THE MT VOID
02/21/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 34, Whole Number 2368
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 5 (BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE, RALPH BREAKS
THE INTERNET, WICKED: PART I) (film reviews
by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (THE TEAM THAT FOREVER CHANGED
BASEBALL AND AMERICA) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 5 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
Three family films:
BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE (2005): We watched the 2003 film BECAUSE OF
WINN-DIXIE, based on the 2000 novel by Kate DiCamillo. In the
film, Opal asks the librarian for a book to read to Gloria Dump,
an old African American woman who is going blind. The librarian
suggests GONE WITH THE WIND. Really? And Gloria seems to be
enjoying it. All of this is from the book.
But for the twentieth anniversary edition, DeCamillo
decided/realized that GONE WITH THE WIND was a totally
inappropriate book to be read to an African American woman. So
she changed the book to DAVID COPPERFIELD, while retaining the
reference to her ancestor in the Civil War by making it the book
he had carried with him through the war.
One can claim books should be cleaned up of racism, sexism, etc.,
but when it is the author initiating the changes the question is
more complicated. No one seems to object to non-fiction books
having a second edition with changes, corrections, and updates.
(Indeed, sometimes second editions are almost total rewrites.)
And apparently there were not major objections when Larry Niven
corrected the error about the Earth's rotation in the first
edition of RINGWORLD.
I doubt that even most of those who object to this change would
suggest that the Nancy Drew novel featuring the Ku Klux Klan
should be reprinted. (That title, "Red Gate Farm", was re-issued,
but with an entirely different story.) [-ecl]
Released theatrically 18 February 2005.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317132/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/because_of_winndixie>
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (2018): The story is "meh", but the
references are what you should watch the movie for. I'm a bit
surprised Disney let them make fun of the whole "Princess" trope,
and all the ways that all the Princesses are alike. (Although
there is some attempt to subvert the stereotypes as well.) One
definitely hets the feeling that Vanellope is far more interesting
than any of the Princesses.
The depiction of the Internet is also interesting, though it is
not clear why some entities retain their real names, and other are
fictional. Maybe it's that the fictional ones are acting in
clearly unscrupulous ways, or serve as competitors to the real
entities. [-ecl]
Released theatrically 21 November 2018.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5848272/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ralph_breaks_the_internet>
WICKED: PART I (2024): Apparently, multi-part movies have become a
thing. I don't mean movies and their sequels: each of the
"Godfather" movies had a beginning, a middle, and an end, with no
cliffhangers to be resolved in the next film. No, I mean the
trend Peter Jackson started with "The Lord of the Rings". This
was a movie based on a very long work, and even with three movies,
there still had to be things left out.
But then Jackson decided he should do THE HOBBIT as three movies
because, well, he could. This was a mistake, and in fact things
had to be added. But not all directors got the message, so we
have HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS (Parts 1 and 2), MISSION
IMPOSSIBLE--DEAD RECKONING (Parts 1 and 2), DUNE (Parts 1 and 2),
and now WICKED (Part 1).
What makes this even more like THE HOBBIT is that the two parts of
WICKED are based on a stage play that is under three hours long,
while WICKED PART 1 is already two hours and forty minutes long by
itself.
(WICKED the stage musical was in turn based on the book WICKED by
Gregory Maguire, which itself spawned an entire sub-genre, with
seven more books in the "Wicked" universe, and at least another
half dozen revisionist retellings of other fairy stories.)
Of the film itself, I have to say the songs did nothing for me and
the dancing seemed far more free-form than what I prefer, but the
art direction and set design were pretty amazing. [-ecl]
Released theatrically 22 November 2024.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262426/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wicked_2024>
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I am reading THE TEAM THAT FOREVER CHANGED BASEBALL AND AMERICA:
THE 1947 BROOKLYN DODGERS edited by Lyle Spatz (University of
Nebraska Press, ISBN 978-0-8032-3992-0), having wondered after
seeing "42" how much of it was accurate. THE TEAM THAT FOREVER
CHANGED BASEBALL AND AMERICA, however, gave so much detail, that
filtering it was almost impossible. There was a biography for
every player on the roster, some only a few pages, but the ones
for those with longer careers much longer. The problem is that so
much of it deals with baseball.
Well, okay, it *is* a book about a baseball team and a baseball
season, but I was hoping for more on the "changed America" part.
There were interesting tidbits: African Americans were asked not
to make too big a thing of Jackie Robinson being the first African
American in the major leagues since 1884, to avoid encouraging a
white backlash. The Dodgers moved their spring training from
their previous base in Florida to Cuba, where Black players were
nothing unusual. And so on.
If you are interested in the biographies of the whole team, even
people you never heard about before, and a description of every
game (in the "Timelines" chapters), this is the book for you. But
if you want more commentary on the societal aspects, you probably
should look elsewhere. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
--Decouvertes
MT VOID, 02/21/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 34, Whole Number 2368