Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 1-25

123456 SECTION1CHICAGO TRIBUNE 25 A 40-year-old woman has four kids and is going through a divorce. She will be in a bike-a-thon, and a male co-worker gave her $50 and told her to buy a cute outfit so he can enjoy the view from behind. Amy says the woman should: A. Remind him a bike-a-thon, not a bike-a- thong. B.

Say to the hopeless romantic. C. Say to his suggestive offer. ASK AMY Different spokes PAGE 26 By Michael Wilmington Tribune movie critic Orson Welles, citizen of the movies, will be celebrated all this summer at the Music Box Theatre in a weekend matinee series: film classics in which he directed or starred or did both. a just tribute to one of the greatest names in the pantheon of cinema, that wondrous, vagrant, beleaguered and absolutely indispensable artist who very well may have been the most talented moviemaker who ever lived.

He is of course, best known as director-star-co-writer of the staggeringly inventive, blazingly brilliant film he made at age 25 the movie which, starting in 1962, has been voted in five decades as the best of all timein Sight and International Poll of critics and filmmakers. But does that make Welles the ultimate one- hit wonder, never matching despite a lifetime of trying, ending up a prolific actor in mediocre films and wine commercials, directing only occasionally on leaner and leaner budgets he had to raise himself? The huge value of the Music Box series is that it allows us to see how wrong that notion is. Welles directed one indisputable masterpiece right after Magnificent Amber- and he kept on making great works or trying right up to his death in 1985, when he had several scripts ready and half a dozen films in various stages of completion. His legacy is still being mined his old movies restored and his uncompleted ones (like the legendary Other Side of the and being finished or assembled. Welles was a citizen of the world.

But for a while, at least, he was a Chicagoan; though he was born in Kenosha, his mother lived here until her death in 1924. We should be proud to claim him and delighted to see or re-see these supreme classics: all in 35 mm prints, some newly struck. a feast something the protean Welles was never shy of creating or consuming. Bon appetit! Magnificent (U.S.; Orson Welles, 1942) troubled but magnificent all-time classic, adapted from Booth Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The film charts the fall of a once splendid Indiana family, The Ambersons, and their vanishing, elegant world of sleigh rides and serenades, MOVIES Orson Welles made the blazingly brilliant in 1941when he was 25.

Orson Welles mastered art of movies PLEASE SEE WELLES, PAGE29 By Chris Jones Tribune arts reporter La Comedie Francaise has performed Malade more than 2,000 times during the past 324 years. So not surprising that deference and reverence were thrown out long ago. These days, the image-conscious French national theater prefers to explore the house relationship with the macabre, the surreal and the vividly grotesque. Aside from the need to attract younger, hipper audiences to a bastion of the Parisian establishment, probably the only way it can keep itself from being bored to death. Fair enough.

Vive la France. This internationally touring production from Swiss director Claude Stratz visiting Chicago for this weekend as part of a short North American tour will come as something of a shock to a good portion of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater audience. Pair Moliere and America, and one usually gets a mix of flamboyant wigs, painted sets, powdered visages, high-style verbosity, rhyming couplets rendered into well-spoken English and assorted other detritus of the typical American classical outing to the belle France of the17th Century. Not here. Stratz instead offers a very intense, dark and challenging show performed in a single two-hour act far closer to the work of Steven Berkoff than Brian Bedford.

One has seen funnier and subtler evenings of Moliere and shabbily executed English sur- titles certainly help with the comic timing at Thursday Chicago opening. And you could make a reasonable case that this kind of dark, post-modern sobriety is a misreading of the Moliere comic universe. I make that case. On these shores, at least, rarely been a show that so provocatively and yet so completely located Moliere within the French cultural trajectory and exposed the restless existentialism. Watch this production and you help but muse that the route between 17th Century comedy and everything from Beckett to the Cirque du Soleil to that strange French affection for Jerry Lewis can seem surprisingly logical.

Malade Imaginary was always among the darkest of the Moliere comedies. Along with a lonely, self-loath- ing protagonist, the play involves lots of strange low humor staged around bile, enemas, bedpans and the like. But in terms of structure, still a fairly conventional piece with the usual Moliere cast of grumpy pop, illicit love affair, scheming servant, raisonneur and the rest. In hands, though, the production emphasizes the pain of being hated or misunderstood only in the big physical set pieces does the piece escape into any kind of comic riff. Long stretches of the dialog are more sad and perverse than droll.

But assuming up for ride, this is not a bad thing. The famous feigned death sequences here pack the kind of emotional oomph rarely seen in any Moliere comedy anywhere. quite a jaw-dropper and just one of many fascinating ideas here on display. Furthermore, some very robust acting to appreciate including a take on Argan from the fine Alain Pralon that renders him more like Hamm in Also on that same stylistic map is the equally terrific Catherine Sauval, who oscillates around the imaginary invalid with deliciously self-serving zeal. Various supporting players inhabit the grotesque with palpable ease.

This is not a show likely to gain the endorsement of the American Medical Association the doctors are the freakish stuff of nightmares that Moliere could barely have imagined. Malade is being presented in French with a projected English translation at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. THEATER REVIEW La Comedie Francaise gives a dark reading of Malade Where Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier When Through Sunday Running time 2 hours Tickets $75 at 312-595-5600 By Steve Johnson Tribune television critic Considering its provenance and its large and genuinely splendid cast, the ambitious new cable version of is a well understated thing, or at least understated by the standards of converting Stephen King novels to film. This version, 25 years after a first and relatively well-regarded mini-series, more than justifies the considerable effort that went into making it. a tale of soullessness with a remarkable depth of soul, of bloodsucking pulsing with red blood cells.

To be sure, the newer is a little preachy and too consciously at the beginning of each of the two nights (7 p.m. Sunday and Monday, TNT)as it hammers home standing theme of the wee place with a roiling underbelly of evil. winter malaise is epidemic in a small intones Rob Lowe, sounding more like reading than talking as writer alter- ego. self-medicate with alcohol and And so on. But as the film gets into exposing that underbelly in this case centered on a newly re-inhabited haunted old mansion on a hill it develops psychological complexity and a fullness of character that is usually in books but rarely makes the transition to screen.

Mikael Salomon, the Danish cinematographer of deserves considerable credit for this. Working from a teleplay by Peter Filardi Salomon cuts scenes off when they remain interesting and adds a visual style that is, itself, a littleGothic: florid and color-drenched and remarkably natural feeling when the ghouls and special effects start flying. And got a cast to die for, if pardon the expression. As the writer returning to the Maine town of Lot to confront the horror he witnessed in childhood, Lowe is the lone nod to TV casting convention, but in the moments when he reading words, his technique, setting his square jaw and keeping mostly still, serves him well. Giving Lowe an emotional counterpoint is Samantha Mathis as the local barista yes, the novel has been modernized, though not overwhelmingly so.

She takes a liking to Lowe before deciding that betraying the town before joining back up with him as really bad things push the concerns past conventional morality. Another major talent, Andre Braugher, rounds out this initial Scooby gang. the English teacher who first suspects that the suddenly high rate of mortality with anemia may have Transylvanian roots. Being an African-American in a King novel, however, his fate is pretty much foretold. Add to them: James Cromwell as a thirsty priest, Rutger Hauer as a fellow who likes to sleep in daytime, and Donald Sutherland, serving thick-sliced ham with his Morris chairs, as a new-to-town antiques dealer.

The director and writer underscore the careful rounding of second novel, which neatly draws the parallels between writer and vampire and makes every characteran integral part of the resolution. In the opening half, the horrors around them seem to come up a little quickly and go away too easily, perhaps because the mini-series format demands a first-night teaser. But by Night Two and the true wave of horror, the concluding spasm of violence akin to the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks display, no explosion too loud, too bright or too low in the sky. TELEVISION digs deep into gore In airing Sunday and Monday nights on TNT, Rob Lowe (foreground) plays a writer who returns to a Maine town to confront the horror he witnessed in childhood. TNT to air remake of classic horror tale Here are selected capsule reviews of movies in current release.

Information is based on the most up-to-date theater schedules available and subject to change. Around the World in 80 Days This sort-of remake borrows the title of Jules novel and the 1956 best picture Oscar winner, but it changes persnickety British gentleman Phileas Fogg into an absent-minded inventor (Steve Coogan) and focuses on Jackie Passepartout, trying to return a stolen Jade Buddha to his Chinese village. The transplant of a standard Chan plot onto this adventure tale never takes. PG. 2:05.

Baadasssss! 1 2 Mario Van Peebles writes, directs, produces and stars in this biopic of the making of his father Melvin Van 1971in- dependent black power film, Baadasssss a fast-paced look at production nuts and bolts, marvelously evoking the passion and frantic energy behind the revolutionary film and era, and staying away from the cloying sentimentality that often comes with hero depictions. R. 1:48. MOVIE CAPSULES PLEASE SEE MOVIES, PAGE27.