I ARTS 375N MAPLE 769-1300 BARGAIN SHOWS $2.53 Before * PM Mon-Fri Before 3 PM Set-Sun JACK NICHOLSON He found o line TUES within himself. The Michigan Daily Tuesday, February 16, 1982 Page 5 'Amateur' is amateunsh THE BORDER UNIVERSAL- RK IJ1:00-3:05-5:15-7:30-9:45 By Richard Campbell OHN SAVAGE was last seen in this area as a young mid-western man in Hair, who grew disenchanted with the Vietnam War. In The Amateur, Savage plays a young CIA code-breaker who grows disenchanted with the world of international intrigue. Unfortunately that's where the similarity ends. For where Hair was a sunny, fast-paced, exuberant fantasy, The Amateur is a dark, slow, boring drama. The promotional blurbs for the film speak of'the tension "riveting you to your seat." You'll be riveted to your seat, all right-you'll be sleeping in it. For a spy movie to be this slow-paced should be against the law. Director Charles Jarrott's editing of even the simplest scenes show a com- plete absence of artistic talent. The beginning sequence, intended to develop tension surrounding a terrorist takeover of an American Embassy, is extremely disjointed, jumping from one meaningless shot to another. Further, the shots are boring on even the simplest level: The camera lingers over actions that don't advance the plot. And, John Coquillon's photography is too often too dark. If you can't see what's going on, how are you supposed to get involved with the story? If it weren't for the mention in the publicity package of Jarrott's earlier credits, notably Anne of a Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, one might easily assume that he had had no experience either behind the camera or working with a group of actors. The most crucial scenes in the film are those in wich Savage decides to avenge the death of his girlfriend. These scenes of intense emotional and intellectual conflict just do not come through in the movie. Asthe film progresses, the viewer's interest quickly wanes. Long, "dramatic" pauses; dark, low-contrast photography; pointlessly short sequen- ces in diners and on beaches-all com- bine into an amazing feat of anti- cinema. It's as if Jarrott wants to find out how quickly he can alienate his audience. Savage's acting is the kind that would be idolized if it were in a movie good enough to take advantage of it. He cries, gets angry, and generally emotes his heart out. This would be Oscar material-if only the film had enough substance to make that acting worth- while. Plummer's acting, on the other hand, would work no matter what movie he was in. Although in recent years he seems to have favored bit parts over larger roles, he is so good that even in only one minute in The Amateur, he brings life to the minor part of the secret police chief. Through shuffling, absent-mindedness, and a peck on his wife's cheek, his character springs out of the background to capture your in- terest. However, neither of these perfor- mances can make up for the hopelessly jumbled production. Jarrot's direction has taken care of that. Adding insult to injury, the film ends with a title card relating what happens to the characters after the final scene, pseudo-documentary style. As if anyone cared. Read and Use Daily Classifieds BURT LANCASTER 1:30 SUSAN SARANDON ,:30 ATLA fTtC $1 7:30 C TT' TU ES 9:30 ® AAOUNT 1:15 4:00 7:00 . 9:30 . Riveting... Enthralling... CHARIOTS OF TIRE NO $1 TOES MP ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S DIAL "M" 35 15001 for MURDER L: in 3-D TUESDAY LUNCH-DISCUSSION FEBRUARY 16-12 NOON "MEDICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NUCLEAR WAR" A Video Tape of DR. HELEN CALDICOTT, A Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility At The International Center 603 E. Madison Street Lunch $1.00 For additional information, ,lease coll 662-5529 Co-sponsored by: The Ecumenical Campus Center, The International Center, Church Women United in Ann Arbor. John Savage as the intense CIA code-breaker in 'The Amateur.' " Records David Byrne--'The Catherine Wheel' Jerry Harrison-'The Red and the Black' 'Tom Tom Club' (Sire) Now that all of the Talking Heads' solo albums are out, the point is clear that the whole is: going to have to work to keep up with some of its parts. Of the three, the front-runner is also the' most unlikely-Tom Tom Club, as. bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz dubbed their collaboration with Jamaican keyboardist-producer Steven Stanley and assorted friends and relatives. "It's hard to praise this album too highly, largely because it is such as unassumingly refreshing work, every bit as playful as it is adven- turous. A few others have tried such a far-reaching synthesis of reggae, rap, pop, and psychedelia, but no one else has achieved dance music as surreally iensual as this. Although both the Byrne and Ijarrison albums are just as good as anything they've ever done previously,' b'th of their works lack the charismatic magic and inventive spirit that makes Tom Tom Club seem like something more than the Heads. For better or worse, both The Red and the Black and Trhe Catherine Wheel have "Talking Heads" written all over them. From Byrne, this is somewhat of a surprise. Certainly, no one has more of right to the Talking Heads sound than he, but the point is that each of his albums up until this one has had a unique sound all its own. This is the first to sound more like its predecessors than something unique unto itself. (Of course, though,. that's not half as worrisome as the quotes lifted ver- batim from Eno's ambient catalogue.) To be sure, there are plenty of joys on Catherine Wheel, especially delightful combos of the Heads' early rhythmic THE DAILY CLASSIFIEDS ARE A GREAT WAY TO GET FAST RESULTS CALL 784-0557 lightness and their more recent produc- tion technology as found on tunes like "His Wife Refused." Still, I can't dismiss the nagging fear that Byrne is being dragged down an avenue of self-obsessedintellectualism in the wake of Brian Eno. Like Byrne, Eno's first three albums were as dif- ferent from each other as day and night (and neither-day-nor-night, I suppose). Then, the ideas behind each album slowly became more narrowed and in- bred. Now, the man seems to be such an intellectual dilettante that everything h, consumes comes back up viscerallys: neutered, his albums, sounding like living creatures fully dissected and then pasted back together. Perhaps I'm overreacting to this slight indication of a slowing in David Byrne's creative pace, but I would like for Byrne and Eno to end up putting out a series of albums virtually identical except for the manipulation of one minor variable and thinking that that idea is really valuable and stimulating. How this all relates back to The Catherine Wheel' is that I respected both Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but rarely wanted to listen to either of them after an intense but brief infatuation with both of them. The tone of each was a but too dryly calculated and intellectually strident to be very listenable, even though I found them both quite impressive. I fear that the same fate will befall The Catherine Wheel-it will be an album I enjoy more talking about than listening to. The Jerry Harrison album is also a surprise, though of a different sort. Like the Byrnejalhum, it's obviously a Talking Heads product. In fact, it's vir- tually a reproduction of Remain in Light in personnel and sound. But it is to Harrison's tribute that for a songwriter whose major songwriting credit until this LP was "Hospital" for The Modern Lovers, this album com- pares surprisingly well to its progenitor. To call it Remain in Light, Part II would not be misrepresenting, overestimating, or belittling it in any. fashion. Obviously, though, the unexpected beacon of hope for Talking Heads is Tina Weymouth. If David Byrne should falter, Tina seems more than capable of picking it up and running gleefully for new territory. Hopefully, though, no one will falter, and their planned studio album-following the (still) upcoming live double album-will show us' a Talking Heads beyond our wildest hopes. -Mark Dighton VA I B '. U k. E j * -l 1 "CLASSES TAUGHT IN ENGLISH" The University is located in Santo Domingo, I Dominican Republic. 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