The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 163

ENTERTAINMENTTHE ARTSTV LISTINGS F. 1 CALENDAR ORANGE COUNTY Eos Angeles (Eimes MONDAY NOVEMBER 2, 1992 HIGHLIGHTS Orange County NEW CLUB IN TOWN: Los Lobos opened the Rhythm Cafe in style Saturday night. The new club, says reviewer Mike Boehm, is a classy, comfortable place to see a show, with five tiered, sharply sloped levels of seating that offer perfect sight lines. Fl MEADOWS ROCK: Glenn Danzig came as everyone from Jim Morrison to Ozzy Osbourne to his Halloween show at the Irvine Meadows. Reviewed by Noel Davis.

F2 'ONE OF KIND': Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard played the Irvine Barclay Friday and reviewer Bill Kohlhaase says there isn't a candidate out there who can equal the musician's uncorrupted vision. F2 STEVE DYKES Los Angeles Tin Tartikoff: A 'Nice Guy' Who Didn't Finish Movies: Paramount boss leaves amid signs things are amiss. But some say he was just starting to turn studio around despite lack of high-profile holiday films. By ROBEHT W. WELKOS and RYAN MURPHY SPECIAL TO THE TIMES For weeks, Paramount Pictures has been the butt of a cruel joke circulating in Hollywood that goes like this: Coming soon to a theater near you this Christmas from Paramount nothing'.

As with most jokes, there is an element of truth to it. Rival studios are stockpiling heavy artillery for the lucrative holiday season. For example, 20th Century Fox is ready to unleash a potential mega-hit in "Home Alone 2" and high-profile projects in "Hoffa" starring Jack Nicholson and "Toys" featuring Robin Williams. Paramount, meanwhile, is reportedly rushing to finish a Steve Martin film called "Leap of Faith" as its lone Christmas offering. Even last week, as Brandon Tartikoff stunned the entertainment industry with the announcement that he was stepping down as head of Paramount Pictures, studio personnel were working overtime to get the movie finished for its scheduled Dec.

18 release. For a major studio to have only one Christmas movie, it has been said, was unbelievable. Few in Hollywood doubted that a significant reason in Tartikoff decision to leave after only 15 months was the health of his 9-year-old daughter, who was severely injured in a 1991 automobile crash and now requires rehabilitation therapy. But at the Paramount lot, there were undercurrents that things were amiss, that Tartikoff for all his creative powers was unable to get the studio to kick into gear. A recent string of bombs such as "Bebe's Kids," "Whispers in the Dark," "School Ties" and "1492" made studio morale sink, and even a week before his official announcement there were rumblings that Tartikoff would be gone before the end of the month.

Although Tartikoff's efforts at Paramount will no doubt go down in the annals of the film industry as scattered to mixed, several sources say he was making strides to turn things around during the last months of his chairmanship. Tartikoff, who had great success transforming stodgy NBC into a hipper, more youthful hit factory, was apparently dead set on giving Paramount a similar make-over. He was working hard to attract younger talent to the studio (a development deal with Tom Cruise was in the works), and was beginning to green-light sexy, cutting-edge materia! such as the Sharon Stone-William Baldwin voyeurism thriller, "Sliver." Tartikoff was also given high marks within the studio for landing the prestige Cruise-Sydney Pollock project "The Firm," which begins shooting later this month. Last week, he nabbed John Landis to direct the long -languishing Eddie Murphy property "Beverly Hills Cop III," and was to receive the revised script for Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan epic "Clear and Present Danger" in two weeks, according to producer Mace Neufeld. Please see PARAMOUNT, F16 Bono leads U2 at Dodger Stadium: A pair of masterful weekend concerts from the Irish quartet.

POP MUSIC REVIEW U2: Power and Thrills OLDIE BUT GOODY: While Hal Holbrook, shown here Friday at the Performing Arts Center, has been doing Mark Twain for nearly four decades, the show and the humor remain fresh, says reviewer Jan Herman. F3 turned off or greatly downplayed. Nothing during the concerts was quite as thrilling, for instance, as when Edge started his distinctive, treble-heavy guitar intro, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton joined in the galloping rhythm of a song like "Where the Streets Have No Name." The music is still what matters most. Lots of other provocative elements, however, were tossed at the audience including lead singer Bono Hewson's role-playing.

There were lots of strange, sometimes scary-looking characters in Saturday's Halloween night audience: a red devil, a swashbuckling pirate, a bleeding accident victim an Elvis and Priscilla strolling regally hand in hand. But the most unsettling of all was on stage as Hewson, dressed in black leather and dark glasses, portrayed the self-absorbed rock star during the early moments of the two-hour performance. This was no Halloween extra, but one of the central elements of the provocative "Zoo TV" tour. As U2 rose to popularity and acclaim in the '80s as a group whose music and performances were centered on a spiritually conscious, uplifting stance, there were frequent criticisms that the group took itself too seriously. The group tried to answer the complaints in interviews by saying that ideals outlined in such songs as "Pride (In the Name of Love)" were about man's Please see 172, F7 By ROBERT HILBURN TIMES POP MUSIC CRITIC LOS ANGELES Grand slam.

On a field where the Dodgers recently completed one of the worst seasons in the team's history, U2 brought some thrills back to Dodger Stadium with a pair of masterful weekend concerts. On one of the final stops on a truly magical, mystery tour, the Irish quartet demonstrated once again why it is the only contemporary band with the ambition and talent to once have been considered on the same level as the Beatles. Previewed last spring at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, the "Zoo TV" tour started as a bold step into the rock 'n' roll unknown-, a test of the physical and emotional limits of stadium rock, and in many ways a test of the character of the band itself. Now that it has woven its way back to Southern California, the flashy, high-tech tour has evolved in some surprising and reassuring ways. The most dramatic technical effect of the tour is an elaborate video-monitor system that delivers such a startling sense of intimacy and immediacy to the proceedings that it may become the standard for stadium concerts in the '90s.

Equally important is the way the band itself has been able to use all the technical assault for its own purposes, rather than being overwhelmed by it. Indeed, some of U2's most powerful moments Friday and Saturday came when the video screens were either ON THE RECORD "All Democrats are insane. Republicans are never insane. They're just resting their intellect." Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, in Costa Mesa on Friday. F2 More Orange County Calendar coverage, F2-F3 Elsewhere ftp HOWARD ROSENBERG Media Coverage: The Vote Is In With the grueling presidential campaign coming to an end Tuesday, the results are already in today on how the media fared in their coverage.

As in every election, there have been winners and losers. Winner. MTV, for its get-out-the-young-vote crusade as part of regular campaign coverage that spoke to the youth crowd without being condescending. MTV was never better this campaign than when recently having Al Gore in to be quizzed by a studio audience and moderators Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren. It was Soren, especially, whose precise, informed, incisive questions stood out.

If only someone had had the foresight to suggest her as a press participant in some of the televised presidential debates. Loser. Rush Limbaugh, for rarely elevating his anti-Clinton-Gore harangues on TV above shrill, sophomoric name-calling. By all reasonable criteria, Limbaugh is a burlesquing entertainer, not a serious political commentator. But what passes as entertainment on Limbaugh's radio Please see MEDIA, F16 HOWARD ROSENBERG: Voters head for the polls Tuesday, marking the end to a election campaign in which the media have had their own winners and losers.

Fl NEW KIDS: Artistic director To-moe Shizune led his Hakutobo troupe as a new generation of butoh dancers arrived at the Japan America Theatre. The new kids on the block just don't carry the same punch that their elders did. Reviewed by Chris Pasles. F5 SATISFIED: Jim Lampley once again a man who does sports and nothing but talks about life after his news debacle at KCBS-TV, life with wife Bree Walker and living life without worrying about whether the world thinks he's a serious guy. Fll HINES: "Jammin': Jelly Roll Morton on Broadway," featuring Gregory Hines, is an insightful examination of the creation of the musical "Jelly's Last Jam" tonight on PBS.

Reviewed by Sylvie Drake. F14 MARILYNN YOUNG For The Times COUNTERPUNCH Cesar Rosas, left, and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos perform in costumes for Rhythm Cafe opening. O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW Lobos Launch Rhythm Cafe PETER CLOTHIER: Christopher Knight's review of "Parallel Visions. Modern Artists and Outsider Art" at the L.A.

County Museum of Art did a disservice to Times' readers and to the show it purported to review, writes the associate editor of Artspace magazine. F5 IAN BOWATER: "1492" is another example of a screenwriter's work being let down by the final cut, a former film executive contends. F5 OPERA REVIEW 'McTeague': Clever Coup for Chicago By MARTIN BERNHEIMER TIMES MUSIC CRITIC CHICAGO Philip Glass had his trendy fling with minimalist mysticism at the Met a few weeks ago. Yawn. Saturday night, the enterprising Lyric Opera of Chicago countered with a world premiere of its own.

No yawn. The Chicago entry, far more treat than trick, was William Bolcom's "McTeague." It boasted the obvious ingredients of an instant no-nonsense all-American hit. The composer, a master of his complex craft, wrote an accessible score that cannily bridged period pop, mild-mannered modernism and old-fashioned operatic convention. The librettists, Arnold Weinstein and Robert Alt-man yes, the wise old Hollywood maverick provided Bolcom with a taut libretto based on Frank Norris' 1899 Please see F8 Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. Los Lobos sported peaked hats with skull and crossbones insignia, shiny sashes and pantaloons, bandannas, and even an eye patch on David Hidalgo, who proved he needs just one eye to play ace Tex-Mex accordion and searing guitar solos.

Hidalgo's guitar sidekick, Cesar Roias, had on his ever-present dark glasses, proving that some habits of dress don't change, regardless of the occasion. Los Lobos' show, though, was very much guided by the occasion. The band's current album, "Kiko," is a cohesive, magical but overidingly serious -minded song -cycle that may be the finest rock album of the year. Los Lobos' 80-minute set included only five of the Please see RHYTHM, F2 By MIKE BOEHM TIMES STAFF WRITER SANTA ANA Rhythm Cafe got hijacked by pirates on its maiden voyage, but they were kind enough to pry open a treasure chest well-stocked with blues-rock doubloons for the posh new concert venue's opening-night audience. In the spirit of Halloween, the members of Los Lobos came out in full buccaneer regalia for the first of the two shows they played Saturday night to launch the 550 -capacity cafe, which aims to cross swords with the somewhat smaller (480 capacity) but firmly entrenched (almost seven years of virtually unchallenged domination of the Orange County concert-club scene) INDEX What Goes On F2 Movie Guide F3 Morning Report F4 Tonight on TV and cable F15.