The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 165

section Critics guide Desmond Ryan 3 Pop topics 5 Concert listings 6 entertainment art Sunday, May 1, 1983 She has "a gift from God" one director says. "Like Garbo, like Monroe. She's one of them." It's a greed. Nastassia By Desmond Ryan Inquirer Movie Critic NEW YORK The notorious poster shows Nastassia Kinski wearing nothing but a strategically draped python and a sultry expression. It can be found in college dormitories and fraternity houses and wherever else red-blooded young men gather to wonder why snakes have all the luck.

To the world at large. Kinski is better known for that single Richard Avcdon photograph than for the sum of her movies. It captured not only the quality of fragile sensuality that she brings to the screen, it made her a celebrity. Stardom cannot be bought, as Pia Zadora's husband, millionaire Mcshulam Riklis, has learned to his vast cost. In the usual course, an actress makes a hit movie, and the movers and shakers of the film industry conclude perfect English that bears the merest hint of a Cerman accent.

"They're my goddesses: Garbo, Bergman, Vivien Leigh and especially Monroe." But filmmakers and critics trot out comparisons with stars of the past whether Kinski likes it or not. "It's that something special, a gift from Cod," says Jean-Jacques Beineix, her director in the forthcoming The Moon in the Gutter. "Like Garbo, like Monroe. She's one of them." Kinski has all the trappings of stardom, if not the credits that explain it. She is gracing the cover of the current issue of Time and her schedule is at the mercy of a retinue of publicists on both coasts.

Arthur Bell, a col- umnist for the Village Voice, even has a long piece in a recent issue on how he didn't interview Kinski. And this could well be the (See NASTASSIA KINSKI on 13-L) that she has a special quality that ensured its success. It is difficult, for example, to imagine anyone but Diane Kcaton as Annie Hall. Yet despite the fact that her two 1982 films were commercial failures, Hollywood has decreed Kinski a star at the ripe age of 22. Her rise is all the more extraordinary because producers and directors sensed her unique quality even in such dismal circumstances as Paul Schrader's demented Cat People.

James Toback, Kinski's director in the recently released Exposed, calls that quality "erotic mystery" and says she is destined to join the pantheon of movie sirens. When Kinski hears this assertion repeated, her star-' tling eyes, which give her an air of openness and candor, grow even wider. In a habitual gesture, she runs her fingers through her hair and shakes her head. "I find it very embarrassing," she says in star is a tVv. ff if hi1 iiv i- Vfl' I Kinski in 'Cat People WWII' Specinl lo The Inqura CORI WELLS BHAUN Nastassia Kinski during an interview in a New York hotel's restaurant: Her answers showed a wide-ranging curiosity With Rudolf Nureyev in 'Exposed' Digitals sound a new music era War as art in Japanese woodblocks -v' 'ASSrHrl 'h Vvi' i i 1 lillllllllil Listeners anticipate perfect sound on the new discs.

Dealers expect a boost in sales. And classical musicians Umk to the end of the slump in the recording industry. By Daniel Webster Inquirer MuMt fruit The search for the ideal sonnd-recording process has brought classical music funs to the threshold of the digital era. The implications for serious listeners and for the musicians who have suffered through the recording slump of recent years are resounding around the country. In the new process, sound is coded numerically on tape, free of noise and nearly without loss of quality.

The taped signals are transferred to gleaming compact digital discs (CDs. as they arc called), which resemble small silver phonograph records. They are played on special equipment that uses lasers to translate the signals into sound. Firms manufacturing the new equipment predict that their technology will sweep the field in a few years. The LP record would become a dinosaur in the evolution of near-perfect home music reproduction.

Manufacturers' predictions are echoed by almost everyone who has heard digitally recorded music played on the new CD turntables, Radio station WFLN launched digital broadcasting with an hour-long By Edward J. Sozanski Inqutrtt Art Cnllc One of the many subplots in the history of art concerns lhe humble block print, the oldest and technically the simplest of the graphic media. In the 16th century Albrecht Durer raised block printing to high art, but as etching, intrinsically a more expressive process, and steel engraving became popular block-printing became a secondary, primarily illustrative, technique. Block printing fared better in Japan. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists like Harunobu, Hi-roshige.

Hokusai and Utamaro, in collaboration with master carvers and printers, had established the block print as a object of delicate beauty, albeit with a totally different esthetic. Where European block prints were characteristically bold, black and linear, the Japanese ukiyo-e "pictures of the floating world" emphasized flat areas of soft color, intricate design and subtle tonalities that even today seem extraordinary for the medium. The two traditions converged The Japanese Army Fights Furiously at Haicheng in the Snow and block print by Beisaku program that included music by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Some reservations are being heard from cautious retailers who have been through other technological revolutions (quadriphonics, holography) that failed to convince the public of their lasting importance. Those dissents seem to be few, however, and manufacturers are gearing up to meet a demand that has made it virtually impossible to keep players in stock.

An informal survey of audio dealers in Philadelphia turned up not a single outlet at which a potential buyer could walk in and walk out with a player. But demonstrator models are available, and a number of stores arc (See RECORDINGS on 12-L) when the impressionists and the post-impressionists "discovered" the Japanese masters. The influence of ukiyo-e on 19th-century Western taste is unmistakable, but it is deli-ciously ironic that the Europeans were being inspired by an art that was already in decline. The ukiyo-e tradition, reduced to illustrative reportage, gasped its last just before the turn of the century, even as Europeans like Paul Gauguin and Ed-vard Munch were finding it inspira tional. That final burst of creativity occurred during 1894-95, when Japan and China were fighting a war to determine which would dominate Korea.

Enthusiasm for the war was high in Japan, which had instigated it, and journalistic coverage created a demand for pictures. Artists responded by turning out wood-block illustrations that could be quickly and cheaply reproduced. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, whose extensive collection of Japanese prints includes a rich selection of these war scenes, has put 86 of them on display in an exhibit that began last weekend and continues through June 26. They are interesting not only because of their unusual triptych format and strong narrative content but because they demonstrate that by century's end the Japanese were borrowing just as much from Europe as Europe was borrow-(See WOOD BLOCKS on 14-L) By JOHN CORR says they "are playing gigs hero, at the Wax Museum in Washington and the Lone Star Cafe in New York. The band doesn't even have a name yet, and I get the feeling these appearances are sort of an experiment for the musicians to see how they work together." South St.

and big changes at the Dubliner, 250 S. Fifth St. Joe Piontek, new owner of the Dubliner, says he will continue the live Irish music on weekends in the bar but will separate it from the dining room and "really concentrate on improving the food." I know he means that, because he hired as chef Irv Gelber. former owner-chef of the defunct Cafe Vienna. 7r I town these hundreds of tunes in my head." He started playing one of the hundreds of tunes "Stormy Weather," to be exact and pretty soon a small crowd had gathered and it was springtime on Chestnut Street.

RESTAURANTS: Gaetano opened quietly Friday. The little place at 705 Walnut St. is run by Tom and Inez Schinco. who operated the very successful Gaetano's on the same block, at 727 Walnut until 1979. The 727 property is now the World's Fare restaurant.

The new Gaetano seats only 48 and doesn't yet have a liquor license, but I doubt that will deter people who remember Inez' cooking. The Admiral's Club has been open only a week, and already they are talking about expanding it. The club is a posh room overlooking the Dela Kevin the Piper opened his performing season last week in the 1700 block of Chestnut Street. "This is a great town for street musicians," he said. "That's why you see so many of us." The arrival of May brings the music back to the streets of Philadelphia, and the best places for listening are Chestnut Street west of Broad and the NewMarket area around Second and Pine Streets.

Kevin the Piper, a bearded man with a soft voice and a sunny smile, says he prefers Chestnut Street because he has made a lot of friends there. He plays a recorder because, some years ago, he bought one by mistake. "I saw an ad for a recorder," he said, "and I thought it was a tape recorder. When it came, I started playing it, I found out I had all ware River. It is on the second floor over Daniel's, which used to be called the Riverfront Restaurant.

(I'll never understand why they changed the name.) It is a lot fancier than Daniel's, however, and has its own chef, kitchen staff and uniformed waiters. It costs S100 to join the club, but that amount is deducted from your first month's food bill. Lunch is served Tuesday through Saturday, and the room is open to non members on Saturday nights. PREDICTIONS: Look for the reopening, under a new name, of the old Holly Moore's restaurant at 18th and Sansom Streets, the revamping of the old Da Vinci restaurant on Walnut Street, the opening of a large and fancy restaurant adjoining the Scruples after-hours club at 119 PUB CRAWLING: If you love beer, show up at 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Dickens Inn in NewMarket, where five major beer-distributing concerns urc offering 1.16 brands for sampling.

There is a $2 entrance fee and, for $5 more, you may avail yourself of the restaurant's "English country pub buffet." For another dollar, you can enter the Yard of Ale contest and try to drink without pausing 48 ounces of alu from a tubular glass container. MUSIC: A new band featuring Richie Manuel and Rick Danko, formerly of The Band, Paul Butterfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Blondie Chaplin, formerly with the Beach Boys, comes to town Friday night to play at Filly's, 237 Chestnut St. (If you are going, better get there early.) Stan Chapman, owner of Filly's, It's Maytime and Piper time.