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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (June 18, 1979)
that phrase into two movies; this sequel to Sight of the Living Dead reportedly grossed more in its first week than either The Deer Hunter or The China Syndrome. “The dead” are groping cadavers hunger fpg for live human flesh and intestines. They can’t starve back to death because they can only die once their brains have been busted from their bodies, so Romero designed a most graphic decapitation vs. intestine-pulling war fought on a most deceptive battle field— a suburban shopping mall near Pittsburgh. At the end of the world, signaled by the cTbsing of the television networks, our movie’s four heroes run for their lives aboard a stolen civil defense chopper. Sanctuary is a bricked-in shopping center, anybody’s paradise, except for the wall of ambling car nivores circling it. The mall is rife with stereos, fancy clothes, microwave ovens and Safeway food to burn. After nearly losing her life to a Krishna corpse, the female pro tagonist begins a race-saving pregnancy while the men march to the battlefront, plaza level, in front of Penney’s, popping off heads to muzak. Lots of metaphor here for a late-night hor ror. Romero catches the crux of Americana: the good guys fight not to save Mankind, but to protect their Sony Trinitrons. In one gorgeous scene, they are savagely assailed by bikers barging through the carrion barrier to Select their share. Flesh tears and guts rip. but the audience watches in moral confusion, wondering what separates the bikers from the heroes or the corporations from the corp ses. Technically excellent, fast-paced and in living color, it is a movie worth seeing, if not for the grunts and gore, then for its redeem ing social value. Lark EUen Goukj Two Voices 7 here uas considerable difference of opinion over the merits and demerits of V oices. The editor gets cranky when people bleed all over her desk, so here for the first and possibly last time, we present two opposing views of the same film. VOICES siamng Michael Ontkean, Aim Irving <2? Alex Rf>cco, writirn by John HrrzfHd: directed by Robert Markowitz. Ibices is pathos of the most dastardly sort; the film manipulates emotions with such casual disregard for truth that the more basic rules of logic and common decency fall quickly by the wayside. The story derives from the unrequited love of older brother Drew Rothman (Michael Ontkean) for dancer and deaf teacher Rosemarie (Amy Irving). After all, he’s a would-be singer who drives the delivery truck for his father’s cleaning shop; she’s deaf, and so vulnerable looking it’s a wonder she doesn't just blow away in a strong breeze She'll never hear his music; and, anyway, her mother thinks he’s a bum. The plot needs something to keep Drew from getting to Rosemarie’s dance audition on time so, presto! His gambler father is suddenly pursued by Chicago-style gamblers who are going to break both his legs; the distraught father sets the cleaning shop on fire to collect insurance, and Drew must run to the shop to put out the fire, while poor deal Rosemarie—who never really wanted to be a dancer anyway—is humiliated. At which point a soot-stained Drew shows up and, in the best Rocky tradition, tells the dance mas ter to turn the volume up real high and turn the speakers to the floor. Presto yet again — Rosemarie dances like Nureyev without an ounce of effort. And if this hasn’t led most of the audience straight to their Kleenexes, the final scene with Drew singing to Rosemarie ia sign lan guage, could make a statue weep. In the end, though, Ibices leaves us with nothing, just a sour feeling. Great pieces of pathos—like the Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Coming Home—at least take us on an interest ing journey on the way to their final cathar sis. Ibices only makes one thankful that the main character isn’t blind, too. g» itilai lia, NWfnu noiwf The key to any successful movie love story is the degree to which we care about the two protagonists. If we respond to the lovers, the movie is just about home free. This movie has the considerable charm and appeal of Michael Ontkean, last seen in Slap Shot and on television's The Rookies, and Amy Irving, who went bloody crazy in The Fury. Together they create that elusive quality known as screen chemistry, not unlike the sparks generated in the good old days, by Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullivan or Robert Walker and Judy Garland. The story is hackneyed, but a fresh approach to a con ventional happy-ending love story is almost impossible. In this variation we have Ont kean as a would-be rock singer, a kind of Billy Joel still looking for his voice, and Irving as a teacher of deaf children who is overprotected by her concerned mother. Ontkean is out to find a princess in New Jersey, and Irving needs a prince who can waken her from her long sleep. Newcomer director Bob Mar kowitz has a nice feel for urban romances, and this one uses its rather dreary New Jersey setting with the same kind of finesse as On the Waterfront. What doesn’t work in Knees — and almost drowns it completely — is a last-quarter rush to the Rocky finish. It isn’t enough for Irving to be a great leather; no, she has to have a finer cinematic goal —she wants to be a dancer. One more variation on Rocky and The Turning Point. We’re subjected to a ridiculous sequence in which Irving auditions for a third-rate dance company by feeling the music through the vibrations beneath her feet. Irving could reach those kids, say no to her mother and take a chance on a new rnan; that’s enough dramatic thrust for any movie, and it rneaffs a good deal more than some soapy nonsense about dancing that comes out of nowhere. Kqually maudlin is the end ing which has Ontkean singing (and making deaf-language signs) with Burton Cum mings dubbed voice. It was just embarras sing. Overlook the ending and concentrate on the charm and appeal of Ontkean and Irving. There is a great deal in Knees that rings true. Jacobs Atlas — I.. " --- mmnt (Continued from page 14) Kansas City, and Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and Tom Pendergast, the political rascal who ran this city for close to thirty years, a town where in the Thirties it was estimated that 250 nightclubs were open within a twelve square-block area, leading to plenty of work for jazz musicians. Detailed biographies of early band leaders Bennie Moten (who gave Count Basie his first important job), Walter Page (later Basie’s bassist), and Basie him self highlight this section. In New York, we read of the founding of Harlem, of its white and black czars, of the legendary night life and the many bands that enjoyed popularity, with profiles on Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson included. From the Thirties we head to the Sixties with Michael Budd’s Jan in the Suites (Uni versity of Iowa Press, $8.95), a volume short on pages (98 plus appendices) but long on facts. Starting with a brief overview of pre Sixties jazz, Budd goes on to give his impres sion of the important developments in the jazz world during that decade. Only new and innovative movements and directions are given serious attention; past styles and the musicians who maintained them are disre garded. A lengthy chapter is devoted to “new colors” and the African, Brazilian and In dian instruments that lent those shadings A good chunk is included on electronic instru ments, the basis of commercial jazz today. Advances in melody and harmony are noted with musical sketches and an exploration of Miles Davis introduction of modal, or one key, jazz. There’s also a look at the hows and whys of composition in the Sixties, using the Modern Jazz Quartet and Charles Vlmgus as examples. If readers would like help in playing jazz, then Jazz Improvisation by Trent Kynaston and Robert Ricci (Prentice-Hall, $15.95) could lie of service. It's an 8 x II format that fits nicely on the music stand (though spiral binding would have helped keep the book open) and contains many examples of the fundamentals one needs to know to be able to solo. Major, minor, diminished, modal, whole tone and blues scales are explained and notated and chord charts with virtually ail necessary chords are included. The book pulls no punches. The authors say jazz playing is no easy matter, but hard --- work and attention to details can pull the student through. This book, supplemented by some of the rhythm section records that are available today (many excellent discs are published by Jamey Aebersold, 1211 -D Aebersold Dr., New Albany, IN 47150), should get the prospective player definitely headed in the right direction. Zan Stawart Cold, Sweet, Blue Pears “In the city of the Olesha fruit/,” writes Nor man Dubie, an often astonishing, somewhat Frostian, 34-year-old American poet obses sed with the allegorical possibilities of history and with the power of the sometimes painful sensual ammunition carried by the com monplace, “A citizen never dies, he just wakes/One morning without his legs, and then he is given/A city of his very own mak ing . . * The idea that the poet makes a deal, that he must barter something for the right to reinvent the world (“In this way his existence narrows/,” the versr continues, ‘‘While ex panding like a diary . . .’*) is one of the themes that runs through Dubie’s latest col lection, called, itself. The ( ity of the Olesha Fruit (Doubleday, $6.95). Among the other themes is the related notion that an observer is sometimes more nearly the architect of the scene observed than are the people who par tuipate in it (“The Ganges ' " l‘he Seagull,” and, especially, “'The Ambassador Diaries of Jean dr Bosschere and Kdgar Poe;. The “Olesha” in the poem’s, and the vol ume’s, curious title is the Russian author Yuri Olesha (1699-1960), also known as Yurt Olios Hut. The “Olesha fruit,” at their hrtl meaning in any rase, are blue pears, **. . washed/And being eaten in the sunlight «* a city I hat is In-mg constructed all of the time .. — a reference, apparently, to an image of Olesha s I hr Russian, in fact, loved describ ing color — mostly simple, splendidly unam biguous color. Dubie’s poetry is, among other things, strikingly sensual: we see his colors, we smell, we sense heavily. His strange worlds seem uncomfortably real His strange similes (“You drop a pencil . . ./It falls still like a drunk, like a drunk falling onto a whore;’* ”, . .a brain of a whale/'I hat is steaming like a new lawn calf, . .") bite lietausc they seem so real, so tangible, that we wonder if we wouldn’t havr thought of them ourselves Col man Andrews -- > / hree summery Ampersands of the Month for the long hot days to come: the tunbathing Ampersand with the pottage-stamp bathing tail it from San Ihego’t Carl Partridge (hit tecond winner in (Ail slot); the balloons were tlippled by Phyllis Kryven of l.evittown, PA; and the floral wreath wat tor ought by Kristi Weber of Coleta, CA. They each receive $2f because we're generous to a
