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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 15, 1987)
□ MOVIES_| 'Princess Bride' is too much like a fractured fairy-tale By Mary Courtis Emerald Contributor She gets kidnapped, he gets killed, hut it all turns out all right in the end Not by a long shot! "The Princess Bride" is one of those frustrating movies that bursts with possibilities and potential, but fails to flower. Review ★ ★ First, we are given a fragmented, nothing story. Then we are saddled with a vapid heroine named Butter cup, who is given little to do but scream and look indignant Finally, there is a wimpy male lead with all the substance of wonderbread and an assortment of other characters that seem to be thrown in for cheap thrills or simply out of desperation. Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, for example, put in a charming two minute appearance and then poof, just disappear from the story while duller actors linger on In fact, the only character that can sustain any degree of viewer interest throughout the film is Andre the Giant. who plays a not-so smart but good-hearted thief. It is really frightening when a pro fessional wrestler out-acts everyone else in the film. There are other problems too, the most glaring being the shod dy special effects. Several scenes have backdrops that were obviously painted. The switches from actors to stunt doubles are also awkward and badly timed and jump cuts crop up all over the place. Such bad craftsmanship and editing only serve to make a bad movie worse, and the listless direction does not help either. Poor Rob Reiner; this must have been the film that got away. It's too bad. Given a tighter plot, more appealing and com plex characters and a believable setting, the magic and the ex citement the film’s producers Photo bv (o«rt«t photo ('.ary Hives /left) and Robin Wright (right), moon over each other in “Princess Bride.” wanted to provoke might have happened As it is. we are left with only isolated moments when the movie comes alive liefore it slips back into the tedium of near misses. So if its chuckles and enchantment you want, you would lie better off renting “l.abrinyth" at your local video store. "The Princess Bride" shows nightly at Cinema World Director's USC film school experiences provide basis for his debut feature movie By Craig Hoit Emerald Contributor Phil |oanou didn't "wimp out." The director of "Three O'clock High" tells an amazing story of his experience with the USC film department. When Joanou was a student at USC. his student film was banned from being shown at the annual screening for Hollywood film executives because it was too long The film. "Last Chance Dance." consisted of long track ing shots (sequences of film in which information is conveyed through the flow of an uninter rupted camera movement rather than through editing) that loanou couldn't edit down into a coherent story. The faculty in sisted that he cut his film, and he finally gave in to their pressure, re-editing the film for his final graded screening In the process, he lost the film's structure He also lost the respect of his peers who felt he had "wimped out." However, two days before the screening, the faculty gave In to pressure from a dean in the fine arts division, and allowed the full film to be shown. The resulting film impressed Steven Spielberg's story editor, and joanou was offered a job to direct a couple of "Amazing Stories” episodes. A nice story, but what does it have to do with "Three O’clock High.” his first feature film? "Three O'clock High" is a logical-film for joanou to make — many of the film's elements, most notably the plot and stylistic tendencies, can be seen as a direct reflection upon his experience at USC. The boy next door has to fight the new kid at school. In an abbreviated summation, this is the story of "Three O'clock High." However, when we look at the systems of relationships that arise from the film's simple nar rative. we find a world in which power is given to the school and the system. The story is not so much "nice kid" fighting "bad kid," hut the trials of the hero in an absurd world, where the rules and regulations of a high Review ★ * '/i school provide no exit. The power figures in the film, with one notable exception, are satirized as stereotypes. The Dean of Discipline is a bald figure in black who roads Nuzi literature and who takes pleasure in his enforcement of a system that believes students are guilty until proven inno cent. Tin' dean's bald assistant takes sadistic pleasure in asser ting physical domination upon the hero as he makes a "routine search for narcotics." The two discipline officers are shot in low angle (signifying power), and the dean's office is a dark and shadowy interroga tion chamber. It is important to contrast the disciplinarians with the one authority figure who has redeeming human qualities the principal. 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