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