THE MT VOID
04/07/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 41, Whole Number 2270

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Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 18 (Disney's PINOCCHIO, GUILLERMO
DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO, BRIAN AND CHARLES)
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (PAST IMPERFECT) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 18 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

This is the eighteenth batch of mini-reviews, three films about
robots. Well, sort of. And guess, one of them ran earlier
(12/23/22), but they were too perfect to run as a set to let that
stop us.

Disney's PINOCCHIO: At the beginning of Disney's PINOCCHIO, Jiminy
Cricket gets into an argument with the narrator. It is always the
best idea to stay on the good side of the narrator.

We call this "Disney's Pinocchio" to distinguish it from the
Netflix PINOCCHIO, a.k.a. "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio". These
are in keeping with the gran Hollywood tradition of having one
studio announce a film, and then another one do a copycat version.
An example would be WYATT EARP and TOMBSTONE. In this case, Disney
must have been the copycat, because del Toro was working on his
version for fourteen years, and filming for three.

Often the difference is in budget. and that is true here; the
Disney version was budgeted at $150 million, and the del Toro
version at $35 million. But the most visible difference is that
the Disney version is live-action/CGI and the del Toro version is
stop-motion animation.

Disney has the marquee name of Tom Hanks. But (at least in this
film) he can't sing, and shouldn't have tried.

Disney's PINOCCHIO has the traditional Disney look, and Pinocchio
could have been lifted straight from the 1940 version.

Not everything is traditional. The town's population is more
racially diverse than would be historically accurate, and the Blue
Fairy is Black. (This ha generated a lot of comment, but in the
1940 version she was white with blonde hair, and if we have talking
foxes and puppets that come alive, one can't complain too much
about not sticking to reality.

Another change is that Pleasure Island has no smoking or alcohol,
and ends up looking like Disneyland--and that is supposedly a bad
thing? (However, there is vandalism and bullying, so it by any
means totally ideal.

Released on Disney+ streaming 8 September 2022. Rating: low +2 (-4
to +4) or 7/10

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4593060/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pinocchio_2022>

GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO: This is called "GUILLERMO DEL
TORO'S PINOCCHIO" to distinguish it from the *other* 2022 Pinocchio
film, PINOCCHIO, which is a live-action Disney film starring Tom
Hanks, while GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO is a stop-motion
animated Netflix film. (This makes the third stop-motion animated
film from Netflix this year, the first two being THE HOUSE
[reviewed in the 05/13/22 issue of the MT VOID] and WENDELL & WILD
[reviewed above].) There was also a Roberto Begnini version in
2002. GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO obviously has a very
different look from current CGI animation--not as realistic, for
example--but apparently del Toro is hoping for a stop-motion
revival. del Toro is also not afraid to change the classic story
in many ways. For example, it takes place in pre-World-War-II
Italy, and fascism and war play an important role in the film. The
animation is stunning, but the story was never really one of our
core memories from childhood, so we had more difficulty connecting
to it than many others will.

Released on Netflix streaming 9 December 2022. Rating: high +1 (-4
to +4), or 6/10.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1488589/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/guillermo_del_toros_pinocchio>

BRIAN AND CHARLES: BRIAN AND CHARLES is expanded from a 2017
12-minute film, and serves as evidence that some shorts do not
expand well. The plot has almost nothing to do with the premise
(an eccentric character builds a robot), which has become more of a
MacGuffin. The plot could just as easily have centered around an
eccentric character and a younger brother. And there are some
inconsistencies that were introduced in the expansion. For
example, why is all the introductory material being filmed as a
documentary. Are we to believe it is all a documentary, or is that
aspect dropped early on? It seemed a promising idea, but was very
disappointing.

Released theatrically 17 June 2022. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13270424/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brian_and_charles>

[-mrl/ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

PAST IMPERFECT by Peter Charles Hoffer (PublicAffairs, ISBN
978-1-588648-445-3) looks at four recent scandals involving
respected historians (Stephen Ambrose, Michael Bellesiles, Joseph
Ellis, and Doris Kearns Goodwin). Hoffer goes back to historians
at the very start of the United States and presents evidence to
support his claim that the failings of these four are not a new
phenomenon, but defects found in historians for the last two
hundred and fifty years.

I would have more confidence in Hoffer if the following sentence
did not appear on page 26: "Such borrowing as Parkman (and
Bancroft) assayed from other authors was something that men of
letters did all the time, without qualms--if not without
controversy, as Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Samuel
L. Clements (Mark Twain), and other authors discovered."

Yes, he manages to misspell the names two of the three famous
authors that he lists (and arguably uses a dash where a comma would
have been a better choice). And later he refers to the book by
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh as THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY
GRAIL, when the accurate title is HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL`
Strangely, he uses the correct title on the next page, and then
just HOLY BLOOD ten pages later, before reverting to THE HOLY BLOOD
AND THE HOLY GRAIL in the index. For someone complaining about
sloppiness (as indicating possible deception), Hoffer is hardly in
an unassailable position.

It may seem like a minor thing, but it is many ways indicative of
the flaws he finds in historians, who are disrespectful of primary
sources and have misused them to support their thesis, which is
called consensus history. Falsification, plagiarism, and
fabrication--the crimes of the four historians--have been with us
since the beginning of American history, Hoffer claims, and run as
a thread through not just consensus history, but its successors.

The actual cases Hoffer discusses are of different kinds of
deception. Hoffer points out that Michael Bellesiles, the author
of ARMING AMERICA, has incomplete data in the first edition (e.g.,
there are only vague indications of sample sizes), and data in
subsequent editions inconsistent with those in the first (e.g.,
the sample sizes are smaller, and there are fewer samples).
Basically, Hoffer claims that gun ownership was somewhere around
15% in colonial America, but all subsequent researches of the
documents Hoffer claims to have used indicate a much higher
percentage.

Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin are both accused of
plagiarism, and have admitted to re-using or paraphrasing secondary
sources, and particularly in such a way that when those secondary
sources were citing primary sources, it appeared that Ambrose or
Goodwin had found the primary source themselves.

Joseph Ellis was a different sort of deception. He didn't
plagiarize other historians, or fake data in his books. No, he did
a George Santos: he made up an entire back story. He was more
careful than Santos, though--he did not lie on his resume to Mount
Holyoke College. What he did was lie to his students in his
lectures, claiming all sorts of Vietnam War and civil rights
experiences that he never had.

Hoffer also discusses another sort of feception common among
historians (and others, one suspects): using the research of
graduate students and other assistants. This in itself is not bad,
assuming that either the assistants are doing purely clerical or
basic editing work, but if these assistants are doing substantive
research and writing that appears in the finished work, Hoffer says
they should be given co-author credit, not just a mention in the
acknowledgments section.

On Sunday, April 9, 2023 at 11:02:27 AM UTC-4, evelynchim...@gmail.com wrote:
> THE MT VOID
> 04/07/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 41, Whole Number 2270

> Yes, he manages to misspell the names two of the three famous
> authors that he lists (and arguably uses a dash where a comma would
> have been a better choice). And later he refers to the book by
> Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh as THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY
> GRAIL, when the accurate title is HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL`
> Strangely, he uses the correct title on the next page, and then
> just HOLY BLOOD ten pages later, before reverting to THE HOLY BLOOD
> AND THE HOLY GRAIL in the index. For someone complaining about
> sloppiness (as indicating possible deception), Hoffer is hardly in
> an unassailable position.

If you look on Amazon, you'll find editions with both titles.

This jumped out at me, since while I can't put my hand on it,
I'm pretty sure my 30+ year old copy is 'tHBatHG'.

Regardless, its a remarkable piece of fraud, spinning a 1950's
French hoax into a fake "historical" account, later ripped off by
Dan Brown.

pt

On 4/11/23 9:37 AM, Peter Trei wrote:
> On Sunday, April 9, 2023 at 11:02:27 AM UTC-4, evelynchim...@gmail.com wrote:
>> THE MT VOID
>> 04/07/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 41, Whole Number 2270
>
>> Yes, he manages to misspell the names two of the three famous
>> authors that he lists (and arguably uses a dash where a comma would
>> have been a better choice). And later he refers to the book by
>> Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh as THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY
>> GRAIL, when the accurate title is HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL`
>> Strangely, he uses the correct title on the next page, and then
>> just HOLY BLOOD ten pages later, before reverting to THE HOLY BLOOD
>> AND THE HOLY GRAIL in the index. For someone complaining about
>> sloppiness (as indicating possible deception), Hoffer is hardly in
>> an unassailable position.
>
> If you look on Amazon, you'll find editions with both titles.
>
> This jumped out at me, since while I can't put my hand on it,
> I'm pretty sure my 30+ year old copy is 'tHBatHG'.
>
> Regardless, its a remarkable piece of fraud, spinning a 1950's
> French hoax into a fake "historical" account, later ripped off by
> Dan Brown.

If you claim that something is a fact, you can't properly accuse others
of "ripping it off." Someone else could plagiarize the text, but it
isn't plagiarism to use factual claims in one's own work, even if
they're lies.

There are works of fiction which claim "Everything here is true!" as a
literary device which no one is expected to believe (e.g., Lucian of
Samosata's space-travel story), but I don't think "Holy Blood, Holy
Grail" falls into that category.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

In article <u13pud$2laco$1@dont-email.me>, garym@mcgath.com (Gary McGath)
wrote:
> On 4/11/23 9:37 AM, Peter Trei wrote:
> > Regardless, its a remarkable piece of fraud, spinning a 1950's
> > French hoax into a fake "historical" account, later ripped off by
> > Dan Brown.
>
> If you claim that something is a fact, you can't properly accuse
> others of "ripping it off." Someone else could plagiarize the text,
> but it isn't plagiarism to use factual claims in one's own work,
> even if they're lies.

Two of the authors of HBHG sued Dan Brown's publisher for copyright
infringement, and lost on basically those grounds.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Brown#Copyright_infringement_cases>

--
John Dallman
"This isn't a supernova problem. It's a pointy-haired boss problem."

On Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:13:35 AM UTC-4, Gary McGath wrote:
> On 4/11/23 9:37 AM, Peter Trei wrote:
> > On Sunday, April 9, 2023 at 11:02:27 AM UTC-4, evelynchim...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> THE MT VOID
> >> 04/07/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 41, Whole Number 2270
> >
> >> Yes, he manages to misspell the names two of the three famous
> >> authors that he lists (and arguably uses a dash where a comma would
> >> have been a better choice). And later he refers to the book by
> >> Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh as THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY
> >> GRAIL, when the accurate title is HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL`
> >> Strangely, he uses the correct title on the next page, and then
> >> just HOLY BLOOD ten pages later, before reverting to THE HOLY BLOOD
> >> AND THE HOLY GRAIL in the index. For someone complaining about
> >> sloppiness (as indicating possible deception), Hoffer is hardly in
> >> an unassailable position.
> >
> > If you look on Amazon, you'll find editions with both titles.
> >
> > This jumped out at me, since while I can't put my hand on it,
> > I'm pretty sure my 30+ year old copy is 'tHBatHG'.
> >
> > Regardless, its a remarkable piece of fraud, spinning a 1950's
> > French hoax into a fake "historical" account, later ripped off by
> > Dan Brown.
> If you claim that something is a fact, you can't properly accuse others
> of "ripping it off." Someone else could plagiarize the text, but it
> isn't plagiarism to use factual claims in one's own work, even if
> they're lies.
>
> There are works of fiction which claim "Everything here is true!" as a
> literary device which no one is expected to believe (e.g., Lucian of
> Samosata's space-travel story), but I don't think "Holy Blood, Holy
> Grail" falls into that category.

For those unfamiliar:

Dan Brown was sued for plagiarism by Baigent and Leigh, on the
grounds that much of the underlying story of 'The DaVinci Code'
was taken from HBHG.

The 'story' involves Christ knocking up Mary Magdelene before
the Crucifixion, and her moving to the south of France, leading to
a 'Jesus Bloodline' with descendants down to present day.
B&L merged this with the 'Priory of Sion' hoax for their book.
The 'Jesus bloodline' idea has history, but the Priory of Sion only
dates to the 1950s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_bloodline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion

The rip-off is very obvious if you read both books, TdVC even has
a character named Teabing, an anagram of Baigent, and HBHG is
mentioned in the text.

However, the court found in favor of Brown, largely because HBHG was
published as non-fiction, and recounting "historical facts" isn't
plagiarism, even if they are lies.

Since I was familiar with the sources at the time I first read TdVC, my
experience of the book was not the usual one. It was a bit like riding
'The Haunted Mansion' ride with every house maintenance light turned
on - revelations did not surprise, and the plot holes and poor writing
were obvious.

pt