's 0 ThMchgnaiy Tesay Who says romance is dead? By MICHAEL THOMPSON And you thought all the talk about "Reservoir Dogs" and Quentin Tarantino was all over. Well, it sort of isn'tbecause Tarantino has anew hyper- violent, fun for the whole family film. True Romance written by Quentin Tarantino; directed by Tony Scott; with Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, and Val Kilmer. Strap your head on for a rollercoaster ride of a movie that never lets up. Christian Slater stars as Clarence Whirley, a cool loser who just happens to fall upon a callgirl who truly loves him and a large suitcase full of cocaine. The stage is set for laughs and blood. And the movie delivers in so many ways that you're breathless by the end. Tarantino's script is above all a ro- mance. But that hardly stops him from killing lots of people. And, hey, that can be kind of romantic can't it? It is for Alabama (Patricia Arquette) and that's good enough for me. "True Romance" doesn'tjust stop at the romantic level, Tarantino shoots for it all. The film is rambunctious, ridicu- lous, riveting, revolting and "so cool." Tarantino looks at the adolescent fantasy, the pros and cons of cocaine, the film industry (and its corruption), and Elvis. As ridiculous as all of that sounds, Tarantino brings it all together in the best action romance in a long time. Much like "Reservoir Dogs" the cast is bloated with talent. Christian Slater rocks in hisbestrolesince J.D. in "Heath- ers." Patricia Arquette is totally believ- able as a girl on the wildest ride of her life. BradPittcomes acrossasoneof the cast members from "Slacker" who wan- dered onto another set that day. Gary Oldman is better as a drug dealing pimp than as Dracula. Christopher Walken punctuates powerfully with words and other things. Val Kilmer, however, steals the show as the faceless Elvis. Fortu- nately none of these egos clash, they are Tarantino looks at the adolescent fantasy, the pros and cons of cocaine, the film industry (and its corruption), and Elvis. As ridiculous as all of that sounds, Tarantino brings It all together In the best action romance In a long time, smooth the whole way. Director Tony Scott ("The Last Boy Scout") throws in a pile of style, which fits easily into this film. Couch feathers snowing down on bullet-ridden corpses is the most proper image for a film like this. Sometimes the constant grays get a little tedious, but Clarence's bright or ange sport coatmakes up foreverything else. Tarantino isn't out to give the public a "geriatric" film. He wants to shake things up. When somebody tries some- thing new there will always be angry people. And plenty of people wiltlbe disturbed by the violence in this film. But Tarantino never seems one to want to make people happy. He lets us laugh and then slams us down. "True Romance" was the test for Tarantino. "Reservoir Dogs" was no case of beginners luck- this guy is a professional through and through. His writing is so strong thathe doesn't have to direct a film for you to feel his pres- ence. So buy your ticket and experience something cool. "TR UE ROMANCE" IS PLAYING AT SHOWCASE Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater star in the violent/romance, "True Romance." : K A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain Robert Olen Butler Penguin "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain" is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of fifteen short stories by Robert Olen Butler. Each story is told through the voice of Butler's fictional Vietnamese-American narrators, who immigrated from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Butler served in Vietnam for a year as a U.S. Army linguist. While there, he "fell in love with the Vietnamese and Vietnam," he told a New York Tunes interviewer. Apparently unable to shake that love, Butler now lives in Lake Charles, La., where many Vietnamese Americans (including Butler's characters) also reside. Butler may love the Vietnamese, but his stories patronize them. While trying to show characters in a positive light, he resorts to a Western stereotype of Asians. Ironically, one of Butler's characters notes that there are two groups of American Vietnam veterans, those who see Vietnamese Americans as "sly and dangerous and unreal," and those who see them as "fascinating and long-suffering and unreal." Butler unintentionally slips into the latter group, as his characters illustrate. One critic has written that Butler's stories "have the delicate and graceful quality of tropical flowers." Butler's characters also have "delicate" qualities. From a woman's "delicate loathing" to Ho Chi Minh's "delicate" photo retouch- ing, Butler's Vietnamese Americans are very delicate people. Butler's narrators arealso poetic. One, an average housewife, sits in a hotel hot tub with three white women. When a beautiful Mexican woman enters the tub, flaunting herself, the narrator notes that the white women's eyes "rose and then whirled like the steam from the water" in response. Whether bargirl or business- man, Butler's narrators have an unusual talent for using these startling, haiku-like figures of speech. Butler's characters are highly spiritual, as well. Several of Butler's narrators meet the spirits of dead ancestors and friends. One narrator, on his death-bed, is visited by his old buddy, Ho Chi Minh. These ghost stories may remind some readers ofMaxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior," a work which Butler's echoes in style and content. Of course, not all Vietnamese Americans are as delicate, poetic and spiritual as Butler describes them, but one couldeasily get that impression afterreading his stories. Butler's superior writing ability helps him accomplish this. Because Butler's stories are told in the first-person "I," his characters seem to tell their own stories. Moreover, Butler uses vivid details that make his stories deceptively real. One narrator tries to console his wife, who lies next to him in bed, but his attention isdivided between her, his itching heel and his buzzing alarm clock. Butleradeptly makes one forget his stories are fiction. With his expert writing skills, Butler creates a world almost like our own. Although his characters are believable, we should remember they are not real. - Oliver Giancola The Get Smart Handbook Joey Green Collier "I'm getting complaints from the landlord about the gun battles in the hall, and the bombs in the lobby, and the knife fights in the elevator." "Well, when you rent an apartment to a secret agent, you've got to expect those things." "But he doesn't know I'm a secret agent" "Well, how do you explain people attacking you and shooting at you?" "Well, I told him I work for the Bureau of Internal Revenue." This exchange between Maxwell Smart and his boss, "the Chief," is one of many bits of dialogue that entertained viewers of "Get Smart," a late-1960s television comedy that spoofed super-spies like James Bond. Joey Green's "The Get Smart Handbook" is a handy guide for those who have been watching the show "and loving it." In 1965, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry teamed-up at the behestofDan Melnick, aproducer. Brooks and Henry developed a show about a globetrotting secret agent named Maxwell Smart. Smart and his female partner, Agent 99, worked for Control, a Western spy network that fought Kaos, an evil organization dedicated to world domination. Smart bumbled constantly, but by using gadgets like his trademark shoe phone, he always succeeded. As the authorexplains, "Get Smart" wasn'tjusta goofy comedy: "The show's simple, two-word title ... exhorted viewers to wise up and see government espionage for what it really is: an idiotic enterprise glamorized by Hollywood." The show achieved this with satire. "Get Smart" also challenged the networks' comedy formulas. Brooks said in 1965 that he "wanted to do a crazy, unreal, comic-strip kind of thing about something besides a family." The resultwas tooweird forABC, which told Brooks and Henry to add a dog and a mother. They added a dog (Fang, a lazy coward), but refused to give Max a mother. ABC rejected the show, and "Get Smart" went to NBC, where the show remained until its fifth season. "Get Smart" died on CBS after Max and 99 had twins. The secret agents had become another sitcom family. "Get Smart" still airs on "Nick at Night." A y*r fnnnPr Mtitnr of "Nationa La~mpoon" and authorf of "The Unofficial Concert in April of 1992.During "Some- body to Love," the microphone is handed over to the audience; Michael duets with Lisa Stansfield on "These Are the Days of Our Lives." Another bonus for Queen fans is the last track of the EP, "Dear Friends," originally performed by Queen on their third album, "Sheer Heart Attack." Of course, not everyone loves Queen's music, so Michael included three other tracks which he featured during his "Cover to Cover" tour in 1991 in which he only snag other artists's songs. Arguably the highlight of the EP is Michael's blend of Seal's hit "Killer" and Temptations' classic "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone." The music of "Killer" runs throughout both songs. Very cool. The third song is "Calling You," from which you might have, heard a sound byte in the background of a television commercial for AT&T's long distance services. This EP is good, but you might want to check out the recently released, 175- minute long "Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert" on video cassette and laser disc if you're only interested in hearing Michael's renditions of Queen songs. The video costs about twice as much as this 28-minute long CD, but it features Michael and many other recording art- ists performing the music of Queen and their own songs. - Jim Whitaker Various Artists Stephen Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall RCA Victor Many a tribute has been paid to Stephen Sondheimandhis music: "Side by Side by Sondheim," "'Follies' in Concert" and the current off-Broadway revue with Julie Andrews, "Putting it Together," just to name a few. In "A Celebration at Carnegie Hall," Broadway's greats gathered together to salute the man who is the greatest musi- cal theatercomposer/lyricistof our time, and raise money for Carnegie Hall. The stars of thisrecording are clearly the women: Bernadette Peters in the achingly beautiful "Not A Day Goes By" (from "Merrily We Roll Along"), Madeline Kahn's charmingly neurotic "Not Getting Married Today" ("Com- pany") and Glenn Close's (yes, Glenn Close can sing) simple yet honest "Send in the Clowns" ("A Little Night Mu- sic"). And Patti LuPone will blow you away with her powerful "Being Alive" ("Company"). This particular Sondheim tribute is exciting for its experimentation. Each performer or groups of performers took certain liberties with the selections, and varied the songs from their original Broadway sounds. For example, jazz man Billy Stritch does a great mellow "Anyone Can Whistle" while accom- panying himself on the piano. Also, many songs from different shows were brought together in medleys. Bill Irwin provides a neat comic introduction to the show, but the men on the recording are nothing special. An- other drawback is the live nature of the recording - you hear a lot of people laughing, but you don't know why! (This is probably RCA Victor's ploy to get you to buy the video of the show, which aired on PBS.) This is a great recording for the Sondheim buff, but a newcomer to Sondheim's work might not warm up to it. If you don't know the songs, you'll appreciate these discs a lot more after you listen to the original cast record- ings. But if you do, you'll be pleasantly surprised by thenew andexciting rendi- tions of the songs. - Melissa Rose Bernardo Vaious Artists Dix Improvisations: Victoriaville 1989 Les Disques Victo In comparison with American audi- ences, Canadians have been more sol- idly supportive of North American musical experimentations over the last few decades. "Dix Improvisations" proves this once again. Recorded live at See RECORDS, Page 8 Rod Stewart stills plays the role of the crooner even after all these years. Rod Stewart Unplugged... And Seated Warner Brothers "Unplugged ... And Seated," Rod Stewart's twenty-third career album in twenty-four years, is an impressive col- lection of some of his best material, along with several songs heard here for the first time. Recorded in Los Angeles this Feb- ruary, the album captures the reunion of Stewart with his ex-Faces partner, gui- tarist Ronnie Wood. The album tends to focus on Stewart's early '70s hits such as "MaggieMay," "Reason To Believe" and "The First Cut Is The Deepest," but these great songs shine today just as they did when they were originally re- leased. The album also contains Stewart's smash hit version of Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately," which was first recorded by Stewart on his 1991 album "Vagabond Heart." Stewart even breaks out a banjo to- wards the end of the performance to play "Mandolin Wind." Even if you're sick of all of these MTV "Unplugged" albums, this one is a must-have; it is the incomparable Rod Stewart performing some of his best tunes with a top-notch supporting all- acoustic band (including violins!). - Jim Whitaker George Michael and Queen with Lisa Stansfield Five Live Hollywood Records Finally, a live album that wasn't recordedonMTV's"Unplugged." "Five Live" is very easy on the ears. No screaming guitar solos here, just a col- lection of good songs sung by George Michael. The artist royalties and record company net profits from this EP go to the Mercury Phoenix Trust for the dis- tribution to AIDS charities worldwide in memory of Queen's late singer Freddie Mercury. Two of the tracks, "Somebody to Love" and "These Are the Days of Our Lives," are Queen songs that were per- formed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute r -- School Already Getting You Down? Then It's Time To Relax At Ashley's! k I I