ARTS
,'
The Michigan Daily
Wednesday, October 19, 1988
Page 7
Y Year:
BY ANDREA GACKI
You're 15 years old, or there-
abouts. As you struggle through the
last painful jokes of puberty, you
discover that you're in love. So
consuming is this love that you're
willing to employ some truly effec-
tive means to insure success: fervent
prayer, mental telepathy, or even
hypnosis of that beloved individual.
According to typical teenage love
films, the logical conclusion would
be eternal happiness. In reality,
however, the experience would
probably only result in stifled hor-
monal impulses and a deepened
knowledge of the occult sciences.
The movie The Year My Voice
Broke, winner of five Australian
film awards, including best picture,
depicts the genuine angst and petty
tragedy of such events, and it depicts
them with a compassion seldom
seen in film. Writer and director
John Duigan focuses on the tribula-
tions of Danny, a young boy in love
with his childhood friend Freia.
While that section of the storyline is
wonderful, certain aspects of the film
can at best be called peripheral, and
True
to
life
teenage
traumas
Z
at worst, distracting. Nevertheless,
what remains is pretty near perfect.
The setting is the Tablelands of
New South Wales in 1962, and
Danny (Noah Taylor) is the skinny
little protagonist. Watch with dread
as Danny's poetry is stolen and read
aloud to the school; cringe as he's
given a swirly in the school bath-
room. His one true love, Freia
(Loene Carmen), is an unhappy girl
who matured a bit too swiftly. But
she receives the attentions of Trevor
(Ben Mendelsohn), the star football
player kindly termed "hyperactive"
but genuinely psychotic. Awaiting a
chink in their relationship, Danny
dolefully follows them around; in-
stead of success, he's subjected to
yet more humiliation.
Besides Danny's plight, The Year
My Voice Broke has a subplot in-
volving a vague mystery concerning
the relationship between a suppos-
edly haunted house and Freia's true
parentage; unfortunately, it occupies
a decidedly obscure position in the
story. In addition, Trevor's tragic end
is just a little too pat. Although
these events only serve to detract
from the core of the storyline, the
superb acting buoys the weak as-
pects. Ben Mendelsohn gives the
dense Trevor a great dumb laugh,
and Noah Taylor portrays Dandy
with just the right mixture of sensi-
tivity and humor. Loene Carmen as
Freia gives a magnificent perfor-
mance as a simultaneously cruel and
pitiful nymphet who ultimately
manifests the strength to continue
without Danny's or anyone else's
aid. Set against a musical score of
plaintive strings, these actors in en-
semble evoke much sympathy.
Rejection in young love is
devastating, and although The Year
My Voice Broke is painfully real,
it's also very sweet. Underneath the
clutter of peripheral happenings, this
is a film that is ultimately true to its
subject.
THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE is
playing at the Ann Arbor Theatre.
CLASSIFIED ADS!
Call 764-0557
Wasn't high school great? Danny (Noah Taylor) shows his
and Freia (Loene Carmen) embrace.
spirit as Trevor (Ben Mendelsohn)
X000000
---October 18-21:
Auditions of Langston Hughes
Black Nativity from 6-11 p.m.
October 18 & 19; auditioners
should be prepared to perform one
gospel song of their choice. Dance
auditions will take place Thursday,
October 20, from 6-9 p.m.; no
preparation neccessary. Call backs
Friday, October 21, 6-11 p.m.
Auditions and Opportunities
runs each Wednesday in the
Michigan Daily Arts section, and is
seeking contributions. If you have
information about any auditions or
similar events and wish to publicize
them, please contact Cherie Curry
at 763-0379.
Tangerine Dream
Optical Race
John Tesh
Tour de France
Private Music
Here we have two new releases
with sporting themes from the most
pop-oriented of New Age labels,
Private Music. But right to the big
question - yes, this is the John
Tesh from Entertainment Tonight.
And he turns out to have been all the
while sinking his day-job fortune
into a formidable arsenal of state-of-
the-art synthesizers and recording
equipment, perhaps in vain hopes of
getting a chance one day to interview
himself about his new hit album.
But it would be folly to prematurely
write Tesh off as just another ego-
tripping Hollywood music-dabbler;
Tour de France, Tesh's Emmy-
award-winning soundtrack to the
CBS Sports coverage, reveals the
noticeable technical talent of a man
with accomplished classical training.
"A Thousand Summers" displays
the crisp digital sound and imagina-
tive hand at orchestration with which
Tesh covers familiar New
Age/Instrumental ground. In
particular, the drum programming
here is exceptional, yielding exciting
grooves, and at times Tesh can ma-
nipulate his primo studio hook-up to
squeeze out rich ambience and mem-
orable themes ("Mike Mercuric,"
"Day One"). But instrumental tech-
nique can only go so far in a sound-
track without cinematic vision. All
too often, Tesh's lust for high-tech
leads him astray into annoying fu-
sion-ish pseudo-funk: the Jan Ham-
mer/Sanborn hybrid "That Old De-
mon Meanness" or the sub-hip-hop
spasms of "You Are Here." When
Tesh tries to grab for the sublime
gusto, he just can't summon the
transcendent big-screen grandeur of a
Vangelis or Jean-Michel Jarre; in-
stead, he ends up with something
closer to Europe's "The Final
Countdown" than 2001.
This territory he tests out here
really belongs to German trio Tan-
gerine Dream, who make their debut,
Optical Race, on the label founded
by former band member Peter Bau-
mann. After 20-odd LP's of charting
courses for the mind's eye, leader
Edgar Froese can set into motion a
train of hypnotic synthesizer
rhythms that surges forward, its
sense of motion reminiscent of
countrymen Kraftwerk, with effort-
less confidence.
The pace can get a little pedes-
trian at times. And although their
keyboard samples and sequencing are
still superb, the cutting-edge of the
Tangerines' sound may have been
TO ALL BLACK STUDENTS!.
(...OF COURSE, YOU!)
John Tesh
Tesh leaves Mary Hart behind
in "his move from the TV
studio to the recording
studio.
overtaken by those artists influenced
by of the band's own seminal elec-
tronic designs. But what can't be
duplicated is that lucid vision - that
right stuff that cannot simply be ac-
cessed by any switch on Mr. Tesh's
Synclavier.
- Michael Paul Fischer
See Records, Page 8
Who works
aslate as a
you do?
When you need copies after
hours, depend on Kinko's. We're
open late for your last minute
emergencies.
kinkO's-
540 E. Liberty 761-4539
1220 S. University 747-9070
Michigan Union 662-1222
TFhe next BLACK
IivAo
STUDENT
UNION
A A - r ",E J ,I N 0
will be held on:
Wednesday, October 19, 1988
7:30 PM---SHARP!
at the
CLASSIFIED ADS! Call 764-0557
I mIl. 'Trotter House
1443 Washtenaw Avenue.
L YOU LLEREN'T THERE LRST TIME DON"T MISS OUT
BECHUSE:
I
I
I1
Stop studyin' and start laughin'!
lAUG eRAC K
~Stand 111)Comnedy
PRESENTS
TIM LILLY
With Student Comedians
Jim Mercurio Erin Hartman
and
Jason Allington
WEDNESDAY
OCTOBER 19
.4f I rlA
WE WILL ELECT CHAIRPERSONS...
LIUSTEN TO A SPEECH BY STOKLEY...
CARMICHAEL!
* DISCUSS 'BLACK SOLIDARITY DAYI'
PL ERSE CRL L 769--1024 FOR MORE INFO.!
t
es
U.
HOMECOMING 88
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20
9:00pm Kickoff Party at Good
Time Charley's
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22
10:00am Mud Bowl: SAE vs Phi
Delts
10:00am Go Blue Brunch in the'
Track and Tennis Building
1:00pm MICHIGAN FOOTBALL:
MCHIGANvs INDIANA HOOSIERS
9:00pm Victory Party at the
U-Club
,t
(,
..
,
i
4
.
,,,.
4"
I
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21
2-5:00pm Evans Scholars Car
Bash on the Diag
WHJAT'S A VNOO5IER
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