dJ~efore' Bertolucci's big break The Michigan Theater screens Bemardo Bertolucci's "Before the Revolution" at 7 p.m. michigandaily.com/arts fyz Sit~ant MONDAY FEBRUARY 14, 2000 5A K Leo, Boyle sun burn on 'Beach' By Erin Podolsky Daily Arts Writer Fear not, Leo lovers. I am happy to inform you that not only is the esteemed Mr. DiCaprio drip- ping wet for a great portion of "The Beach," but that he is also half-naked for a good 118 out of 120 total movie minutes. Somewhat a modern version of all those island paradise-gone-horribly-wrong tales you had to read in high school - although the Beach- dwellers all appear to be high school graduates, "Lord of the Flies" apparently wasn't in their curriculum. "The Beach" sees Richard (DiCaprio), a slight loner with "well-defined thumbs" that betray the hours of video game playing he's engaged in, arrive in Bangkok with the intention of doing something "different" with his vacation. Different arrives in the form 'Peanuts' creator Schulz dies at 77 The Associated Press "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz died on Saturday, turning his farewell note in Sunday papers into an epitaph for both a comic strip and its creator. Schulz was 77, and died in his sleep at about 9:45 p.m. at his home in Santa Rosa, said his son, Craig Schulz. He was diagnosed with colon can- cer and suffered a series of small strokes during emergency abdomi- nal surgery in November 1999 and announced his retirement a few weeks afterward. Schulz had seemed fine earlier in the day and had gone to his daughter Jill Transki's home in Santa Rosa. Only his wife, Jeannie, was with him when he died, Craig Schulz said. His wildly popular "Peanuts" made its debut on Oct. 2, 1950. The travails of the "little round-headed kid" and his pals eventually ran in more than 2,600 newspapers, reach- ing millions of readers in 75 coun- tries. His last strip, appearing in Feb. 13 Sunday editions, showed Snoopy at his typewriter and other Peanuts reg- ulars along with a "Dear Friends" letter thanking his readers for their support. "I have been grateful over the years for the loyalty of our editors and the wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip," Schulz wrote. "Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy ... how can I ever forget them ..." It ended with his signature. Over the years, the Peanuts gang became a part of American popular culture, delivering gentle humor spiked with a child's-eye view of human foibles. Sergio Aragones, a Mad magazine cartoonist and friend for more than 30 years, called Schulz "a true car- toonist." "In a couple of centuries when people talk about American artists, he'll be the one of the very few remembered," Aragones said. "And when they talk about comic strips, probably his will be the only one ever mentioned." He was to have been honored with a lifetime achievement award on May 27 at the National Cartoonists Society convention in New York. "Peanuts," meanwhile, had remained an intensely personal effort. He had had a clause in his contract dictating the strip had to end with his death. While battling cancer, he opted to retire it right then, saying he wanted to focus on his health and family without the worry of a daily deadline. "Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems?" he once said. "They do it because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's why I draw cartoons. It's my life." of Daffy (Robert The Beach Grade: C- At Briarwood, Quality 16 & Showcase Carlyle), a grime-covered, crazed man who gives Richard a map to the urban legend-esque Beach just before slitting his own wrists. While any good American citizen traveling abroad would A) not understand Daffy's Scottish brogue; B) worry about smoking the laced-with-god-knows-what pot Daffy's dirty, grubby hand tosses over the wall that separates their rooms; or C) take a cue from Daffy's clearly maniac state Courtesy of 20th Century Fox Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) and Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) bask in the sea and look hot in "The Beach." and stay as far away from the Beach as possible, Richard is sick of being a good American citi- zen. Lonely and horny, he recruits a French cou- ple his age staying in a nearby room to seek out the Beach. They're looking for adventure, too, so the trio sets off with enough sexual tension to power a small city. Along the way Richard makes sure to plant the proverbial first act gun that will reappear in the third as his Achilles heel, making a copy of the map after being expressly told not to do so. He slips the map to a couple of stoners he briefly hangs out with, even though it's painfully obvi- ous that they are the wrong kind of people to be leading to the Beach. Their reemergence late in the film as intruders on the island sets up direc- tor Danny Boyle's most unsuccessful experi- ment. One part Kurtz and one part Willard of "Apocalypse Now" with a smattering of "Super Mario Bros." thrown in for good measure (liter:' ally), Richard goes undercover to stop them. In the process, he loses his humanity and, of course, realizes the true evil of the Beach and its inhabitants - the horror, the horror! Richard fits right in when he arrives at the Beach - suspiciously so. It seems that he is sublimating his own personality in order to bet- ter mesh with those around him, throwing him- self wholeheartedly into the commune-like atmosphere that the Beach dwellers have creat- ed. Shifting between "Lord of the Flies" extremes Ralph and Simon. Richard has the time of his life. "The Beach" has plenty of Ralphs and Simons to go around, but it has a distinct lack of Piggys. Then again, this is Hollywood. The Piggys don't get callbacks. After wetly freezing to death in "itanic." it fooks like DiCaprio put a stipulation in his con- tract that he could under no circumstances make another ice watery movie anytime in the near, future. He has turned up now in "The Beach," where the weather is always balmy and the water is clear and blue. It's unfortunate that Leo hasn't realized that naybe the key to his movie prob- lems is the water itself - never mind that the stuff covers 70% of the Earth's surface. For DiCaprio, good old 1120 is turning out to be act- ing Kryptonite. DiCaprio has as little chemistry with his female count ,rpart (or anybody else in the movie. for that matter) as Boyle's camera does with any thing it sees. Bovle and the rest of his crew have been sinking lower and lower with each subsequent film after the creepy "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting." the movie that tacked the chic onto heroin, first with the decid- edly mediocre "A Life Less Ordinary" and now "The Beach." Whither Renton'? Boyle assigns DiCaprio an opening voiceover monologue along the lines of Ewan McGregor's "Trainspotting" statement of purpose, but poor Leo lacks the cadcncc and the rhythm to make his own speech anything more than oddly fat. Bovle, and "The Beach" as a whole, suffer the same malady. Irrelevant narration in Kind' lacks explanation By Sarah Curry For the Daily Ken Foster makes a canny observa- tion within one of his own stories: "We The Kind I'm Likely to G et Grade: D+ Wearn o"row& Comnpa STOP BY DAILY ARTS TOMORROW AFTER 1 P.M. TO PICK UP FREE PASSES FOR A SCREENING OF CURTIS HANSON'S LATEST FILM "WONDER BOYS." SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED, SO GET HERE ON TIME. might as well be in any dark room right now." In his short fic- tion collection "The Kind I'm Likely To Get," Foster tries to capture the mind- set of disoriented (he takes offense at "aimless") twenty-some- things. In the process, he shows that with a grim enough attitude the sit- uation of one's life can become irrele- vant. Many of the 14 stories follow Mary and John. Their relationship started by accident; it was a misunderstanding. By the time Foster begins writing about them, the relationship is over, but not really. They spend their lives wanting to meet, trying not to meet, and being unhappy when they meet. The rest tend to place the same gen- eral situation against a variety of back- drops: A party where everyone has to wear red dresses; a man moonlighting as a gigolo, an office space. The details of life are dwelt upon, but the big issues are never tackled. In general, Foster's narration is full of See FOSTER, Page 10 I I Don't Panic! f ou thinkr're pregnant.. call us-we 1 stn, we care. 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