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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 18, 1979)
Films Superman Directed by Richard Donner McDonald Theatre Superman the Movie is faithful to the spirit, more or less, of the book — the comic book, that is. CINEMA PH. 344-3(61 NOW SHOWING VIVA ITALIA! Muti is the best-filled thing from Italy since ravioli ” —Stewart Klein. Metromedia TV Richard Drey fuss .Moses Mine Private Detective. ... so go figure pi; -PLUS The Rrat- Mo*ie About Otl-Road Racing. Checkered Rag A UNIVERSAL RtLEASt TECHWCOtOK * '=3* Special Midnight Show Friday & Saturday Doors open 11:30 “THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES” Rated X all seats $2°° That’s a problem. When was the last time you spent over two hours with a comic book? The introductory credits take forever — one name at a time zooms into the screen. Then the whole Superman myth is laid out from the beginning If you didn't know that Superman was born on the planet Krypton, that his father, Jor-EI, launched the baby Super man in a rocket for earth moments before Krypton exploded, that a Midwestern couple, the Kents, raised the young super hero, and that he later went to work for the Daily Planet in Metropolis as the mild-mannered Clark Kent, etc. the first half of the picture is at least educational. Marlon Brando (as Jor-EI) sets the tone for the picture’s first half with the words. “This is not a fantasy,.Never mind that he’s not speaking about the film per se, we get the point. Superman is up to some serious tricks. Brando de livers his lines with the authority of the narrator of a Btolical epic. He speaks of suppression, the weak nesses of earthlings, and the rela tionship of fathers to sons. For those who learn their philosophy from comic books, Brando s talks are at least educational. Special effects provide about all the entertainment there is to the first half. Krypton is a barren planet, occasional cities dotting the landscape like a multitude of Las Vegases. The architectural motif is crystal. The people, with the exception of Jor-EI and Ns wife Lara (Suzanne York), are poker faced and cold. The scenes of Superman's youth in the Midwest are beauti fully photographed. His foot race against a train is amusing. His rela tionsNp with his adopted parents is never convincing, although we are meant to care that his father (Glenn Ford) dies and that he feels compelled to leave his mother. Yawn. In the second half, Superman has been educated for twelve years in the inexplicably present Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole, we are at last given Super man in his guise of Clark Kent working for The Daily Planet, and as the caped-crusader himself fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Finally there are some touches of humor — Dark Kent confronts a city devoid of en closed phone booths; Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) interviews Superman and asks questions about his biological functions and Ns size. Superman’s flying is the big gimmick of the second half. It’s invigorating. The effects are never as stupendous as one might have hoped for, but still the flying is en chanting. A sequence where Superman carries Lois Lane aloft on a date, otherwise charming, becomes overdone when Lane's thoughts are over-dubbed. Imagine Rod McKuen at 30,000 feet — its enough to make one airsick. Margot Kidder, whether acting dazed by Superman’s hand someness and strength or dis dainful of Clark Kent’s awkward ness and lack of sophistication, never errs. But the most marvel ous aspect of her performance is how she so naturally invests Lois Lane with a libido. Chris Reeve, as Superman, pulls off the same trick. He also gives his character an air of com passion and a Bondian sense of humor. Reeve’s Kent, however, fumbles too much and speaks in too high a voice. Clark Kent is mild-mannered, not castrated. Jackie Cooper’s Perry White is terrible. Cooper over-acts and is relentlessly one-dimensional. Gene Hackman, as Lex Luthor. an archvillian out to perpetrate the crime of the century, is reminis cent of Batman villians on the old television show. The crime is re miniscent of many SPECTRE plots in the Bond films. Snore. Superman pulls off miracle after miracle to thwart Luthor. But it’s like going to the moon — after the first trip, the others seemed insig nificant After the first great feat Superman performs in Metropolis — his rescue of Lane from a plummeting helicopter — we start thinking. “Well, big deal,” whenever Superman is finished closing the San Andreas fault or whatever. The film s producers are obvi ously hoping the public is looking for a hero. But why resurrect Superman, who has had his day? Why did DeLaurentis remake King Kong? Why did Lumet and company do The Wiz? Why did they remake The Body Snatch ers? Because the seventies are bereft of original ideas, that’s why. Sure the Superman character has been updated to the extent that he has a libido. But that's not enough. He still acts as if he's in the thirties. And his enemies have not been updated. Superman should smash OPEC by importing oil from space, or he should humble the South Af rican whites into abolishing apar ORIENT EXPRESS Oriental cooking with a difference: nom.s.g. fresh ingredients, reasonable prices. FREE! one egg roll with this ad and any purchase good Thun ft Fri Jan IS ft 19 HWY 99 (6th Street) at Roosevelt, next to DJI's mkt 689-7637 theid, or he should bring Peace to the Middle East. Otherwise he’s no more interesting or believable or competent than Jimmy Carter, who one assumes is also fighting for truth, justice and the American way. \ As it is, the effects of the film are nice, but the overall intentions of the film are irrelevant. The best fantasy has its roots in reality. Superman the Movie never has any more than one foot on the ground By William Kogut Invasion of the Body Snatchers Directed by Philip Kaufman Springfield Cinema Invasion of the Body Snatchers, like Superman, is based on premises that have been around awhile. But unlike Superman, Snatchers success fully updates and adapts itself to this era. The original Snatchers was set in a small town. The new version is set in San Francisco. Spores from deep space reach the earth via rain and overnight they mature into small pods with flowers at tached. Elizabeth (Brooke Adams) picks up a pod and carries it home. Kept by the side of her bed, the pod grows overnight into a duplicate of her lover, a dentist. The original dentist deteriorates into a mass of black cobwebs vtfiich surreptitiously is thrown into the garbage in t .3 morning by the duplicate, or pod person. The duplicate lover is unnatur ally free of anxiety — is super mel low. Elizabeth notices this and begins a crusade to uncover the reason for the change in her lover. Her ally in this crusade is Matthew (Donald Sutherland), a fellow worker with Elizabeth at the De partment of Health. As the pod people multiply, Elizabeth s and Matthew's para noia grows. They join forces with another couple played by Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright. A pop psychologist (Leonard Nimoy) tries to assuage tie couples fears. To sleep means to take the risk of being duplicated. Elizabeth and Matthew fight to stay awake while fleeing from hoards of pod people. San Francisco is a center for alternative life-styles. The film manages to present the transfor mation into a pod person as being analagous to changing one’s life style. Since a pod person's life style is anxiety free and encour ages a sense of community (albeit with other pod folk), it resembles various seventies life-styles that pretend to be "The Answer." But at the bottom line Ameri cans fear losing their individuality to mass movements. Snatchers exploit these fears and in doing so seems to lend support to the old argument, “Sure, this society suf fers from anxiety, etc. But that’s the price one pays for living in a free society where the individual is allowed to make his or her own choices.” The movie also appeals to a self-indulgent sense of pes simism. ‘‘Look at the blank-faced, uncaring and insensitive pod per son,” the viewer is encouraged to say to himself. “People are really becoming like that too. I’m sur rounded by pod people! I’m the only sentient being left in this cold and cruel world.” Snatchers does not deal in good and evil as does Superman. Snatchers deals with compassion, which it implies is a dying emotion. Elizabeth s dentist lover cares more about a televised basketball game than about her kisses. A step further on, the duplicate lover doesn’t even care about basket ball. Snatchers implies we are all only a step short of becoming pod people Horror and science fiction films have a way of reducing charac ters, making them secondary in importance to ideas. But the characters here co-exist in impor tance with the ideas. Elizabeth is vulnerable. She brings a pretty flower home and it turns against her! One could not be more vul nerable than that. An obvious un derdog ignored by her boyfriend in both Ns incarnations, Elizabeth has our sympathy from the start. Matthew is first shown inspect ing a restuarant for health code violations. This is a master-stroke of writing — initially he tries to pro tect people from what might go into them, later he tries to protect people from what they might turn into. Kibner (Nimoy)is an operator, a probable charlatan, yet projects a certain rationality. Nimoy is per fect in this role — his association with the utterly rational Mr. Spock in the Star Trek works wonderfully to his advantage. Spock, after all, is a bit of a pod person himself — as is Kibner. All the scenes have important little touches — there is always something happening in the background. Garbage trucks are everywhere devouring the cob web bodies of pod victims. The scenes of emerging pod people are terrifying. The sound track is well done — director Kaufman has paid enormous at tention to detail. Film buffs will spot a number of in-jokes in Snatchers, chief and most terrifying among them is a scene featuring the hero of the original film (1956), Kevin McCar thy, banging against the cracked windshield of Matthew s car and shouting, 'They’re here! They're here!” Superman gives us miracles in which we no longer have any faith. Snatchers depicts a socio psychological disaster the in evitability of which we accept now more than ever. By William Kogut THE FOOT CO. 1840 Patterson 683-2931 Wt U wi> pmr M nmmmg 4m JU Mn oqinM Specializing in resoling your (old) running shoes. 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