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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 1981)
Film Bye, Bye Brazil In Portuguese with English subtitles Starring Jose Wilker, Betty Fa ria Directed by Carlos Diegues Valley River Twin If you’ve ever dreamed of stealing a million in diamonds and heading for Brazil, then you should see Bye Bye Brazil. The film is one of the latest Brazilian movies to make a moderate splash in the American film market. A comedy about the disor ienting effects American cultur al penetration has on a nation trying frenziedly to catch up to the United States, the film offers an irreverent glimpse into a changing Brazil that American bank robbers squandering their loot on Rio de Janeiro mulattas never see. Without so much as a single shout of Yankee go-home, film maker Carlos Diegues humor ously, and at times poignantly, lets his audience see how the American cultural onslaught is bulldozing aside traditional Brazilian culture just like the new roads punch through the fragile Amazon jungle. The re sult of this ravaging is a cheap South American copy of the United States, a kind of cultural wasteland. The film's leading actor, Jose Wilker, travels through that wasteland making a living selling cheap thrills to the ig norant townspeople of Brazil’s poverty-stricken northeast. Wilker, best known to American audiences as the profligate husband Vadinho in Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, plays his role of itinerant huckster to the hilt, letting us see that ben eath his self-confident show manship he’s a scruffy operator only slightly less ignorant than most of his audience. Although Americans may find Wilker’s flaky male chauvinism hard to take, his great satirical scenes are not to be over looked. During one road show, he delivers on a promise to make it snow in tropical Brazil by dropping mounds of coconut flakes on the audience. With a great flourish he says, only half sarcastically, “And now in Brazil, as in the U.S., France, Germany, old England and all the civilized countries, there is snow.” Wilker's schlock traveling road show, Cam aval Rolidei, is a metaphor for contemporary Brazil, a nation obsessed with moving ahead but changing more than progressing. Wilker's small-time hype, laughable to a sophisticated audience, only highlights the pathetic gullibility of the poor rural folk he encounters in poverty-stricken northeast Brazil. Diegues uses the backland couple Cico and Dasdo, who are caught up by the tinsel al lure of Carnaval Rolidei, as al legorical figures for Brazilians undergoing modernization. Like Cico, who ignores his good and simple wife and lusts after the cheap beauty of the show's jaded Rumba Queen Salome (Betty Faria), Brazilians are buying the trappings of modern American prosperity at the expense of developing their own cultural wealth. The film also captures per fectly the Brazilian belief in the Amazon's supernatural poten tial. The exaggerated expecta tions placed on the Amazon to solve a host of problems facing the country are easily seen when Wilker takes the road show into the jungle frontier lands where he promises they’ll find the ground littered with precious stones Instead, they find boomtowns . INCREDIBLE WOMAN LILY TOMLIN CHARLES GRODIN NED BEATTY A LIJA Production “THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN” Written by JANE WAGNER Music by SUZANNE ClANI Produced by HANK MOONJEAN Executive Producer |ANE WAGNER Directed by JOEL SCHUMACHER A UNIVERSAL PICTURE Read the IOVE Book • Cooyrieht © 1980 by Universal City Studios. Inc. FGlwwawt Rim#* SUOBKliO OPENING JANUARY 30 AT A THEATRE NEAR YOU filled with corruption and In dians jerked out of age-old cul tural patterns into an unsure modern present. The film’s characters have a childish belief that American know-how makes everything possible. In one scene, workers are being recruited for the con troversial Jari Project (an Amer ican development company) in the Amazon. The recruiter relies mostly on the project’s gringo backing to convince Brazilians it’s a sure bet. But even without all the social commentary, Bye Bye Brazil offers plenty of hijinks, the richly soft music of Chico Buarque, and lots of flesh — hence its R rating. If nothing else, it’s a film to sit back and enjoy. By Jim Gersbach Variety is key ingredient Miscellaneous music notes . Tonight in room 167 of the EMU on campus the EMU Cul tural Forum presents a Songw riters' Showcase. The show case features local area singer songwriters Emmy Fox, Barney Barbour, Cecelia Ostrow and Percy Hilo. Discussion will fol low the performance scheduled for 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. The folk songs to be performed are all original and range in variety from political consciousness songs to intimate, personal bal lads. For further information call the Cultural Forum at 686-4373. The Community Center for the Performing Arts (CCPA) welcomes Emery, Schmidt & McCann, purveyors of back woods jazz to the W O W. Hall Saturday and Sunday at 9:30 p.m. Playing dancing jazz with a traditional Irish and a bit of bebop for flavor on Saturday, these three jazz musicians change the pace on Sunday night with a sit down concert. Tickets are $3 in advance, $3.50 on the day of the show. Tickets are available at House of Records, EMU Main Desk and the CCPA. Call 687-2746 for more information. Sunday at 4 p.m. is the benefit concert for the winners of the Oregon District Metropolitan Opera National Council Audi tions. Sponsored by the Port land Opera Guild in cooperation with the Eugene Opera, Susan St. John and Philip Kelsey will perform in Beall Hall on cam pus. Admission is a tax deducti ble donation of $3 for general admission; $2 for seniors and students. Further donations are welcome. ’S 4c Self Service COPIES • Binding • Two-sided copies • Reductions 764 E. 13th 344-7894
