[continued from previous message]   
      
   neon sign.  Even in a world where conversations take place in   
   sonata form, this crashed my sense of going along, and knocked me   
   clean out of the story every time.  [-kw]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
   TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)   
      
   CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND by Steven Spielberg (Dell, ISBN   
   978-0-440-11433-8) was the book and movie choice this month.  I   
   had of course seen the film several times but had never read the   
   book until now.   
      
   The first thing to note is that Leslie Waller actually ghost-wrote   
   the novel, based on Spielberg's outline.  I cannot say I liked the   
   novel--the film is best at the special effects and "sense of   
   wonder"rather than characterizations or plot--but still there   
   should be credit where credit is due.   
      
   And while the film has great special effects, it has not aged   
   well.  Or maybe we were so entranced by the visuals that we didn't   
   notice the flaws.   
      
   Such as the fact that the Nearys were a seriously dysfunctional   
   family even before Neary was contacted and started throwing   
   shrubbery in through the windows.  One son is systematically (and   
   noisily) destroying his little sister's doll, and neither of the   
   parents says anything.  (In fact, the two sons are two of the most   
   obnoxious children in movies.  The mother is a terrible mother and   
   totally unsupportive of Roy, and Roy seems mentally challenged   
   even before everything starts happening.   
      
   The time scale is all messed up as well.  Lacombe and his team are   
   in Mongolia, then northern India, and then somewhere else, all in   
   one day.  From the time the military gets the location coordinates   
   to when the arrival happens cannot be more than a few days, yet   
   they manage to have an elaborate base set up, evacuate the whole   
   area, assemble the voyagers and provide them with uniforms (and   
   somehow happen to have an extra one just in Roy's size), and   
   figure out a communications protocol--which frankly never made any   
   sense to me: why would the musical notes, and the human-created   
   hand signals, be the mode of communication?  Especially since they   
   are of no use in transmitting something like the coordinates.   
      
   The bottom line is that the film is visually well-done, but weak   
   on all the elements that can be put in a novel.  Not surprisingly,   
   the novel adds nothing to the experience.  [-ecl]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
                                        Evelyn C. Leeper   
                                        evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
      
      
              Money is like manure.  Spread it around and it   
              does a lot of good, but pile it in one place,   
              and it stinks like hell.   
   				          --Clint Murchison   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)