The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 36

Page 4C The Kansas City Star Friday November 21 1986 STAR PREVIEWREVIEWS Thomas continued from pg 1C Thomas said in a recent telephone interview He said the record boosted by the enormous popularity of the movie went on to sell some 9 million copies dwarfing the sales figures of his other hits Thomas 44 has just released a new album a collection of classic country-pop An American beauty Strong characterizations give Desert its hardiness ment Jack is a shellshocked basket case who periodically locks himself in a back room drinking and listening to radio bulletins on the Korean War Sometimes he imagines that he's back under fire When that happens tempers and fists fly and usually Rose who is on the receiving end Mother Lily is of little help a blindly upbeat sort who pretends their life is like something out of Better Homes and Gardens Into this tension-filled atmosphere sashays sister Starr (Ellen Barkin) a flashy wisecracking good-time gal who is taking up temporary residence to qualify for a Nevada divorce Aunt Starr becomes mentor confidante and defender but only at the price of adding an element of sexual tension to an already seething emotional brew Writerdirector Eugene Corr balances this domestic situation against the bigger picture of Cold War animosity and national paranoia The of the title refers not only to the cactus flowers Lily admires for their ability to survive in a hostile environment but also to the blossoming mushroom cloud that looms over the climactic were being tested in the desert the story is seen through the eyes of Rose (Annabeth Gish) a 13-year-old struggling with advancing womanhood and an intolerable family situation Her widowed mother Lily (JoBeth Williams) is a casino worker who has married Jack (Jon Voight) a gas station operator and World War II veteran whose mercurial behavior keeps the household on edge Although he may seem to be The concert Thomas and his five-piece band are to perform at 5 and 8:30 pm Saturday at the KC Opry 10017 Winner Road Independence Tickets cost $10 in advance and $12 at the door Call 461-2228 Annabeth Gish and Jon Voight in Bloom the picture of domestic content- through whose eyes we view the adults is a modest but rewarding film the first made under the auspices of Robert Sundance Institute It bodes well for the future of that enterprise subtlety and insight that it must rank among the best see this year indeed an Oscar nomination seems in order He gets strong support from Williams and Barkin as sisters with radically different approaches to life and Annabeth Gish is fine as the young heroine Voight who can be either brilliant or bathetic for is simply outstanding as the tortured Jack In less sensitive hands the character could be a villain in the Dickensian mold Voight turns him into an object of pity a performance of such moment Such a great adventure deserves more excitement in its telling persecutions in their native Russia and board a steamer for America During a storm at sea young Fievel is washed overboard only to drag himself ashore in New York harbor at the feet of the half-completed Statue of Liberty He meets a couple of other recent immigrants the Italian kid Tony and the pretty Irish lass Bridget and roams the streets of Manhattan looking for his parents and facing all sorts of dangers The gimmick here is that Fievel and most of the other characters in American are pointment In fact one of the most satisfying themes of American is how the characters deal with the reality of life in America which teems with con men sweatshops and yes cats The Bluth animators have created at least two masterful the opening raid on village by Tsarist cats and a terrific storm at sea One aspect of the film that work however is the depiction of the men and women with whom the mice co-exist While the mice are quite believable the movements of the human figures are jerky and unconvincing mice animated rodents whose aspirations and stories closely parallel those of the thousands of human immigrants to this country in the last years of the 19th century A sort of history lesson dressed up in animated clothes a pleasant if not overwhelming entertainment American is Steven first foray into animation The production was directed by Don Bluth the ex-Disney animator who a few years back made an impressive solo debut with the fantastic of Unfortunately never quite meets that standard either in story or in the quality of the animation was made for about $9 million a shoestring budget by standards and less than half of what Disney spent on last Great Mouse Although the cost-cutting tricks may not be noticed by the small fry serious animation fans are likely to regard as a small step backwards Still plenty to enjoy here Fed up with raids by Cossack felines Papa Mousekewitz speechifies about the USA where the streets are made of cheese and there are no cats Clearly doomed to disap- By Robert Butler The arts and entertainment editor How It Rates An American Tail an animated fantasy contains no objectionable material (Audience rating: G) 85 minutes Now showing at the Bannister Square Blue Ridge West Crown Center Glenwood Metro North Olathe Landing and Springs South theaters Produced by Don Bluth Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss directed by Don Bluth and released by Universal with the voices of Dom deLuise Phillip Glasser Madeline Kahn Nehemiah Persoff Christopher Plummer Erica Yohn What an adventure! In the 1880s Fievel and his parents flee anti-Jewish Pomeroy hits and in December he will embark on a tour of Texas in an effort to raise funds to establish a shelter for abused children in the Midland-Odessa area Thomas who conquered longtime dependencies on drugs and alcoholism attributed his drug problems and those of many others to psychological scars resulting from child abuse most countries child abuse is a way of he said country I guess is the most civilized in this area but if you check closely find out that child abuse is going on in 90 percent of American Thomas said that child abuse was unconcious and manifested itself in various ways from withholding affection to physical punishment organized religion can be abusive by telling kids gonna burn up if they have bad he said Thomas said he was an alcoholic by the time he was 15 and later used amphetamines barbiturates and eventually cocaine before swearing off hard drugs in 1976 after a spiritual awakening Even then he said he began smoking marijuana heavily and continued to do so until earlier this year He called cocaine the most destructive and addictive of the drugs he used and he praised the effort to stop drugs at the border and make the public more aware of their dangers drugs had been a way of self-defense" he said really was hard to put down and face my problems not to be compared with Sunday morning preachers although I have anything against them but not not a big believer in organized Thomas was raised in Houston where his father installed air conditioners for a living had more air conditioners in Houston Texas than any other place in the he said Thomas said he hoped his new album would get him back on country radio and he also would like to develop a career as a film-and-television actor for the simple reason that it involve so much traveling Thomas lives in Arlington Texas a suburb of Dallas He said he moved there from Nashville because he wanted to raise this three kids beyond the music business environment Gloria his wife of 18 years wrote Looks From An Old one of his hits As for the future Thomas said he wanted to continue reaching people as an entertainer "I have no plans to slow he said with a chuckle want to keep going at least until I look like Willie Ralphs continued from pg 1C continued from pg 1C you find yourself taking a long time getting it together to work again and not having the stuff to carry The name of the new Bad Company was chosen only weeks before the release of the record The band which yet recruited original bassist Burrell was mixing the album in Los Angeles when a representative of Atlantic Records arrived to suggest the handle you guessed Bad Company said a great name Can we do Ralphs said thought it would be all right if we could get at least one other (original) member in the band Enter Burrell who went into rehearsals with the band for its first live dates was as much a part of that (the old band) as Ralphs 42 said all worked equally well together in the band and I wrote a lot of the songs So I feel bad about using the name I feel pretty good not going to get worked up about it just going out here to see what happens If people like it great doing our best come from revered if not hugely successful bands: Rodgers and Kirke split from Free Burrell quit King Crimson and Ralphs left Mott the Hoople soon after it broke commercially with the Young a No 3 hit in England that was written and produced by David Bowie then I was getting Ralphs recalled that was like a very adolescent type rock band It was a very punk sort of band I wanted to get into the straight bluesy sort of So did rock listeners throughout Europe and especially America where Bad simple appeal had its greatest longevity The six albums from 1974 to 1982 consistently sold in the millions and six singles went Top 20 including Get Like Making and Roll worst thing that happened was seeing the band falling out for the wrong reasons when the business got the better of us when the machine if you like was starting to eat us up was saying hang on Get back We had to step back from it all and not let it consume us Sometimes Pomeroy said work was becoming repetitive with the same formula story time after time Morale was low Of course leaving Disney was a little like rowing away from the Queen Mary in our own little dingy on a high The first effort by the newborn Don Bluth Productions was Secret of a fantasy about laboratory rats whose intelligence had been raised to human levels and who escaped to form their own society very few people saw it It was released at the same time as which of course got all the Pomeroy said one person who did see it was Steven Spielberg and for that reason alone it was worth making Spielberg met with Bluth and said be happy to back the animators if they had an appropriate subject Bluth and company responded with American Spielberg jumped at the idea: His own grandfather named Fievel just like the young mouse in the movie had fled persecution in Russia for a new life in the gave us free rein but he added his own touches to the story Pomeroy said key example is a storm at sea in which Fievel is washed overboard He looked at the drawings and suggested that instead of showing just a big wave we personalize it He thought it would manifest worst nightmare if for just a second we saw this horrible face on the wave was a wonderful suggestion that really makes that scene Steven wanted this movie written as though it was a live-action feature His notion was that any film even an animated one had to be as well-structured as if it were can get by with weak dialogue or weak animation but not a weak story Hey some weak animation in and but you notice it because the so strong Even when not working on feature films Pomeroy stay away from animation He and Bluth have worked on commercials video games and short subjects when there was nothing else to do takes a weirdo personality to be an Pomeroy said can start work at 6 am and the next time I look at the clock 9 at night You get caught up in creating a personality You become a Look at the cartoons that are nothing more than a fancy advertisement for toys That sort of thing is killing careful classical animation which may be one of the last handmade things left on this earth hate to see it Pomeroy admitted that an animation freak He eats animation breathes animation and probably dreams animation When he was 13 he picked up a book about the classic age of animation at the Walt Disney Studios From that day forward he knew that all he ever wanted to be was a Disney animator started writing letters to the Disney still got all of them on Pomeroy said started hanging around pestering them until I finally got a job For those few people who wanted to be animators Disney was the beacon the lighthouse you were drawn Pomeroy joined the Disney operation in 1973 working on Small and Fox and the He also became a close friend of animator Don Bluth who in 1979 led a walkout 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