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Standard-Speaker from Hazleton, Pennsylvania • 8

Publication:
Standard-Speakeri
Location:
Hazleton, Pennsylvania
Issue Date:
Page:
8
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Who's to Mamie for lousy cinema? iinn 'Crazy Summer' i eood tune with the summer bit "Abets." mimics 4Pee-wee Learti to play bridge via video BylUL TAI BIJKB CfSpley News Service One of my mosJFfraJchildhood and adolescent memories is my paretAs retreating with some of their friends to play bridge inithe living room, And over the years I've come to equate bridge to such other exciting endeavors as Mah Jong and shuffleboard. The appeal of the game as well as most card games, to be honest has always escaped me. Nonetheless, like my folk, there are legions of passionate devotees to this game of bidding and contracts and God knows what other convulated rules, So to review a new group of how-to-play bridge tapes, I had Mom and Dad sit down and screen them. Herewith, their report but Time gives this lavish, grisly seqruel a cover story, crowning it "popular moviemaking at its best." la five pages of knowing blather it is not mentioned that the movie features scenes of the creatures exploding acid blood all over screaming humans (though the writer does detect "a kind of manic good Maybe some of the rah-rah connects to the fact that Time bad a first-print exclusive nn pictures of the mother alien. On page S3 of a recent Rolling Stone begins a long, supportive feature story about the lop-budget jammer release "Howard the Duck." Turn to page M.

and 3 Ts i'tVs. iff I Li a i Bridge the Right Way. Volume 1" (Embassy, $19.95, 60 minute) The presentation is nice, but the tape isn't really very informative. In fact, you could watch the whole thing and not really understand the; basics. The key By DAVID ELLIOTT Copley News Service "One Crazy Summery deserves credit for trying to do what "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" did so richly last summer: create a completely silly world of nonsense comedy, using animation effects, pop-out colors and outlandish, dreamy gags.

But nice ambitions have been melting like snow cones this summer that goo under your theater seat could be the drainage of failed intentions, not Milk Duds. And "One Crazy Summer" is another melter. It doesn't have a central, focusing star like Pee-wee, and its style rej mains on the surface, a set of tricks and gestures. It was written, and also directed, by a man with a cartoon name. Savage Steve Holland.

Holland also helped Bill Kopp with his animation segments, which break into the film every reel or so, and give it a big boost with the story of a sad-sack rhino, a "lonely guy on a quest for 1 The horned and horny loner parallels the live-action hero. Hoops, whose name proclaims his parent's dream that he should be a basketball star. Hoops is looking for love, not slam-dunks, and for admission to. the Rhode Island School of Design, where he can put his cartooning talents to use. John Cusack, who starred for Holland in "Better Off Dead," has features that look nearly as pen-drawn as the rhino's.

He's a pert, likable actor, but he's a soft center. So Holland surrounds him with not just cartoons but people who can make funny, exaggerated faces, such as Tom Villard, Joel Murray (Bill Murray's chunky kid brother) and Bobcat Goldthwait, and some others who simply have such faces to begin with, like Kristen Goelz, a child actor with solemn, droopy features. Goldthwait, the screamer comic whose approach makes Sam Kinison in "Back to School" seem another Voltaire, is an acquired taste. One that may be best acquired by the immature. He looks and acts like a troll sprung from a mental ward, and he shreds his vocal cords at every opportunity.

Many of his bits are borrowed from Kinison, Pee-wee Herman, Buddy Hackett, the Three Stooges, but Holland treats him like a discovery, and showcases him. No doubt it can be said that one person's Pee-wee is another's Bobcat. Not so.smy dear Watson. Compare the laugh Goldthwait gets in this film, donning a dinosaur Some critics say Hollywood bas been producing too many knov.es based cm demographic surveys. The result is a spate of films like "Cobra" (above) starring Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen.

Video Views C3.IJUFJ SC Mtft reading a parody issue of Rolling Stone. Cory.isalit? Us magazine, plunging for depU in a finger bowl of controversy, oflert four pages on bow Stallone's dismal "Cobra" is a box-office disappointment: only S49 miluoa so far! Veteran producer David Brown comes to Sys defense wait. "Give the guy a break." I May we also aend cash? I. We are assured that Stallone still has great deal options witb Rocky and Rambo. Sections of the press and TV are now so wired to the movie biz that such fatuous coverage is simply business as roil Yet it often fails to get people into theaters.

The mass audience can stiD be canned, as with but it is not deeply masochistic. The semi-flap of "Cobr is a signal that raw ravbbae-rousing finally leads to a diminished rabble, and that six months of preview hype cannot perfume the stench of a really awful film. SuIL S40 miluoa is not nothing. And "Cobra" still bas the beloved "ancillary markets" tTV. foreign, cable, video I to fatten its take.

It is increasingly bard for even such masters of waste and miscalculation to lose really big money. John Cusak and Demi Moore star in "One Crazy Summer." suit and trampling like Godzilla over a developer's scale model, with the sonata of weirdness achieved by Pee-wee in his film, in his romantic engagement with a truck-stop waitress inside the mouth of a giant ceramic Tyranossaurus Rex. One is shtick, the other a goofy sort of art. Anyway, "One Crazy is mostly another "wacky" frolic for the late-summer teen market. It has a bevy of beach beauties (including the croaky-sexy Demi Moore), stupid adults, stupider rich adults, a doddering millionaire (William Hickey, doing leftovers from his role in "Prizzi's a gun-happy scoutmaster (Joe Flaherty), jokes about lobsters screaming as" they boil, and a dog that wears a flea collar like a satellite dish.

The sound track is a spin of rock classics including ''Born to Be Wild," "Dancing In the Street" and "Fun, Fun." Some sparkle in the photography rivals the hip-zip cartoons. Cusack is cute, Moore is more than cute. Goldthwait keeps screaming. But as a comedy this is wee, not Pee-wee. "One Crazy Summer" is rated PG.

By DAVID ELLIOTT i Copley News Service The worst thing about the lousy state of movies is that I don't hear: much complaining, just blase grumbles, The zombie march of American films in the '80s has stomped people into cynicism they expect most movies to be terrible. And they're right. This is the poorest year for American films I've known in 18 years of reviewing. And what almost makes it worse though it often saved bur flagging spirits is that "the British, whose film industry was a dead mouse a few years ago, have become the mouse that roarst Films like "My Beautiful Laundrette." "Brazil." "Dreamchild." "A Room With a View." "Mona Lisa" and "28 Up" show that you don't need $20 million budgets and huge ad blitzes to make movies that many people (even adults care to see. Even Hollywood is vaguely impressed.

David Puttnam, the English producer who sparked much of the British Renaissance, has been appointed chairman at Columbia Pictures. If he can survive the power games, resist the enzymes of envy and dilution that sabotage creative effort in that little town of. antsy egotists. Puttnam may point the way for other studios to change their recipes, freshen their thinking and give the public more than clones of sequels of over-budgeted TV concepts. But we'll need more than a Puttnam -Hercules to clean out these stables.

American cinema is a pathetic invalid," writes critic David Denby in a long, mournful essay for New York magazine, "Can the Movies Be Saved?" Like a methodical undertaker, Denby lays out the distressing The ballooning budgets now $16 million average for a studio in-house project. The insane reliance on demographic surveys that smear all the subtleties of movie response. The tie-in mania to MTV and toys and even more prosaic products, whose makers chip in pieces of budget for free promotion. The reliance on stroking the pet prejudices of generic teenagers (seldom real The' paucity of subjects (Denby: "Except for winning, we have no The narrowing list of sure-bet stars, so reductive now that a half-actor like Sylvester Stallone can get $12 million for a new film. The nervous-panic of corporate smar-ties.

fondling We "bottom line" in studio executive suites, that they might cook the wrong deal and be left to eat (with the critics; those swine) a complex, probing film. (One factor Denby doesn't target is the impact of cocaine use, which is not rampant but is in the industry's bloodstream. As a major director recently told me. "You'll be talking to someone and suddenly you realize they're hot there. They're beaming home to the white planet.

Their brains are scrambled. Most damaging is the mystique of First Weekend Success, or as Jack Nicholson recently moaned: "Everybody's going for the big whamola all the time." A movie that doesn't smash at once into the Top Five and also get great "per theater averages" in its first weekend will likely crash from the fickle heights of hubbub very fast. The millions splurged on the first week's promo could have paid the entire budgets for several "marginal" films of quality like "Dim Sum." "Smooth Talk" and "Choose Me." and such pictures are booked in a way that gives them no chance to become a mass-movie "winner." (Yet more of them, on the average, turn a healthy profit.) Second City grads join forces syndrome of arped success. TOs record-busters like "Jaws" and "Star Wars" slammed expectations out of line. What studios came to value was no longer mixing a schedule of films that could turn a good profit overall, with some works made just for the prestige and challenge, but serving up summer and Christmas mega-hits that can zoom careers into the industry fast lane.

The studio executives, increasingly from TV. are used to clubby high-rolling and "sweeps week" thinking. They're hit-or-run filmmakers who crave credit for the stunning whopper, but break into night sweats over any film that smacks of failure or nearly as leprous I of merely modest success. In line with go-for -broke careerisro and escalating greed, budgets Wast through the roof. And when a Marun Scorsese makes an "After Hours" for just million, it isn't welcomed as good news; these lean producers may jog and Jacuzzi for hours, but they like their movies at They've got the film "product" on a barbecue spit, dripping prestige perks and expense account morsels, long before it opens in theaters.

The super deal then demands a giant shill. a "power campaign around which many theater chains wrap thetr booking plans. So the mow becomes a jazzy juggernaut and might tjust might I attract the undiscriminating audst-nce (mostly teens) that bas grown up thinking the aura makes the movie Some of these consumers dont seem able to even focus on a movie if it doesnl have that radiance of whaTs happening. Yet today most people are bored by the hype overload; all they can hear now is a dull roar of static. And so the total film audience stagnant, or in decline slightly increased grosses come from higher ticket prices).

Most adults donl bother to go. Those that do often jus want to crash the kid party, or sneak -peek thetr video options six months ahead Others and these might make a film future possible search out the "uttle films ta "small" theaters, wluch often have bigger screens than the mall boxes the studios mostly prefer. For the event pictures and their consumers, the sickness feeds on itself; the crud in films today is synergistic. And a key aspect of the systen is that the btg media are. quite literally, buying into the bloated daydreams of the sludtos.

Even as so many films stagger and drop, symptoms of an incestuous depettdency continue: Very few people are saying they had a You don't have to echo my taste to agree this has been a plague year for U.S. films. After seven months, my list of pleasures is short: "The Best of Times." "8 Million Ways to Die." "F-X," "Haunted Honeymoon." "Dim Sum." "Smooth Talk," "The Manhattan Project." "About Last Night "Psycho III." plus some pieces of "Hannah and Her Sisters." "Murphy's Romance." "Down and Out in Beverly Hills." "The Trip to Bountiful." "Back to School." "Sweet Liberty." "Trouble in Mind." "Heartburn." "Pretty in Pink" that's about it. Year by year, week after week, studio elephant droppings fill up theaters, bulldozed there by hype, buzzed by the flies of idiot "criticism" up!" "I give it. a This creates a pungent if phony sense of importance that helps to ease the films, even most of the flops, into a strong second life in video release.

Even for many who don't recall an earlier era (like about 1976) of greater diversity and risk, there is now growing resistance, obvious in the quickly fading grosses for most films. Even media-dizzy softheads cannot take a continuous carpet bombing of bores like "Cobra." "SpaceCamp." "Head Office." Highlander." "Crossroads." "Iron Eagle." "Wildcats." "American Anthem." "Poltergeist II." "Running Scared." "Short Circuit." "Jo Jo Dancer," "Under the Cherry Moon." "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Big Trouble in Little China." I I'd add "Aliens." "Ruthless People" and "Karate Kid II." though many wouldn't, Our hunger for quality is so acute that it is hard to accept the mixed nature of a wished-for adult hit like "Heartburn." Jack Nicholson! Meryl Streep! Mike Nichols! Nora Ephron! Yet all that VIP glitter, and the hip (riskiness of the comedy scenes, can't disguise the failings (mostly in Ephron's script) that sneak up on the film and drag it down. At some point the movie process, with its deluding hopes and overbaked pressures, has undone even these talents, and we are left wondering (for example) why Nichols resorts to repetitive goo-goo shots of Streep acting Lady Madonna with a baby. Jack Nicholson laments, in a recent Rolling Stone. "The movies have sold their future so cheap for so long it's almost amateurish to comment on it." At the risk of seeming amateurish, some more comments What is choking our films is a weird to bridge is the communication between partners, which involves special conventions and buying contracts.

The explanations here just don't come off. If someone tries to start out and learn bridge from this tape, they'll probably just end up confused and turned-off That is if they don't fall asleep watching. (My mom added, "Even though you're my son, there's no way I'm going to sit through Volume 2." "Bridge With Omar Sharif" (Best Film Video, $39.95, 55 minutes) Omar is as charming and handsome as ever, and in this fine production he displays his abilities as-an outstanding bridge player, He appears with another excellent bridge player, Grand Master Dorothy Haden Trescot, and together they do an excellent job when it comes to communication between partners. When the bidding is complete, you're invited to take Sharif's hand and play, and a fine job is done in explaining how to get the most out of each hand. For bridge players, watching this tape will be time well spent.

"Win At Bridge With Eddie Kantar" (Active Home Video, $29,95, 60 minutes) An excellent and informative presentation to playing winning bridge. Some of the best material here covers things like how to understand your opponent's hand, when to finesse and how to capture high cards. And more than just instruction, Kantar occasionally deviates from his lesson, with bits of bridge humor and stories; The result is that this is entertaining, as well as informative. Highly recommended. Habla Espanol? Well, if you do speak Spanish the Los Angeles-based JCI video company is releasing a whole series of action-adventure Spanish films.

There are, for example, "The Hawk of the Caribbean," "Dawn of the Pirates" and "Wings of War." Be honest, have you ever thought about or tried hooking up two VCRs so you can make a personal copy of a tape you've rented? Well, the folk who put out those films are making this illegal duping more difficult. The process is called Macrovision, which is encoded on the tape and causes any copies you make to look really bad. The latest company to start using Macrovision is HBO Cannon, joining MCA Home Video, CBS -Fox, MGM Home Video and Disney Home Video. Your video piracy days may be numbered. Each week it seems I'm writing about new price cuts, and here are some more: MGM is releasing a series of movies under the promo banner of "Movies Great Movies" at $19.95.

Among the titles are "At the "North by Northwest" and "The Sunshine Boys." And now, price cutting, continued. Embassy is also reducing the digits on J50 of their titles each under $30. Under a promo title of "Reel; Deal," among the movies now on the cheap list are "The Graduate," "Lion in Winter," "Blade Runner" and the "Jazz in America" series. DON'T MISS "National Parks Travel Video" (International Travel Video Guides, $39.95, minutes) Like the great outdoors? Then this tape is absolutely for you. The visuals are great and this tour of National Parks from the Everglades in Florida to Acadia in Maine to Yosemite in Wyoming is thoughtfully put together.

A real fine job -plus no mosquitoes. (Can be ordered directly from Encounter Productions, 2267 N.W. Pettygrove, Portland, OR97210.) yet he doesn't run away from a sharp cast that includes Kenneth McMillan, Steve Railsback and the percolating Meg Ryan (who was so fine as the doomed flyer's wife in "Top Still, it's a buddy comedy, worth, seeing for Candy and Levy. They've got their SCTV-honed timing, and are seldom reduced to just making faces. While Levy stays close to classic funny-coward stuff (as a sort of brighter, leaner Bud AbbottJ, Candy becomes more than a fumbling fatty as Dooley.

A gifted actor, Candy serves up the hurt macho pride and sometimes menacing force of Dooley tbecop, ian3 while he's funny when dolled up in drag auivine, he doesn't need such props to be entertaining, The film was stapled together from pieces of other comedies, with the usual payoffs: chases, fireballs. If not fresh, neither is it a flop job like "Running Scared." Candy and Levy are a class act, and "Armed and Dangerous" was made by people who know how to churn out a silly summer comedy. Armed. and Dangerous" is rated PG-13. By DAVID ELLIOTT Copley News Service John Candy doesn't have to be in a good movie to be funny, but "Armed and Dangerous" is rather good, in a cheap way.

And Candy is in hip company, teamed with his old SCTV pal Eugene Levy in a comedy scripted by other Second City grads, Harold Ramis and Peter Torokvei. Candy lends his vastness to the role of Dooley, an L.A. cop who is thrown off the force on a false charge, and sinks to the depths of an outfit run by crooks, the Guard Dog Security Service. His feckless new partner is Kane (Levy), a lawyer disbarred after such tactics as, when told that the Manson-like crazy he is defending "had a carpet made of human hair," he replies, "Well, your honor, bad taste is not a criminal offense." Dooley and Kane uncover the hoods running Guard Dog, whose leader Carlino is grossly on the grab. Robert Loggia plays Carlino like his Mafioso in "Prizzi's Honor," but denuded of his brains and charm.

Sweaty with lust and greed. Loggia is a great chewer of scenes. That is why the system will remain intact until tomethiftg radical changes. In coming years the movie market i0 probably bisect into basically oon-i competing halves. Money from cable and video markets, which crave ew "software." will help feed production, especially of sanaUerudget films from miro-tfudxi and independent operators.

Pleasant, innovattwe "art" theaters will lure a sizable adult audience, and some teens, to te work by toretgn artists and aavvy Yanks Lie Alan Rudolph. Wayne Wang. Jim Jarmuscti. AJttarrt Brooks. John Saytes.

Joyce Chopra. Mama Scorsrttr and la! Lhe upscale limit) Woody Alien. Meaniue, the Teflon MaH Cof-finpVcx wul continue having tisiLaUon Mm for the the tug studio job, relying heavily on overpriced candy and popcorn and the sparkle-blurbs of bjpe ,00 EMerUmrneA Tonight" and "At. the Movies But the only thing that will stu! American filming at the core is a core shift in America itnetf. The pandering booster spirit of the present pmod.

wvj its jingle-jifcjfotura and dithering evasion kM nearly all the complex issues of Che modern world. wiH finally give way to a more challenged era. Movves tvtdom Shape history, but they do reflect it (and how fine ft w-iQ be mbea they Slop marking up to this sugar-coated phaseof til. The beg shift may come post-Reagan, or later, but nearly everyone setwec that the present lull, in wtach mainstreani films are made to coddle and divert rather than stimulate, is something of a consutner culture hobday from the 2KKh century. Movies are moss alive when Lie ts most alive, as history changes and peciple must face it.

When that comes, the mere oValmakers wiH have to wi up or move back to TV. The artists and the pubuc will insist. 3 Most popular video cassettes 2 By Tha Aaaoclatad Prsaa Tha toMoailng ra tha moat popular Moo comMIm a thay appaar In nait vaaa's laaua of Billboard magaHna. Copyright ItU. Billboard Publication Inc.

NaprlnUd art par ml salon 8 Kalhy Smith's Body Basics" (JCI) rV'Plnocchlo" (Dlanay) "Jana Fonda's Workout" (Karl-Lorlmar) "Clua" (Paramount) 10. "Caaablanca" (CBS-fox) 11. "Miami Vlca-TM Prodigal Son" (MCA) 12. "Murphy's Romsnea" (HCA-Cotumbla) Nights" (HCA-Cotumbls) 14 'Automatic OoM" (Vldoo Aaso- Jaggad Edga" (BCA-Columbla) "Housa" (Naw World) (Madia) Mlna" (CBS-Fox) 12. "A Nlghtmara on Elm Straat 2: Fraddy's Ratianga" (Madia) 13.

"Cocoon" (CBS-Fox) 14 15. "Wltnass" (Paramount) 16. "Clua" (Paramount) H. Altar Hours' (Wsrnar) 1 Rocky IV (CBS-fol 20. "Bast of Timas" (Embassy) tha Pooh and tha Blustary Day" (Dlanay) I 1a "Tha King and CSS-Fo) (Now World) Houston Tha No.

1 Vldoo Hits" (Music Vision) 1 '-j Rantals to tha Future" (MCA) 2 "Splat Llka Us" (WarnsrlBros.) 3. "Murphy's Romanca" (RCA- Columbia) i "Tha Jawal of tha Nlla" (CBS-f o) Eagla" (CBS-Fo) "Whlta Nights" (RCAotumbla) Fonda's Maw Workout (KarVLorlmar) tv'Tha Sound Music" In Wondorland" (Dlanay) (CSSo) to MM Future" (MCA) cistaa) 15 "Prima Tlma" (Karl-Lorlmar) 16 "Iron Eagla': (CBS-Fo).

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