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FILM
LOGIE
Continued from Page 8
Bruce Willis got stuck on a bad
'Blind Date'
By John Shea
LOOK UP TO THE SKIES OF
Hollywood and you can't help but
notice tie intense, brightly burning
star of Bruce Willis; the man is
hot. When he's not busy on the set
of his hit televison series,
"Moonlighting," he is off pushing
wine coolers or cutting albums.
,Yet, while finding success with
every project he undertakes, Willis
is still not satisfied. He wants
more. And now, he is starring in
his first major motion picture,
Blake Edwards' Blind Date, hoping
to ascend even further.
Willis plays Walter Davis, a
young executive with a pathetic
social life. Walter needs a date for
an important client dinner, and
ultimately trusts his brother Ted
(Phil Hartman), a seedy car dealer,
to set him up with someone.
Ted actually does a good job;
Nadia (Kim Basinger, 9 1/2 Weeks,
The Natural) is beautiful. She is
quiet, bright, and an art lover too.
Walter is very taken with her - so
taken that he ignores the emphatic
plea of his brother ("Whatever you
do, don't let her drink") and
indulges by drinking champagne
with her before the dinner party.
Ooops! Big mistake. What
started out as a wonderful evening
turns into a nightmare as Nadie
loses all control, with Walter
scrambling to keep her from getting
into a lot of trouble. He must also
deal with David Bedford (John
Larroquette, "Night Court"), a
psychotically jealous ex-boyfriend
who has made a personal vow to
"Kill Walter" before the night is
through..
Considering this is a Blake
Edwards' film, Blind Date is a
rather ironic title. Despite the fact
that almost every single one of his
45 films are light-hearted, romantic
comedies, we're never quite sure
what to expect. The same man who
has brought us Victor/Victoria and
That's Life has also brought us
S.O.B. and A Fine Mess. Working
within a single genre of film for his
entire career, one would imagine
that Edwards would know by now
what works and what doesn't.
Instead he wavers back and forth,
between touching and tasteless, a
credit to his industry and an
embarrassment.
Blind Date falls somewhere in
between the two extremes. Edwards
wants this film to be hip and
bizarre, much in the tradition of
After Hours. And for parts of the
first half of the movie, Edwards'
attempts succeed. But he gives up
on the film at the end, and resorts
to an unoriginal, slapstick ending
which is too reminiscent of a TV
sitcom. We've seen it all before,
and it's tired.
It is ultimately up to Willis to
carry the load, and he can't because
the producers have put handcuffs on
him. What makes Willis so
appealing is his aloofness and, if
you will, his "super-coolness."
Here, he is restrained, simply a
reactor to the events around him.
He tries hard, but it just doesn't
work.
Larroquette, with a high, intense
energy level, is the best part of the
movie. We are most interested in
him, while we should be interested
in Willis and Basinger, And that
says something. Like most blind
dates, this one is better left unseen.
r&%I--- ---Bs Food Best of the Mst-
Burger Radio station
M A G A Z I N E'S Pizza Local band
Popcorn Building
Hot Dogs Dorm
Bagels Bar
Greek food Dance. Bar
Italian food Happy hour
Oriental food Place to meet people
Mexican food Place to take a first date
Seafood Birth control method
Junk food Place to get away from it all
Breakfast Place to study
Late-night eats Excuse for a late paper
Take-out Person in Ann Arbor
Greasy spoon Best thing about Ann Arbor
Deli Best (fill-in-the-blank)
New restaurant
Food bargain _______________
Place to take the folks The Wost of A
Dorm cafeteria
Most unsightly building_
Worst place to take a first date
Be tBe sWorst dorm meal__ _
R E A D E R P O L L B stsnWorst thing about Ann Arbor
Men's clothing store Worst (fill-in-the-blank)
THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL BALLOT for Weekend Women's clothing store
M agazine's fifth annual Best of Ann Arbor reader Thrift/used clothing store __pt'_aur ntd i aSeeD
IIl. It's quite a gesture on our part, devoting a whole Shoe store _________________
Magazine to your opinions, so don't blow the oppor- Grocery
tunity. Fill this out. Now. Mail or deliver it to the Gift store What do you like about Weekend Magazine?
Daily (Weekend Magazine, 420 Maynard St., 48109) Copy shop
by April 6, or give it to our people in the Fishbowl Liquor store What do you dislike about it?
today. Results will be printed in our April 17 edition. Book store
Used book store What do you like about the rest of the Daily?
Signature Record store
Address Used record store What do you dislike about it?_
Phone Candy store
PAGE 4 'WEEKEND /APRIL 3, 1987
which hasn't seen action since
Saturday night and reads, "-2,196."
You're never sure that it knows to
reset to zero.
All of which prompts me to ask,
aside from the obvious, what is
wrong with the relatively good-old
mechanical meters? They don't need
batteries or computers. Once the
city buys a mechanical meter, it
runs for free, unlike these new
high-tech jobbies. It's sort of like
buying a digital watch instead of a
well-crafted, self-winding watch.
Perhaps the digitoid meters are
cheaper now, but how much do the
batteries cost? Maybe the computer
helps nab us crooks, but how much
more does it cost to run? And why
this sudden concern over how tardy
drivers are? The new meters won't
prevent the unscrupulous among us
- when confronted upon returning
to our cars, with a meter-slug in
mid-scrawl - from protesting that
we had to run down to the corner to
get some change and then feeding
the meter in front of the reader,
only to speed by moments later,
hurling obscenities at the trusting
fool.
In my neighborhood, the prob-
lem is just as bad at home. When I
and my housemates tried to squeeze
our cars onto our tiny driveway, I
got nailed for crossing "the set-back
line." I've since read the exact
regulation in the City Code, and I
still don't know what or where this
line is. So now I park on a street
with signs limiting parking to four
hours at a time between 8 a.m. and
6 p.m. I rush out at noon to see if
my tires have been chalked. If not,
I'm probably safe for the whole
day. If they have been, I have to
drive around the block to rub the
chalk off. What a pain.
Now I know these regulations
exist only to give everyone a fair
shot at parking spaces, but I
honestly think we could live
without them. All of them, as-
suming drivers would be cool about
not blocking traffic, and things like
that. But that will take organ-
ization, and time. In the interim,
wouldn't it be terrible if cars started
leaping sideways during parallel
parking, knocking those poor
defenseless meters off their moor-
ings? And I'd hate to think what
some evil computer genius could do
to prevent Tally Hall justice... E
Read
and
We
D04~~
INTERVIEW
Continued from Page 8
D: Will other kinds of sexually
oriented literature become more
predominant, such as lesbian liter-
ature or novels that don't deal spe-
cifically with between the rela -
tionship between one man and one
woman?
H: I definitely think that there is a
trend toward expanding kinds of
relationships. In this Margaret
Atwood novel I just read we don't
learn until halfway through that the
main character has a close woman
friend, but we don't really know
what kind of woman friend, and
then she turns out to be gay - sort
of the old "best girlfriend"
paradigm, but then she's slightly
different because she has a different
sexual orientation, so that it kind of
slips in, but not in terms of
mainstream literature. I think it's
interesting to see catalogs on gay
literature, with almost none of
them are about women.
D: I noticed that most women's
novels deal alot with violent
situations between men and
women. Why is that?
H: Its become a very controversial
issue, especially in black women's
writing. The black community has
really gone up in arms in terms of
how black men are portrayed so
negatively in fiction, and that black
women writers are doing a real
disservice to the black community
by representing violent inadequate
abusive men. Of course, some
people feel that's completely
wrong, that one should only have
positive role models. Other people
will say that this is what it's like,
that part of reality to a large extent
has never been written about.
That's always a big issue: whe-
ther you just want to present
positive role models so that you
can overcome negative stereotypes,
or if you want to present it as it is,
which might not be a very happy
picture, but at least it will present
things as they are.
Women's literature has some
commitment to social change, and
part of it is to show a positive role
model, but another part is to show
it the way it is.
D: How does this affect romance
novels?
H: One interesting thing about
romance fiction is that it has a neat
ending, and the other kind of fiction
tends not to have a clear resolution.
If one is going to bring about
social change, one doesn't want to
present an alternative dogma -
'Well, it's always been like this,
now it shouldn't be like this for
everybody at all times and all
places' rather than 'these are the
issues.' I leave (the question) open
and each reader figures it out for
themselves.
The term 'women's literature' is
so monolithic. There really are a lot
of varieties and variations, and sort
of cultural specificities, whether it's
an American bestseller or whether
its South African or East German.E
THE
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Women in Judaism Series
Professor Tikva Frymer-Kensky
"Women in Jewish Thought"
What Jewish thought has taught about Jewish women
and what women are adding to Jewish thought
Left: Men's Gold -Tone Champagj
Right: Ladies' Gold-Tone Bracelet
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