THE MT VOID
01/31/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 31, Whole Number 2365
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in February
(comments by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
FRANKENSTEIN (pointer to article)
Octavia Butler and Los Angeles (pointer to article)
This Week's Reading (THE GATHERING STORM) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
(there will be no February meeting)
March 6, 2025: STAR WARS - A NEW HOPE (1977)
play: "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope"
(2013) by Ian Doescher
audio/text:libby: <
https://tinyurl.com/doescher-1>
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in February
(comments by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Okay, we are into the "31 Days of Oscar", so you can't throw a
dart at the schedule without hitting something worth watching.
Okay, that's an exaggeration--some of the older films, or those
whose nominations were in the more technical aspects, are more
there as filler. But seriously. if there are any films you've
heard of but haven't seen, now's the time.
(To keep to the "31 Days of Oscar" name, TCM is letting it run
three days into March as well as all of February. They seemed to
have lumped a lot of the science fiction and fantasy into the last
day.)
We suppose one lesser-known film to recommend would be BABETTE'S
FEAST (1987). This may well be the first film that seduces the
viewer with its photography of food. (We're sure people will tell
us of earlier ones.) It may not have led to LIKE WATER FOR
CHOCOLATE (1992), THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993), EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN
(1994), BIG NIGHT (1996), CHOCOLAT (2001), but it almost
definitely influenced them.
The basic plot is that Babette, a refugee from Paris, arrives at a
Danish village. She works for room and board as a cook and
housekeeper for two religious sisters, and gradually improves
their abstemious meals. And when she wins 10,000 francs on a
lottery ticket, she offers to make the villagers a real French
dinner.
At the time the release of BABETTE'S FEAST, New York City
restaurants offered a dinner to go with viewing it, but it was
about $100 a plate ($275 a plate in 2024 dollars). Maybe the
thing to do if you're on a budget is to watch TAMPOPO (1985),
which predated BABETTE'S FEAST by a couple of years, and then get
a bowl of ramen, which is about $15 for the most expensive ramen
at Rai Rai Ramen in East Brunswick, and about twice that in New
York.
But you can still watch BABETTE'S FEAST. [-mrl/ecl]
[BABETTE'S FEAST (1987), Monday, February 17, 2:00 PM]
For those in the New York area, PBS (Channel Thirteen) is running
several science fiction films:
[GALAXY QUEST (1999), Saturday, February 86, 9:00 PM]
["Sigourney Weaver: The Most Iconic Action Heroine", Saturday,
February 6, 10:50 PM]
[SPACEBALLS (1987), Saturday, February 15, 9:00 PM]
[""Mel Brooks: The Genius Entertainer"", Saturday, February 13,
10:45 PM]
[WARGAMES (1983)), Saturday, February 13, 10:50 PM]
Other films of interest on TCM:
SATURDAY, February 1
9:45 AM The Great Dictator (1940)
MONDAY, February 3
4:00 PM Brigadoon (1954)
TUESDAY, February 4
8:00 PM Harvey (1950)
WEDNESDAY, February 5
2:45 AM Being There (1979)
FRIDAY, February 7
12:45 AM Ship of Fools (1965)
12:30 PM Cabin in the Sky (1943)
SUNDAY, February 9
2:45 PM Gigi (1958)
MONDAY, February 10
10:00 AM The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
TUESDAY, February 11
3:45 AM The Bad Seed (1956)
WEDNESDAY, February 12
10:15 AM Camelot (1967)
THURSDAY, February 13
4:15 AM Cries and Whispers (1972)
10:00 AM The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
SATURDAY, February 15
4:45 PM Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
SUNDAY, February 16
5:30 AM A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
4:00 PM Ben-Hur (1959)
TUESDAY, February 18
8:30 AM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
SUNDAY, February 23
10:30 PM The China Syndrome (1979)
MONDAY, February 24
12:45 AM Network (1976)
TUESDAY, February 25
7:30 AM Great Expectations (1946)
FRIDAY, February 28
9:00 AM The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
11:30 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
MONDAY, March 3
8:00 AM Tom Thumb (1958)
9:45 AM 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)
2:00 PM The Time Machine (1960)
3:45 PM Mighty Joe Young (1949)
5:30 PM 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
===================================================================
TOPIC: FRANKENSTEIN (pointer to article)
From The Guardian:
<
https://tinyurl.com/mtvoid-shelley-suicide>
Frankenstein inspired by suicide of Mary Shelley’s half-sister,
book reveals
New collection of author’s diary entries provides tragic insight
"Frankenstein’s monster, as horror fans know, did not really spark
into life with a bolt of lightning, but was born inside the mind
of Mary Shelley during a dreary holiday on a mountainside above
Geneva. The inspiration came as volcanic ash clouds unexpectedly
blocked out the sun that summer of 1816 and she and her friends,
including the infamous, 'bad boy' poets Lord Byron and Percy
Bysshe Shelley, competed to tell scary stories.
"But a new collection of the young author's personal diary
entries, out in March, provides strong evidence that, although the
stay in the Alps set the grim mood of her novel, her imagination
was ignited by something personal and much closer to home. ..."
===================================================================
TOPIC: Octavia Butler and Los Angeles (pointer to article)
From the New York Times:
<
https://tinyurl.com/mtvoid-octavia-butler>
As California Burns, ‘Octavia Tried to Tell Us’ Has New Meaning
The phrase, which gained momentum in 2020, has resurfaced, in part
because it can seem like Octavia Butler was more than a fiction
writer.
"In the wake of the devastating fires in Los Angeles, many people
are referencing the work of the science fiction writer Octavia
Butler. Butler, who grew up in Pasadena, was the daughter of a
housekeeper and a father who was a shoeshiner. She went on to
become the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur
'genius' award. Her book 'Parable of the Sower,' published in
1993, paints a picture of a California ravished by the effects of
climate change, income inequality, political divisiveness and
centers on a young woman struggling to find faith and the
community to build a new future.
"The phrase 'Octavia tried to tell us,' which began to gain
momentum in 2020 during the pandemic, has once again resurfaced,
in part because Butler studied science and history so deeply. The
accuracy with which she read the shifts in America can, at times,
seem eerily prophetic. One entry in 'Parable of the Sower,' which
is structured as a journal, dated on 'February 1, 2025' begins,
'We had a fire today.' It goes on to describe how the fear of
fires plague Robledo, a fictional town that feels much like
Altadena, a haven for the Black middle class for more than 50
years, where Butler lived in the late '90s. ..."
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I finished THE GATHERING STORM by Sir Winston Churchill (Harper,
ISBN 978-0-395-41055-4), which is the first volume of his
six-volume history of World War II, called collectively THE SECOND
WORLD WAR. I say "six-volume" but it also appeared in a
twelve-volume set (each volume in the six-volume set is actually
labeled internally as two "books"), a four-volume set (I assume
with three "books" in each), and a one-volume abridgment. Given
that the whole work is 1,6000,000 words (not counting appendices),
many may opt for the abridgment. (By comparison, Gibbon's HISTORY
OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE is "only" about
1,162,000 words, and has no appendices.)
Several things need to be said about this work as caveats to the
reader. While most people agree that Churchill could craft prose,
there is more to history than that. It is not that he is grossly
inaccurate, but first of all, the work concentrates on Britain's
role in the war, with other countries' participation as an
adjunct. While I haven't gotten far enough into the volumes to be
sure, I suspect that means the Eastern Front and the Soviet
Union's participation is not covered as fully as it should be, nor
events in China. (I am not sure how the rest of the
"Empire/Commonwealth", e.g., Australia, Singapore, and so on, will
fare.)
The second caveat is that Churchill is basically making himself
the center of attention, and this results in more focus on what he
was personally involved in. This is understandable for an
autobiography, but less so for what is presented as a history.
The third caveat is that when Churchill wrote this right after
World War II, much information was still classified. For example,
he could say nothing about code-breaking at Bletchley Park.
The result is that in spite of its size, this is not an exhaustive
history of World War II. Then again, it's not clear that any one
person, or even group of people, would write such a thing.
Wikipedia merely says that "thousands" of books have been written
about World War II, and I think that may be only in English.
And one reason that the work is so long is that Churchill included
a huge number of already-composed sections: speeches, letters,
reports, and so on. Some of these might have been better served
by a summary, and in fact, if he seemed to have summarized the
contents in introducing one, I often skipped over it, or at least
only skimmed it.
It remains to be seen whether I still "stay the course." In many
ways, the examination of the causes of the war, and the events
leading up to it, are more interesting (to me, anyway) than long
descriptions of troop movements. For now, I am taking a break
from Churchill and reading some of the books I bought a few months
ago at Second Time Books, as they are probably starting to feel
neglected and that I have forgotten them. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net Every day you may make progress. Every step may be
fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an
ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path.
You know you will never get to the end of the journey.
But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the
joy and glory of the climb.
--Sir Winston Churchill
MT VOID, 01/31/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 31, Whole Number 2365