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From: "Evelyn C. Leeper" <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: MT VOID, 01/03/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 27, Whole Number 2361
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2025 11:06:50 -0500
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THE MT VOID
01/03/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 27, Whole Number 2361

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Sending Address: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
All material is the opinion of the author and is copyrighted by
the author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent or posted will be assumed authorized for
inclusion unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to eleeper@optonline.net
The latest issue is at <http://www.leepers.us/mtvoid/latest.htm>.
An index with links to the issues of the MT VOID since 1986 is at
<http://leepers.us/mtvoid/back_issues.htm>.

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:
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