ARTS Wednesday, September 28, 1983 the Michigan Daily Page 5 Angry females getting rough Wood' S last By Joe Hoppe : E VIOLENT FEMMES have gone bigtime since their last time in Ann Arbor. T-shirts and buttons are being sold by the cigarette machine at Joe's, and the price of admission has gone up a couple of bucks. They've just retur- ned from Europe - been on the road six ,months now. But they're not singing ,about how tough that life is yet, they're ..still having fun. So was the audience Sunday night. The Femmes used to play on the street. Gordon Gano sang unam- plified and played an acoustic, Brian - Ritchie lugged around his big mariachi bass, and Victor Delorenzo kept the drun kit down to the tranceaphone and maybe a kick snare. They'd set up on a streetcorner and just play. It was a lot like that at Joe's. They stood three abreast, DeLorenzo standing up in the e middle with everyone else, they put an amp or two on a convenient chair, tur- ned it up to a point where you could still talk on it, and just played. The only change was Gano now with an electric guitar, Ritchie switches between the amplified acoustic and an electric - but no rock star posturings Gano takes a small solo with his face turned toward the wall. Real relaxed, at first they weren't even in tune, starting into a song on the album, or one recently recorded in Britain, then going off on a goof. "Hey guys, let's do this, and let's do that. Let's have Brian take a silly cellophane whistle out of his pocket and play a solo. Let's stop in the middle of everything and tell horrible jokes; ex- posing ourselves as true people. Let's argue and threaten to break up the band right here. Let's turn it all over to Victor and his paisley Egyptian priest pill box hat, jazzy brushes and tranced tranceaphone. Let's just do it." And they did, like on some streetcorner where you can do whatever you want because no one is paying much atten- tion to you anyway. But everyone was paying attention. It wasn't the street, it was a bar, and everyone was squished together tight. So the crowd got to participate too. Call- response with Gano, who was seemingly amazed that everyone knows all the words and was actually getting involved. The Femmes stop, ready to speed up into a chorus of "Confessions" when a dancer in the thick of it all, knowing all is about to explode and he will be crushed with the rising tempo yells "No, don't do that." The Femmes of Violence have mercy, and they don't. We aren't just passersby on the film to open on Friday CULVER CITY, Calif. (AP) - Brain- storm, Natalie Wood's last movie, finally reaches area theaters Friday, 22 months after the actress drowned before filming her final scenes and the studio tried to scuttle the production. Director Douglas Trumbull's original concept had to be altered to get around Wood's loss but he managed -- with the help of Lloyd's of London - to fight off two attempts to terminate the project. "Natalie was three scenes away from finishing and I had three more weeks of shooting," Trumbull said. "I reviewed what was left to shoot and decided im mediately that the film could be finished. It never crossed my mind that it might be terminated." He reworked the script to eliminate Wood's unfinished scenes. Three scenes were eliminated because of taste: a love scene in a canoe with Wood and Christopher Walken; a shot of both leaping into-4 swimming pool; a fantasy of their son's drowning. Part of Wood's dialogue was given to actor Joe Dorsey. Brainstorm is a science fiction movie about video-taping human memory. At preview screenings, the end titles were followed by a simple dedication: "To Natalie." The Violent Femmes did their damage Sunday night at Joe's. Daily Photo by DOUG McMAHON boulevard, we're giving the Femmes our attention, and they give it back; a show, fun and entertainment. The road manager comes out with his saxophone and honks. "Kiss off", one of the best on the Femmes' album, gets lost in the middle and becomes "Pipeline." Everybody surfs. They're just playing, playing music, playing around. Getting right down to it, though, the band was as great as their nicely jux- taposed name would lead one to think. The Femme end comes from being called that in high school lockerrooms. The Violent "sounds neat." The kernel buried within all the fun, the secret ingredient, was Gano's great high school woman-caused angst. Can't get none. As in "Gimme the Car" with his entire existence riding on this one weekend night, the car is a necessity. "C'mon, Dad, gimme the car. C'mon dad, I ain't no runt, C'mon girl gimme Quality quartet supports Man' By Emily Montgomery T HE LATEST production of the. Brecht company, A Man's a Man, opened to a sparce but satisfied audien- ce Thursday night. The comedy, direc- ted by Bob Brown, is at the beginning of a four week run at the R.C. Auditorium in East Quad. Unlike most plays where the success or failure of the production depends solely upon the performance of the main character, A Man's a Man challenges a company above and beyond this in that it requires four main characters, all of whom must be excep- tional actors. Their skill is needed in this show and the Brecht Company delivers. At the ,top of this list of extensive talent is Blake Ratcliffe, who is delight- ful as Polly Baker, an English speaking your..." and the guitars discretly blurp out all the hidden promise and mystery. Or Gano will go to the other extreme, back to the locker room and lie about many loves: "I've got girl trouble up the ass!" We know he's lying, but it's okay. We know h:ow it is, Gordon. That established, the Femmes go back to more streetish music, blues and country and "Country Death Song": Gano is a farmer out to destroy his own kind, pushing his daughter into a bot- -tomless pit - "She screamed as she fell, but I never heard her hit." On into gospel rock, "it's going to rain for forty days and forty nights" and everyone on the dance floor will clap their hands. The last song was "Gone Daddy Gone," and they were; real gone dad- dies. ARMY SURPLUS 201 E. Washington at Fourth Open M-W 9-6 Open Th-F 9-8 Open Sat. 9-7 i 994-3572 chap whose motto for life it "All's fair in love . . ." and keeping out of trouble. Next, but certainly not any less talen- ted is Martin Walsh who plays the manipulative but lovable Uriah Shelley. Sideways glances and an air of total insubordination to anything-in- cluding the play itself-was what en- deared him to his audience. Given the difficult but rewarding op- portunity of playing under these two masters is John Pollins who portrays Jesse Mahoney, the slightly less significant but every bit as enjoyable comrade of the aforementioned pranksters. Last is Galy Gay, a poor (in more ways than one) porter whose main motivation in life centers around fin- ding something to fill the great em- ptiness in his gut, which can only be matched by the great emptiness in his head. Jeff Wine is so believable in this part, that it's scary. He is as incredibly average, devastatingly dull and. awesomely airheaded as the part demands. As he stares off in space and fantasizes about a fish which he will never be permitted to eat, one can't help but feel sorry for him. He's such a sap. Of the company, John Shaw and Roger Kerson as supporting actors should not be overlooked. Shaw was downright enchanting as Jeriah Jip, who, if it is possible, was almost as ignorant as Galy Gay. Kerson por- trayed the vicious "Bloody-five." His voice was domineering but his ap- pearance was diminutive-an irresistible combination. The play is fairly long, 3 hours, but at no point did it seem to drag. Some of the singing left something to be desired but these parts are few and far between and can be overlooked since the play on the whole is so exceptional. A Man's a Man will continue Satur- day night at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 6:30 until October 16th. Tickets cost $5 and are available at the door and before the show. ULTIMATE TAILGATE PICNIC FOR RENT: 35' Luxureous Motor Home. Home and Away games. Groups up to 20. Call 663-5162 Join then Daily Arts Staff 20%. OFFI OUR ENTIRE STOCK OF DUALFOLD UNOERWEAR, SWEATERS & BACKPACKS Available in Many Styles and Colors WITH THIS CQUPON (Except Sale Items) EXPIRES WED. ,OCT.5, 1983 :. I 'Cruisers' doesn't go distance By Joshua Bilmes f The Buddy Holly Story had been done by Sylvester Stallone in the style of Citizen Kane while he was under the influence of a bad Hardy Boys novel, somethng like Eddie and the Cruisers would have been the result. That's not bad, in a way, for many of the elements from which Eddie borrows are some very fine things indeed. The problem is that the four elements. just do not fit well together. Sylvester Stallone would not have directed Citizen Kane, and Buddy Holly is not at all like a bad Hardy Boys novel. Fortunately, the mystery element stands off to the side for the first part of the film, which starts out in a manner similar to Citizen Kane. Maggie (Ellen Barkin), a reporter for Media Magazine, watches old news footage of '50s singer Eddie Wilson and his band, the Cruisers. Shortly after completing an album, Season in Hell, Eddie drives off a bridge. His body is never discovered, but he is presumed dead. The tapes for the album disappeared the next dlay. A few decdes later, Maggie decides to go looking for Wilson who she thinks is still alive. Like the reporter in Kane, she goes to interview old members of the band. There's Doc, there's Joann, and there's Fred. The three are played by Joe Pan- toliano, Helen Schneider, and Tom Berenger. Fred is the most important. He spends most of the movie remem- bering the good old days, and these scenes are the movie's best. They make you wish you were back with the band - they look good, and they feel good. It's too good to last, though. The easygoing fifties start to dissolve into backbiting and artistic arguments. The band's saxophonist dies. The management at Satin Records seems to not like A Season in Hell. Eddie (Michael Pare) drives off in a rage with Joann, while the rest of the band bickers over who to blame. One can be forgiven for not wishing they were back in the '50s. But what the movie provides in the present is something which makes one wish they were outside the theater. The band members all get together, spurred on by Maggie's interest. The dialogue in these scenes is vintage bad Hardy Boys. It's almost as funny as the ''somebody is putting people into comas" line which Genevieve Bujold had to deliver in Coma. The incidental music and the photography would have been perfect for a good mystery. When used on a film such as this, the most noticeable thing is how inappropriate they are. It all ends up on too happy a note. A few quotes from the film's ending best serve to indicate the film's Rocky in- fluences. "Shortcuts kid. I never could do things the easy.... (The ransacker's) a dreamer, and the world needs dreamers....I'm gonna make you proud of me....Go get 'em (ransacker)." The film is good enough that I hate to reveal any more. It has enough virtues that it is very possible the movie will be enjoyed by those that see it. John Caf- ferty composes and sings some very good songs for the movie. The photography by Fred Murphy is above average, and the acting is not bad. But the screenplay from P.F. Kluge's novel is simply unpardonable. It needs less uplifting, less trite mystery, and a little more Kane and Holly. Considering the built-insobstacleecourse the script provides, however, Eddie and the Cruisers is a surprisingly enjoyable film. THE JOURNEY HAS BEGUN If you'd like to be part of an electronics story that's still unfolding, come to the Hughes Career Opportunity Presentation. Hughes representatives from the Space & Communications and Radar Systems Groups will be on campus to meet EE, ME, Computer Science, Physics or Engineering Systems majors: Wednesday, Sept. 28, 4 - 6 PM Room 311, West Engineering Bldg. (refreshments will be served) Records~ Grant meets capitalist (record buying) pigs halfway - enough tfuth amongst the bass beats to make a sensitive ch- ochlea tremble with discomfort. Always the same, pleasure with pain. -Ben Ticho Eddy Grant - 'Killer on the Rampage' (Columbia) Copteus thumps and a round of barumbas from the newest crown prin- ce of the dreadlocks. Grant is the great black cum soul cum last remnants, of disco hope for the record industry, which has successfully promoted Killer into a homicidal sales monster. $A~' e003 Creating a new world with electronics - - - - - - - - - - -