1 4 Family fun at the film fest? The Michigan Daily-Sunday, March 16, 1980 Page 5 THEYEATS TH EATRE FESTIVAL present By RJ SMITH The Ann Arbor Film Festival-great fun for the family ! Take this exchange between members of my family that began when we entered the lobby of the Michigan Theater Friday night. Junior (a five-year-old with new wave wraparound glasses): Can we get some popcorn? I want popcorn I Morm: Oh be quiet. Hey, how come all the people here look like haracters from some collegiate ext Stop Greenwich Village? Don't poor people come here? Junior: (Now crying) Popcorn! Popcorn i Sis:' l wanna see something funny. Pop: Me, I'm a documentary man. Junior: Car-toons I RJ: They've got -all that and more at the Ann Arbor Film ,festival-great fun for the entire amilyl See what I mean? ALL THE FOLKS seemed to have a good time Friday evening (some people even brought their grandparents). By far the most crowded evening at the Michigan (it seemed darned close to capacity at the 9:00 show), there was at times as much noise off the screen as there was on it. And if very occasionally this was obtrusive, more often it was nderstandable: the judges must have expected as much when they presented us with Willard Small's Disco Dog, a, film in which many minutes are. given over to repeated showings of Un Chien Andalou's eye-slicing scene, while disco music is played. The latter half is repeated edits of a famous assassination in the streets of Vietnam, first seen on television. Over this, too, is played disco music. We're all desensitized to violence by the same rocess that gives us disco's mind- numb, and the heathens shake, shake, Daily Photo by MAUREEN O'MALLEY Just when we'd finally mahaged to forget about de-evolution along comes these characters-calling themselves de-environmentalists. What will those crazy artists think of next? instructions on how to make a paper airplane) sufficient to serve its purpose of being a documentary about flight. A good deal of the films' tongue-in-cheek, B-52's-ish ambience certainly has to do with the way age trivializes, but one can't help thinking Doug Rideout (the filmmaker) was even then making fun of the times. THE BEST of evening's animation. seemed to succeed not through virtuosity, but from humor and imagination. Paul Tassie's Apeman was clearly tops here; relying heavily on the effective rock music, Tassie wrote, it was a dimestore dada drama involving a trio of found-object creatures, made up of such things as tennis shoes, model rockets, and novelty eyeglasses. Their bodies changed constantly as they moved, adding to a mood of uncertainty. Also top-notch, if less innovative, was Mike Conner's In Search Of, a bit of clay animation involving a disturbingly masochistic clay torso that has lost its head. By the time the final film of the evening comes on, and it turns out to a lengthy abstraction with a name like Near And Far/Now And Then or Displanted Visions, a knot can form on the back of your neck the size of a billiard ball. But this was not so with the 15-minute Floating Reflections, much of which presented images of such things as a flower garden, fish under water, and various sports superimposed on similar shots. Moving from the ominous to the muscularly intense, it was a memorable sort of lyric abstraction. By the way, my grandmother died in the theater-she couldn't take seeing that eye get sliced by the razor' over and over again. But other than that little thing, my memories of Friday's shows are warm ones. "Good fun," my mother said. I agreed. CARMINA BURANA POWER Today at 3 p.m..: CNE With Guests from Ireland open to the public without charge Please call the Center for Western European Studies, 764-4311, for the complete festival schedule "YEA TS AND MODERN DRA MA" A COLLOQJUIUM MARCH 19-22, 1980 shake their booty while people die in Asia. Get it? (The inside lowdown is they threw it in to clear out the house so as to make room for the 11:00 show.) Personally, I did no hooting. The occasional film of contention could be overlooked, for the winners that generally) sandwiched it (ingenious how that worked out, isn't it?). FOR ME THE highlight of the evening was a 30-minute documentary, Kittyhawk. Disqualified from the festival's competition among other reasons because one of the actors in it, George Manupelli, is also a festival officer, Kittyhawk takes techniques from 1960's straight-laced documentaries of all sorts (it was made in the 60's) along with a general disruption of story-telling approaches, chucks in a great sense of humor, and comes up with something pretty spectacular. "I think the most superficial things peopledo are what they're doing anyway," explains one character in a central scene. Kittyhawk takes a look at all the superficial things a group of people do while they set out to make a film called Kittyhawk, while at the same time providing us with visual proof along the way (shots of a jet, I The Yeats Theatre Festival is made possible by a grant from The Michigan Council for the Humanities & is sponsored by The University of Michigan Center for Western European Studies i l FI Now Playing at Butterfield -Theatres WEDNESDAY IS "BARGAIN DAY" $1.50 UNTIL 5:30 ADULT R SA SN EV OIDAYS $350O MON THRU THURS VENGS $3 00 FCHLDRN RIU$T SN MINES UNTIL 5 30 EXETHLIDAYS $2 50 EIN 4 UNDER $1 50 MONDAY NIGHT IS "GUEST NIGHT" Two Adults Admitted for, $3.00 I t 11 k Marshall Tucker still at it rCampus 1214S. Unav. ity 668-64161 Mon. Tues, Thurs, Fri at 7:30, 9:15 Wed, Sat, Sun at 1:j0,3:00,5:00.7:00 9:15 IT'S COLD IT'S WET IT'S HEW I (R) II I 14 Iq r A By STEVE HOOK If touring rock musiciarfs were to adopt catchy slogans to reflect their product, from among those currently used for other consumer goods, the Marshall Tucker Band would probably describe their current conert performances as "The Best Surprise is No Surprise.'- Onstage at Crisler Arena Friday night, the boys from Spartanville, S.C., took few chances and treaded few unfamilar'water in displaying their talents. For the casual, detached fan, market, the Tucker boys were ready and waiting. Sure, they played authentic Southern rock, and could get cowboys dancing from Detroit to Dallas, but they could, .and had the notion to, appeal to a vastly larger audience by throwing in all kinds of diverse influences. Hell, the musicians don't even agree on what it is they're playing anymore: bass guitarist Tommy Caldwell calls it "country= jazz," his brother Toy thinks of ther group as "a real progressive country" band, rhythm guitarist George McCorkle likes the term "an American influences run amuck in the Marshall Tuckr Band: a delightful ingredient in getting airplay (i.e. million-selling records). 'There's something for everybody in the Marshall Tucker sound,' their Warner Brothers press release gloats, a distinction which ultimately spells doom for purists, but which surely pleases the WB brass, whom the, Tucker boys have recently signed on with. (McCorkie: "Our exeitement now is the move to Warnrs. It's a new opening with a big company. We can utilize their big personnel and abilities. It's a new highlight in our lives.") ALL THIS IS well and good, but oh wouldn't it be thrilling to see them shed their heavy vests, roll up their sleeves, and kick out on a different tangent, show us something new. Instead, onstage at Crisler, the Caldwells and McKorkle, who formed the emotional nucleus of the band, lumbered from song to song with mock intensity, rehashing their stand-bys with labored enthusiasm; in a few isolated instances they actuallyt managed to appear' excited about playing their music, like for a few seconds during "Heard it in a Lovesong."' (To be fair, the band did offer a smattering of new music, including¢a live debut of their recent single, "Running Like the Wind.") To make matters worse, the band. is physically incohesive onstage. Lead singer ahd tamborine-slapper Doug Grey is located way off to the left, and keyboard/alto sax/flutist Jerry Eubanks off to the right of the three guitarists and drummer Paul Riddle. The spotlight is shifting so 'quickly between a bellow on Eubanks' flute, a wail on Toy Caldwell's lead guitar, Grey's hog-calling vocals, that you lose the sense of continuity between the musicians, of unified spirit and intensity. Their physical separation from each other onstage, an See SOUTHERN, page 7 Waysi de 302 0 htenow 434-1762 Mon., Tues Thurs. Fri., 7:30-9:15 Sat.,SunWed 30-3:30-5:30-7:30-9:15 ENDS THUR. MAR. 20th 14 0 rl ON k I A curse from hell! An American Dream hmes a love.stbr. 4 t CANNON FILMS RELEASE on.,Tues., Thurs Fri Mon., Tues.,Thurs. Fri 700-9:30 etSat.,Sun., Wed. 1:00- 400-700- 9 30 1:30-4:30-7:15-9:45 State 1.2m3.4 F r, ... 231 S. State-662-6264--662-6264 r (UPPER LEVEL) Mon. Tues., Thurs. ,Fri Mon., Tues., Thurs., Fri. 7:10-9:40 7:009:30 Sat, Sun., Wed.S SotSun. Wed GEORGE SEGAL- NATALIE WOOD NOMINATED FOR The comedy 2 ACAgEMY AWARDS that fools around a lot! PETER SELLERS ENDS THURS. A ST MARRIED e-{UPLE 4 - SHIRLEY MacLAINE BEING THERE United Artists - - TICKETS AT POWER'CENTER today 1-3 p.m. PHONE: 763-3333 r I >i U 'Carmina Burana' Dancers in the Court of Love enact affection between boy and girl in a scene from "Carmina Burana," Carl Off's acclaimed symphonic inter- pretation of 13th-century poems by wandering scholars and monks. The University Symphony Orchestra, University Choir, dancers from the School of Dance, and the Contemporary Directions Ensemble will perform "Car- mina Burana" and William Albright's "The Seven Deadly Sins" for a final time this afternoon at 3:00 p.m. r HOUSING REAPPLICATION their effortless renditions of songs like Take the Highway and Can't You See made for an enjoyable set, but for those hoping for something beyond his, a Whance to hear some fresh, spon neous wSouthern rock, an updated "stat of the art" as it were, their appearance was a disappointment, and cast senous doubts on the group's natural reputation as the South's most Pride of the South. CLEARLY, THERE is nothing dishonorable for artists to exhibit their most familiar and popular works in concert-audiences tend to clamour for- these. But this falls short when the musicians just seem to be going *through the motions, as the Marshall Tucker Band were doing Friday night. 'But why should we take a step forward,' you can imagine a bandmaster asking, when we can draw four encores side-stepping?' Apparently, "Ramblin'," "This Old Cowboy" and "24 Hours at a Time," songs which debuted when Nixon was still president, have enough miles left in them to deter the band from dabbling with new material: as long as the rock and roll band which plays traditional American music," and singer Doug Grey describes it as "blue'sy rock and roll." Diverse DRAWING I- For students presently living in the residence halls who wish to return to the residence halls for the academic year 1980-81. TUESDAY, March 11 -1 1:30 p.m. .. . SIGNING OF LEASES TUESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY MARCH 11 -MARCH 16 CM"A l'