, I think I figured about the same,
but 40 years old is a bit late to start having what would
eventually be four more children. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Our book for our book-and-film SF group in February was HEART OF A
DOG by Mikhail Bulgakov (translated by Mirra Ginsberg) (Grove
Press, ISBN 978-0-802-15059-2), or as Hoopla has it "by Michael
Bulgaria". (In fairness, Hoopla has the URL with "Michael
Bulgaria" redirect to the correct spelling, no doubt to compensate
for autocorrect changing "Mikhail Bulgakov" to "Michael Bulgaria".)
The book was written in 1925, but banned in the Soviet Union until
1987. However, it circulated in samizdat in the interim. It was
translated in to English in 1968. After it was allowed in the
Soviet Union, it was rapidly made into a film there in 1988, and
the film is faithful to the book (with some one the racier parts
cleaned up, e.g., Vasnetsova's background as either a prostitute
or someone's mistress).
My notes were primarily as I was reading the book, which is
basically a "Frankenstein" story (or maybe more a "Dr. Moreau"
story), told with the dog who is turned into a man as the narrator.
While dogs can shed tears, they are for biological purposes only
(e.g., to lubricate the eyes), not for emotional reasons.
At the time Bulgakov was writing, a chervontset (plural,
chervontsy) was ten rubles, much as we used to refer to a
ten-dollar bill as a "sawbuck". There are one hundred kopecks in a
ruble. A pood is about 36 pounds. Why these are not translated (or
at least footnoted) is a mystery.
When the narrator describes learning to read, the translator has a
difficult job, because she has to translate everything into
English, including the letters from the Cyrillic of the Russian
words to the Latin of the English. So the fourth letter on what is
obviously a nameplate after "p-r-o" in English would be "f" (for
"Prof.") and hence she must describe it as "a queer little hooked
stick, nasty looking, unfamiliar." But in Russian, the next
Cyrillic letter would be the same as the Greek "phi": a circle
with a vertical line through it.
The doctor, Philip Philippovich, says that he cannot endure the
word "counterrevolutionary": "It's absolutely impossible to tell
what it covers!" In the 1950s in the United States, "Communist"
held the same position. Now it's "woke".
Philip Philippovich keeps repeating "from Seville to Granada" and
"to the sacred banks of the Nile". The first is a line from
Mozart's DON GIOVANNI, the second is from Verdi's AIDA. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one
who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
--Ambrose Bierce
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2