THE MT VOID
01/03/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 27, Whole Number 2361
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 10 (OMNI LOOP, THE WILD ROBOT)
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
COMIN' ROUND ANTARES (to the tune of "Comin' Round the
Mountain") (words by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Double (and Triple) Feature Recommendations (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (A STUDY IN SCARLET) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 10 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
This is the tenth batch of mini-reviews, two science fiction films:
OMNI LOOP (2024) [with SPOILERS]: We meet Zoya in the hospital,
where the doctor is explaining that she has a black hole inside
her which is slowly growing and will kill her in about a week.
(Plot hole #1: Why won't it keep growing and absorb the whole
Earth?)
But Zoya has some magic pills, which when she takes on, she jumps
back to a week earlier. (Plot hole #2: This reeks of "Star Trek"
and "tech-tech-tech".) So the basic plot is GROUNDHOG DAY, but
with a week instead of a day. (It's *not* a plot hole in
GROUNDHOG DAY, because that is a fantasy, not science fiction.)
Zoya finds herself wishing she had made different decisions in her
life and wanting to extend the range of the pills so that she can
go back further. She happens to (literally) run into Paula, who
is working on questions of time at the local community college
(really?) under Zoya's old professor (really?) and they steal the
nanoscopic man that was created when the professor was working on
shrinking people (really?). (This is like THE INCREDIBLE
SHRINKING MAN ... well, sort of.)
Plot hole #3: The pills regenerate, so they never get used up.
Actually, it's not clear why there is more than one pill--Zoya
says taking multiple pills doesn't make a difference.
So they are working to solve the problem of how to increase the
time span. Plot hole #4: Paula claims they have all the time in
the world, but after a week of work, Paula "resets", so Zoya has
to re-convince her and also bring her up to speed each time. Plot
hole #5: How do they keep all the knowledge--which seems to
involve complex equations and diagrams filling a notebook--that
they have gained during reset? How does the notebook with their
work stay in existence? Why is the nanoman still in the lab each
time?
We eventually find out that Zoya found these pills when she was
twelve, and used them to do well in school (after she knew the
answers on a test, she would jump back to take the test again).
And in fact, Zoya did not like the work of science--she liked the
solutions. She claimed her husband disparaged her work and made
her decide to become a wife and mother (and textbook writer)
rather than a research scientist. But we find out that memory is
not reliable as we see the discussion and realize that he was
actually very supportive. So we also learn that basing the
reasons for time travel on one's memory is a risky proposition.
In spite of this, we discover that everyone wants to go back;
everyone has regrets.
At one point Zoya tries to find someone she had worked with before
who turned out to be "successful", and discovers that ultimately
he was not satisfied, and his son did not think his father was a
success in what mattered. The father also seems to have kept
(stolen?) Zoya's work that supposedly Zoya's mother had. Plot
hole #6: How did he get it?
Eventually, Zoya realizes that she is wishing for what the son
discounts as unimportant, but that she has what the son sees as
success. And that she would lose a lot of the good along with the
bad if she is successful.
Or as Billy Rose and Mort Dixon wrote in 1928, "If you want the
rainbow, you must have the rain."
Paula asks Zoya what happens when she loops back, but this assumes
that that particular time line goes on even when she loops back.
This clearly involves some deep discussion of the nature of time.
The casting is a good example of diversity without a sledge
hammer, just as John Carpenter did it forty years ago.
(The title seems to refer to the constant looping Zoya is doing,
and perhaps it does, but the Omni Loop is an actual part of the
Miami Metromover system. However, there is no 1209 University
Drive, Princeton, NJ.) [-ecl]
Released streaming 20 September 2024.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28150132/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/omni_loop>
THE WILD ROBOT (2024): In THE WILD ROBOT, robot Rozzum 7134 is
shipwrecked on an island. (The name is a nod to R.U.R.--"Rossum's
Universal Robots"--by Karel Capek.) Rozzum 7134, or Roz as she(*)
becomes--is a helper robot, designed to complete the tasks she is
given. Without instruction, when she tries to help it doesn't
always work (she thinks the help a beaver needs is to remove the
sticks damming the river). Eventually, she learns the animals'
language through some equivalent of the Universal Translator (and
apparently all animals speak the same language and are mutually
understandable).
After she accidentally kills most of a goose family, she is
imprinted on by the remaining gosling, and then helped in the
requiring mothering by a fox.
The main idea seems to be the concept of family as not necessarily
biological or genetic, but by accidental or purposeful
construction. (We saw the same thing in ICE AGE.) As pointed out
by Caroline Bielak on the podcast "History in Reverse", there is
also a sub-theme of diversity, and how the animals defeat the
robot attackers because they have many different skills and modes
of fighting, while the robots have only one.
(There is also the iconic Dreamscape symbol of a silhouette
against a full moon. This is sort of like how Alfred Hitchcock
had a cameo in all of his films.)
At one point, a character says, "We must become more than we were
programmed to be." This seems to be a rewording of the famous
statement by Rose Sayer in THE AFRICAN QUEEN: "Nature ... is what
we were put in this world to rise above."
There does seem to be a supernatural/religious element in the the
idea that Roz can have her memories erased and yet still remember
things. Caroline suggested that because Roz had rewritten and
overwritten her code, the memory removal might no longer work, but
I am not convinced.)
And [SPOILER] if the animals are all friends, how will the
carnivores survive, and then what will keep the herbivores from
overrunning the resources?
(*) The notion of a gendered robot is peculiar, yet calling Roz
"it" doesn't seem right either. This is yet another reason to
come up with a set of non-binary singular pronouns for sentient
beings. [-ecl]
Released theatrically 27 September 2024.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29623480/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wild_robot>
===================================================================
TOPIC: COMIN' ROUND ANTARES (to the tune of "Comin' Round the
Mountain") (words by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In the process of scanning in old MT VOIDs (from the 1980s!)
I found this filk song in the 11/27/83 issue that I have no memory
of writing:
She'll be comin' round Antares when she comes, [2 times]
She'll be comin' round Antares,
With the payload that she carries.
She'll be comin' round Antares when she comes.
She'll be blasting all her rockets when she comes, [2 times]
She'll be blasting all her rockets,
She'll have space dust in her pockets.
She'll be blasting all her rockets when she comes.
She'll be stopping off at L-5 when she comes, [2 times]
She'll be stopping off at L-5,
With her ion-powered warp drive.
She'll be stopping off at L-5 when she comes.
She'll have tales of alien races when she comes, [2 times]
She'll have tales of alien races,
Distant planets and strange places.
She'll have tales of alien races when she comes.
She's much younger, she will find, when she comes, [2 times]
She's much younger, she will find,
Than the twin she left behind.
She's much younger, she will find, when she comes.
She'll be crossing the ecliptic when she comes, [2 times]
She'll be crossing the ecliptic,
Towards an orbit that's elliptic.
She'll be crossing the ecliptic when she comes.
She will use atomic fission when she comes, [2 times]
She will use atomic fission,
On her interstellar mission.
She will use atomic fission when she comes.
We will kill the old red rooster when she comes, [2 times]
We will kill the old red rooster,
While she refuels her old booster.
We will kill the old red rooster when she comes.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Double (and Triple) Feature Recommendations (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
Triple feature: PSYCHO, "The Making of Psycho" (90-minute extra on
the "Psycho" DVD), and HITCHCOCK (narrative film about the making
of PSYCHO, starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren)
Double feature: REMEMBERING GENE WILDER and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
Double feature: WICKED and THE WIZARD OF OZ.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I don't have as many things to say about A STUDY IN SCARLET by
Arthur Conan Doyle as I did about (for example) "The League of
Red-Headed Gentlemen", but I did notice a few things.
In the beginning, [Doyle as] Watson writes, "[At the fatal battle
of Maiwand] I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which
shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. [In the base
hospital at Peshawar] I was struck down by enteric fever... [After
I recovered] I was despatched accordingly, in the troopship
Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my
health irretrievably ruined... "
Although we occasionally see Watson complain about the shoulder
wound (or sometimes a mysterious leg wound), when he's climbing
over fences to help Holmes burgle a house, or tackling a criminal,
his health hardly seems "irretrievably ruined."
Watson tells Holmes, "I keep a bull pup."
How on earth can Watson have been keeping a bull pup through all
the battles and wounds and enteric fever, not to mention ending up
in a hotel with no permanent place of residence?
Holmes describes himself thusly, "The theories which I have
expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are
really extremely practical -- so practical that I depend upon them
for my bread and cheese. ... I have a trade of my own. I suppose I
am the only one in the world. I'm a consulting detective, if you
can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of
government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows
are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the
right scent."
Holmes claims he is making a living at his consulting detective.
He claims that the government and private detectives bring him
cases they can't solve. But we never see any private detectives
bring him cases, and surely Lestrade, Gregson, Jones, and Mycroft
aren't paying him out of government funds when they ask for his
help. Yes, he gets the occasional payment (such as in "A Scandal
in Bohemia" or "The Adventure of the Priory School"), but that is
a rarity. And a lot of cases seem to come to him directly, making
him basically just another private detective. Well, the best of
them, but still not a new category. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net This country has come to feel the same when Congress
is in session as we do when the baby gets hold of a
hammer. It's just a question of how much damage he
can do with it before we take it away from him.
--Will Rogers
MT VOID, 01/03/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 27, Whole Number 2361