Page 6-Tuesday; March 14, 1978-The Michigan Daily
NEWS FROM THE,
MAJOR EVENTS OFFICE
We ore very proud to announce that
JACKSON BROWNE will appear, in concert,
with special guest KARLA BONOFF, on
Wednesday, April 12, at 8:00 p.m. in
Crisler Arena.
Possibly the most prolific songwriter out
of Los Angeles .today, Jackson Browne has
the number-three album in the nation,
"Running On Empty." The album is a con-
glomeration of tunes about life "on the
road"-the highs, the lows and the heart-
aches of travelling cross-country with a
band on a Continental Double-Eagle bus.
This comes on the heels of "The Pretender,"
a multi-platinum album that shot him to
super stardom.
Raised in Los Angeles, Jackson gained
prominence as a songwriter in the early
seventies f or artists like Linda Ronstadt,
Johnny Rivers, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
and Glen Frey of the Eagles. With songs like
"Take It Easy," "Doctor My Eyes," "Rock
Me On The Water," and "These Days,"
his following grew and his next album,
"Late For The Sky," went gold upon re-
lease. After touring extensively, Jackson
Browne produced one of the finest albums
of the last few years: "The Pretender."
Jackson's last Ann Arbor appearance was
in Hill Auditorium in April of 1975. We're
very pleased to welcome him back.
Tickets are $8 and $7 and will go on
sale beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday,
March 19, at the Crisler Arena Box Office.
After Saturday, tickets will be available at
the Michigan Union Box Office (11:30 to
5:30, M-Fri).
JOHN DENVER tickets went on sale yes-
terday for his April 15 appearance at
Crisler Arena. Tickets are $10, $7.50 and
$5 and are still available at the Michigan
Union Box Office. Denver, who is making
his third Ann Arborrappearance, will be
performing "in the round," so plenty of
good seats are available. He recently sold
out two nights at Madison Square Garden
in New York.-
TIDBITS: California Jam 11, a mammoth
outdoor concert being held this Saturday,
expects 400,000 people. The list of. acts
includes Aerosmith, foreigner, Heart, Dave
Mason, Ted Nugent and Santana . . .
Steve Martin's next album is titled, "I've
Done Terrible Things To My Dog With A
Fork"... .
a canned thriller
Triple dose of rock
By TIM YAGLE
J OURNEY, RONNIE MONTROSE,
and perhaps the hottest new band
around, Van Halen, came to Detroit last
Friday night and left the sold-out
Masonic Auditorium in an exhausted
daze.
Probably the most impressive new
band today, Van Halen, opened the ex-
travaganza with some of the best real
heavy metal rock I've heard in a while.
Most of the material the quartet blasted
at us was from their debut album Van
Halen, including the slow but heavy
"Runnin' With The Devil," the scorcher
"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," and their
exhiliarating '70s version of the Kinds'
hit "You Really Got Me."
Lead guitarist Edward Van Halen
really excited the crowd with some
masterful body work and motion during
his crunching solos, one of which (just
like on the album) preceded "You
Really Got Me." Lead vocalist David
Roth did some fairly bad immitations of
Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant. Van
Halen has a decent stage show and
you'll be hearing a lot more from this
powerfhouse band.
Ronnie Montrose and his band hit the
stage next and enthralled the audience
with some brilliant synthesizer and
guitar pieces, including material from
his premier solo LP Ronnie Montrose.
The only words the former Montrose
guitarist uttered were "Hello" and
"Goodnight and thank you." He let his
guitar do the talking for him, like any
master would.
JOURNEY PLAYED SOME tunes
from their three previous albums
before launching into some of the
singles from their new album, Infinity.
Well played versions of "Anytime" and
"Wheel In the Sky" got the concer-
tgoers buzzing. Lead guitarist Neal
Schon was devastating with his inter-
mittent ear-piercing solos.
Just after "Wheel In The Sky,"
drummer Ansley Dunbar went berserk
in a lengthy but well-executed drum
solo. This was accompanied by rotating
blue police-like lights under the drum-
set. The frenzied fans were on their feet
during Dunbar's finale.
An energetic "La Do Da" ensued but
one of the evenings few mellow momen-
ts came with the beautiful "Winds Of
March." Journey even managed to
spruce this tune up a bit.
'Coma'
By OWEN GLEIBERMAN
M ICHAEL CRICHTON might have
directed Come following a
sterilizing shower and a quick slipping
into antiseptic surgical duds. At the
ultra-modern Boston hospital where the
picture takes place, technology reigns
supreme, and the physical surroun-
dings, be they administrative offices or
operating rooms, seem perpetually un-
touched by human hands. Crichton,
who also wrote the screenplay, is a real-
life physician, and he's captured the
numbingly smooth workings of a
modern medical institution with the
sureness of an insider's knowledge. It's
a clean, simple style of filmmaking,
and it makes Coma a competently
assembled thriller - not a whole lot
more.
What this film lacks entirely is the
least bit of imagination, the slightest
indication that the director knows how
to do anything but follow a formula lif-
ted from a thousand other thriller
movies. Every scene's outcome seems
all but preordained from above. Beyond
an engaging but generally
unremarkable performance by
Genevieve Bujold, as a persistent
young doctor-cum-detective,. Coma's
only interest lies in its deranged villains
- doctors who put young people in in-
terminable comas, via a tube that
shoots carbon monoxide into an operat-
ing room, then peddle the victims' vital
organs on a thriving black market for
human giblets. The use of suspense
devices is so conventional, one gets the
feeling there isn't a single moment that
wasn't conceived strictly by rote.
After two young patients drop into
inexplicable comas following routine
anesthesizations, up-and-coming surgi-
cal resident Susan Wheeler (Bujold),
one of the patient's close friends,
becomes severely suspicious about pos-
sible shenanigans. Upon some investi-
gation the pattern becomes clear: 10
other patients have undergone similar
episodes in the last year, always in
operating room eight.
WHAT DOES IT all mean? Bujold's
not quite sure, but she's smart enough
to disregard the sinister chief of
surgery (Richard Widmark), who
assures herwshe's just under a bit of
stress, as well as a boyfriend (Michael
Douglas), who can't seem to do much
beyond suggesting she take a valium.
Bujold eventually discovers the victims
are all being sent to the Jefferson In-
stitute, a massive, prison-like structure
run by a woman who looks about as
trustworthy as Count Dracula.
The Institute, she is told, stems from
a federal grant to further the care for
and study of comatose patients. She
goes on an official weekly tour, which
includes virtually the only visually
imaginative set-up in the film, a purple-
lit gymnasium-like room where rows of
comatose patients hang like salami.
Stealing away, Bujold searches for an
explanation to the bizarre series of
comas. She escapes atop an ambulance
after being chased by guards, but not
before discovering the grisly money-
making scheme behind the institute's
therapeutic facade.
Coma's conspiracy isn't complex
enough to keep your heart in your
throat - there aren't enough layers for
Bujold to uncover - so the film tries to
compensate by exploiting our osten-
sible queasiness about hospitals and the
medical profession in general. Most of
the shock gimmicks are too obvious to
work effectively. Grisly scenes, such as
one with two pathologists who might
have been Frankenstein's assistants
slicing up human brains like so much
corned beef are too campy to be scary.
Coma never lets uA forget there's a jar
of pickled human parts behind every
door, but the effects aren't eerie enough
to get under your skin - it's more like a
child's chamber of horrors.
THE CLIMAX, where Bujold un-
dergoes an operation with the head
villain at the surgical-helm, manages to
work up something resembling real
suspense. The end is somewhat am-
biguous. Bujold pulls through with a lit-
tle help from boyfriend Mike, but it's
not indicatbd just how the two of them
are going to destroy a conspiracy in-
volving hundreds of people.
What limits the effectiveness of a film
with such a thoughtfully lurid premise,
I think, is that director Crichton opts for
a slick storytelling style which just isn't
that exciting, since the suspense
techniques used are so utterly conven-
tional. He captures that antiseptic
hospital feeling with clean
cinematography and gliding zooms, but
doesn't produce the intricate detail that
can have a viewer's stomach doing flip-
flops. Coma is kept simple; with every-
thing confined to the inside of hospitals.
Even a romantic interlude between Bu-
jold and Douglas, virtually the only
break from white coats and tiled walls,
is too obligatory to seem like much of a
breather.
In a great gothic thriller like
Rosemary's Baby, we don't fear simply
for the heroine's life - it's her sanity
that's on trial. With Bujold playing ace
detective, a potentially horrifying
vision of medical evil quickly
degenerates into an exercise in manipu-
lative suspense. The idea of selling
human organs ends up a spicy bit of
black humor. It's all very amusing, but
can't make up for the lack of originality'
behind Coma's big mystery.
CEDAR POINT AMUSEMENT PARK, Sandusky,
Ohio, will hold on-campus interviews for
summer employment:
DATE: Wednesday, March 22 *
TIME: 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
PLACE: Summer Placement Office
Over 3,200 positions available for a wide variety of jobs.
Dormitory or apartment style housing available. Contact
Summer Placement Office for informa-
tion and appointment. Spend a sum-
mer in one of the finest resort areas
in the North.
2L ] L~-J
6ikIVFSITY cfvUSICAL 8OCIETY announces
AIPhoto
Goya recovered
"The Snowstorm", the treasured $40,000 oil painting by 19th centur Spanish
artist Francesco de Goya was found Monday in a parked van in Chicag.
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE COLLEGIUM
MARC STUDENT HOUSING
FALL AND WINTER 1978-79
Would you like to live in on elegant neo-Tudor mansion (East Quad)? Dining hall, library, cuittal
events, interesting associates, old-world ambience. The Medieval and Renaissance Collegium is nw
accepting reservations for student accommodations in the MARC Residence House, effective septenr
1978. If you are a MARC concentrator or if you are interested in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. yu
are eligible to live in the MARC House. For information or to reserve a room for the fall, see the directc,
Russell Fraser (2619 Haven, 764.4140), or phone the MARC office 763-2066), or stop by the office (M
9:00-12:00 and 1:00-4:00. N-11, Law Quad) with your name and address. Act now on your reservation
Only a limited number of places are available.
Redeamus ad antra.
GOLD LANCE
GIVES YOU
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COLLEGE RINGS
OF FINE QUALITY
V N I Y
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