Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 17

REPUBLIC; tfjfcwt FGfeJjanuary 30, 1987 The Arizona Republic Bridge Night life Ski report Cinemafare Television Comics An equitable arrangement Actors Bob Sorenson and Linda De Armond share more than greasepaint, but marriage to someone in the same business, especially show business, can have its ups and downs. D3. 0 Weekend highlights Ufe IP 00 fo) If Mr LRJ 'Platoon' leads viewer through pain of Vietnam wwv.www' I.III.I.II.M.M.I..III.II i j.n. i ties Movies Review ON STAGE Out of the TV and onto the stage come Joan Rivers and her acid comedy Saturday at Symphony Hall, and Carol Lawrence and Alan Thicke Saturday at Sundome. Details on Page D3.

POPULAR MUSIC Saturday brings Alice Cooper to the Coliseum with Megadeth, Lonnie Mack and Hans Olson to the Mason Jar Lounge and Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra to Scotts-dale Center. Details on pages D3 and D5. CLASSICAL Tonight, the Juilliard String Quartet is at Scottsdale Center. Saturday, Theo Alcantara conducts the Phoenix Symphony with pianist Jeffrey Siegel at ASU's Gammage Center in Tempe, and Caio Pagano and Takayori Atsumi offer a piano and cello recital at ASU Music Theatre. Sunday, Juliana Markova will play a piano recital at ASU Music Theatre.

For details, see pages D3 and D5. MOVIES New on Valley screens today are the adventure Allan Quartermain and the Lost City Of Gold; Clockwise, a comedy with John Cleese; Decline of the American Empire; Welcome to 18, a teen exploitation film; Monster in the Closet, with Donald Grant and Denise OuBarry; Outrageous Fortune, a comedy adventure with Shelley Long and Bette Midler and Platoon, the Vietnam combat film starring Charlie Sheen. For details, see the movie guide on Page D10. EVENTS Today through Sunday, Gila County Fairgrounds is the site of a Gem and Mineral Show. Saturday's schedule includes the Casa Grande Historical Society Fiesta, the Sunbonnet Doll Club Show and Sale at the El Zaribah Shrine Temple and a Teddy Bear and "Bearaphernalia" Sale at Phoenix Visual Arts Center.

For details, turn to Page D5. PLATOON Orion Pictures, written and directed by Oliver Stone, music by Georges Delerue, photography by Robert Richardson. Cast: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe. Rated: R. By MARSHA McCREADIE The Arizona Republic I didn't take a single note during the screening of Platoon: It's that engrossing, that overwhelming.

From the minute that grunt Chris' plane arrives and drops him deep in the plains, body bags, and limited action of Vietnam in 1968, the movie has you in its grip and never lets go. On its most basic level, it's just a war movie. But what a war movie. No other film footage even documentaries can match Platoon for the nearly visceral, hands-on sense of being in a foxhole, of being tired, shot at, irritable and jumpy to the point of insanity. Possibly this is because, as the press material informs, the actors were put through a grueling Vietnam-like training session before the movie was filmed.

It also must have a great deal to do with the script, and its intense vision. Platoon is writer-director Oliver Stone's account of his experiences in Vietnam, when he dropped out of Yale and enlisted in the Army, in part out of guilt at the fact that the conflict was known as a "poor man's war." As one character says to Chris (Charlie Sheen), when he explains his "crusading" position: "You have to be rich to have ideas like that." A terrific performance like Sheen's was unexpected. He was just OK in Short takes A scarred Tom Berenger as Sgt. Barnes shows the face of anger that he turns on a Vietnamese family in Platoon. some of the voice-over letters that Chris writes home, and to the narrated conclusion of the movie.

The rest of the movie rings true. The dialogue, though scabrous at times, is realistic (and can be interestingly compared with the more macho dialogue of Heartbreak Ridge). And Chris' introduction to dope and his interaction with the blacks in his troop seem true to life and not without humor. Platoon is an extraordinary look at a painful topic. And it can only help to see it again, in this light.

another war movie, Red Dawn, and recently was seen in a small bit at the conclusion of the disastrous Wisdom, the vanity project of Sheen's real-life brother, Emilio Estevez. But in Platoon, Sheen carries his character through an intense and broad moral range Chris goes from being totally "green" to being as jumpy and paranoid as the most shell-shocked of the grunts to an understanding of the confusing morality of the war. There are a number of unforgettable scenes, but two come immediately to mind: when Chris gets uncontrollably angry at a retarded Vietnamese; and the terrible sequence when Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) takes his wrath out on a village and on one family in particular. If there is a fault in Platoon, it's that the film's dramatic structure is too polarized.

Barnes is just too bad, and Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) is too good. Not that these types couldn't havejor didn't, exist. But their squaring ofrso neatly, with Chris in between, is too pat and melodramatic a package. The same objection can be made to PHYLLIS DILLER, who turns 70 this year, gets "carried away" at a Los Angeles party Wednesday night.

Her bearers are Billy Hufsey, Meat Loaf and Grammy nominee Luis Cardenas, who gave Diller a role in his Hungry for Your Love video. Female comedy team is an 'Outrageous' hit News briefs ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE COUP This week's unsuccessful coup attempt in the Philippines had a certain show-biz flair to it. When not ries Movies Review blaring instructions about surrendering, govern ment loudspeakers played Paul Anka love songs to the mutinous soldiers holed up in a Manila television station. The rebels, meanwhile, found life-size pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Outrageous Fortune is a film whose main idea is so good, so long overdue, that it overrides some thin stretches, some unfunny moments. Comedies with women are rare enough, and it's high time someone came up with a female comedy team.

Bette Midler and Shelley Long are perfect foils for each other in the movie, though it seems at least in retrospect that the funnier lines went to Midler. Long plays the straight man, so maybe it's inevitable that Midler's performance sticks in your mind longer. Or maybe Midler is just the better comedian. Outrageous Fortune starts with a unique bit as Lauren (Long) stands outside her parents' New York apartment (really, outside their buzzer), begging them for more money to I wlwj 1 Iff ill wf0S i f. Jit 7 ffl p4 yaf 'm, PA OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE Touchstone Pictures, directed by Arthur Hiller, written by Leslie Dixon, photography by David Walsh, production designed by James Vance.

Cast: Bette Midler, Shelley Long, Peter Coyote, Robert Prosky, John Schuck, George Car-lin. Rated: R. continue her studies as an actress. She's very much a WASP princess and very much into her ambitions to become a great dramatic actress, even if at the Comedy, D2 Gable in the station, wrote pro-rebellion slogans on them and displayed them to photographers. TV HUNKS Playgirl magazine is searching for the sexiest male TV reporters in America.

Readers who want to take an active role in the selection process can urge a favorite wild and crazy TV news stud to mail an 8-by-10 glossy, a brief resume and a VHS videotape of on-air footage to Sexiest TV Reporters in America, co Playgirl magazine, 801 Second New York, N.Y. 10017. Deadline is March 31. OPERA NAMES PUBLICIST Arizona Opera Company has named Thomas Goldthwaite public relations director, succeeding Joe Onofrio, who recently moved to a similar post with the Phoenix Symphony. Goldthwaite recently was a staff writer for the Indianapolis Star.

Before that, he was a writer in and editor of the Leisure section of The Arizona Republic. Bette's more than middlirY with film, marital success Outrageous Fortune already has received one very good review (from David Ansen of Newsweek), and if nothing else, it is at least the first major film comedy with two women as a team. Shelley Long, chiefly of TV's Cheers, from which she recently resigned, plays Midler's enemy, then friend. Together they track down their shared boyfriend, played by Peter Coyote. "I heard one critic say we were like Hope and Crosby, but I think we're a lot lower than that," Midler good-hu-moredly mugs on a recent Saturday over Bette, D2 By MARSHA McCREADIE The Arizona Republic LOS ANGELES It's great to see Bette Midler once again on top.

It's hard to think of a time when things were this good for the 41-year-old star of the new comedy Outrageous Fortune. Midler's most recent film, Ruthless People, has been a big moneymaker for Touchstone Films (a a Disney), following on the heels of another hit, Down and Out in Beverly Hills. She is a new mother (Sophie is her 4-month-old daughter), and she has been happily married for two years. PAT PAULSEN says he thinks he's a better winemaker than comedian, but judging from the labels on his bottles, it's a tossup. Paulsen writes most of his wine labels.

His Refrigerator White, for instance, is "blessed with saucy impertinence." Because of its "intrinsic -swallowability," says Shelley Long, left, who handles the straight lines, and Bette Midler are foils for each other in Outrageous Fortune, an updated "on the road" comedy. Violinist's classicism highlights chamber event the label, "it is not necessary to enhance the flavor of this wine by heating your teeth over an open flame before drinking. Nay, serve chilled." He says he calls it Refrigerator White because he is having fun, but the real reason is on the label: "Our aim two bottles in every refrigerator across America." Music Review Our daily quote "The right wing is mad. The left wing is mad. We must have done something right.

I think all By bIMITRI DROBATSCHEWSKY The Arizona Republic Bela Bartok'B Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta was the principal selection in Thursday's concert by the Phoenix Symphony Chamber Orchestra, but concertmaster Max Wexler's solo performance in Haydn's C-major Violin Concerto provided the evening's most rewarding moments. Wexler played the concerto exceptionally well, capturing the classical 6tyle of the work but also staying true to the performance standards of the Baroque era, in which elaborate embellishments then often played ad libitum greater intensity had made itself felt, notably in the two slow segments. Such intensity was not lacking in the fascinating Bartok opus, in which two string orchestras were disposed antipho-nally, separated by a harp, piano and celesta. Bartok's irregular but incisive rhythms, his cleverly contrapuntal juxtapositions of the various groups, and his masterful build-up of dramatic high points benefited from the skillful playing of all section members. But not everybody was utterly precise at all times, pointing to the fact that a piece of that degree of difficulty probably needed an extra rehearsal or two.

ment). The cantilena of the Adagio movement, accompanied by pizzicatos from the orchestra, was reminiscent of Haydn's most beautiful string quartets. The program had opened with a somewhat sleepy performance of the seldom-heard Brandenburg Concerto ATaibyJ.S.Bach. Although the ethereal dialogue between oboe and violin in the Adagio was superbly played by Marian Pendell and Holly Marable, respectively, and all the woodwinds, French horns and guest-harpsichordist John Metz performed nobly, the concerto never really seemed to get ignited. There would have been no quarrel with Alcantaras slow tempos if good drama begins with the 'what and I can't think of a more provocative topic." Actor Robert urich, one of the stars of PHOENIX SYMPHONY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Conducted by Theo Alcantara, with soloist Max Wexler, violin.

Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Thursday. composition. The violinist made the most of his opulent tone, his sure intonation and his technical abilities (as evidenced in the extended cadenza of thj first move Amerika, who doesn't understand why everyone is so up in arms about the miniseries, which begins Feb. 15 on ABC. Compiled from Associated Press, United Press Interna become an integral xart of the tional and Arizona Republic stall reports by Hardy Price..