Page 6-Tuesday, April 11, 1978-The Michigan Daily
Brian De Palma's
furious chaos
THE BITTER TEARS
~ay ' OF PETRA VAN KANT
Director-RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER (1972)
The story deals with shifting power relationships among three lesbians,
-a successful "liberated" fashion designer, her contented slave girl, and a
sultry model who makes the master the slave. Accompanied by the music
of Verdi and thes Platters, dressed in glitter. The three women act out a
supercharged melodrama of passion. "A trogi-comic love story disguised
as a lesbian slumber party in high-camp drag."-Molly Haskell, Villaae
Voice. German with subtitles.
7& 9:15p.m.MLB 3 $1.50
FRIDAY: Wyler's WUTHERING HEIGHTS
The Ann Arbor Film Cooperative
Presents at ANGELL HALL TUESDAY, APRIL 11
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
(George Roy Hill, 1969) 7 & 9-Aud. A
Two legendary outlaws find themselves crowded out of a West made less wild
by ever more modern and efficient lawmen. One of the quintessential films
of the 60'sm BUTCH features a wry, hip script by William Goldman, crisp
direction by Hill, and the winning screen couple of NEWMAN and REDFORD.
Wonderful-entertainment. Academy Award-winning music by Burt Bacharach.
With KATHERINE ROSS. Cinemascope.
Plus Short: MISSISSIPPI HARE (Chuck Jones, 1947)
Bugs on the Big River f
Tomorrow: Herzog's HEART OF GLASS at Aud. A
By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
I DON'T KNOW of another director
who appears to revel so in the sheer
cathartic joy of filmmaking as does
Brian De Palma. His pictures radiate
the manic exuberance of a kid let loose
under the Christmas tree, wallowing
through piles of strange and exotic
presents, discovering suddenly-
realized dreams of stupendous unex-
plored universes.
Yet, like a child, De Palma often
seems so bedazzled by the wondermen-
ts he uncovers that he rarely seems to
know just what order to put them in. He
emerges as a director who often can't
see the forest for the trees, who keeps
sacrificing the whole for the fascination
of the moment. As an artist, he can
make a film pulsate with a dynamo of
energy and imagination that few direc-
tors, if any, can presently match; then,
just as abruptly, he can let pace, style
and plot strangely, simply drop in a
heap.
SUCH HAS BEEN the frustrating
pattern with virtually all of De Palma's
films, from the early, semi-
underground Greetings and Hi, Mom,
right down through his current big-
budget mainstream entry, The Fury.
His latest is of special interest in any
attempt to discern a maturation
process in De Palma. It comes directly
on the heels of Carrie, the director's fir-
st genuine commercial success and the
only work that combined his usual
NEWS FROM THE
MAJOR EVENTS OFFICE
Jazz-pop artist Al Jareau will bring his
white-hot intriguing vocals to Ann Arbor
for the first time on May 3 at 8:00 p.m. in
Hill Auditorium. Jarreau's unorthodox vocal
work has invariably confounded any descrip-
tion; he's best described as a vocal musician
with an "orchestra in this throat."
Cashbox named Jarreau the "Number
One Jazz Vocalist for 1976." In 1977, the
German Academy of Music awarded Al his
second German Grammy as "Best Inter-
national Artist." All of this critical acclaim
set the stage for Jarreau's third Warner
Brothers' release, "Look To The Rainbow-
Live In Europe." This exquisite double-
album has launched Al into a mammoth new
dimension as artist and performer. Live-
that's the only way to hear him.
Tickets for the Al Jarreau Concert are
$6.50, $5.50 and $4.50 and go on sale
beginning this morning at the Michigan
Union Box Office (11:30 to 5:30, M-F).
For more information, please call 763-
2071.
If you want to hear the music of Linda
Ronstadt, Jennifer Warnes, John McVie,
Mick Fleetwood, John David Souther and
Jackson Browne, then go ahead and buy
Warren Zevon's new album, "Excitable
Boy." With a list of credits sounding like
an invitation list to the Grammy awards,
Zevon has created more excitement and
enthusiasm than any' other songwriter-
turned-performer since Jackson Browne,
who incidentally, produced this album.
Warren's lyrics are weird, demented and
savage-but can be very, very funny. With
songs like "Roland The Headless Thomson
Gunner" and "Werewolves Of London,"
Warren has run the gamut from crazy lyrics
to beautiful ballads. But don't try to under-
stand Zevon, just enjoy his absurdity. We
are in the process of bidding on his cross-
country tour. If things work out, you might
see him in May in Hill Auditorium. Check
with our box office (763-2071) after April
17 for more information.
Tidbits: Bob Seger has finished the final
mix of his upcoming Capital LP . . . the
Year One Band, who played a concert last
July in the Grand Canyon, is planning on-
other bash next month on the roof of the
110-story World Trade Center in New York
City. As Steve Martin said, "isn't it amaz-
ing what people will do to attract atten-
tion?"..- .
scenaric intensity with the structural
unity necessary to craft a truly
memorable film. Like its famous
predecessor, The Fury centers on the
mysteries and terrors of telekinesis - a
person's theoretical ability to move,
destroy or even metabolically alter ob-
jects non-living or living, simply by
mentally willing it.
Carrie was surely the ultimate "get-
ting-even" film, a teenage wallflower's
revenge of a lifetime that we could
almost universally identify with, either
on the giving or receiving side of the
coin. The Fury contains no such cosmic
cosmology, and despite some ab-
solutely astonishing special effects
represents a distressing regression to
the usual De Palma mish-mash of
engaging incoherence.
THE FILM'S cluttered plot depicts
the mutual evolvement into telekinesis
of two paranormal (as the vernacular
has it) teen-agers, Robin Sanza and
Gillian Belluvar. Born of radically dif-
fering backgrounds (the two don't even
meet until late in the film), they are
united only in their bizarre powers.
These abilities seem unsettlingly all-
inclusive: our duo can not only read
minds but literally watch and feel what
the other is feeling at any given
moment. They can peer into past and
future, they can levitate, and most
frighteningly, they can destroy
anything or anybody with impunity.
This last power makes the two kids
rather prized icons in the eyes of the
government. Enter a super-sinister
CIA-ish agency so secret no one's even
heard of it (cliche time, anyone?),
headed by super-slimey John
Cassavetes as a slightly deformed arch-
villain. Early on the agency kidnaps
young Robin, appears to kill off his
father (Kirk Douglas) - then spirits
the sibling off to a mansion north of
Chicago, where his powers are forcibly
amplified to destructive levels by a
cache of scientists and technicians
(Primary Plot No. 1).
MEANTIME YOUNG Gillian, in-
creasingly uptight over her psychic un-
derside, enters a grotesquely lavish
pseudo-sanitarium for paranormal
testing and soon is also ticketed for cap-
tivity in service of Uncle Sam. We wat-
ch Cassavetes chortling with pride over
his two new secret weapons:. "The
Chinese don't have one, the Soviets
don't have one," he gloats gleefully.
Meanwhile, the very much alive
Douglas has embarked on an obsessive
search for his missing son. The three
protagonists' paths draw ever closer in
their desperate struggle against their
corporate adversaries, until they
finally crash together in a climax so
unnerving as to make the viewer vow
not to think bad thoughts about anyone
ever again.
SINCE THIS is De Palma's second
successive film on telekinesis and its
putportedly universe-shaking poten-
tialities, one must assume it's one of the
director's prime pre-occupations. Is
this shivery tale intended to signal the
dawning of some dark new millenium in
human evolution, its psychic demigods
approximating Yeats' poetic rough
beast slouching towards Bethlehem to
be born? Alas, De Palma has supplied
no such cosmic breadth to his project,
even as his subject matter roars out for
such an application.
INSTEAD, THIS most imaginative of
directors has inexplicably crafted a
molehill out of a mountain, subjugating
the apocalyptic thunderclaps of his
story to a small-minded preoc-
cupations. Is this shivery tale intended
to signal the dawning of some dark new
millenium in human evolution, its
psychic demigods approximating
Yeats' poetic rough beast slouching
towards Bethlehem to be born? Alas,
De Palma has supplied no such cosmic
breadth to his project, even as his sub-
ject matter roars out for such an ap-
plication.
INSTEAD, THIS most imaginative of
directors has inexplicably crafted a
molehill out of a mountain, subjugating
the apocalyptic thunderclaps of his
story to a small-minded preoccupation
with the unoriginal notions that: a) Our
government is run by baaaaad meni
(yawn); b) Young love (however inter
stellar) hasn't got a chance against an.
uncaring and exploitive society (sob):.
Armageddon is thus sacrificed for
cloak-and-dagger, the foreboding
future submerged by the hum-drurm
heartbreak of the moment.
De Palma treats both subject and
style as if he were in a shooting gallery,
his random thrusts ranging from the
breathtaking to the abyssmal.
Sometimes he touches the sublime: A
small van parks late-night on a rooftop
of a giant Chicago parking ramp as the
camera slowly pulls back, the vehicle's
ever-diminishing circumference for-
ming an eerie, minute haven against
the menage of the darklit city below.
WHEN DE PALMA later stagesa
multiple murder scene on a normally
quiet residential street, his slow-motion
rendering of the sequence carries all
the frame-by-frame horror and agony
of a Zapruder film, a nightmare depic-
tion of people trapped in sudden con-
vulsive acts too late to reverse.
Inevitably though, De Palma balan-
ces off his successes with segments so
extraneous that one wants to make him
write "pace" and "rhythm" on a
blackboard 100 times. The director
devotes long minutes to a visually
striking but irrelevant and largely in-
coherent night-time car chase; he jars
us with a strained comedy interlude
between fugitive Douglas and a captive
Chicago tenement family straight out of
Archie Bunker-land. At the film's
climax, Gillian dispatches Cassavetes
in gruesomely ingenious fashion, and
the viewer waits breathlessly to find out
what will happen next. Will our heroine,
now fast-approaching superhuman
capacity, walk out into the world and
proceed to dismantle it? Or perhaps
save it?
\ IRRELEVANT, SAYS De Palma,
who in the best grade-B tradition cuts
the film short at the bad guy's demise,
apparently unable to resist opting for
the gut shock of the moment over the
mundane havoc of the long run.
De Palma makes a few jabs at
studying the personalities of his,
possessed teen protagonists,
chronicling both Gillian's growing
terror at her inability to control her own
powers, and Robin's metamorphosis
from All-American boy into rampaging
psychotic. The idea of the necessity to
maintain social conscience alongside
absolute power could have been
arrestingly depicted, but the director;
proves too scatterminded, naturally, to.
maintain focus on it. Yet, Amy Irving.
and Andrew. Stevens still succeed, in
converting~ meagre material given,
them into performances which ex;
cruciatingly blend horror and poignan-
ce.
-The rest of The Fury's characters are
walking cartoons. A fine cast including
Douglas, Carrie Snodgress (at long,
last) and Charles Durning labor valian-
tly but futilely under the neglectful
abuse of a director who apparently
couldn't decide whether he was making
a science fiction film, a spy film, a
lover's tragedy or a Saturday morning
kiddie show. And after ten years of
feature film making, it seems
distressingly doubtful if he will ever
figure out which is which.
The average weight of centers in
the Big Eight increased by 32 pounds
in 20 years, going from 197 in 1957 to
229 in 1977.
TOM WOLFEI
is coming
to
Cenicore
336 Maynard
10 a.m. Thursday, April 13
4V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V fff ftfttffitifi
The University of Michigan Alumni Association announces.. .
7879AUDITIONS
for the
70 - 79
F aMai z idn3
Saturday, April 15
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
School of Music 2_
* Room 20580
The aMaizin' Blues is a student singing/dancing ensemble p
tunes, vocal jazz standards and traditional Michigan favoi
graphed and have been staged in Washington; D.C., Pitt
Chicago, as well as all over Michigan. In addition, the grou
where they performed at Disneyland and the Hollywood Pall
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CALL 7
* * * * ** A l -AA
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files
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erforming popular music, show
rites. Shows are fully choreo-
sburgh, Cleveland, Columbus,
p went to the 1978 Rose Bowl
adium.
64-0384 or 76440593
A A A A " A AA
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15 ~ ~ 1515151515
AN O N E
A NNOUN CE S
AN EVENING WITH
ISHWNPILP
THIS, WEEK
Tuesday,
April 11th
8 p.m.
Michigan Theatre
Union Programming Committee presents:
MINI COURSE: Your Rights as a Tenant-
What do the new housing laws mean for you?
Informal lecture/dicussion and question
Kuenzel Room, Michigan Union, Wednesday, April 12, 3 pm-FREE
UAC in Cooperation With
The Actor's Ensemble present:
FULL CIRCLE
A powerful drama dealing with the Holocaust
Schorling Auditorium, Thursday-Saturday, April 13-15, 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 16, 2 pm-$2.50
Eclipse Jazz presents:
JOSEPH JARMAN and LEO SMITH
Duets between Saxophonist Jarman (of the Art Ensemble of Chicago)
and Trumpeter Smith. Both are spontaneous and exciting musicians in
modern jazz
Residential College Auditorium, Friday, April 14, 8 pm-$2.50
Mediatrics presents:
LADY SINOS THE BLUES
Biography of Billie Holiday, perhaps the greatest American Blues singer.
Not Sci. Aud., Friday, April 14, 7 & 9:30 pm-$1.50
PAPER CHASE
Dramatic story of a first-year Harvard law student trying to date
his professor's daughter.
Nat. Sci. Aud., Saturday, April 15, 7:30 & 9:30 pm-$1.50
Cinema Lecture Series presents:
TICKETS $7.50 - $6.50 Reserved
Available at 'Michigan Theatre Box Office, Ann Arbor Music Mart, Bonzo
Records and all Hudson's stores.
A Son of Bamboo Production/Full Moon Production
HnO INDIANA UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
The Master of Science in Environmental Science degree (MSES) is a 48
credit-hour program of preparation for ,both public and private-sector
careers. A degree in physical, earth or biological science, engineering
or mathematics is required for admission. The areas of study included are:
MASTER OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The Master of Public Affairs degree (MPA) is a 48 credit-hour inter-
disciplinary program of preparation for public sector careers. Candidates
are admitted from a variety of educational backgrounds.
BASIC ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE
Applied. Ecology, Applied Earth.
Science, Environmental Chemistry,
Mathematics for Environmental
Sciences
ENVIRONMENTAL
U ntA AmC Aumr ft.I3Ir
APPLIED ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE CONCENTRATION
Specialization in a particular environ-
mental science field: Environmental
Impact Analysis, Water Resources,
Geography and Land-Use Analysis,
Geology, Ecology, Field Biology,
Microbiology
COURSES IN THE CORE CON-
CENTRATION INCLUDE:
Pubic. Management
Publie Organization
Quantitative Analysis For PubIlc
Management
Publie Management Eonomics
Environmental andSocial
Systems
THE AREAS OF PROFESSIONAL
STUDY AVAILABLE ARE:
Comparative and International
Affairs
Environmental Policy
Health Systems Administration
Management of Public Affairs
Planning
Policy Analysis
i
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