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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (July 8, 2004)
Today’s crossword solution 1 THtAMHEOtOGKItMl INTERNATIONAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL 5-day film package $29 1-night $6 All-day Saturday $10 For details, video clips & tickets: website: www.archaeology channel.org e-mail: f ilmfest <g> archaeology channel.org telephone: (541)344-5572 mail: TAC Festival 4147 E. Amazon Dr., Eugene, OR 97405 Tickets can be purchased at the box office during the festival. July 13 - 17, 2004 McDonald Theatre Schedule Tuesday, 13 July 2004 5:45pmDoors open 6:30 Opening Ceremony 6:50 Guardians of Angkor (USA) 7:53 Cultural Wars: Tales from the Trenches, Keynote address by Dr. Jane Waldbaum, American Institute of Archaeology 8:45 Iraq’s Lost Treasure (USA) Wednesday, 14 July 2004 5:45pmDoors open 6:20 Introductions 6:30 Alexandria-Center of Knowledge (Germany) 7:33 Secrets of the Dead: Search for First Human (USA) 8:41 Tubabs in Africa (USA) Thursday, 15 July 2004 5:45pmDoors open 6:20 Introductions 6:30 The Mystery of Chaco Canyon (USA) 7:38 Tonto (USA) 8:17 Searching for Blue (Peru) 9:03 Sastun: My Apprenticeship With a Maya Healer (USA/Belize) Friday, 16 July 2004 5:45pmDoors open 6:20 Introductions 6:30 Bilad Chinqit-The Land of Chinguetti (Italy) 7:40 A Forgotten Place: The History of an Abandoned Farming Community (USA) 8:45 Ephesus-Metropolis of the Ancient World (Austria) Saturday, 17 July 2004 10:15am Doors open 10:50 Introductions 11:00 The Mummies of Taklamakan (France) 12:03pm Sagalassos, the Forgotten City (Belgium) 1:06 Kurtal-Snake Spirit (Australia) 1:35 lunch break 2:35 Time Team-Garden Secrets (UK) 3:25 Skull Wars Revisited, Keynote address by Dr. David Hurst Thomas, curator of anthropology, American Museum of Natural History 4:17 Guardians of a Legacy (USA) 4:28 The House of Julius Polybius in Pompeii (Italy) 4:37 The Splendor of Rome (Italy) Festival Events Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, July 13-15 1-4:30pm Teachers’ Workshop, Downtown Athletic Club, $49 10 a.m. Guided trips to Heritage Sites, length varies, $15 Fri., July 16 10am-1pm, Children’s Workshop, Alton Baker Park, $15 10am Guided trips to Heritage Sites, length varies, $15 1 - 4pm Heritage Film Symposium, Downtown Athletic Club, $20 Aaron Sullivan Illustrator Enid and Seymour of 'Ghost World’ express increasing alienation from the materialistic nature of others. MOVIE continued from page 7 around them says everything about what high school must have been like for them. Upon seeing that two of the popular kids in school have hooked up, Enid remarks: "He better be watch out or he'll get AIDS when he date-rapes her." Enid and Rebecca's relationship is of a type that seems to develop among those neither pretty enough to advance socially nor ambitious enough to advance academically. They stick together, watch each oth er's back and mock the superficiality of those around them. But as they enter the world outside of high school the relationship begins to fall apart, as Rebecca begins to yearn for a normal life. Around this time the two come across another outcast in the form of Seymour, played by the excellent Steve Buscemi. They meet him during the course of an elaborate prank in which they call the number in a pa thetic-sounding personal ad in order to check out what a guy who would write something like that looks like. After watching him sit alone at a restaurant counter for hours, they fol low him home and check out his mail to find out more about him. Once again, small details say everything you need to know about a character, as the girls find out Seymour belongs to a W.C. Fields fan club and the National Psoriasis Foundation. He is also a collector of old records and advertising art, as Enid finds out later when she befriends him. It is their relationship which sets the tone for the rest of the film, as both are cynical smart-asses being slowly beat en down by the world. Seymour is more withered than Enid, having long had to deal with an environment he finds grating and senseless. He has re treated into a world made of collec tor's items and the minutia of old jazz, blues and ragtime 78s. By this time it becomes clear that Zwigoff is beginning to make more subtle points about the relationship of people and their belongings. Char acters in the film define themselves by what they buy, what they wear and what they posses. As Enid and Rebecca begin to grow apart, the split is shown through Re becca's sudden craving for a job, fur niture for her new apartment and the other aspects of commercial life, all of which Enid finds distasteful. On the flip side, Enid is unable to keep a job, and when she tries to hold a garage sale she is too sentimentally attached to her old things to be able to sell them. She finds it ever more difficult to relate to those around her. Her and Seymour's mutual discon nection becomes associated with their attachment to old, unmar ketable objects and their disgust with the sleek and commercial. People find them strange because of their tastes and their intelligence, as well as their personal quirks. This subtext wouldn't work if their loneliness weren't so palpable to be gin with. Each deals with an empti ness in their lives which they deal with in different ways. Their relation ship soon develops into something more bittersweet than it started out as. Seymour deals with his issues through a bout of impotent violence. Enid's solution is different, leading to the film's sublime ending. It is this sublimity which infects the film, making it one of the best cinematic character studies of the past decade. rya nnybu rg@ dailyem era kl.co m NYBURG continued from page 7 albums are hard to come by these days, having been out of print for ages, but his more recent work from the early and mid 1990s is worth checking out, especially Tribal Thun der," which should belong in every surf rock lover's home. Now let us move to the other side of the ocean and examine another popu lar style. Punk rock was an interesting phenomenon to say the least, seeing as it produced so many bands which pro duced so little material of worth. A lot of great work came out of the late 1970s punk rock era, but so did a lot of crap, which is why it surprises me that some of the great stuff isn't always giv en the credit it is certainly due. Pop quiz: Who released the first United Kingdom punk rock album? It was not the Sex Pistols, as seems to be the popular myth, but rather a gangly looking group of freaks called the Damned. This group had the first U.K. punk rock single ("New Rose"), al bum ("Damned Damned Damned") and was the first U.K. punk group to play in these here United States. Prob ably the closest parallel to the Damned's sound is the Misfits, or maybe the Cramps. Like those groups, the Damned members didn't so much play punk as they did create a freaked-out, hyperventilating form of early rock 'n' roll. It's interesting that all these bands used variations on B movie imagery for their lyrical con tent, but I'll leave the theorizing about that for another column. The Damned members didn't re lease much of value during their con voluted careers. The first album is a must-own, as is their third, "Machine Gun Etiquette." Both of these albums were recorded with guitarist/song writer Brian James in the band, and as such are the only truly necessary recordings by the outfit. Everything else ranged across degrees of forget table, but if the Sex Pistols are remem bered for producing one truly classic punk album, the Damned can at least merit a mention for putting out two great ones. That's more than most did, and it's a shame that more people don't remember it. rya nnyburg@da i lyemera Id. co m GOT A STORY IDEA? in ■fc-C
