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THE MT VOID
10/24/25 -- Vol. 44, No. 17, Whole Number 2403
Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 25 (NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1954),
THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS, THE STONE TAPE)
(film comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
"Computing... There I Was" (new podcast)
Harry Lime and the Cuckoo Clock (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
A Trip to Mars (pointer)
Crackpots, Issue 2400, THE DIVINE COMEDY, Colonitis,
and Freedom (letter of comment by John Hertz)
MUNCHHAUSEN (letter of comment by Paul Dormer)
This Week's Reading ("Very Short Introduction" series)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 25 (film comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Terry Frost recommended a film written by Nigel Kneale, THE
ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, but rather than commenting on that film, I
will talk about three of Nigel Kneale's television plays for the
BBC.
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1954): This starred Peter Cushing (as
Winston Smith) before he became a big Hammer star. One bit that
resonated with current events is when Winston Smith is re-writing
old news reports to say that Big Brother claimed the enemy would
take place where it actually did rather than where he originally
(and incorrectly) claimed he would, and when the reduction of the
chocolate ration was described as an increase.
Actually, there are a lot of bits that resonate with current
events. Alas.
The show was considered so horrifying and graphic at the time that
questions were raised in Parliament about it. By today's
standards, of course, it would probably get a PG-13.
It is available at archive.org. (Avoid the colorized version.)
Released televised 12 December 1954.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14473100/reference>
THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS (1968): Set in a future when war,
conflict, and other "tensions" have been banished, and the
government controls the population by broadcasting sex (and the
Sex Olympics) and telling people to "watch, not do." (They do the
same with food.)
And then when a protester dies and the audience responds, the
government invents what is basically "Survivor": three people on a
(supposedly) deserted island, and various threats against them.
Given that they have no idea even how to start a fire, or grow
food, this seems a bit redundant.
And whenever something bad happens, the only audience reaction is
laughter, because they have never learned any other emotions.
(It is true that CANDID CAMERA predated THE YEAR OF THE SEX
OLYMPICS, but that was a fairly minimal version of a reality show.
Not until AN AMERICAN FAMILY in 1973 did the reality show become a
full-fledged genre.)
THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS is available at archive.org. (Avoid
the colorized version.)
Released televised 29 July 1968.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142001/reference>
THE STONE TAPE (1972): THE STONE TAPE was a 1972 "Christmas ghost
story" by Nigel Kneale broadcast on the BBC. The "ghost", how it
is described by witnesses, how people react to it, and so on, bear
a strong resemblance to those elements in Kneale's 1958 BBC play
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and its 1967 movie version.
We start with a bunch of "tech bros", and Kneale was very
prescient here: they are every bit as obnoxious as the ones are
now. They are moving into an old house to develop a new recording
medium, but one, the house is much older than they think, and two,
it seems to be "haunted".
At one time, this and THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS were very
difficult to find, especially on this side of the Pond. Now that
the BBC is releasing most (all?) of their ouvre, it is easier to
see these works by the author who was known pretty much only as
the creator of Quatermass.
(Kneale also did the script for SHARPE'S GOLD, and it was a doozy.
He added an entire subplot of a tribe of Aztecs surviving in caves
in Spain. Back in the day when the History Channel was the
*History* Channel, they ran the "Sharpe" series with Sander
Vanocur interviewing Bernard Cornwell about each episode. When
Vanocur asked Cornwell why he had included Aztecs, Cornwell was
quick to emphasize that *he* never wrote *that*.)
Released televised 25 December 1972.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069316/reference>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Harry Lime and the Cuckoo Clock (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
In the film THE THIRD MAN, Harry Lime makes a speech contrasting
Italy and Switzerland. This speech was written by Orson Welles,
not Graham Greene, and is very dramatic and perhaps even
convincing. But Lime (Welles) was wrong in what he is saying:
"... in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had
warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced
Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In
Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years
of democracy and peace--and what did that produce? The cuckoo
clock."
Lime does not specify what 500 years he is referring to, but in
terms of parallels to fifty years of the Italy of the Borgias he
is conveniently certainly overlooking the religious wars in
Switzerland between 1529 and 1531. For that matter, trying to find
a 500-year period of peace in Switzerland, one has to dodge the
wars in which it was involved in 1315, 1386, 1422, 1440, 1474,
1499, 1511, 1653, 1656, 1712, 1798, 1799, 1802, 1806, 1809, 1813,
1815, 1830, 1847, ... There is no 500-year period of democracy and
peace. (John Calvin's government in the 1540s in Geneva was not a
democracy.)
(Also, it is generally believed that the cuckoo clock was invented
in Germany.)
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: "Computing... There I Was" (new podcast)
Member Richie Beilek has started a new podcast of interviews with
people who have been in computing for a long time:
<
https://rss.com/podcasts/computing-there-i-was/ ?_gl=1%2az6hs4q%2a_gcl_au%2aMTc5NzMyNzg0LjE3NTY4NTk4MTI>.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: A Trip to Mars (pointer)
The New York Times reports on the 28th Annual International Mars
Society Convention:
"A Trip to Mars? TheyrCOre Ready to Go.
"Fans of the red planet joined scientists at an annual conference
sponsored by the Mars Society. One attendee said he would take a
'one-way ticket.'" [-nyt]
Full article (*not* paywalled) at
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/style/ mars-society-convention.html?unlocked_article_code= 1.uk8.anzQ.njPNHeJoFkgL&smid=url-share>
However, I think that link is good for only thirty days (from
10/19 in this case). The paywalled link is at <
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/style/
mars-society-convention.html>
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Crackpots, Issue 2400, THE DIVINE COMEDY, Colonitis, and
Freedom (letter of comment by John Hertz)
In response to Mark's quote in the 09/26/25 issue of the MT VOID,
John Hertz writes:
[Mark wrote,] "A sufficiently advanced scientist is
indistinguishable from a crackpot." [-mrl]
One of Jerry Pournelle's notions was that 10% of any funding
should be given to contrarians.
Also Ignaz Semmelweiss comes to mind. [-jh]
In response to the 09/26/25 issue of the MT VOID, John writes:
Hurrah for No. 2400! [-jh]
In response to Evelyn's comments on Dante's INFERNO in the
10/03/25 issue of the MT VOID, John writes:
Whose tr.? I recommend Dorothy L. Sayers' tr. of THE DIVINE
COMEDY. Even Gillian Polack, sore at the liberties DLS admittedly
took to achieve "terza rima" (note that I use the term "achieve"),
agreed with me that the notes are superb. [-jh]
Evelyn responds:
The particular translation I just bought is by Robert M. Durling,
but I already had Sayers's (of the entire DIVINE COMEDY), as well
as John Ciardi's of THE INFERNO. I also have H. F. Carey's
translation from Project Gutenberg. [-ecl]
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE PITY OF IT ALL: A PORTRAIT
OF THE GERMAN-JEWISH EPOCH 1743-1933 by Amos Elon in the same
issue, John writes:
I haven't gotten to this yet. I do wish Brother Elon hadn't (i)
succumbed to colonitis--a title so catchy as to be
incomprehensible, followed by a colon and the real title; (ii)
said "epoch" when he meant "era". [-jh]
Evelyn responds:
I thought I had commented at some point on the distressing
occurrence of what John calls "colonitis", but I cannot locate the
article now. It may be okay when the books are "face-out" in a
bookstore, but when one is looking over the spines (as one does in
a used book store), the catchy title is pretty much useless. A
particularly egregious example is Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has
TEAM OF RIVALS: THE POLITICAL GENIUS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN; THE BULLY
PULPIT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, AND THE GOLDEN
AGE OF JOURNALISM; and (in a burst of double colonitis) NO
ORDINARY TIME: FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: THE HOME FRONT IN
WORLD WAR II. (One can argue that the term "bully pulpit" gives at
least some hint as to the content of the second book in the list.
[-ecl]
In response to Adlai Stevenson's quote in the same issue, John
Hertz writes:
[Adlai Stevenson said,] "A free society is one where it is safe to
be unpopular." [-as]
"freedom for the thought we hate", United States vs. Schwimmer,
279 U.S. 644, 655 (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting) [-jh]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MUNCHHAUSEN (letter of comment by Paul Dormer)
In response to Evelyn's comments on MUNCHHAUSEN in the 10/17/25
issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer writes:
[SLIGHT SPOILER]
This turned up on the BBC one afternoon many years ago and I have
since got the DVD. The opening sequence, with its amusing reveal,
really got me.
As the IMDb says, Erich Kastner, author of EMIL AND THE
DETECTIVES, wrote the screenplay under a pseudonym, although no
credit is given. It's said that as Goebbels commissioned the
film, he and the director decided to make a film about a liar as
big as Goebbels. [-pd]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The "Very Short Introduction" series is a series from the Oxford
University Press of literally hundreds of books about almost every
subject you can think of (and probably a lot you cannot).
(Examples include advertising, astrobiology, cancer, Druids,
family law, privacy, rivers, and work.) (There are 824 in the
latest list I could find, including the scheduled but not yet
published volumes.) They are 4.5 inches by 7 inches (or 11cm by
17.5cm), and about 150 pages each, give or take. As I had noted, I
picked up about fifteen of these recently and am working my way
through them chronologically. So far I have read "Classics" and
"History", and am now reading "The Ancient Near East", to be
followed by "Ancient Assyria". "Classics" is not about *the*
classics, as in just literature, but rather the entire field of
study about the Greeks and Romans, and in particular focuses on a
specific temple in an isolated part of Greece, its origins,
purpose, uses, etc.
I am also working my way through the dozen or so Great Courses I
have recently bought. In the car, I am listening to "The Joy of
Science" (60 lessons). I have just finished "Foundations of
Western Civilization" on DVD, and am now watching "The History of
Science Antiquity-1700" (36 lessons), to be followed by "The
History of Science 1700-1900" (also 36 lessons).
And then there's BABYLON 5. (I'm in Season 4.) After that, THE
SOPRANOS is waiting in the wings.
All this has cut into my *film* watching. This is a real change in
lifestyle; I find myself weirdly feeling guilty if I don't watch
at least one movie a day. I realize this makes no sense, but over
forty years of dedicated film watching with Mark (dating from when
we got our first VCR) makes it seem like a fixture.
I therefore find myself adding films to my to-watch list and then
eventually realizing that it isn't that I *want* to watch them,
but that I feel that I should.
(Obviously, I am still watching enough to write the mini-review
columns, so I haven't given up entirely.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the
United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome.
Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God
with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
--H. L. Mencken
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