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THE MT VOID
06/05/26 -- Vol. 44, No. 49, Whole Number 2435

Editor: Evelyn Leeper, evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Mini-Reviews Change (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Mini Reviews, Part 17 (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III,
LADIES IN LAVENDER, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN
BRODIE (1969)) (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Rest of June on TCM (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
"Foundling Fathers" by Meg Elison (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (letters of comment by Paul Dormer
and Scott Dorsey)
This Week's Reading (RICHARD III--HIS LIFE & CHARACTER,
HISTORIC DOUBTS ON THE LIFE AND REIGN OF KING
RICHARD III) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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

TOPIC: Mini-Reviews Change (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Unless I hear a groundswell of opinion that I should continue,
I will be dropping the release dates and IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes
links from the film reviews. [-ecl]

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

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 17 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper)

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III: This was a DVD that I got as part of a
"buy two, get three" deal on swapadvd.com site. There was a very
limited selection after the ONE I actually wanted (MIDNIGHT IN
PARIS). Still, four DVDs for effectively $1 each made it
worthwhile, even though this one was a pan-and scan.

The problem with the "Mission Impossible" films (other than that
they got ludicrously long) is they have too much Tom Cruise and
not enough Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg. (This is something I have
commented on with other series: Spock was more popular than Kirk,
and Ilya was more popular than Napoleon.)

I wonder how long the movie would be without all the chase senes
and action scenes in general. I don't care enough to spend the
time to check it. (On establishing characters, in the commentary
director J. J. Abrams says, "Get to the action of it as soon as
you can."

[SPOILER] The "Mission Impossible" franchise has learned from the
James Bond franchise's "mistake." Bond got married, and almost
immediately his wife was killed. (They also did that with Felix
Leiter.) The MI franchise has avoided that--several times. One can
argue, however, that the constant repetition of "his wife is in
danger and he has to rescue her *and* save the world" can be
tiresome.


LADIES IN LAVENDER: With Judi Dench and Maggie Smith as the leads,
and Miriam Margolies and Toby Jones in the supporting cast
(although Jones's part is actually very small), how could I pass
it up? Especially as part of a "buy-two-get-three-free" deal on
the DVD swap site,

Where films often make characters younger than what they were in
the original source (see THE BIG PICTURE for a great example of
this), in this case writer/director Charles Dance made the two
women older--the story had them in their forties, while in fact
Dench and Smith were seventy at the time. (They were actually born
less than three weeks apart in December 1934.)


THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969): Once again, the egotism and self-centeredness of Jean Brodie is portrayed beautifully by novel
author Muriel Spark, screenwriter Jay Presson Allen, and actor
Maggie Smith.

Jean Brodie says that Michelangelo is not the greatest Italian
painter--Giotti is. "He is my favorite," she explains, as if being
her favorite automatically makes him the greatest.

Jean Brodie says that Franco is called "El Jefe", which she
pronounces "HEH-feh", saying, "The J is silent." But it isn't
silent; it is pronounced as an 'H'.

Jean Brodie is also trying to have Jenny become Teddy Lloyd's
lover--except Jane is probably 16, or at most 17. These days that
would make her a "groomer", and frankly, that would have been true
then (although the term "groomer" is too recent, and "procurer"
might have been the most polite term applied).

The time span of the film is not clear. Jean Brodie pegs the age
of the girls who write the fake letter as "eleven or twelve". At
the end they are graduating as seniors, making them (one presumes)
about seventeen or eighteen. Yet the storyline of Jean Brodie and
Mr. Lowther is not one that can be sustained through five years.


[-ecl]

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

TOPIC: The Rest of June on TCM (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Worth noting is the Mel Brooks "festival" on June 28 of five of
his films:
2:30 PM The Twelve Chairs (1970)
4:15 PM The Producers (1967)
6:00 PM Spaceballs (1987)
8:00 PM Blazing Saddles (1974)
10:00 PM Young Frankenstein (1974)

I'll also point out the little-seen THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA,
QUEEN OF THE DESERT, of which Mark wrote in 1994, "The story is of
three drag queens making a journey across the Australian desert
from Sydney to Alice Springs to make a performance engagement. ...
Unless you reject the well-labeled premise from the start, you
will probably find this a surprisingly wholesome feel-good sort of
film, a little strong on manipulation and weak on credibility in
spots, but rarely failing to entertain."

Other films of interest:

SATURDAY, June 27
7:45 AM Eye of the Devil (1966)
2:00 PM Forbidden Planet (1956)

SUNDAY, June 28
12:00 AM Stolen Face (1952)
10:00 AM Stolen Face (1952)

TUESDAY, June 30
1:00 AM The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
4:30 AM Orpheus (1950)
10:15 PM Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

[-ecl]

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

TOPIC: "Foundling Fathers" by Meg Elison (copyright 2026, Tachyon
Publications, publication date June 23 2026, ISBN:
978-1-61696-458-0 (print); 978-1-61696-459-7 (digital)) (book
review by Joe Karpierz)

There is much fiction currently being written, both inside the sff
fields and outside, that are in conversation with our current
political situation. Thomas Ha's "In My Country", a Hugo finalist
for Best Short Story comes immediately to mind (largely because
I'm currently reading it), and Meg Elison's upcoming novella from
Tachyon Publications, "Foundling Fathers" is another. As I fished
around for how to start this review, several ways came to mind.
What I settled upon, however, is what I believe is quite possibly
the best first line of any novella (or maybe any other piece of
fiction) I've ever read:

"It took Benjamin Franklin twenty-seven minutes and fourteen
seconds to discover there was pornography on the internet."

I don't know what a sentence like that says about me--that it
drew me into the book completely and utterly--but I feel that if
that doesn't draw in the reader, well, I'm sure there's something
else that would, but I find it difficult to believe.

The year, as far as Ben Franklin knows, is 1750. What he has
discovered is a smartphone that someone left in a "privy". Like
any intelligent and curious teenage boy, he started poking around,
and well, you know. He immediately takes the device to his
brothers: Tom, John, and George (who of course are Jefferson,
Adams, and Washington). This is one more piece of evidence that
not all is what it seems to be. What are those things that fly in
the sky? Why do they never see the boat that comes to bring them
supplies? Why does their calendar not match up with what they
learn from the device about Ptolemy (among other things)?

Let's back up a bit. The boys, their "parents" Jeff Hancock and
Mary Libertas, and a bunch of "slaves" there to serve their every
need, are part of an elaborate scheme by the Antediluvian Society,
a group of right wing billionaires who (and where have you heard
this before?) want to make America what it was, bring it back to
the glory of yesteryear. The boys are being brought up with
Christian values (as the society sees them), manners, and other
behaviors of 1750. They are living on an island in isolation so
they don't know anything about the outside "real world". The
Saratoga plan (there's always a plan, and like most plans, this
one does not survive contact with the enemy), is to introduce the
clones (I mean, did I have to tell you they were clones, and thus
this novella becomes science fiction?) to society and return
America to its former (in the society's eyes) glory.

Of course, the boys aren't supposed to know it's 2026 and not
1750, but they were raised to be as intelligent as the originals,
and once they found the smartphone they started putting two and
two together and really did get four and demanded to know what was
really going on and what their part is in the whole thing.

As I finished the book, I didn't know what to think of it. But the
more I thought about it, the better it got. The fact that the
right wing cabal's plan was going awry feels like it parallels
what is going on in the real world in the U.S. today, and it
really is sweet and delicious. To be fair, we don't know how
things really end up in the novella, just as we don't know how
things are going to end up in the real world we are living in
today. It's not necessarily easy to predict where we're going to
end up in our timeline, and so Elison didn't predict where the Fab
Four (John, Ben, Tom, and George), as I've come to think about
them, are going to end up. This is a terrific read, and one that I
heartily recommend. Just don't leave your cellphone laying around
where people who aren't supposed to see it will find it. You never
know what will happen. [-jak]

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

TOPIC: QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (letters of comment by Paul Dormer
and Scott Dorsey)

In response to Evelyn's comments on Nicholas Cage and QUATERMASS
AND THE PIT in the 05/29/26 issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer
writes:

"Quatermass and the Pit" was originally a TV series on the BBC in
the Fifties. My mother said she watched alone whilst my father was
out and me and my sisters were in bed. Scared her, too. [-pd]

Scott Dorsey adds:

Most of those shows are now lost but there are three or four that
were preserved. They are very different than the movie due to the
constraints of live TV, and they are interesting in themselves.
[-sd]

Evelyn notes:

The TV series "Quatermass II" and "Quatermass and the Pit" exist
in complete form (all six episodes each). (I know, because I have
them.) Of "The Quatermass Experiment" I believe only Chapter 2
remains. [-ecl]

Paul adds:

"Quatermass and the Pit" was shown, I recall, at the UK Worldcon
in 1979.

I note that the first two films have been shown on Talking Pictures
TV in the last couple of weeks. [-pd]

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

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

In the 08/04/23 issue of the MT VOID, I discussed Winston
Churchill's views on the Richard III controversy from A HISTORY OF
THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES: THE BIRTH OF BRITAIN (Bloomsbury USA
Academic, ISBN 978-1-472-58524-0), and mentioned Josephine Tey's
THE DAUGHTER OF TIME (Scribner, ISBN 978-0-684-80386-9), although
I said at the time that I realized the latter was a work of
fiction, and therefore based my conclusions on facts that I could
verify in real sources, and logical conclusions from them, rather
than citations from (possibly) fictitious sources (e.g., Sir
Cuthbert Oliphant).

Well, Oliphant may be fictitious, but Tey seems to have patterned
him after James Gairdner as described in RICHARD III--HIS LIFE &
CHARACTER by Clements R. Markham (Project Gutenberg, <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36451>, 1903). Of Gairdner,
Markham writes, "His Richard III. is a prince, headlong and
reckless as to consequences, but of rare gifts and with many
redeeming qualities. He was wise and able, brave, generous,
religious, fascinating, and yet had committed two very cowardly
assassinations before he was nineteen, murdered his defenceless
nephews, and gratuitously slandered his mother. Such a monster is
an impossibility in real life."

And Tey writes of (the fictitious) Oliphant, "He is, to be honest,
in a sad muddle himself about Richard. On the same page he says
that he was an admirable administrator and general, with an
excellent reputation, staid and good-living, very popular by
contrast with the Woodville upstarts (the Queen's relations) and
that he was 'perfectly unscrupulous and ready to wade through any
depth of bloodshed to the crown which lay within his grasp'. On
one page he says grudgingly: 'There are reasons for supposing that
he was not destitute of a conscience' and then on a later page
reports More's picture of a man so tormented by his own deed that
he could not sleep. And so on.'"

(Gairdner wrote his HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND REIGN OF RICHARD III
in 1878; there was a second edition in 1898, as well as a life of
Henry VII in 1889.)

And much of the evidence Tey has her narrator and his assistant
Brent Carradine discover is also given in Markham's book. It isn't
plagiarism in the strict sense, because Markham is quoting various
primary and secondary sources, and Tey is also quoting them. But
it does seem as Markham did a lot of the "heavy lifting" for Tey.
However, Tey does pick up Markham's own description of Thomas
More's account as being a "party pamphlet."

I can see why Markham might have been Tey's inspiration, because
the previous defender of Richard III, Horace Walpole in HISTORIC
DOUBTS ON THE LIFE AND REIGN OF KING RICHARD III (published in
1768), does not lay out a very clear or comprehensible defense.
Large portions of his evidence from primary sources are quoted in
the original French or Latin, rather than translated (as Markham
does). I suppose in 1768 it was assumed that his audience would be
fluent in those languages; by 1878, Markham could make no such
assumption. And the structure of Walpole's argument is not as
straightforward as Markham's; I felt he was jumping around without
any particular order.

This is not to say his writing style isn't engaging. For example,
in the Preface he writes, "So incompetent has the generality of
historians been for the province they have undertaken, that it is
almost a question, whether, if the dead of past ages could revive,
they would be able to reconnoitre the events of their own times,
as transmitted to us by ignorance and misrepresentation. All very
ancient history, except that of the illuminated Jews, is a perfect
fable. It was written by priests, or collected from their reports;
and calculated solely to raise lofty ideas of the origin of each
nation. Gods and demi-gods were the principal actors; and truth is
seldom to be expected where the personages are supernatural."
Given that he is about to criticize the veracity of Christian
historians, it seems odd to blame misrepresentation on the facts
that the historians were pagans, and for that matter, was not God
considered supernatural as well?

He is also sometimes snarky: "Sir Thomas More has exhausted all
his eloquence and imagination to work up a piteous scene, in which
the queen [Elizabeth Woodville] is made to excite our compassion
in the highest degree, and is furnished by that able pen with
strains of pathetic oratory, which no part of her conduct affords
us reason to believe she possessed."

In the matter of the claim that Richard had his own mother accused
of adultery, Walpole writes, "The doubts on the validity of
Edward's marriage were better grounds for Richard's proceedings
than aspersion of his mother's honour. On that invalidity he
claimed the crown, and obtained it; and with such universal
concurrence, that the nation undoubtedly was on his side--but as
he could not deprive his nephews, on that foundation, without
bastardizing their sisters too, no wonder, the historians, who
wrote under the Lancastrian domination, have used all their art
and industry to misrepresent the fact. If the marriage of Edward
the Fourth with the widow Grey was bigamy, and consequently null,
what became of the title of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry the
Seventh? What became of it? Why a bastard branch of Lancaster,
matched with a bastard of York, were obtruded on the nation as the
right heirs of the crown! and, as far as two negatives can make an
affirmative, they were so." First Walpole disposes of that claim,
and then he turns mathematically snarky as well.

And note his use of the understated "unlucky" here: "It happens
unluckily too, that great part of the time Ratcliffe was absent,
Sir Thomas More himself telling us that Sir Richard Ratcliffe had
the custody of the prisoners at Pontefract, and presided at their
execution there. But a much more unlucky circumstance is, that
James Tirrel, said to be knighted for this horrid service, was not
only a knight before, but a great or very considerable officer of
the crown; and in that situation had walked at Richard's preceding
coronation." I think he uses "unlucky" in the sense of "oops!"

One thing he notes that I don't recall in Markham is that "no
prosecution of the supposed assassins was even thought of till
eleven years afterwards, on the appearance of Perkin Warbeck."
Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Richard of Gloucester, the younger of
the two (supposedly murdered) princes, so when he showed up,
clearly in line for the throne *before* Henry VII, Henry had to do
something to discredit him, and what better way than by claiming
Richard of Gloucester had been murdered before Henry claimed the
crown.

So there are portions to be gleaned from Walpole, but on the
whole, I recommend Markham.

(Sir George Buck published the first defense of Richard III with
THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND REIGNE OF RICHARD THE THIRD in 1646,
but I cannot find a copy of this.) [-ecl]

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

Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com


I would be most content if my children grew up to be the
kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of
building enough bookcases.
--Anna Quindlen
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