Oregon daily emerald., July 22, 1999, Page 5, Image 5

WOW Hall Bash
Guttermouth plays Fri
day night, courtesy of
KWVA. Tickets are $8 at
the door, 291W. 8th.
Reggaemeisters
Toots and the Ma^fals
play the Wild Duck
tonight at 8:30 p.m. Tick
ets are $19.485-3825.
Kubrick’s last foray into the psyche hits paydirt
By Sara Jarrett
Oregon Daily Emerald
Eyes Wide Shut” is one of those rare
films that continues to get better upon
reflection. In the theater, the viewer is
taken on a journey past the pleasure of grati
fication, down to the pathetic depths of un
attainable desire. The .movie’s splendor
needs time to sink in.
The secretive nature of the making of
Stanley Kubrick’s final film, which was
luckily finished before his in death in
March, caused unparalleled intrigue for
Kubrick fans. The notion of real-life married
couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in a
sexually explicit venture did the job for the
rest of us.
* The movie reached reputable status be
fore it even opened.
Director; Stanley
Kubrick
Stoning: Tom Cruise
Nicole Kidman
Score: *****
1 he beginning
scenes, though a bit
slow, produce a mi
rage of the filthy rich,
aglow underneath
their overabundant
Christmas tree lights,
champagne and mar
ijuana.
We are allowed
admittance into the
lives of the affluent,
even told their se
crets.
Where the movie
falls short is when
Dr. Bill Harford
(Cruise) rendezvous with a mysterious soci
ety in which whores and the powerful do
more than mingle.
Up until this point, we had been granted
the voyeuristic pleasure of directly gazing at
or through the eyes of the speaker, as a
plethora of classic-Kubrick long, drawn-out
conversations and the camera’s all-encom
passing sweeps told the story.
In the orgy milieu, that privileged vision
is disrupted by onlookers digitally inserted
into the frames after Kubrick’s death. The
sequence, lasting a little more than a
minute, is now nothing more than arms and
legs gyrating behind censors.
Bill walks through the maze of bodies,
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise star in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
some naked, some covered in black cloaks,
all wearing gaudy face masks to preserve
their true identities. He is constantly being
inflicted with images of his wife, Alice (Kid
man), in the arms of a young naval officer
whom she admitted, earlier that night, to
have had sexual fantasies about, though
never actually committing adultery.
The mere thought of her infidelity, how
ever, both troubles Bill and gets him in trou
ble. He is either so jealous he needs revenge,
or he realizes he has some unquenched de
sires of his own.
It’s just a shame that greed trampled the
artistic vision of the film’s late creator. If
Kubrick agreed to the manipulation of the
climaxing scene (no pun intended) for a
more marketable R rating instead of an NC
17, I’m disappointed. The ritualistic nature
of the scene, complete with chanting, is still
very hypnotic and beautifully done,
nonetheless.
Throughout the movie, though faced with
some enticing propositions, Bill remains
faithful to Alice. In fact, he doesn’t do much
of anything, except constantly affirming his
self worth by telling everybody he meets he
is a doctor.
Alas, “Eyes Wide Shut” is not only aboul
sex, but rather the meaning of desire —
whether acted upon or not — along with
the perception and manipulation of reality
deceit, near-misses, fantasies and dreams.
Even at more than 2 1/2 hours, “Eyes
Wide Shut” is worth seeing more thar
once.
Eugene audience turns a critical
eye toward the overly-hyped film
By Sara Lieberth
Oregon Daily Emerald
As is prone to happen, controversy sur
rounding or even preceding a film’s release
can spark a myriad of audience expectations
—be they met or unmet — as well as a spec
trum of reactions based on an individual’s
anticipations.
Some undoubtedly were drawn to “Eyes
Wide Shut” by the star power of Tom Cruise
and Nicole Kidman, and the tease of real-life
hubby and wife making whoopee on the big
screen. Others anxiously salivated over the
first film from a beloved director since the
1987 release of “Full Metal Jacket.”
Still others will see this film based solely
on the multi-faceted hype the media has so
adeptly created, mostly in light of Stanley
Kubrick’s death from a heart attack the day
after he delivered the final cut of this, his fi
nal work.
From any of these varied perspectives,
what awaits viewers in the dark theaters of
America running the two-hour and 40
minute film is a disappointment on all
counts, said moviegoers leaving a recent
Valley River Center showing.
Mark Yates, University graduate student,
said he definitely came to the movie as a
Kubrick junkie.
“I had high expectations coming in,” he
said. “But the film didn’t live up to them. It
felt like a sampling of his other films; there
really wasn’t anything new to it.”
David Reihs, 29, another self-proclaimed
admirer of Kubrick — “He’s the only reason
I went to the film” — said he could appreci
ate the movie’s premise, and he even en
joyed the painstakingly slowed pace of dia
logue and cinematography.
“I’m not the type who typically likes
movies for their big-star attraction,” he said.
“But I was impressed with the storyline. It
was much more complex than how I’d
heard it described.”
Devotees of Kubrick’s impressive and di
verse contributions to filmmaking might ap
Turn to REACTION, Page 8
Ramona .
the Pest *
invades J
Sam ■
Bond’s H
Their music
has been re- LucioMenegon and Valerie Esway of RTP
ferred to as a “playful style blending the trance-like
tones of Cowboy Junkies with the fiery intensity of
Violent Femmes...alternately hypnotic and feverish.”
i neir name evokes memories
of Beezus, Henry Huggins and
Ribsy the dog.
Their food choices' while on
tour are made with the help of a
book called “The Tofu Toll
booth.”
Yep, Ramona the Pest sounds
like a Eugene kind of band.
The San Francisco-based duo,
normally a quintet, settles into
Sam Bond’s Garage on July 28 to
serenade locals with Valerie
Esway’s “apocalyptic odes.” Lu
cio Menegon provides the guitar
sounds.
Go make them feel welcome.
Who: Ramona the
Pest
When: July 28
Where: Sam Bond's
Garage, 407 Blair
Blvd. Call 431-6603
for more info.
Indie project with
local angle aims
for big-time splash
Eugene provides backdrops
for most of the movie, filmed
in hopes of hitting Sundance
Troy Foster
for the Emerald
A local gang of filmmakers will soon
find out if its gamble pays off.
The stakes are high — an $80,000 in
vestment.
Their hand is a full-length movie.
What’s wild? “Jacks.”
Eugene is a backdrop this summer for
the makers of “Jacks,” a full-length in
dependent film being shot in and
around the Emerald City.
And three weeks into filming, in a
dimly-lit Wild Duck hall, an important
scene is about to be shot — one that will
last one minute at most but will take the
next five hours to film. This is a typical
day in the life of these indie filmmak
ers, as filming could last up to 15 hours
and go late into the night.
Cast and crew members laugh and
joke around just moments before the
H_1_>j—: ..JH
Catharine KendaU/Emerdld
‘Jacks’ director Jesse Lawler (left) and producer Kenneth Brady discuss a scene.
cameras roll. When director Jesse
Lawler calls action, however, on come
the poker faces, and the seriousness of
making the movie sets in.
So serious, in fact, that nobody on the
set is willing to reveal the significance
of the scene, other than that it is one of
the movie’s most important.
“I don’t know how much I can say
about it,” whispered Jonas Spaccarotel
li, the film’s second assistant director.
“We can’t disclose too much of the
plot.”
The script follows four college bud
dies on their journey through a twisted
web of chaos and deception. The trip
all starts as low-stakes poker for these
pals but soon grows out of control as the
cash flow runs dry and bets become
dares.
Turn to ‘JACKS’, Page 8