February 2024 Reading Summary

 Not many books were read, but two of them were epic novels.  One of them required 9 days!  I usually have about 2 to 2 1/2 hours per day to read, with sometimes an extra hour on Sundays, when I often don't practice piano.  I will begin with my regular five remaining Avon/Equinox authors, though this month I read Silverberg's last big novel.  I have one large volume of his short stories remaining, and then I'm in to a few of his reissued pulp trash novels from early days.  So Silverberg will likely be wrapped up by summer.  Tubb and Bulmer will go on for years yet, as will Moorcock.  And I still have at least ten more Malzberg pulp crime novels remaining.

 

First published as a whole in 2003, the 449 page Roma Eterna is historical fantasy fiction, though it can't really be called a novel.  At least not in the traditional sense of that term.  Silverberg postulates that the Roman Empire managed to survive, rather than fall apart as it did.  Each chapter carefully explains how it managed to overcome some of its biggest obstacles, such as the rise of Christianity, the northern barbarian invasions, and the rise of Islam.  The chapters were mostly published separately, then combined to make this one long story.  It's always  interesting to think how certain trivial events might have altered history if they had not happened, and this book is full of such ideas.  I must admit that more than a few places were pretty boring to read, unless readers are fans of Roman history.  I'm sure I missed many small connections, though I easily got the big picture.  Again there is a great shortage of female characters.  the ones that do appear seem to be there mostly to satisfy males for companionship and pleasure.  Though hardly my favourite book by the author, it is a solid piece of writing by a man who was quite obsessed with much of history during his creative lifetime.

It felt good to jump into an easily readable novel by Bulmer, the 15th Dray Prescott one called Secret Scorpio.  Though it many ways it's just more of the same, he is a good enough author not to repeat himself too often, and each volume adds something new.  In fact, Bulmer is a terrific writer, with a great sense of pacing and an ever lurking sense of humour.  Many of these stories rise well above the usual pulp level encountered in so many books from this time.  The guy was a veritable work horse, with a very demanding publishing schedule.  Secret Scorpio introduces a fake religion, one promising riches and rewards in this life, as well as in the afterlife.  Many people can not resist such promises, it would seem.  Even people who should know better.  For once, the Emperor, whom Dray has insulted and thus has banished him from the main city, is ahead of Dray.  He does have his finger on the pulse of his people, it would seem.  Dray will have to face him again in the next book.  They do not like one another very much, and Delia, the Emperor's daughter and Dray's wife, is caught between the two men.  A good addition to the series.

 

Tubb's 2nd Cap Kennedy book, by contrast, seems to rehash many of the tales already told by this prolific pulp master.  Cap ends up becoming a mining slave, and must orchestrate a break out before he can set things to right.  A brutal race of reptilian people are being led by a particularly greedy member of their race, though he in turn is being tricked out of his mining fortune by two humanoids.  In addition to becoming a slave, Cap also has to fight in the arena.  How many times has this already happened in a story by Tubb?  The title is there to attract boys to the genre, but there are no female slaves.  Sorry, boys.  There is only one woman in the story, and she is there very briefly.  This is a man's world.  Girls keep out.  Oh, there is also a giant worm burrowing deep in the planetoid being mined.  We have to have a giant underground worm.  No marks for originality here.  We've read it before, both in single novels by Tubb and in his Dumarest series.  I hope the other books in this series can raise themselves a bit higher.

 

On to Michael Moorcock and the 2nd of his Colonel Pyat novels, called The Laughter of Carthage.  The first book dealt with Russia and Ukraine in the years of the Revolution, roughly 1917-20.  At the conclusion, Pyat was on a boat heading for Constantinople.  It is a roundabout journey, but he makes it.  His adventures in and around the city eventually involve him in the Greek and Turkish war, revealing how the Greeks were betrayed by the Americans and British during their failed attempt at conquering the Islamic nation.  After a lengthy stay, in which he more or less adopts a 13 year old girl as his lover, daughter, and bride to be, they both head to Rome, and then on to Paris.  Like its predecessor, it is a very long book and covers a lot of ground.  Including the introduction we are looking at around 534 pages.  In some ways this story is as engaging as the first one, but in other ways it isn't.  Pyat's madness becomes much more evident in this volume, and his asides and comments that interrupt the narrative flow grow longer and more manic.  The story itself, when it is told, is as fascinating as the first book.  Another thing that makes this volume a bit less fun to read is the amount of untranslated foreign language rants and sentences that occupy the paragraphs.  French, German, Russian, and possibly other languages are used, and most readers will have no idea what they say.

 

While Pyat may be a fictional character, he is situated in the true happenings of the 1910s and the 1920s.  He meets many real characters from the time, and sometimes becomes involved in events that actually occurred.  This is not historical fiction at all, but a unique way of telling the complicated story of just what was going on in Europe at the time.  While no one person could possibly understand all of it, Pyat has opinions on just about everything.  His anti-Semitism and general racism become even more outlandish.  He supports the cause of the white (male) protestant, and is against the pope and all that Catholicism stands for.  And don't get him started on Islam.  So we are not too surprised when this Pyat character, who loves D. W. Griffith and all that his films stand for, supports the work of the Klan once he arrives in the US.  At first I wasn't thrilled with the American portion of the book, but by waiting patiently for several pages the story became completely fascinating again.  Despite its great length, this is a series worth reading.  at the conclusion of book 2 Pyat is about 22 or 23 years of age and about to be reunited with the love of his life once again, after a lengthy interval.  After a suitable break, I will look forward to reading the 3rd book.

 

Burt Wulf lands in Vegas with a bang in Desert Stalker, a 1973 thriller that is the 4th in a series.  Malzberg hit his stride in this series at least one book back, and the roller coaster life of this lone vigilante keeps the pace moving forward.  Though all the books are loosely connected, they are not tied down to the same characters.  In fact, most of the main characters are dead by the end of each novel in which they appear.  This time Wulf takes on the Vegas racket, and takes a hotel and its crooked proprietor hostage.  Just when it seems like the story will focus around a kind of unusual hostage situation, it explodes into a major pulp fiction action adventure tale.  Again the car chase is unique, and the way it is resolved.  Hollywood seems to know only one type of car chases; Malzberg is way ahead of them.  At one point we see a bit of life come back into Wulf, who has been essentially a killing machine since the overdose death of his new York girlfriend.  He has another female friend from two books ago, whom he met in San Francisco and managed to pull away from drugs.  He calls her in a moment of desperation, badly needing to talk to someone.   And so we are confronted with at least a trace of humanity reawakening in the man.  There are 14 books in the series.

 

Moving on to my free reading for the month, I managed to get through [ ] books.  The first one is called Seven Brief Lessons In Physics, by Carlo Rovelli, a book suitable for non-science majors to help them understand the modern world.  Beginning with simple but very effective explanations of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, the book (really it's barely a novella) moves outward to cosmology and inward to atoms and electrons.  It succinctly summarizes our knowledge to date in the most simple terms I have ever come across.  The book would be suitable for Gr. 11 Physics students, or anyone who has even a passing interest in what has been going on for the past hundred years or so regarding our material world.

 A simple and easy to understand primer on the state of modern physics.

 

Next came Clark Ashton Smith's 2nd collection of shorter tales, called Out of Space and Time.  It was published in 1942, though Smith had pretty much done with writing by 1936.  Heavily influenced by Poe, he wrote in the tradition of Lovecraft, Dunsany, and Robert E. Howard.  But he definitely outclassed those latter writers, except for Dunsany.  Smith's horror fantasy stories are unique in the literature, and well worth seeking out.  This collection has 20 tales.  One of them, "The City of the Singing Flame," is given in its early shorter version and in its revised novella version.  I read the novella version.  A man steps through a kind of dimensional warp in time and space and emerges in a fantastic landscape, with a city in the distance that sings like a siren to any who hear.  Filled with good descriptions of strange people, places, music, and architecture, it ends with the complete destruction of what should have been the gate to Utopia.  I can see the early stories of Jack Williamson being heavily influenced be Smith's writing to mention A. Merritt.  "The Second Internment" is straight out of Poe's stories, as a man who fears premature burial has it happen to him not once, but twice.  The description of him suffering inside the coffin is true horror writing at its finest.  "The Chain of Aforgorman" is an Orientalist horror/fantasy tale about a man who uses a rare drug to achieve his goal of reading from a forbidden text.  Guess where it gets him?  Not to heaven, at any rate.    "The Unchartered Isle" is a shipwreck fantasy, about a man who encounters some very strange humans where he ends up landing.  Though he leaves with proof of his strange adventure, still no one believes him. 

 

Once we get to the Zothique stories, we have come upon some of the finest fantasy horror fiction to have ever been penned. "The Dark Eidolon" is a prime example of Smith's ability to create a kind of fiction that has never been surpassed, even by Fritz Leiber.  A vengeful and powerful wizard takes revenge of the cruel and selfish king that once wronged him.  Though the wizard does take his revenge, despite dire warnings from his patron evil god, a few unexpected turns make his revenge far from satisfying.  Great stuff!

 

Original cover jacket for first edition by Hannes Bok.  Arkam House was the publisher. 

 

Another tale from the continent of Zothique is "The Lost Hieroglyph," where a hapless 2nd rate astrologer takes his final long and rather complicated journey into the hereafter.  One thing (of many) that I like about Smith's writing is that his endings are often unexpected and unusually harsh at times.  Assuming a certain ending, the reader is likely to be surprised.  "Sadastor" is very much in the tradition of Lord Dunsany, a short piece that is mostly descriptive.  "Oh," says one creature to another, "so you think you are woeful.  Well, wait till you hear my story...".

Smith is again at his very best in the relatively short "The Death of Ilalotha."  A handmaiden to the Queen, both these women are in love with the same man.  He flees for a week to recuperate.  It is the hand maiden whom he loves, and is at a loss at what to do.  When he returns he finds Ilalotha dead, as well as the King.  A 3-day orgy and drunken feast is just ending, apparently the way funerals are run in this kingdom.  Again there is a truly wonderful ending, as readers expect something quite different.  A real treat to read!  By comparison, "The Return of the Sorcerer" is pretty much pure Lovecraft, and nowhere near as good.  Twin brother sorcerers fall out and one kills the other.  The dead one comes back for some revenge.  But he has been cut up into pieces, which have been buried separately.  So it takes him some time to get his act together, so to speak.

"The Testament of Athammaus" shows a humourous side to Smith.  A city's axeman tells the tale of a criminal whose head would not stay attached to his body.  Each time the man reappears from his grave, the neck area becomes more deformed, until at last his head comes back attached at his chest.  Needless to say, the citizens are quick to abandon the city after the third reincarnation.  Athammaus is the last to leave.  He now has the same job in a different city.  Another somewhat light-hearted tale is "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan."  Avoosl is a money lender, and somewhat on the greedy side.  After refusing to give pitiful beggar a coin, something that always obdes ill in a Smith story,  the beggar predicts an unholy death for the man.  One day a thief comes to Avoosl, selling him two beautiful emeralds.  But the emeralds are called back to their owner, and Avoosl follows them, not wanting to lose their investment.  He discovers a veritable Aladdin's cave of jewels, and literally bathes in them.  However, he soon meets the even greedier owner of the jewels.  "Ubbo Sathla" concerns a jewel found by a man in a London antique shop.  Could it possibly be the jewel that old texts say was once owned by a powerful wizard eons ago?  Why of course it is!  And by staring into it, the new owner of the jewel gets to meet his ancestors from way back.

The next story is a SF novelette called "The Monster of the Prophecy."  A down on his luck London poet contemplates jumping into the Thames one night.  He is interrupted by a man who tells him that he is an alien from the Antares system, and that he wants to bring back a human with him to help fulfill a prophecy.  Off they go, and a large part of the story is a description of the city state where the alien, having timed his appearance with the strange man from Earth (the people from the Antares system have three legs and five arms and three eyes), is able to claim leadership over the people.  But things don't go smoothly for either the new leader or the man from Earth.  A decent enough story, but not the kind that Smith excels at.  For that we turn to the final longer tale, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis."  Forget "Alien."  For a really good SF/horror story, look no further than this tale of a group of Martian archaeologists researching a 40,000 city on Mars.  Like many Martian cities, this one has a vast underground component. What a great film this would make!  Though the ancient city dwellers of Yoh-Vombis are long gone, there is still a very nasty lifeform dwelling down there beneath the old city.  Classic Smith story telling!

Next up was Solaris, the 1961 novel by Stanislav Lem.  Unlike the two movies I have seen loosely based on the book, the novel is about the planet Solaris.  As Lem himself stated, "If I wanted to write a romance, I would have called it "Love In Outer Space."  Two quotes by Dr. Snaut early on clarify things nicely.  "We don't need other worlds--we need mirrors."  In other words, humans are a long way from claiming to be ready to visit other planets and to understand them.  And then, "We are unlikely to learn anything about it [the planet Solaris], but maybe about ourselves.

This is hardly the first great alien contact story I have read.  There are excellent ones by many of the Avon/Equinox authors, such as The Man In the Maze by Robert Silverberg, and The Shores of Another Sea and Unearthly Neighbours by Chad Oliver, to name only three.  But Solaris is different in many ways.  For one thing, humans have already been studying the great ocean planet for decades before Dr. Kelvin comes aboard.  His psychology degree is useless in his search for answers as to why people are appearing on the planet (he does seem to be a bit thick), since his entire outlook, and that of other humans trying to communicate with Solaris, is totally human centred.  They have no reference point other than themselves in which to experiment.  Thinking outside the box, in this case, leads quickly to so many quack theories that are untestable that the subject can not really proceed in any direction but the usual one.  Lem is painstaking in describing the planet, and takes a full 38 page chapter to let us know what has already been learned.  Besides this chapter, there is much more about Solaris, too.  But none of it allows for any kind of communication.  Oliver's Unearthly Neighbours comes closest to this conundrum,and would make a good companion read with Solaris.  But Lem offers no plausible answers.  His only solution is for Kelvin to stay on the station and keep trying.  By now he has realized the futility of getting back his wife/girlfriend, but the great ocean (there is some land on Solaris, too, by the way) and the mystery of its existence will not let him return to Earth.  And so he stays on at the end, and will continue to experiment.  A true "science" fiction book, and one worth more than one reading.  And forget about the Soderbergh film, which has absolutely nothing to do with what Lem is attempting to write about.

That's it for this month.  I am coming towards the end of my Silverberg books, with only one more SF story collection remaining.  When that author is finished, I will replace him with a reread of all the works by Fritz Leiber, still a great favourite.  Besides the man who coined the term 'Sword and Sorcery', and who wrote many of the best stories in that genre, he is also a great SF author, as well as a horror writer.  His stories are often filled with humour, too.  So expect lots of Leiber in the months ahead.

Mapman Mike

 

An Epic Weekend

And a weekend of epics!  Two epics, in fact.  But first, some local news.  Our winterless winter continues.  A cold day here and there, but mostly well above-normal temperature days.  Barely any snow all season, and very little rain.    Our indoor fun continues, regardless.  Deb has finished her most recent short film, Effigy House, and is nearly finished remodelling the bathroom.  How's that for dual projects.  A busy woman is a happy woman, or so some say.  I continue to work on my piano program.  I have had three lessons with Philip Adamson on this program so far.  We have managed to get through the Bach Prelude and Fugue (Book 2, Eb+), and the four-movement Beethoven sonata (Opus 10 #3).  It is my lifetime 12th Prelude and Fugue (there are 48), and my 11th Beethoven Sonata (there are 32).  Given another two lifetimes I might get through all of them.  Unfortunately, some complications have arisen in the piano performance group. People kept inviting others to join, and now it is too large for my liking.  I have withdrawn from it for now, and so once again am without an audience.  It was fun while it lasted, though.  But our home can no longer hold all the members, as is the case with other members.

 

In Wondrium news (The Great Courses)  we usually have two or three lecture series going on.  Right now we are watching a very good series about the Gnostic Gospels, and one about the 23 best piano works of all time.  Whereas we used to mostly seek our spiritual enlightenment (pre-Covid) outside of the house (concert halls, art museums, travel, etc.), now 90% of our searching is done within the Homestead walls.  Streaming services like Criterion and Mubi (and Prime) have a lot to do with it.  But Deb's filmmaking keeps her indoors a lot and very involved with making her artistic dreams come true.  My piano practice has become much more regular and less interrupted by day trips and longer trips.  I read at least two hours each day, which I love doing.  As to outdoor pursuits, I am still heavily involved with astronomy.  I hope to return to Iaido next month.  And our travelling days are slowly beginning to return.  But we love our home and all the varied things there are to do within in.  The less I drive places the better I feel.  Our days of being within crowded environments are quite rare compared to what they used to be.

That brings me to our epic weekend.  Saturday was the Full Winter Moon.  We usually celebrate full moon days whenever possible, and this time we went all out.  Deb cooked a wonderful spaghetti and vegan meatball early dinner, with her own no-tomato sauce.  Later we made a pumpkin pie, a kind of round cake or pie always on hand for full moon nights.  We enjoyed a roaring wood fire (luckily it was the one cold day of the week), and listened to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.  We have an excellent 1955 version from the Vienna State Opera, and we cranked up the speakers and listened to one of our favourite operas.  There are so many fantastic arias in this opera, which is mostly comedy but has a terrific horror/fantasy element to it as well.  It was a long overdue listening event, and we both went to bed with great music soaring through our brains.

Then came Sunday.  We made this Lawrence of Arabia day.  The overture to this epic film, one of the best films ever made, is nearly as good as the one to Don Giovanni!  David Lean rather outdid himself, and the desert photography has never been done better.  We began watching at breakfast (late time on Sundays), quit at intermission for a few hours, then went back at it around 5 pm to finish up at 6:45 pm.  I was so inspired by my (3rd?) viewing that I went and purchased Lawrence's complete writings, which is part of the Delphi Classics series, for $2.99.  Whenever I come around to the "Ls" in my Delphi reading list I will commence reading the works of T. E. Lawrence.  Now I have clips from Mozart and the Lawrence soundtrack rattling around in my head.  O'Toole did a superb job in a very tough role.  Just as he begins to think of himself as godlike, he gets captured by Turks and tortured.  This totally changes his view of things, as he comes to realize not only his own mortality, but the fact that he isn't really anyone special.  The whole job of trying to unite the Arabs, many of whom were completely uneducated, and to save them from British rule, becomes as hopeless a cause as someone trying to unite the American Indians against the whites.  It was simply every tribe for itself.  It worked for hundreds and even thousands of years.  But change was coming over the world so rapidly that no one, not even Lawrence, could totally foresee it. 

Leaving Criterion Feb. 29th. 

 

We also managed to get through the final two episodes of Doctor Who, in the season that featured Tennant and Tate.  "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" concluded the 10th Doctor's 4th season.  It pulled out all the stops, as it featured Rose Tyler, Torchwood and its three main characters, as well as Martha Jones and Unit, Sarah Jane Smith and her son (and even K-9 in a brief appearance), and other former characters.  Bernard Cribbins as Donna's granddad remains a highlight of the entire season, as does Donna herself.  She gets a brilliant role in the final episode, and aces her performance.  I wish she had lasted more than one season.

 

Besides hearing one of the greatest operas ever written, and watching one of the greatest films ever made, other fun things happened this weekend, too.  I finished reading a book of delicious stories by Clark Ashton Smith.  I began reading Solaris, by Stanislav Lem.  I did some work on my NM map collection.  Of course I also practiced my piano pieces.  And we are making good progress on Eastshade, a PC game we have been really enjoying for some time now.  We finally took our long awaited balloon ride in the game, which became a slow motion flyover of all the landscape we have covered while playing.  The balloon took us up into the mountains, and we got to climb the highest peak.  We are nearing the conclusion to the game, but I'm hoping at the end, like Myst, we'll still be able to explore the towns and forests and lakes.   I think Deb and I would be good candidates for a Mars colony, providing we had enough things to keep us busy indoors.

 

Lawrence took up two of my three festival choices for February.  I have one remaining.  Before that we watched my going away choice (before I picked Lawrence, which is also leaving Criterion this month), another neat little noir film called Backfire, from 1950.  A good story keeps most viewers guessing who the bad guy is, as we never see him until the final scene.  Three war buddies back from Europe go different ways afterwards.  One is in hospital having no less than 13 surgeries.  One of his buddies wants to team up with him and buy a ranch.  The third one runs a funeral home.  Buddy number two runs into some bad trouble, and buddy number one has to go look for him, after recovering from his last surgery.  We love watching b & w noir crime thrillers, and this one comes out better than average.  It stars a lot of familiar actors.

 

Leaving Criterion Feb. 29th. 

 

The next update should be the February reading summary, just as soon as I finish up Solaris.

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Homestead News

With large windows that face south and west, we see a lot of great sunsets here at the Homestead.  This has been a week of them.  I finally bestirred myself and took a photo of the one on Monday evening.

Monday's sky show from the Homestead. 

We are returning to very warm weather this week, as February heads for record warmth.  Soon I will have my restored bike out for a ride.  Here are a few more photos of it, before everything gets dirty again.

A few more photos of my restored Schwinn bike, an 18 speed beauty from the early 80s. 

 

In movie news, there are three to report.  My leaving choice was an odd little noir film from 1948 called I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes.  A man throws his shoes out the window at some howling cats, and they are used to commit a murder, then helpfully returned to his doorstep next day.  The man is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death.  Turns out his wife had a very creepy stalker, well before the time that this became a thing.  A fairly intelligent script helps this taut thriller along.  Lots of red herrings along the way to keep viewers guessing who did it.  Hint:  Not the guy they arrested and sentenced to death.

 

Leaving Criterion Feb. 29th. 

 

Deb's leaving film was called The Great Buster: A Celebration, a 2018 documentary by Peter Bogdanovich.  It's hard to deny that Buster Keaton was one of the greatest comic actors and directors in history, and many of his films, both short and full length, continue to stand up very well 100 years later.  The film is filled with great interviews and dozens of clips that leave one's head spinning with what Keaton did over his relatively short film career.  A truly brilliant film, and worth watching more than once.

Leaving Mubi soon. 

 

Deb's regular pick was called The Sleeping Negro, a provocative film told by and about an angry black man in America.  Skinner Myers' film is from 2021, and could easily turn off a lot of viewers due to his non-negotiable take on racism in America.  Though white folk don't come off too well in this film, as to be expected, he doesn't spare his black brothers, either.  One of his best friends drops by (to borrow money) and confesses that he has become a born again Christian who supports Trump.  We meet another young black man who has been stealing his grandmother's disability pension cheques.  He was supposed to pay the mortgage, but used it for other purposes.  As a result, they are both evicted from their home.  This is a promising film maker.

 

Now showing on Mubi. 

 

Episodes 5 and 6 of Detective Anna are now showing, this one involving an ancient Egyptian sacrificial ceremony.  Still two more Doctor Who episodes awaiting, too.  And I am currently reading some delicious stories by Clark Ashton Smith.  Books reviews are still a week away.  Stay tuned.

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

Solaris, Take 2

The most recent version of Solaris is from 2002, directed by Steven Soderbergh.  Though it has a lot going for it, the film ends up by disappointing SF viewers.  The sets are great, the actors are good, and the music is excellent.  But instead of telling a story about a sentient ocean planet, we get a Valentine's Day love story with an unrealistic happy ending that left me scratching my head.  Was this film even a science fiction movie?  Barely.  Mostly it was about a man who made a terrible mistake, and after making the same mistake again finally gets it right.  A bit like Groundhog Day.  We learn nothing much about human ability to withstand aliens meddling with our minds.  We see nothing to convince us that the main character is a brilliant analyst/shrink.  One would think he might use some of his knowledge and experience to try to get at the bottom of this mystery.  Just what is happening?  Why is it happening.  Is there any way to communicate with the alien intelligence?  Nope.  We learn nothing.  Admittedly I did not find too much to praise in the Tarkovsky version, either (and he is one of my favourite directors).  Even Lem, the author, says that neither film gets the heart of what his novel is about.  Though I have not read the novel, I am about to.  It will be discussed here during my end of the month reading summary.  So please come back for more.

 

We know it's a SF film because George Clooney is wearing a space helmet. 

It is leaving Criterion Feb. 29th.

 

That was Deb's leaving soon choice.  I would have chosen it if she hadn't.  Her main choice was quite a different kind of film.  La Antena is an Argentinian film from 2007.  It is constructed like a 1920s German fantasy film, and is mostly silent and in b & w.  It mixes avant garde technique with a unique story telling method, and it comes off really well.  There is a lot of humour in this tale of a city whose people have lost their voice, and are about to lose words, too.  The evil man who wants to take over the world (the plot has its weak points at times) is a TV producer.  The visual effects are great fun to watch, even as the story plods along to its inevitable conclusion.  The cinematic cleverness includes using the silent screen subtitles as integral to the action within a scene.  This was the first film screened by Mubi when it began screening films in 2007.  It got off to a very good start.  Highly recommended.

A must see film for silent film fans, from 2007.  Showing again on Mubi. 

 

Before those two films came my leaving choice (my regular choice was the 1st 2-part Detective Anna).   The Beekeeper is a Greek/French film from 1986, starring Marcello Mastroianni.  To me it is a perfect example of a European film from the 1980s.  Marcello sports a Greek moustache.  He plays an aging father of three grown up children, and is about to leave his wife as the film begins.  The first 20 minutes of the film features his youngest daughter's wedding.  The wedding turns into a disaster as it rains and the party is indoors.  This opening segment would make a great short film all by itself.  Marcello is an itinerant beekeeper, who heads for the south of Greece with his hives.  He is part of a dwindling tradition of such keepers, with only about six older men still plying the trade.  The film changes gears almost immediately when a teenage girl, amazingly played by Nadia Mourouzi in her first film, hitches a ride with him.  She is a runaway, ditched by her boyfriend, and does her best to cling to Marcello, whom she must see as a badly needed father figure.  Both characters are truly messed up people, however, neither one knowing how to handle any type of relationship.  Marcello remains mostly expressionless in the film, but with him it is enough to transmit a lot of character.  He stands around like a huddled lummox a lot of the time, too.  He eventually realizes that he needs her companionship, too, but when their relationship  turns sexual things go downhill quickly.  She finally leaves him, and that pretty much means the end of Marcello.  A road movie like no other.

The film has now left Mubi. 

 

One of the better Dr.Who episodes of Series 4 with Tenant and Catherine Tate is called Turn Left.  By turning right instead of left, Donna Noble unleashes the furies, which, had she turned left, the Doctor would have dealt with.  Instead, Earth is doomed, and goes through a very unhappy ending.  In this alternate universe, the Doctor is dead.  But Rose (Billie Piper) is still alive, and helping Unit deal with all the catastrophes.  She instructs Donna on a way to undo the damage, and to go back and turn left.  Lots of fun stock footage from previous episodes.  Donna does a solo here, and holds the program together well by herself and with some help from Rose.  The previous episode, Midnight, starred the Doctor without Donna.  It was a low budget drama more suited to the stage than to TV.

We are currently watching the next two episodes of Season Two Detective Anna.

Mapman Mike

 

Detective Anna

One of the best TV series is a made in Russia supernatural detective series called Detective Anna.  From 2016, there are 56 episodes, consisting of a 26 2-part series.  That season ended in a bit of a cliffhanger.  Today I was browsing Prime and saw a second season!  I have been on the lookout for such a thing for many years now, so it must have been added to their lineup relatively recently.  Season 2 is from 2021, and consists of 40 fifty minute episodes, or 20 two part ones.  Wasting no time, we watched the first 2 episodes today.  Good stuff!  Resuming a series with original characters after five years can be quite a tough challenge, but the writer brilliantly takes up the story 5 years later!  Anna has trained in Paris to become a doctor.  Her friend and lover the detective mysterious went underground for five years, and she thought he was dead.  It all takes place in a provincial city some distance from Petersburg, around the turn of the 19th C.  The costumes are unbelievably good, as are most stories.  The acting is first rate.  The series is subtitled.  So happy to see this series back for more!

In more good news, I got my 1980s Schwinn 18 speed bicycle back from the shop today.  It underwent a complete tune up, with new tires, tubes, cables, and it received a top to bottom cleaning.  A shout out to Flow Cafe and Bikes in Amherstburg!!  Here are a few pics of the little beauty.

 

The top photo is from the bike shop; the middle one was taken once we got it home; the last one shows a detail of the handlebars.  More coming later. 

 

In travel news, we have planned our next voyage.  Last year we finally returned to travel, something we used to do several times per year.  Last Spring we undertook a road trip from Detroit to Little Rock, exploring some state high points and some Native American archaeological sites.  In the autumn we attempted a return to the mountains of New Mexico, getting as far as SW Oklahoma before having to cancel due to Deb's hiking accident.  For our upcoming trip, it is still mostly a road trip, and the focus is again on state high points and archaeology.  In mid-March we will fly into New Orleans, our first airport experience since late 2019.  We will fly home a week later.  In between we will drive to two major archaeological sites in the deep south, as well as tackling up to four more state high points.  We are excited, but also a bit nervous about being in crowded conditions.  Last autumn, after attending a crowded film festival for three days, we both came down with terrific colds, which lasted about 9 days.  So airports and flying do not exactly excite us.  Had we driven down there the trip would have to have been at least 4-5 days longer.  A full report will be made as soon as we are home, probably on the Road Trips blog.

There are two movies to report, both of them Deb's choices.  First came a documentary on Angela Carter.  Angela Carter: Of Wolves and Women is a one hour BBC production from 2018, and includes interviews with Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, among others.  She died in her 50s from lung cancer.  I've only read one of her books, but have seen two films based on her writings.  We are both interested in reading more of her stuff now.

 

We watched this documentary on Youtube.

Penda's Fen is from 1974, and is also a BBC production.  This is a very strange little film about a teenage boy who can't seem to find himself just yet.  He is a loner, a misfit, deeply religious (his father is a parson), and incapable of action of any sort when it is needed.  On his 18th birthday his parents inform him that he is adopted.  While the news could have shattered the boy, it actually makes him stronger, as he comes to realize that he now has no idea of his genetic makeup, and thus of his possibilities in life.  He is intelligent and imaginative, and in love with the music of Elgar.  He has troubling dreams of demons and angels, and hallucinations of same.  In one scene he imagines that he meets an elderly Elgar, and learns first hand the secret of the composer's Enigma Variations.  Like the boy, the film can't seem to really find itself, and wanders around in the muck a lot of the time.  Is it a horror story?  A rite of passage?  A critique of the underpinnings of English society?  A search for truth in religion? To some it might seem profound, but to seasoned viewers it just seems lost in the search for truth.  The boy's father, the parson, turns out to be the most interesting character in the film, a man who is far from being religious in the traditional sense.  The boy himself is not very likeable, as he does not have a defining character yet.  Definitely worth a look.

 

We watched this little oddity on Youtube. 

 

I forgot to mention that we have had two days in a row where we exceeded 60 F.  In Canada, in winter.  We have flowers ready to bloom.  Cooler weather will begin returning tomorrow, but nothing very scary.  We had about 9 days of very cold air in January, and then it was gone.  The winter that wasn't.  However, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were buried alive last week, with over a meter of snow in many places.  Yikes!

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

February Dark Skies

 Usable dark night nights in February in this part of Canada are extremely rare.  If it is clear, it's usually far too cold to be standing outside with a telescope.  From where I observe there is no warm room.  The car can't be used, as the turbulence from the heat of the engine would cause poor seeing conditions in the local air  Images would "swim" in the eyepiece.  This is why telescopes cannot be mounted on rooftops of heated buildings.  I have a threshold working temperature and I can't go much below that.  It was clear Saturday night and part of Sunday night, and the temperatures were within my range of tolerance!  February skies are spectacular due to their extreme darkness when there is no snow on the ground.  Orion is high up and an unforgettable sight.  Among other reasons, this is a great time of year to observe.  Those lucky people in southern climates.

Sunday night at 8:15 pm I happened to look up from the eyepiece and noticed a cloud bank coming in from the east.  I figured I had perhaps ten or fifteen minutes of clear sky remaining before I had to shut down.  It was 26 degrees F, which just happened to be the dew point temperature.  By 8:20 I was completely immersed in dense fog.  It had been fog, not clouds, approaching, and it came almost lightning fast.  By 8:30 I had packed up and was commencing my long drive home, at a much slower speed than usual.  I have never encountered an instant fog like that before.  At least I managed about 90 minutes of observing before it arrived.

In film news, there are three to report, two of them my picks and one of Deb's.  Most recently we watched Arab Blues, a 2019 French/Turkish film that is supposed to take place in Tunisia.  Here are two blurbs from the Mubi website about the film: 

Selma has returned to Tunis and wants to open up a psychotherapy practice. As she settles in, she’s faced with increasing complications. There isn’t just the matter of finding patients, but she also needs to navigate a confusing bureaucratic circus to get the right papers to run her practice.

A charming fish-out-of-water comedy, this debut feature places local cultural anxieties on the therapist’s couch. Starring an effortlessly charismatic Golshifteh Farahani, Arab Blues affectionately maps the social landscapes of post-revolution Tunisia with wit, warmth, and a keen eye for the absurd.

 

We last saw Ms Farahani as the housewife of the bus driver in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson.  She is perfect in the role of the therapist who begins to help so many people in her area.  She seems to weather all of the setbacks and hostilities, but even she has her breaking point.  There is a lot of not too subtle criticism of the country's bureaucracy (it was not filmed in Tunisia, needless to say), but even so, she wants to live there.  She recognizes the needs of the people (they are just people, after all) and is trained to help them.  Her young cousin and a friendly by the book cop offer some contrast to the main theme of the film.  Well worth seeking out, as I am sure a lot of Arabic women already have.

 

Leaving Mubi Feb. 7th. 

 

That was my leaving soon choice.  My regular choice was Jacques Tati's 1967 epic comedy Playtime.  This is a hit and miss film, but when it hits, it is quite hilarious.  Tati, however, had the same thing to say about modern times, and he says it over and over.  Architecture, travel posters, American tourist groups, Paris traffic, and all night restaurants get sent up in this perhaps overlong film.  The night at the restaurant is way too long, and sometimes seems to happen in real time.  When the dawn finally comes, viewers are no doubt relieved.  One of the scenes (among many) I really enjoyed was when the high energy jazz group in the restaurant calls it quits due to parts of the ceiling falling on them and their equipment.  Suddenly there is dead silence, and the entire film comes to a standstill.  Then an American woman volunteers to play piano, and she begins by playing slow and soft music.  The film changes gears completely, all within the space of a minute or two, and it comes off brilliantly.  Filmed in widescreen format, one must watch all parts of the screen at times, since the main action in centre may not be the intended focus of attention.  Viewers can miss many jokes by not glancing off to a side.  Definitely worth catching, but it is not my favourite Tati film.  Criterion has a 6 minute intro given by Terry Jones!

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

 Going back a week now, Deb's final film festival choice was The Day The Earth Caught Fire, a Val Guest British film from 1961.  Atomic bomb tests cause the Earth's axis to tilt at a steeper angle, and that seems to throw things out of whack.  We get to watch cynical reporters try to come to grips with events, which in include strange fog, hurricanes, catastrophic fires, earthquakes, and ultimate doom for the planet.  Sound familiar?  Climate change at its most dramatic.  The film suffers from really bad science (an eclipse that comes days too soon) and one of the cheapest endings one could imagine.  Does the Earth survive or doesn't it?  They won't tell us.  Boo.  Still worth watching for SF classic film fans, this was a restored print.

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

Mapman Mike