Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 49

Austin American-Statesman Monday, May 26, 1986 E7 Invitation from Paramount prompts no-lobbying policy They're baaa-ack 'Poltergeist IF lacks imagination of Tobe Hooper's original version By Debl Martin American-Statesman Staff By Patrick Taggart American-Statesman Staff The special effects are neither as imaginative nor as frighteningly staged as in Tobe Hooper's original, and the final confrontation between the Freeiings and spooks is laughably lame. needed to be set in place immediately because peer panelists begin a summerlong review of 143 applications for 1986-87 arts funds next week. "We are not suggesting that the Paramount was acting inappropriately," Coats said. "We have a brand-new situation. We've never had peer panels before, and such an invitation (as the Paramount's) had not been extended before.

All we had in the past was a gentleman's agreement with arts groups that they not lobby." Fine-tuning the details of the policy such as whether telephone calls or letters from applicants to commissioners and peer panelists will be allowed will be discussed at future commission meetings. At the meeting last Wednesday it was clarified that art commissioners and panelists can attend meetings they initiate with arts groups for informational purposes, but not meetings organized by arts groups. Linda Hanson, executive director of the Paramount, was out of town and unavailable for comment. The Paramount also invited the city council and Mayor Frank Cook-sey to the Thursday meeting. Because the city council meets regularly on Thursdays, council members may not be able to attend the Paramount's meeting.

Council member Sally Shipman does plan to attend if her schedule permits, but Cooksey will not be able to attend. The Austin Arts Commission advised its members last week to avoid meetings or events that could be considered lobbying efforts by arts groups seeking city arts funds. The issue came up during a discussion about whether arts commissioners should accept invitations from the Paramount Theatre to attend a meeting Thursday that is intended to provide Information on the theater and its plans. "Any Information an arts group needs to get to us should be in their application (for city arts funds) or, arts groups can make presentations at our regularly scheduled meetings," said Maurice Coats, chairman of the commission. "Commissioners should not participate in closed meetings called by applicants or called for the specific purpose of lobbying for city arts funding." Coats said the policy will be written into the commission's by-laws and will also apply to the newly appointed members of the commission's peer review panels.

An ordinance adopted by the City Council April 18 requires that the arts commission appoint peer panelists to review all applications for city arts funds and recommend to the commission how the funds should be allocated. Coats said a no-lobbying policy Review In the warm months of 1986 two kinds of movies seem to be emerging the bad and the Incredibly bad. Guess which group Poltergeist II belongs In. It is, after all, a movie with a Roman numeral in the title, and that almost always means that the film contains barely a fraction of the originality, drama, humor, horror or whatever else the original was selling. It's a shame, and a lot of people are going to be disappointed.

They will be disappointed because they will go to theaters expecting fun and frights similar to the ones provided by the original Poltergeist. They're simply not there, and that the original movie is so good only makes the displeasure of the sequel more keenly felt The best minutes in Poltergeist II occur early on, as director Brian Gibson and screenwriters Michael Grais and Mark Victor update us on the whereabouts and condition of the Freeling family. Now living with grandma in Arizona (with no TVs in the house), Steve and Diane (Craig Nelson and JoBeth Williams) are still trying to figure out how to get the insurance company to pay for a disappearing house. But as quickly as you can say "act of God clause" those vapory spooks start coming around again, along with a strange-looking clergyman who seems to be able to see into Steve's subconscious mind. Another fellow shows up, a friend of Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), that popcorn-shaped woman from the original.

His name is Taylor (Will Sampson) and he is an American Indian with an apparent insight into the care and feeding of ghosts. After re-acquainting us with the Freeiings, whose kids don't look a day older despite the passage of four years, Poltergeist II loses what little interest it had. Gibson, a first-time director, has no idea how to pace a film or even shoot it very imaginatively; conversations between characters consisently lack rhythm and far too often he settles for a master shot instead of a more intimate camera set-up. The special effects are neither as imaginative nor as frighteningly staged as in Tobe Hooper's original, and the final confrontation between the Freeiings and spooks is laughably lame. Here's another oddity.

Among the subtexts is alcoholism. Taylor is an ex-drinker, Steve nurses a bottle of tequila for much of the picture and Diane is seen sipping an awfully tall bourbon on the rocks in the middle of the day. This is more than a tease, and yet the filmmakers When little Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke, foreground) receives a ghostly phone call, her frightened family (JoBeth Williams, Oliver Robins, Craig T. Nelson, background from left) learns that their nightmare hasn't ended yet in Poltergeist If: The Other Side. From the moment Harry Joy dropped his life would never be quite the same.

never develop the situation. belongs there. Perhaps that material is contained in the part of the movie that Poltergeist II, rated PG, at the ended up on the cutting room floor. Aquarius, Capital Plaza and West- As it exists now, the whole picture gate. WINNER BEST PICTURE 1985 AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY AWARD Lucas rival supplying slimy horror films By Diane Halthman Knight-Rldder News Service NEW WORLD PICTURES OtSK Nx World ftctwa.

AJRmfeacrwd Capital City Playhouse presents World Premiere LAST NIGHT AT MARY'S (R) 472-2966 214 W. 4th St. 1 PRESIDIO THEATRES I 2700 Anderion 451-8352 1 0: 1 0 Michael Burgess wrote a book about the American Revolution. Now, Hollywood's come to his town to make a movie of it-Plunging him into a summer of madness. Star Wars.

They joined forces to create Industrial Light and Magic. Edlund is reluctant to pick a favorite special effect, but "in a way, the floating house in the original Poltergeist was one of my favorite effects," Edlund said. "It's real easy to explode a house you just put a bomb in it. But when you're trying to draw a house through the eye of a needle, which is what the script called for, It takes some ingenuity." In Poltergeist II, the largest effects challenge was to create a believable representation of the "astral plane," to which the haunted Freeling family travels at the end of the film. Edlund decided there should be no gravity in the astral plane.

"We talked at first about idyllic force we also thought of a meatscape, as opposed to a landscape, to capture the hideous helllike situation, but all of those situations involve gravity." Instead, Edlund opted for a floating Freeling family, suspending the actors from wires. a Lucas disciple who worked with Industrial Light and Magic to create the Star Wars films, the new company's work will be on display in six 1986 summer films: Poltergeist II The Other Side; SolarBabies; Big Trouble in Little China; The Boy Who Could Fly; Desert Bloom; and Legal Eagles. Eagles only required one special effect, the explosion of an art gallery on a realistic recreation of New York City's 57th Street. Boss Film a maze of warehouses in the beach community of Marina Del Rey, houses all sorts of critters, monsters, extraterrestrials and life forms that resemble giant tonsils having a bad day. Edlund began his career as a photographer.

He later enrolled at the University of Southern California Cinema School. Edlund joined Bob Abel's innovative computer-assisted effects company in Los Angeles. There he met John Sykstra, Gary Kurtz and George Lucas, who were preparing MARINA DEL REY, Calif. Chance meetings with movie stars are a part of life in Los Angeles; an unexpected celebrity sighting comes as no surprise. But this was special.

There he was, lying languidly atop a file cabinet at the Boss Film Corp. transparent, pinkish, with the texture of a gumdrop and a large extra eye on one side. It was the giant tequila worm who makes his debut along with other slimy bedfellows, in MGM's Poltergeist II The Other Side. The only word to describe the feeling is "wormstruck." The giant tequila worm is hardly the most unusual inhabitant at the Creature Shop of the Boss Film a 3-year-old organization that rivals George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic as Hollywood's hottest special effects shop. Founded by Richard Edlund, 45, -greatness; -Peter Travers, PEOPLE WEET DELIGHTFUL.

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