Aucbvax.1642
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!mhtsa!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI
Fri Jun 12 05:31:29 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #148
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Friday, 12 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 148
Today's Topics:
SF Movies - Capsule Movie Reviews & Raiders of the Lost Ark,
SF Books - Fantasticats, SF Topics - Science in Science Fiction &
Children's TV (Dodo the Kid from Outer Space and
Beanie's Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 2133-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
Subject: Capsule Movie Reviews
By Chicago Sun-Times Reviews
(c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
''Clash of the Titans''-Laurence Olivier plays Zeus in this
spectacular fantasy. Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Ursula Andress and
Susan Fleetwood also star. Rated PG.
''Outland''-''High Noon'' on the moon, this uncompromising
science-fiction thriller stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances
Sternhagen. Rated PG. 3 stars.
''Raiders of the Lost Ark''-Harrison Ford stars as an adventurer
looking for the Ark of the Covenant in this new George Lucas
production, directed by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG.
''Screamers''-Science-fiction thriller about a mad scientist on a
remote island. Barbara Bach, Joseph Cotten and Mel Ferrer star.
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 1158-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: RotLA, another view
We had a sneak preview of Raiders of the Lost Ark here a little while
ago. As others have said, it's non-stop slam-bang action. I think I
empathized too much with the villains, though. In one scene a baddie
is pounding the hell out of Indiana Jones, the hero, when he gets
caught in an airplane propeller and chopped to bits. We're meant to
take a gruesome delight in his destruction, but I felt nauseated.
Five minutes before this guy was just moseying along and now his
brains are all over the pavement. In "Star Wars" you had (literally)
faceless enemies, and it didn't matter so much. They were just robot
dolls to knock down. Here they scream when killed. It's getting
tough, I know, to find sufficiently unsympathetic bad guys. Nazis are
about as close as you can get in modern times. You can't even use
yelling savages anymore; in an early part of the movie they make it
clear that the yelling savages pursuing our hero have been duped by
the fiendish French archaeologist. Even Nazis, though, have wrinkles
and bald spots, and most of them are just doing their job. If they
become more than just tenpins to be knocked out of our hero's way,
then you start to feel it when they get run over by trucks or pushed
off cliffs.
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 2138-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark
[ The following review of Raiders of the Lost Ark is not quite a
spoiler, although it is comprehensive. Note that this movie
opens today throughout the nation. -- Jim ]
By VINCENT CANBY
c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service
NEW YORK - From the first moments, when the star-circled mountain
in the Paramount Pictures logo fades into a similarly shaped,
fog-shrouded Andean peak, where who knows what awful things are about
to happen, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' is off and running at a
breakneck pace that simply won't stop until the final shot, an ironic
epilogue that recalls nothing less than ''Citizen Kane.'' That,
however, is the only high-toned reference in a movie that otherwise
devotes itself exclusively to the glorious days of the B-picture.
To get to the point immediately, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' is
one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and stylish American
adventure movies ever made. It is an homage to old-time movie serials
and back-lot cheapies that transcends its inspirations to become, in
effect, the movie we saw in our imaginations as we watched, say,
Buster Crabbe in ''Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars'' or in Sam Katzman's
''Jungle Jim'' movies.
The film is the result of the particularly happy collaboration
between Steven Spielberg, its director, and George Lucas, who is one
of its executive producers and who, with Philip Kaufman, wrote the
original story on which Lawrence Kasdan's screenplay is based.
As Lucas's ''Star Wars'' helped itself to all sorts of myths, folk
tales and characters from children's fiction and fused them into a
work of high originality, and as Spielberg's ''Close Encounters of the
Third Kind'' made sweetly benign a kind of science-fiction film that
had turned paranoid, ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' refines its tacky
source materials into a movie that evokes memories of movie-going of
an earlier era but that possesses its own, far more rare sensibility.
The film is about Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), a two-fisted
professor of archaeology with a knack for landing in tight situations
in some of the earth's more exotic corners, and his sometimes
girlfriend Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the daughter of a
world-famous archeologist and who, when we first meet her, is running
a lowdown bar in remotest Nepal. Just how Marion has come to be
running a gin mill in Nepal is never explained, but ''Raiders of the
Lost Ark'' is great fun as much for the things it explains as for the
explanations it withholds.
The time is 1936, which not only attaches ''Raiders of the Lost
Ark'' to the films it remembers but also makes possible its fondly
lunatic plot, which is about the attempts of Indiana Jones and Marion,
at the behest of the United States government, to find the lost Ark of
the Covenant before a team of Nazi archeologists can lay their hands
on it.
Hitler, who is described as being obsessed with the occult, is
hellbent on finding the Ark, which once contained the Ten Commandments
as handed down to Moses on their originally inscribed tablets. The Ark
is reported variously (1) to confer magical powers on the person who
possesses it, (2) to be ''something that man was not meant to
disturb,'' being ''not of this world'' and, more picturesquely, (3) as
''a radio for speaking to God.'' No wonder Indiana and Marion risk
life and limb to prevent the Ark from finding its way to Berlin!
After their initial reconciliation in Nepal, following Indiana's
narrow escape from death in the Andes, Indiana and Marion fly on to
Egypt where there is every reason to believe the Nazis are about to
uncover the Ark in a long-buried temple called the Well of Souls.
Even before they reach the actual dig, however, there are fearsome
obstacles to be overcome in Cairo, including attempted assassinations,
a successful kidnapping and a fate worse than death for Marion at the
hands of a renegade French archaeologist named Belloq (Paul Freeman).
More of the plot you should not know, though it gives nothing away
to reveal that Indiana and Marion, either singly or together, must
face such tests of their endurance as confinement in an ancient tomb
with thousands of asps and cobras, an attack by poisoned darts, a
plate of poisoned dates, torture with a red-hot poker, being tied up
in a vehicle that explodes before our very eyes and a superchase in
which Indiana, on horseback, attempts to catch a Nazi truck convoy
carrying the newly found lost Ark to Cairo for transshipment to
Berlin.
The film's climax is almost as dazzling a display as the one that
brings ''Close Encounters'' to its climax.
Harrison and Miss Allen are an endearingly resilient, resourceful
couple, he with his square jaw, his eyes that can apparently see out
of the back of his head and his ever-present fedora, and she with her
Brooke Adams-Margot Kidder beauty, her ability to outdrink, shot glass
for shot glass, Nepal's toughest barflies, her ever-ready sarcasm and
her ability to screech without losing her poise.
Spielberg has also managed to make a movie that looks like a
billion dollars (it was filmed in, among other places, Tunisia,
France, England and Hawaii) yet still suggests the sort of production
shortcuts we associate with old B-movies. The Cairo we see on the
screen is obviously a North African city but, also obviously, it's not
Cairo. There's not a pyramid in sight. My one quibble with Spielberg
is that he didn't insert a familiar, preferably unmatching stock shot
of Cairo into the scene to make sure we got the point. I suppose, we
can't have everything.
''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' which has been rated PG (''Parental
Guidance Suggested''), includes virtually nonstop action that involves
a lot of violence, but this is less horrifying than scary in a most
pleasurable way.
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 11:21:41-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: cats
The Flat Cats are indeed Heinlein, and appear in his novel \\The
Rolling Stones//, which is about a couple of brother child geniuses
living in Luna who earn enough credits to buy a spaceship (!!!), with
the avowed intention of becoming interplanetary merchants. Their
parents (grandmother is Hazel Stone, first mentioned in Future History
stories as the chief of Baker Street Irregulars in \\The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress//) decide this is not a good idea, so get talked into
underwriting the whole venture and coming along themselves in
exploration of outer Solar System.
Flat cats are not properly cats, but literary ancestors of
Tribbles. Feed a flat cat and you get more flat cats. Starve a flat
cat and keep it at about 50 degrees Kelvin (their normal environment
is vacuum) and it estivates or something...but who would want to
starve such a harmless, friendly beast? Answer: a family in a
spaceship with a finite food supply and an exponentially growing flat
cat supply.
[ Thanks also to Will Martin (WMARTIN at OFFICE-3) for identifying
the flat cats. -- Jim ]
As for cat-tails, they are not inhabitants of the Ringworld, but
instead of Earth Plus 6 Million (the one that goes around Jupiter) in
Niven's \\A World Out of Time//. They were cats which had been
genetically engineered to have no legs and 3-foot-long tails.
[ Thanks also to Ken Haase <KWH AT MIT-AI> for identifying the
cat-tails as belonging to \\A World Out of Time//. -- Jim ]
------------------------------
From: MJL@MIT-MC
Date: 06/11/81 12:49:29
Cats? How about the mutant Cat-People of PJ Farmer's THE STONE GOD
AWAKENS? (Won't say anything about the story, it'd be a spoiler...)
/Mijjil
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 09:50:51-PDT
From: E.jeffc at Berkeley
Subject: No science in science fiction ?
I ended the last letter be stating that the science fiction of H.G.
Wells encouraged anti-scientific thought. Once you think about the
plots of his books, it becomes rather obvious.
The Time Machine: the evil Morlocks have all the technology, and it's
very obvious as to whom the reader's sympathies are to belong to. It
was science which destroyed the world in the first place, and it was
science which was holding the beautiful Eloy prisoners of the evil
Morlocks.
The War of the Worlds: Again, the evil Martians have all the
technology on their side. After destroying the world and making man
captive, the Martians are defeated by bacteria, NOT BY MAN. Nothing
man could do would get rid of them, man had no control whatsoever. It
was only by the unforseeable intervention of disease which freed man.
It is a common theme throughout Well's books that technology causes
some disaster, and then the world is set straight again at the end
when all science is put into the control of a few select people, who
could insure that science will not be "misused" again and therefore
cause another disaster. In short, Wells had the mentality of an
environmentallist, not a scientist! And yet his books are considered
science fiction classics!!!
--------------------
If science fiction in its written form has some problems, these are
nothing when compared to the film media. Here I will attack two very
popular science fiction films:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Isaac Asmiov is well known for
having declared in his editorials that there is no science in this
movie. That is absolutely correct, but the real danger of this film
is even more ghastly. Consider what the main characters go through in
the film. They constantly hear the musical notes, they have an
obsession with this mountain, so strong an obsession, in fact, that
one man builds a model of the mountain in his living room! In the
process, he drives his wife away. Any psychologist can tell you that
these are the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, and yet the movie
presents these things as necessary for the obtainment of the "higher
truth"!!!!! This movie doesn't make science popular with the public,
nor does it give the public an idea what science is, but it does tell
the public that it's OK to have nervous breakdown, because this is the
way to find the higher truth in the universe.
Star Wars: Here I add my few hundred bytes to the few hundred thousand
already said. (Pay attention, George Lucas, if you are reading this.)
On the whole, Star Wars is a simple action film, filled with the
typical SF gadgetry. In this fashion it is no worse than the written
form. However, there is the question of the Force. I cannot think of
anything more anti-scientific than the Force. It follows no rules
that can be discerned, it can do anything, and there is an obvious
connection between the Force, ESP, and mysticism in general.
--------------------
Science fact television shows also are guilt of this gross distortion
of science, and I will continue with that story in another letter
tomorrow.
Jeff
------------------------------
Date: 11 June 1981 19:12 edt
From: Margolin.PDO at MIT-Multics
Subject: Dodo
Yes, I remember "Dodo, the Kid from Outer Space". I don't remember
very much, and I'm surprised that Lauren has never heard of it. The
most I remember is the beginning of the theme song:
Dodo, the kid from outer space,
Dodo, he can go anyplace,
With antennas on his ears,
Propellers on his feet,
.
.
.
That's as far as my memory goes. While this is playing, he is zipping
all over the place. Much of the theme of the show was him trying to
get accustomed to earthly customs (much as in "Mork and Mindy"), while
not getting caught by the authorities.
barmar
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 1713-PDT
From: Lynn Gold <G.FIGMO AT SU-SCORE>
Subject: Beany and Cecil
Funny...according to Stan Freberg (who created the series), it was
just a children's puppet show back in the '40's which later became an
animated feature. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Freberg,
he has released many comedy albums and produced numerous commercials,
such as Sunsweet's "campaign" to remove wrinkles from prunes and more
recently a bunch for Jeno's Pizzas and a Campbell Soup commercial
which had Ann Miller tap dancing on a can of soup.)
While I'm on the topic of commercials, does anyone out there know the
name of the girl who appeared in the Choo-Choo Charlie commercials for
Good-n-Plenty?
--Lynn
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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