The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 33

3 ivl MONTREAL WEDNESDAY. APRIL 1. 1987 scar thrills Newman: First 0 Actress Jane Birkin joins movie cast as Bethune's wife ayfoe cars get a job' EYE ON ENTERTAINMENT jJW Li Afc v. I )M van ft v. -wr1' mmmm a KPw Jane Birkin.

a popular singer and actress In France, will play the wife of Canadian surgeon Norman Both-une in the movie epic Bethune: The Making of a Hero. Directed by Canadian Phillip Bor-sos. the $16-million movie will begin shooting in China April 13 with Donald Sutherland cast as the mercurial battlefield surgeon, revered by the Chinese as a hero of the Communist Revolution. Birkin will play Bethune's beautiful Scottish-born wife Frances Campbell Penney. The couple had an obsessive love affair and were twice divorced from each other.

A former model, the English-born Birkin has made a career in France, where she is a much sought-after movie actress and singer. She became an overnight sex symbol in France in 1969 when she recorded Je t'aime moi non plus. a song that was originally recorded by Brigitte Bardot. However, Bardot decided the song was too erotic and prohibited its release, so Birkin recorded it with Serge Gainsbourg. It became one of the most controversial records of the decade in Britain and was banned by most radio networks.

Canadian actress Helen Shaver has been cast as Miss Dowd, a missionary working in China who aided Bethune. The shoot is expected to last 13 weeks in China, three in Montreal and one in Spain, where Bethune served as a doctor on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. Bethune is an official Canada-China co-production, with Canada represented by the Montreal company Filmline International. France is a third partner in the production. CP.

Gazette Collins vs. Holm: It's back in court LOS ANGELES (AP) The marital dispute between Dynasty star Joan Collins and her estranged husband Peter Holm appears to be headed back to court. Holm is backing away from a tentative agreement reached last week. For a brief time, it seemed that the couple could reach agreement: she would get the furniture, he would get the BMW, and each would drop contempt of court charges against the other. "When he thought about the whole ball of wax, he decided it wasn't fair," Holm's lawyer, Frank Steinschriber, said.

"All agreements are off." Letter causes stir in U.K. publishing LONDON (AP) Novelist Graham Greene has stirred the British publishing world with a letter to The Times newspaper threatening to take his books away from his nephew's publishing house unless changes are made in its administration. Since the letter was printed last Saturday. British newspapers have devoted much space to the purported problems at the publishers, sometimes borrowing titles of Greene's novels like The Heart of the Mat-ter and The Human Factor to describe what the author was getting at. Greene's letter was only two terse paragraphs long.

It wasn't clear what he was complaining about or whether he would be happy with the result of an urgently assembled board meeting at the publishing consortium. Church features choirs from U.K. Christ Chruch (Anglican) Cathedral has established a five-concert subscription series spotlighting choirs from England. Opening the series on April 28 at 8 p.m. will be the Southwark Cathedral Choir from the diocese of South London in a program mixing Renaissance and Baroque English composers with Mozart's Mass in K.

194 and Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb. Further concerts are: The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral (June 16 at 8 p.m.), the Trinity College (Cambridge) Chapel Choir (Sept. 23 at 8). The King's Singers (Dec. 2 at 8) and the Choir of St.

John's College, Cambridge (Dec. 23 at With the. exception of the Trinity College Chapel Choir, the groups are all-male. Subscriptions, costing $45 and available at the church office at 4 Place Ville Marie, or if theye not sold out at the door before'the first concert. Hollywood veteran Joan Shawlee die? LOS ANGELES (AP) Joan Shawlee, whose many movie comedy roles included the leader of an all- girl band in Some Like it Hot, 3ias died of cancer in her Hollywpod home.

She was 58. 'r Shawlee also had acted under-tjie name of Joan Fulton. She had the title role in the TV show The Adventures of Aggie, which ran for several years on the BBC, and she also had a recurring role as Peaches on TV's The Dipk Van Dyke Show. She had film roles in The Apartment, A Star is Born, Irma La Douce, A Farewell to Arms, Tony Rome and Willard. scene from The Color of Money: "I'm on a roll now." now I Best Actor Paul Newman in "After I'm alone, I'm going to scream." Platoon was the evening's big winner, capturing four Oscars including best picture of 1986 and for Oliver Stone's direction.

The big disappointment of Oscar evening for the Canadian contingent in Hollywood was the failure of Le Declin de I'empire ameri-cain (Decline of the American Empire) to add an Academy Award to its long list of honors. But Montreal producer Rene Malo wasn't surprised when the Dutch film The Assault took the Oscar for best foreign-language movie. Even on Oscar day, Malo had given The Decline, thought by many observers to be the front- STONE Complete list LOS ANGELES (AP) Here are the Oscar winners at Monday night's Academy Awards: 1. Picture: Platoon. 2.

Actress: Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God). 3. Actor: Paul Newman (The Color of Money). 4. Supporting Actress: Dianne Wiest (Hannah and Her Sisters).

5. Supporting Actor: Michael Caine (Hannah and Her Sisters). 6. Director: Oliver Stone (Platoon). 7.

Screenplay: Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters). 8. Adapted Screenplay: Ruth I 1 si- att iVit mnituii A A LOS ANGELES (AP-CP) -Film giants Paul Newman, Michael Caine and Steven Spielberg basked in the long-awaited glow of Academy Awards recognition yesterday. "I'm thrilled." Newman said after his first victory in seven tries in the best-actor category. 'I'm on a roll now; maybe now I can get a job." The blue-eyed actor won for his reprise of The Hustler role of Fast Eddie Felson in The Color of Money, defeating James Woods, Bob Hoskins, Dexter Gordon and William Hurt.

Potential drama Newman was one of the no-shows who robbed the 59th Oscars of potential drama. Another was Caine, who had lost in three nominations as best actor, but was honored Monday night as best supporting actor for Hannah and Her Sisters. Newman said he was kept away by his editing of The Glass Menagerie, starring his wife, Joanne Woodward, and by superstition spawned by his losses all the times he showed up. Caine was fighting sharks in the Bahamas for Jaws: The Revenge. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there," Caine said through publicist Jerry Pam.

"The mechanical shark has been malfunctioning, and we couldn't finish in time." The British actor said he was surprised to succeed in his fourth try: "I thought Willem Dafoe would win for Platoon." Paid tribute Spielberg, who won the Irving G. Thalberg award for a consistently high level of production, paid tribute to Thalberg, Hollywood's boy wonder of two generations ago, and hinted he will try to follow Thalberg's example of thoughtful, literate, films. But, he assured reporters afterward, "I'm not going to change and start doing arty films." The star of Oscar evening turned out to be Marlee Matlin, the hearing-impaired screen newcomer who won the best actress award as William Hurt's lover in Children of a Lesser God a role she also plays in real life. Her rapid-fire sign-language, swiftly translated to the spoken word by Jack Jason, expressed her joy over her win for what was her first major acting role. And she captivated reporters with her replies backstage.

Asked about a critic who said giving her the Oscar would be a waste since there are no other roles for deaf actresses, she replied: "I'd like to meet that man and straighten him out." How was she going to celebrate her Oscar? Newman's quest for an Oscar HOLLYWOOD (AP) Htn it a lift el film in which actor Paul Nawman, who won hia first Oscar on Monday, has ap paartd: Th. Silver Chalica. 195S. Somobody Up Thars Likaa Ma, 1956. Tha Rack, 1956.

Tha Halan Morgan Story, 1957. Until Thsy Sail, 19S7. Tha Long, Hot Summer, 1958. The Left-Handed Sun, 1958. Cat On a Hot Tin Root, 1958.

(Academy Award nomination) Rally 'Round tha Flag BoyeL 1958. The Young Philadelphtana, 1959. From the Terrace, 1960. Eiodua, 1960. The Hustler, 1961.

(Academy Award nomination) Paris Blues. 1961. Sweet Bird of Youth. 1962. Hemingway's Adventures of Young Man.

1962. Hud, 1963. (Academy Award nomination) A New Kind of Love, 1963. The Prize. 1963.

What a Way to Gol. 1964. The Outrage, 1964. Lady 1965. Harper, 1966.

Torn Curtain, 1966. Hombre, 1967. Cool Hand Luke. 1967. (Academy Award nomination) The Secret War of Harry Frigg, 1968.

Winning. 1969. Butch Casskfy and tha Sundance Kid, 1969. WUSA. 1970.

Sometimes a Oreat Notion, 1971. Pocket Money, 1972. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, 1972. The Macintosh Man, 1973. The Sting.

1973. The Towering Inferno, 1974. The Drowning Pool, 1975. Silent Movie. 1976 (cameo).

Buffalo Sill and the Indiana, or Sitting Bull a History Lesson, 1976. Slap Shot 1977. Ouintet. 1979. The Day the World Ended.

1979. Fort Apache. The Brons. 1980. When Time Ran Out.

1980. Absence of Malice, 1981. (Academy Award nomination) The Verdict, 1982. (Academy Award nomination) Harry and ion. 1984.

The Color ot Money. 1986. (Academy Award winner) Canadian Stephan Dupuis picked up another Oscar in the make-up category for his work on the horror movie The Fly. Despite the absences of some of the winners, and a celebration than ran 22 minutes over its three-hour schedule, the A.C. Nielsen Co.

announced the Oscars managed a healthy 33.8 rating and 53 share in 13 major television markets. That was considerably better than last year's show, the lowest-rated ever with a 27.3 rating and a 43 share. The NCAA college basketball final, which started an hour earlier, ended in a one-point victory by Indiana over Syracuse, but managed only a 19.1 rating and a 27 share in major U.S. cities. A CAINE 16.

Animated Short Film: A Greek Tragedy. 17. Live Action Short Film: Precious Images. 18. Sound: Platoon.

19. Sound Effects: Aliens. 20. Visual Effects: Aliens. 21.

Art Direction: A Room with a View. 22. Cinematography: The Mission. 23. Costume: A Room with a View.

Thalberg Award (previously announced): Steven Speilberg. Honorary Award (previously announced): Ralph Bellamy. 5. Back to School, $90.4 million no Oscars. The evening's biggest winner with four Oscars, Platoon, opened late in the year and is making most of its money in 1987.

i if, va a runner, only a 40-per-cent chance of winning. But if Canada's hopes went down the drain with Le Declin, they were salvaged by a win in the best-documentary feature category for Toronto film-maker Brigitte Ber-man's Artie Shaw: Time is All You've Got. Film-makers have tried for years to do a documentary on Shaw, who was a millionaire at 29, and was married to such glamorous actresses as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. So why did he let Berman do it? "Because he liked my film on Bix Beiderbecke he loved it," she said of her 1981 documentary on the 1920s jazz trumpeter. MATLIN WIEST Herbig a perfect mate for flute soloist Hutchins lllflllllKiSi of Monday's Oscar winners By ARTHUR KAPTAINIS Gazette Music Critic Carl Nielsen's reputation as a flyweight Danish version of Sibelius may be unjust, but it has survived most attempts by sympathetic conductors to revive his symphonies in North America.

Nielsen's concertos for clarinet and flute, however, are in their small ways staples, simply because there are so few other solo vehicles of consequence available to players of these instruments. Formidable talents Accordingly, interest tends to focus on the performer of a Nielsen concerto, rather than the music itself. So it was in Salle Wilfrid Pelle-tier last night, when Montreal Symphony principal flute Timothy Hut-chins applied his formidable talents to the sometimes humorous but more often elliptical 1926 Flute Concerto. There was much to admire in the firm, sweet tone with which Hutchins etched the composer's more languid melodies, and if that tone inclined to breathiness during the first movement dialogue with the bass trombone, the attacks and articulations never lost their aura of command. On the podium, Detroit Symphony music director Gunther Herbig made a perfect mate.

The orchestral texture was always appropriately subdued, yet the accompaniment figures were phrased distinctively and linked with a persuasive sense of line. Thomas Schnurmacher's REVIEW Montreal Symphony Orchattra, with soloist Timothy Hutchins, llute. conducted by Gunther Herbig. at Salle Willrid Pelletier. last night.

Repeat tonight. Four Essays tor Orchestra (Canadian premiere) Tadeusz Baird Flute Concerto Nielsen Symphony No. 2 Brahms Even more impressive was Her-big's achievement with an unexpected quartet of lushly atonal miniatures by the late Polish composer Tadeusz Baird. Perhaps on account of his Scottish ancestry, the FourMs-says for Orchestra were economically scored, amounting to a pianissimo landscape against which fortissimos would surge and die iike solar flares. The music was raviSh-ingly atmospheric and played to" the MSO's strengths as though it Jwd been written on commission.

Which raises the question of why MSO cbpi-missions recently have been so; patently inferior in quality to score, brought in a suitcase by a Visiting conductor. Brahms a disappointment That conductor, lest we forget, was Herbig, rightly acknowledged as one of the greatest Germanists in the international arena. Yet his version of Brahms's Second Symphonywai a disappointment, light in texture, choppily phrased, underpoweredlat fortissimos, unyieldingly attached; to its fast tempos and almost devoid of Brahmsiati largesse. For all its organization, this was Mozart's Brahms, and thus scarcely Brahms at column returns tomorrow. Prawer Jhabvala (A Room with a View).

9. Foreign-Language Film: The Assault (The Netherlands). 10. Documentary Features: Artie Shaw: Time is All You've Got, and Down and Out in America (tie). 11.

Documentary Short Subject: Women For America, For the World. 12. Film Editing: Platoon. 13. Makeup: The Fly.

14. Original Score: Herbie Hancock (Round Midnight). 15. Original Song: Take My Breath Away (Top Gun). 2.

"Crocodile" Dundee. $122.9 million no Oscars. 3. The Karate Kid, Part II. $114.8 million no Oscars.

4. The Color Purple. $95.4 million competed in last year's awards and received no Oscars. How Top 5 box-office hits fared at Oscars LOS ANGELES (AP) Here is a list of the top five grossing movies of 1986 and how they fared at Monday night's 59th annual Academy Awards ceremony. 1.

Top Gun, $171 million U.S. -one Oscar..