ARTS
The Michigan Daily
Friday, February 19, 1982.
Page 7
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'Border' is inconsistent
King Crimson brings 'Discipline' to their Monday night
appearances as Second Chance.
Clubs/Bars
The Blind Pig (208 S. First; 996-
8555)
Tonight and tomorrow the Blind.
Pig features the blues-rock quartet
Lepers. Monday night you can
boogie with Boogie Woogie Red. -
Joe's Star Lounge, (109 N. Main;
665-JOES)
Dynamic country swing and jazz-
tinged bluegrass with Footloose
through tomorrow night.
Mr. Flood's Party (120 W. Liberty;
995-2132).
Don Tapert & the Second Avenue
Band, original rhythm and blues
with country and rock influences,
perform through tomorrow night.
The band features former MC-5
guitarist Robert Gillespie. Folk duo
Connie Huber and Steve Moebs per-
form on Sunday night.
Rick's American Cafe (611 Church;
996-2747)
Scalding R&B classics and
originals with the Blue Front Per-
suaders. Tonight and tomorrow. On
Sunday night former Modern Rager
Jeff Okken is featured when Jane
Jane takes the stage.
Second Chance (516 E. Liberty;
994-5350)
More top-40 rock with Full Nelson
through Sunday night.
U-Club (Michigan Union, 530 S.
State; 763-5911)
Country rock with Doubleshot
Rangers tonight only.
Concerts
Ars Musica
Ars Musica will perform Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons on Sunday. Per-
formances are scheduled for 3 and 8,
p.m. at St. Andrews Episcopal
Church, 306 N. Division. Call 662-3976
for more information.
American Music Series
This new series is designed to help
local performers get access to the
community. On Sunday, P.S. I Love
You, Elvis Patrick and the Grand
River Band, and 5 to 1 will perform 2.
shows (2 p.m. and 7 p.m.) at the
Michigan Theatre. The show is a
,good showcase of local talent.
The Ark
Sally Rogers is back for one show
only this Sunday. A fine singer and
instrumentalist, Roger is well-
versed in playing the dulcimer, ban-
jo, and guitar. Show begins at 8 p.m.
Tidal Wave
King Crimson is back! Founding
members Robert Fripp and Bill
Bruford have joined forces with
guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew and
bassist Tony Levin to revive one of
the most respected names in all of
rock.
The original Crimson was a
seminal force in the development of
progressive, art-rock, breaking in
with classics In the Court of Crimson
King and 20th Century Schizoid Man.
Since disbanding in 1974, Fripp has
been active in a wide variety of
musical formats including ground-
breaking syntho-guitar creations
with Brian Eno and-David Byrne, in-
sistently danceable pop with The
League of Gentlemen, a fruitful
collaboration with Daryl Hall of Hall
& Oates, and a compelling solo tour
which featured only guitar and tape
effects. Fripp's last Ann Arbor ap-
pearance was during the summer of
'79.
Call 99-MUSIC for more infor-
mation.
Theater
Ann Arbor Civic Theater
Major Barbara, one of Bernard
Shaw's most brilliant comedies,
opens next Wednesday. The play
focuses on the conflict between the
amoral father, a munitions maker,
and his idealistic daughter. Their
verbal battles are what make this
play worthwhile.
662-7282 for more information.
Arbecoll Theatrics
South Pacific opens next Friday at
the Michigan Theater. This Rodgers
and Hammerstein favorite features
such songs as "There is Nothing
Like a Dame," and "Some Enchan-
ted Evening." 665-0038 for more in-
formation.
-compiled by Michael Huget
By James Clinton
T he Border is a very interesting
failure. It contains several inten-
sely pleasing scenes, and the overall ef-
fect is that it just misses. Too many
fundamental inconsistencies in both the
conception and execution of the film
keep it from achieving its goal.
The main character Charlie is newly
located in El Paso, where he works on
the border patrol between Texas and
Mexico. Ostensibly his activities are
confined to controlling the migration of
wetbacks from Mexico into Texas. The
job is complicated to a large extent by
his peers on the force, who are a
scurillous bunch, motivated by profit.
The tightrope they walk between ex-
ploitation and enforcement blurs the
line between good guy and bad to such a
degree that Charlie doesn't know where
he fits in. His wife stays home, buying
pools, waterbeds, plastic furniture, and
just about everything else she can get
her hands on in the process involing a
laughable composite of the bored,
idiotic, American consumer. Poor
Charlie is surrounded by morons on all
sides.
As played by an artistically resurgent
Jack Nicholson, Charlie can't seem to
find where he fits in this mess.
Director Tony Rochardson's first
mistake is that he has chosen a film
clearly out of his milieu. Richardson
enjoyed a formidable reputation in the
'60s England, and deservedly so. Why
he has chosen to undertake such a
project is anybody's guess. My
suspision is that in this little tale of
betrayal he saw a microcosm of
American ruthlessness and avarice,
and one man's ability to come to terms
with himself and rectify it. Certainly
the Nicholson character is an extension
of the white hat mythological American
who rides into town to clean up the
mess.
Unfortunately, Richardson's percep-
tion of the types that make up this film
offer little more than stereotypical
ethnicity of the most general kind. In,
an attempt at capturing a backwoods,
neo-red neck sensibility he offers
caricatures rather than reasonable
types. This is particularly true of his
idea of Mexicans, which is nothing, if
not insulting.
He moves the story along at a
deliberate pace, which fits the storyline
quite nicely. Ry Cooder's twangy
musical score is excellent at
creating-where the photography
doesn't-an ambiance of desolation. A
difficulty that is apparent throughout is
the editing, which for some reason
mounts a particular tension, only to
quickly cut to an entirely unrelated set
of circumstances. Whether this was
done intentionally to create an aura of
forebodence doesn't matter, since it ac-
complishes little more than offering its
own confusion. Characters appear and
vanish so quickly that it's impossible to
assign any motivation to their actions
or fasten a perception beyond the ob-
vious.
Nicholson's portrait of Charlie not
only steals the film but comest close to
making the entire coalesce. Once
again he's the high priest of alienation,
though this time there's a twist; he's
the good guy. This is a man of great in-
ternal strength, integrity, and a
manifold sense of purpose. His courage
under fire is-Hemingway-esque and the
violent outcome is as believable as
everything else about the man. As
Charlie, Nicholson is a smoldering time
bomb, building episodically. His
emotional perception of the man is
jarringly accurate and the execution
amounts to the best work he's done in
quite some time. He no longer seems
hyped for a big performance; here he is
deliberate, stalking, and meracing in
his brilliantly contained presentation.
On the basis of his work here and in
Reds, it would seem the old Jack is
back.
Elpidio Carrillo distinguishes himself
from the rest of an essentially wasted
cast by delivering a haunting perfor-
mance as the simplistic Mexican that
Charlie befriends. This is very special
work when one considers she does not
have a word of English in the film. As
the bereft mother she is a tangled web
of fire and tenderness. The peculiar
vulnerability of her face is exceeded
only by her striking beauty.
Unfortunately, the rest of a good cast
is largely wasted, particularly Warren
Oates, an excellent actor who Richar-
dson largely ignores.
Valerie Perrine, never my favorite
actress, comes across as a nebulous
reptilian predator, whose idea of up-
ward mobility consists of a shift from
the tawdry to the tacky.
Ultimately, Richardson must bear
the responsibility for the failure of The
Border. His ludicrous attempt to draw
complexity from simplicity
necessitates the alteration of focus
from a good small scale, story to one
that attempts to encompass too much.
This is unfortunate since it has the
basic ingredients of a fine film and in
different hands perhaps would've
emerged as such. It's Nicholson's
misfortune that his work is akin to
scoring 40 points for the losing team.
It's Richardson's misfortune that he is
two decades and a continent away from
his best work. It's time he returned to
the idiom that served him best.
Hitchcock's'Dial M'
extraordinary in 3-D
AT 11:30 PM
There Is No Such
Thing As
Simple LoveI
Trivia question: What famous Alfred
Hitchcock movie was originally made
in 3-D, but released in 2-D?
The Answer: Dial M' For Murder,
starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly.
Most people associate 3-D films with
the hackneyed science fiction films
like It Came From Outer Space, and
The Creature From the Black Lagoon.
But those films, and even the recent
Comin' At Ya, were rotten because of
bad acting, bad writing, and bad direc-
tion, not because 3-D is inherently the
kiss of death.
Hitchcock recognized the value in a
device that would expand the space of
the camera frame. What makes the 3-D
Dial 'M' so successful, however, is sim-
ply that someone with talent finally
decided to make a movie first, and a 3-
D movie second.
Directors had traditionally poked the
audience in the face with 3-D effects.
Actors were always pointing, throwing
or walking to the camera. Not only was
this distracting from the plot, it was
completely unnecessary. Hitchcock's
use of 3-D. is marvelously refined,
relying on the special effects only for
the most dramatic scenes.
But more than that, Hitchcock used"
the 3-D effect to open up his movie.
Most criticism of Dial 'M' centered on
the fact that the whole film takes place
inside an apartment. Looking at the
film the way it was meant to be seen,
that apartment comes across, not as a
stuffy claustrophobic room, but as a
real, tangible, space. Film theorists of-
ten speak of the world that cinema
creates. In Dial 'M' that world is real.
-Richard Campbell
SECOND CHANCESpetters
516 E. Liber$2.00 t9s93I
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METRO-GOLDWYN MAYER Presents
A MICHAEL PHILLIPS Production of A DAVID S. WARD Film
NICK NOLTE DEBRA WINGER JOHN STEINBECK'S CANNERY ROW
starring AUDRA LINDLEY Narrated by JOHN HUSTON Music by JACK NITZSCHE
Production Designed by RICHARD MacDONALD Director of Photography SVEN NYKVIST, A.S.C.
Based Upon the Book by JOHN STEINBECK Produced by MICHAEL PHILLIPS
Written for the Screen and Directed by DAVID S. WARD %FEAD TW BANUM DWK
PGPAENTAL GUWDNCE SUGGESED Metrocolor e MGM/United Artists
" " " C Distribution and Mrketing
SOME u lEEtIL MAY NOT BE S~rIE FE OR QT} ® 1982 METRO.OOLOWYNWMAYER FILM CO.
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NOW SHOWING I
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