Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 72

151 LOPf liiiLlLt wiiw muni 'iwy hi 1 1 1 snwjr 7T 9 1 fa. mummer ARTS ENTERTAINMENT PEOPLE WINE DINE MOVIE GUIDE F6 F8 F8 Editor: Mark Tremblay FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1990 1 i xi 11 1 i i 1 THEATRE Film belongs to lange 111 are as chilling as the acts he's committed. And as Talbot becomes aware of her father's guilt, it's her eyes that reveal she's finally coming face-to-face with the horrible truth. When she travels to Budapest, she stares into the thick Danube waters. A dying evening sun turns the surface blood red.

mirroring the unspeakable crimes she's heard took place at this site 50 years ago. Never is there any doubt that this is Lange's movie. Frederic Forrest gives a sturdy performance as the federal prosecutor but Mueller- Stahl wilts under her spell. As in her films Sweet Dreams. Frances and Country.

Lange suffocates the performances of those she shares the screen with. Only Jack Xicholson (The Postman Always Rings Twice) has emerged as an equal screen partner. Stamped with producer Irwin Winkler's dislike of saccharin romance. Music Box is not an emotional eruption: it's emotional erosion. Slowly, nervt by nerve, the truth crumbles the heart, tears at trust and then goes right for the gut.

This is the spine of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas's story. Music Box is not courtroom drama and it's not a document of the Holocaust's unspeakable crimes. It's a story about the darkness and destruction of betrayal and the subsequent search for light. i 1 -t- Actress is ewel in Vlusic Box By Wendy Dudley (Herald writer) Like the red dress she wears in a drab courtroom. Jessica Lange is the sole brilliance in director Constantin Costa-Gavras's Music Box.

While bringing a tepid story to a boil, she leaves the film's other actors looking like yesterday's stewed hamburger meat. As criminal lawyer Ann Talbot. Lange is not all that convincing. And she doesn't make a great Hungarian-American. But as a woman w-ho begins to realize her good ol' daddy Mike is guilty of Holocaust atrocities.

Lange turns in a masterpiece of a performance. As a daughter, she is mothering. She tells Dad (Armin Mueller-Stahl) to cut out the salt in his diet. And she beams while watching him play with her son who believes granddad is the best. As her father's lawyer, however, she becomes a smoldering inferno.

When her case weakens and she becomes unsure of her father's innocence, she teeters, crossing from the rational to the emotional. She begins to drink. She flicks off The Three Stooges, no longer seeing the humor in the trio's violence. And in court, she can barely suppress her emotion as witness by witness, she hears about her father's heinous activities. She trembles, toying with her pen.

brushing the sweat from her brow. Stretched like an elastic, she then quickly snaps back. i QjlV -ft If 0 rti emotions cloud the obvious Snake monsters stars of horror flick ERROL SLUE: He drew on aches and pains to aid role Rapid aging taxes actor film's opening. But Costa-Gavras doesn't want us playing jury. He wants all eyes on Lange.

whose familial emotions are clouding the obvious. It's a story told through eyes, pathways to the inner soul. For the most part, the cameras zoom in on Mike's blue eves, orbs that don't worry, there's lots more where they came from. Like, "this valley is just one long smorgasbord" or "this is probably the biggest zoological discovery of the century." The latter zinger can be attributed to Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter), a sensible college seismologist whose brains eventually win the heart of desert stud McKee. The script may be a bit too corny, but the look of Tremors overrides this flaw.

Spectacular desert scenery mixed with plenty of grit help give it the feel of an old western. In fact. McKee's question of "Who are those guys?" is a steal from the film. Butch Cassidv and the Sundance Kid. Country singer Reba McEntire makes her feature film debut as Heather Gummer.

the equal half of Burt (Michael Gross of TV's Family Ties). The pair of survivalists take a valiant stand against the leathery monsters. With pistols and other heavy artillery blazing, they could pass for a modern-dav Butch and the Kid. When not making you squirm JESSICA LANGE: Familial FILM remembering that in this room, she's first and foremost a lawyer. Initially, the plot seems weakened by foreshadowing the verdict within 15 minutes of the By Wendy Dudley (Herald writer) It may be safe to go back in the water, but you best keep your tootsies away from Nevada desert sands.

Subterranean "graboids." with their slimy eel-like tentacles, can't see. but they can feel the slightest pitter-patter above ground. And when they strike, don't bother counting to 10. It's all over by three. These reincarnated sharks are the spiny stars of Tremors, a tasteful horror-comedy which oozes with the blood of the beasts, but not of its human victims.

For several days, a pack of the speedy slugs terrorize Perfection, a town boasting a population of 1.4. Just how the graboids arrived, no one knows. Are they pre-perestrokia spies, radiation mutants or fiends from outer space? Such are the theories offered by handymen Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Basset (Fred Ward). And if you think those lines strike the low IQ ding-dong bell. -'it David Olecko, Calgary Herald Biloxi Blues 4 Hi i Shannon Oatway, Calgary Herald themes racism, old age.

friendship with eloquence and insight. "As a black actor, what I liked about this play was the opportunity to look back into the 1940s and see where we're coming from." he says. "What it was like to exist in the southern United States in the '40s for a black man. "It really deals with the spirit of patience, of understanding, of not jumping the gun and reacting to racism the way people expect you to react with anger and violence. This character (Hoke) understands that's not the way to go.

He maintains a sense of self-dignity." Slue compares Uhry to South African dramatist Athol Fugard in the way he treats racism in intimate, human terms. He has performed many of Fugard's works. His previous Calgary appearance, four years ago. was in a production of Fugard's Master Harold and the boys at Alberta Theatre Projects. Despite his stage successes in T.O..

Slue has found theatre employment sparse there. He makes his living in TV and film, and has credits from CBC's Street Legal to the new Canadian movie Milk and Honey, due to premiere in Calgary at the Plaza next month. Part of the problem, he says, is the insular nature of Toronto's theatre scene. "It tends to be a closed shop. People hire the friends they know." There are few black roles in new Canadian plays and this country has been slow to embrace the U.S.

trend of non- traditional casting. However. Slue loves Canada (he came here in his 20s about two decades ago from New York) and believes that he has some responsibility to help keep Canadian theatre alive. He met one woman at a Miss Daisy preview who hadn't been to the theatre for five years. "For five years! But.

having enjoyed the performance as she said she did. maybe it won't be five years before she comes back." DRIVING MISS DAISY, at the Max Bell Theatre tonight through Feb. 3. Music Box, starring Jessica Lange. Produced by Irwin Winkler, directed by Costa-Gavras and written by Joe Eszterhas.

At Calgary Place, Chinook and Market Mall. in suspense. Tremors will rattle -you with laughter. Walter Chang (Victor Wong). who owns the town's only store.

wants to put a mutilated graboid corpse on sale for $5. And there's the rib-tickling' scenes of these repulsive monsters, devouring generators and entire cars and spitting out untasty pogo-sticks and dynamite sticks. Actually, one 1 graboid doesn't reject the explosive and its innards turn a rocky outcrop into a grotesque and bloody mural. Believe it. there's nothing rudely gruesome about director Ron Underwood's film: It won't keep you awake at nights.

But if you're walking a sandy beach and the ground begins to shake, head for safe waters. TREMORS, starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire. Directed by Ron Underwood. At the Towne, Westbrook, London Towne Square, Northland Village. THEATRE he opens in Biloxi Blues, the middle work in Neil Simon's Second World War trilogy.

This time. Martin plays Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey. whom the actor describes as "a wonderfully eccentric, very dedicated military man whose mission and purpose in life is to save as many of young men's lives as possible." The character may bear no resemblance to anyone on Hill Street Blues, but according to Martin the "beautifully constructed" script has something in common with those written by Stephen Bochco for the TV show.

"I can usually tell how good a play is by how easy the lines are to learn." the actor, says, suggesting that if the words come readily they are clearly natural to the character and the situation. Such scripts are rare, but I Martin finds pleasure in other kinds of performance situations as well. His favorite type of See MARTIN, Page F2 LaRue just role for Kiel Martin By Martin Morrow (Herald writer) Errol Slue knows what it's like to grow old. He's been aging 25 years almost every night since late November. As Hoke Coleburn.

the easygoing chauffeur in the Theatre Calgary-Citadel Theatre co-production of Driving Miss Daisy, the youthful Slue is required to go from a spry 60ish to a semi-blind octogenarian in the course of 90 minutes. He's got it down pat. having acted the role non-stop for almost two months on a tour from Edmonton to Victoria to Calgary, where Miss Daisy opens tonight in the Max Bell Theatre. Before that, he portrayed Hoke for five months last season in the play's Toronto production, copping his third Dora Award nomination in the process. All that rapid aging, and having to pretend to drive a car show after show, has taken its toll on the man.

"One morning." recalls the Jamaican-born actor. "I got out of bed and I couldn't stand up. My foot had become eak from being overused from braking and putting my foot on the accelerator and I hadn't stretched it enough." And that's not all. "I had a pain in the back of my head from my medulla oblongata down into my shoulder." he says, "and I didn't know what the heck was happening to me. It's from that head-turning all the time.

You look in the rearview mirror, or you turn around and speak to (Miss Daisy). Those muscles in the back of your neck, if you don't stretch them, they'll seize up on you." Slue drew on his aches and pains to aid his performance. "I keep asking myself. 'If you've driven a car for 25 years, what's the physical effect on the I took all those kinds of physical considerations and put them into the play." Living for such a long time with the characters of Hoke. Miss Daisy, the cantankerous old Southern Jewish lady who employs him.

and her dutiful son. Boolie. has given Slue a keen appreciation of Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Over lunch, he discusses the comedv's McENTIRE, GROSS: Tasteful horror-comedy oozes with the blood of the beasts KIEL MARTIN: In Calgary for I '--V 1 By Kate Zimmerman (Herald writer) Don't confuse Kiel Martin with Detective J. D.

LaRue. the sex-mad. drunken policeman he played for seven years on the successful TV cop show Hill Street Blues. "I don't think you'd see J. D.

LaRue at the Eau Claire 'Y' at five in the morning." Martin laughs. It's difficult to imagine the dissipated LaRue (whom Martin sums up as "an immature man given to instant running three to five miles a day. as Martin does, or putting in hours on behalf of cerebral palsy and better hearing associations. Maybe LaRue. like the 45-year-old Martin, would admit to dabbling in real estate or playing a bad game of golf, but he probably wouldn't be caught dead indulging in a rousing game of softball or racquet ball.

Those are Martin's enthusiasms, and though he loved his 16-hour days as LaRue. he's unequivocal when he says "That was acting." Acting is also what he's doing at Stage West, where next week Tpii k- 1.