Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 59

6osUT i Calendar, 8-D Movies, 10-D Nightlife, 12-D Art, Museums 13-D section FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1987 0 0 ST. PETERSBURG TIMES SCEE HIDES HARPER Serious acting proves to be too much to ask for Liberace: more than Mr. Glitter By THOMAS HARRISON Timet Staff Writer Director Bob Clark says his new film, From the Hip, is "a comedy with a lot on its mind." At its best, From the Hip is a crude farce patterned after Norman Jewison's 1979 film, And Justice for All, in which Al Pacino played a defense lawyer trapped in the REVIEW vortex of the Maryland judicial 'itelu, ft mouie From the Hip system. The humor in From the Hip trades heavily on vulgarity: a daylong hearing on the admissibility of a seven-letter epithet for sphincter; a humming vibrator pulled from a startled prosecutor's briefcase. All of which reminds This 'Light of Day' too brightly cast YJ By THOMAS HARRISON Timet Staff Writer The fact that Michael J.

Fox is only slightly taller than a portable TV set doesn't mean he has no presence beyond the limits of the medium that created him. Small-screen success has stunted Fox's growth, however, and his lack of dramatic range inhibits his perfor- you of Clark's claim to fame, Porky 's. We know what From the Hip is after from the opening scene, when Judd Nelson pours ice water on his sleeping girlfriend, Jo Ann (Elizabeth Perkins). Bob Clark wants yuks, and he spares no trick to get them. Nelson plays a 25-year-old Boston lawyer named Robin "Stormy" Weathers, one year out of law school and bored with picking up the scraps for his firm's senior partners.

Desperate for a court case, Robin finagles his way into a seemingly ordinary civil suit as counsel for a bank president (Ed Winter) who slugged a litigious colleague. Robin promptly turns the simplease into a First Amendment issue. Using the courtroom as a playground, Robin invokes William Faulkner, G. B. Shaw, and William Shakespeare in his defense.

The judge (ably played by Ray Walston) grudgingly allows the unorthodox tactics, and Robin makes his case. These early scenes are as much the property of Ed Winter as Judd Nelson. Winter is well known as Col. Flagg from the MA S7television series, and he did appear in the first two Forky films. His spirited performance here as a man's man, who'd rather swing away than negotiate, is a gem.

Had From the Hip continued in this vein, its raw energy might've carried it past the screenplay, which Clark wrote with a real-life Boston barrister, David E. Kelley. (Kelley is the story editor for the NBC dramatic series, L.A. Law.) However, the second half of the film is mostly dark shadows. The largest shadow of all belongs to Robin's new client, Dr.

Douglas Benoit, a literature professor at Boston U. Benoit is charged with the savage murder of a hooker who was blackmailing him, and he is suspected of killing her pimp as well. Benoit is described by one of Robin's colleagues as "a cross between Charles Manson and William Buckley," and John Hurt makes him an unlikely candidate for sympathy. Robin and his defense team start to have doubts. Is this fellow capable of slamming a claw hammer into a woman's skull? What are the ethics of defending someone you suspect is guilty? Benoit's defense belongs to Robin only because the senior members of his firm played by Darren McGavin, Nancy Marchand, and Allan Arbus want him to fail.

mance in Light of Day, the new REVIEW mouie Light of Day film from writerdirector Paul Schrader. Fox hasn't yet shaken his TV persona, and he looks too darned pretty to be the tough-but-tender hero of this film. Cast against character, he is too subdued and one-dimensional to be believable as a blue-collar rock 'n' Tatt roller. Fox plays Joey Rasnick, who fronts a Cleveland rock group, The Barbusters, with his older sister Patti (Joan Jett). Like others of their ilk, the Barbusters play mostly for small change and beer nuts.

On a good night, the band members might split $200 five ways. In this world, groups have names like Yogurt Moon, and Hunzz. My favorite line is one character's matter-of-fact assessment of a band that underwent a metamorphosis: "They used to be called Sins. Now they're just Problems," he says. By day, Joey and Bu (Michael McKean), the group's bassist, work at a nearby pressed-metal plant.

Joey and Patti live in a small frame house with Patti's illegitimate son, Benji (Billy Sullivan), who is a reminder to Patti's mother (Gena Rowlands) of her daughter's past transgressions. In this family, Joey is the go-between the peacemaker when Patti's temper flares, and the guy who covers Patti's mistakes. To escape the humdrum rhythm of their lives, Joey and Patti play rock 'n' roll loud and hard. Other Two young actors and their latest roles: Judd Nelson (top, right) argues with Ray Walston (left) and Darren McGavin; Michael J. Fox (above) belts it out with Joan Jett.

musicians dream of limos and Jacuzzis. The music is all that matters to Patti. Jett plays Patti with the kind of damn-the-torpedoes energy that makes her stage act fun to watch. She sneers her best lines, and mumbles the rest in a sexy, hoarse whisper. She uses her pouty, dark-angel face to express the confusion and anger of misdirected youth.

The tenta-tiveness that mars her early scenes gives way to confidence, and her scene with Gena Rowlands near film's end is a grabber. As he did in an earlier movie, the gritty Blue Collar, Schrader sets this film in America's heartland. Where better than Cleveland, home of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Please see 'DAY' 3-D As Liberace lay dying this week in Palm Springs, I thought back to a couple of his St. Petersburg concerts I had been obliged to review. Covering Liberace was an initiation of sorts for young critics at the Times.

Eyes rolled when the assignment came round to you. To a young person, Liberace represented everything gaudy and ridiculous about an older generation's entertainment; to a critic, Liberace was a pianist who murdered the classics and tried to cover his shortcomings with glitter and schmaltz. How surprised I was, then, to return from his matinee exhilarated and charmed. Instead of writing a sly story winking at the taste of the blue-haired St. Petersburg bourgeoisie, I came away impressed with Liberace's winning stage manner and his apparent inner strengths as a human being.

Liberace succeeds, I wrote after that February 1983 show, because he has mastered the art of illusion. He delights his audience into believing that fantasy is real, that the fur and rhinestone capes on his shoulders weigh 136 pounds, that the rings on his fingers contain genuine gems, that he (and the orchestra) can pluck spontaneous requests from the balcony, that he is a romantic genius of the piano. Liberace himself gave constant hints that we should take nothing too seriously. But whether or not the audience got the joke was beside the point. Liberace also gives the unmistak-eable impression that beneath all that makeup, hair spray and self-parodying prancing lurks a man with real soul: He truly loves his audience A real man.

To some, that word and Liberace seemed incongruous. "Use the term loosely," a female reviewer wrote once in a failed attempt to be cute. Liberace had come a long way since the late 1950s when he successfully sued a London newspaper for printing allegations that he was a homosexual. After that, most reporters relied on code words like "swishy" and "flamboyant." When a young male companion sued Liberace for breach of promise in the fall of 1982, the news media had a field day. Here, at last, was their chance to delve into the entertainer's private life without fear of reprisal.

The way some stories about the case read, it was clear you were supposed to snicker between the lines. But most of the staid, polyester-clad Liberace fans I spoke to at the 1983 St. Petersburg concert could not have cared less. "He's a great entertainer," people said again and again. "Whatever he wants to do on his own time is fine with me." Liberace himself had loosened up considerably.

He was fond of mocking his own departure from stereotyped masculinity. After he danced with a woman from the audience and romanced her with a succession of gifts, he took her back to her seat. "Does your husband like to dance, Evelyn?" he asked. Receiving an answer in the affirmative, Liberace touched the other man's arm and brought down the house: "Some other time, Milton." This business of minorities turning themselves into comic caricatures can be a delicate issue. But Liberace's stagey affectations never betrayed a hint of self-loathing.

Instead, he breathed a warm sense of personal pride. Liberace's death on Wednesday, at age 67, was accompanied by a rumor that he had suffered from AIDS a rumor that seemed strengthened when one of his physicians declined comment in deference to the entertainer's "private life." It's a sad commentary on our society, and our ability to deal with a medical epidemic, if some people Liberace and conservative politico Terry Dolan perhaps among them feel they must worry as much about social stigma as they do about the physical effects of a fatal disease. At the same time, it might help us to remember that not all gay people have AIDS, and, increasingly, that not all people with AIDS happen to be gay. Perhaps then we can see the epidemic as a tragedy for all of us, and we can better muster our efforts to treat its sufferers with respect and compassion, and to support humane measures that can prevent its spread. I digress only a little.

When I saw Liberace again two years later, I noticed that he repeated a lot of his material. The audience knew it, and didn't seem to mind. Liberace dealt in nostalgia as much as illusion like the sweet tradition of a family holiday, the delight came in repeating things over and over just that way. Just as families are capable of containing all sorts of people, there is room for all kinds of entertainers, and Liberace remains a hero of mine. Privately, Robin agonizes over right and wrong.

He admits to Jo Ann that he loves the fame, the attention, the TV lights. But he wants to be a hero, too. "Let the truth come out," says Jo Ann. "That's what it's about, isn't it?" "In fairy tales," Robin replies. From the Hip is billed as a light-hearted romp for Judd Please see 'HIP 3-D (francs' cuiis fer- S3 1 fcj- fo 'tr 'V' a "i-'Ai A It's a chilly, damp New Year's Eve: the first night a failed singer named Mike (Michael Angelis) is supposed to manage a shabby Liverpool pub known as the Charleston Club.

Inside, the previous manager is being pummeled -1 i by the club's mobster-owners, a magician (rock star Elvis Costello) is suffering stage fright and two busloads of elderly Protestants and Catholics are squaring off to settle 40 years of hostility. It will not be a quiet evening. fjf 40-. I St Petersburg Times TONY LOPEZ Morosoff before three of his works, left to right: Senses, Smell and Hear. A vision apart from reality COSTELLO Johan Elbers Marilyn Banks in Ailey's Witness.

For the first concert of its three-performance run this weekend at Ruth Eckerd Hall, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater offers several new works, including Caverna Magica to music by the New Age composer Andreas Vollenweider; Bad Blood to music by performance artist Laurie Anderson; and Witness, to traditional music sung by soprano Jessye Norman (who appears in recital at Ruth Eckerd Hall later this month). Performance times are tonight and Saturday at 8 and Saturday at 2 p.m. For information, see page 8-D. MICHAEL FLEMING Nicholas Morosoff, 30 paintings on view through Feb. 13 at Beaux Arts Gallery, 7711 60th St Pinellas Park: Daily noon-5 p.m.; Closes Feb.

13. Morosoff talks about his art and life, Sunday at 3 p.m. By CHARLES BENBOW Times Art Correspondent PINELLAS PARK Nicholas Morosoff was born in Moscow, the son of a renowned lithographer. But he paints like a Frenchman. Or Frenchmen, rather, because his latest paintings 30 in a one-man show at Beaux Arts Gallery have the same ingredients that have made the best-known French modernists popular for nearly 100 years.

But then, so did his show here in September 1978. The 78-year-old Morosoff, who has been an American citizen for 23 years, still paints, now in a studio in his garage in Pinellas Park. He still uses his virtuoso technique in creating the same formulaic imagery that, according to his account, made him a favorite of Parisian art critics and a success in New York galleries. It is easy to accept his story; after all, this artist offers viewers nothing distasteful, ugly or sad; no shadows, doubts or risks, and neither premonitions nor insights, only romantic, joyful fantasy. He favors allegorical series on canvases measuring about 3-by-4 feet.

This show has a painting each for Fire, Earth, Air and Water, Spring, Winter and the five senses. Morosoff's painted world is that of a children's book illustrator (which, indeed, Morosoff once was). It is a sherbet-colored fairyland inhabited by young adults invariably dressed in generic medieval garb, that is, nothing that would suggest class distinctions too strongly. They dance to music provided by fauns and centaurs and troubadours. Juliets and Romeos pose in gardens in which plants (or better, botanical specimens) Please see REALITY 15-D Writer Alan Bleasdale's and director Peter Smith's No Surrender is a violent, offbeat comedy about political zeal in the twilight years.

It plays the Hillsboro 3 cinema, 3306 Hillsborough Tampa, at 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Miami Film Festival opens tonight with a screening of Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy, directed by Robert Altman. The picture is one of 28 films from 17 countries screened at the Gusman Center and Coconut Grove Playhouse for the 10-day event starting today. (See 15-D for details.) 'Round Midnight has been held over one week at the Main Street 5 cinema in Clearwater.

Bertrand Tavernier's bluesy, melancholy movie is superlative elegy dedicated to expatriate jazzmen Bud Powell and Lester Young. HAL LIPPER Farrah Fawcett name was misspelled in an article in Tuesday's Floridian..