Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • Page 58

12LVTallahassee DemocratFit, April 27, 1990 Friedkin's 'The Guardian' never quite gets it together EH By Dave Kehr Chicago Tribune some down periods. And Friedkin's current depressive slump has extended since "Deal of the Century" in 1983, with a partial remission for 1985's "To Live and Die in LA" It's hard to recognize the director of A filmmaker who lives on his own keyed-up emotions, as William Friedkin does, is going to have (f B-29 B-24 Static Air Display Hosted by The Tallahassee Jr. Museum and the Confederate Air Force "Diamond Lil" the oldest of three liberator! bombers still in existence. severed limbs (both human and arboreal) are flying. Friedkin seems to be having enormous difficulty in getting even the simplest scenes going.

In a wholly generic sequence in which Seagrove and the baby are attacked in the woods by a roving gang of punks, Friedkin flails around for half a reel and still never finds a momentum or an angle on the scene that makes it seem anything other than arbitrary and ridiculous. At one point, a biker taunts Seagrove for "staying out so late," though it's plainly high noon did someone forget to slip the day-for-night filter on the camera lens? There are, here and there, occasional glimpses of Friedkin's disquieting personality: Surely, no one has ever shot babies to look so grossly inhuman. But Friedkin has never before seemed quite so distant and quite so derivative (several elements of the film its fairytale frame, the design of the tree and the use of coyotes as Sea-grove's familiars closely recall Neil Jordan's underappreciated "The Company of Yet it's probably to Friedkin's credit that he turns out to be such an inadequate hack he needs to be personally engaged before he can make a movie at all The Guardian" now playing at Capitol Cinemas and Parkway 5. Rated R. the bosom of the nuclear family, and it, too, tries to exploit a cul-turewide fear, turning a shared guilt into a monstrous projection.

The guilt of "The Guardian," however, is far more mundane and far less gripping than "The Exorcist's" agony over our abandonment of the church. Based on a novel by Dan Greenburg, "The Guardian" is concerned not with the struggle for souls but the nagging disquiet felt by parents who must rely on child care. Set in a strangely Midwestern Southern California (the local color is provided by the metaphorical earthquakes that periodically interrupt the action), "The Guardian" concerns the experiences of a transplanted Chicago couple (the utterly colorless Dwier Brown and Carey Lowell) who hire a too-good-to-be true English nanny (Jenny Seagrove, the gray-eyed mermaid of "Local to care for their newborn son. She is in fact some sort of Druid priestess who kidnaps babies, and sacrifices them to a huge, gnarled and hopelessly fake-looking tree (an overgrown cousin to the talking bower in "The Wizard of situated deep in the primal forest of the Hollywood Hills. The film becomes far too explicit much too quickly, as if Friedkin, frustrated by his inability to build a genuine suspense, had decided to move to the main course as quickly as possible.

Soon, the VJLZ i7mi'i" 1 "The French Connection," "The Exorcist" and "Cruising" in such soggy, uncommitted projects as "Deal," "The Brink's Job" and the current "The Guardian." When Friedkin isn't on, he can seem way, way oft "The Guardian," as the paperback title might suggest, is a return to the well of "The Fjcorcist" after more than a decade spent looking for a comparable commercial hit (Friedkin's last film, "Rampage," made for the bankrupt Dino De-Laurentiis company, was never released.) Like "The Exorcist," "The Guardian" is a horror story set in FLEA PROBLEMS? Find the answers at GRAYLING'S S3 1010S.Adams222-4812 "Fin" the only B-29 still in flyable condition today. Where: the old terminal of the Tallahassee Municipal Airport When: 10 am-7 pm Tuesday, May 1-Sunday, May 6 Cost: $3 per person (children adults). An additional $5 fee to board the B-29 $3 to board the B-24 A Portion of the gate admission will go to the Jr. Museum TALL4J1A55EL JR MUSEUM Lottery Collectors Club hopes unused tickets will may one day be valuable I Saturday, April 28 Preview 10 A.M.-3 P.M. A Auction 3 P.M.-8 P.M.

ORIENTAL RUG AUCTION Finest Quality Exceptional Values By Rick Shefchik St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch The national Lottery Collectors Society 130 members strong thinks there's a future in hanging on to old lottery tickets. No one knows if they'll ever be worth anything, but if they are, it stands to reason that mint tickets will be worth more than scratched-off tickets. The collecting rule of thumb always has been: Don't open it, use it, play it or change it Keep it as new as possible. With a lottery ticket, that would mean: Don't scratch it off if you can resist The lottery collectors hope that America will someday lust after the discarded lottery tickets that club members were prescient enough to hoard.

They dream of a day when a 1976 New Jersey Presidential Series ticket will be as valuable as a Topps 1975 George Brett rookie card; a day when those who saved their lottery tickets will have to endure sob stories from those whose moms (or wives or husbands) threw theirs away. But rest assured: That day has not yet arrived. "It's a relatively new area," says Jim Burton, a New Jersey collector who has 2,500 different discarded tickets. "If someone could find some real old tickets, however, it would be worth it to an individual collector to pay for them." A skeptic would note that rare lottery tickets still are struggling to get back to the price the original buyer paid and that lottery tickets do not represent cherished memories of youth the way baseball cards do. The collectors have no time for skeptics.

"Right now, the challenge is to collect one of everything," says Burton, who admits to experiencing a kind of sick feeling at the thought of the millions of lottery tickets thrown away each year. The first state lottery began in New Hampshire in 1964. Since then, various states have issued sets with themes various themes. Members of the Lottery Collectors Society collect new issues and trade them with fellow members. New members receive free tickets from other states, a monthly newsletter and a constantly updated catalog of US.

and Canadian instant tickets. At this point, there is practically no buying or selling of tickets within the club. For membership information and a sample newsletter, write to the Lottery Collectors Society, Dave Parmalee, 1007 Luttrell St, Knoxville, Tenn. 37917. HERMAN KASHAN BOKHARA CHINESE TABRIZ WOOLSSILKS Adolfo Reyes Lie.

9106 In sizes 2'x3' ofi 3'x5V NP 6'x9' 8'xlO' 9'xl2' ,05 10'xl4' U5U 12' 18' fr i Holiday Inn University Center 316 W. Tennessee St. Tel. (904) 222-8000 Over 300 First Quality Handwoven Rugs at Public Auction.