Page 10-Friday, June 11, 1982-The Michigan Daily
'E.T.' proves
that fairytales
can come true
By Richard Campbell
MNWM THE LAND of silicon chips
A. and plastic dreams comes a warm,
human movie of kids growing up to be
kids.
As if Poltergeist weren't big and
brassy enough to overwhelm this sum-
mer's box office, Steven Spielberg has
let loose on hazy, lazy vacation time
E.T., an extraordinary film about an
extraterestrial in his adventures on
Earth.
Poltergeist didn't waste any frames
toying with its ghosts. That house was
haunted from scene one. Likewise in
E.T., there is no Jaws-like
withholding of the extraterrestrial until
the climax; he is a real person and is on
screen for most of the film.
Although there are those who claim
that the extraterrestrial is a mere
machine, it is obvious that Spielberg
visited another galaxy to find his star,
E.T., for that is his name, truly
develops into as complete a character
as you'd want to see in a movie.
Spielberg has always been fascinated
with fantastic fairy tales - stories
about real people in extraordinary
situations. Jaws, Close Encounter of
the Third Kind, 1941, Raider of the Lost
Ark, and Poltergeist all have strong
central characters and personal
relationships which are tested by the
fast-paced fantasy world of sharks,
UFOs, or ghosts.
E.T., except for the interplanetary
traveler, has very few special effects.
The focus of the film is on the growth of
a little twerp, Elliot, who finds a squat,
bug-eyed, little-green-man left behind
in his back yard when his spaceship
prematurely flies away.
It's got to be every kid's secret
desire: to have your own personal
walking, talking (sort of) spaceman
friend. In Elliot's struggle to keep E.T.
and ultimately help him, the twerp
grows upa bit, not enough to knock out
his wide-eyed enthusiasm, but enough
to know what it is to share love.
Enough gushing praise; now the bad
news. Even wonderful movies have
their moments of shame and E.T. is no
exception. Now and then the movie
lapses into a bad case of the cutes, a
disease to which only Disney previously
seemed susceptible. But even if E.T. is
a little to Disney-ish, it's the best darn
Disney you're going to see. In fact, in-
stead of making trash rip-off films like
Black Hole, Disney should undertake a
frame-by-frame examination of E.T. in
order to relearn how to make childish
movies that are - at the same time -
grown-up.
There undoubtedly are a few people
who wish that Spielberg would stop
making these sci-fi fantasies and do
something relevant. They havea point.
Now and then, we see things we've seen
before; intermittantly John Williams'
score sounds like a "best-of" com-
pilation. On the whole, however, there
is more than enough here to stimulate
the imagination and the heart.
This stimulation comes through the
consistantly high standard of acting
from the entire cast. Henry Thomas as
Elliott both shows us the nagging, sim-
plistic world of kids, while showing his
maturity in his relationahip to E.T.
Dee Wallace, as the film's Everymom,
manages to appear at once battered but
beautiful. There's nary a false note
played by any of the cast.
And so it goes. Spielberg has another
certain winner on his hands; a winner
that glows with wit and charm, inside
jokes, and universal truth. I'm gushing
again. E.T. does that kind of thing to
you.
The World According to Garp' will make the difficult transition to the
screen starring Robin Williams as the energetic, humorous T. S. Garp. The
film will open in mid-July.
Fil1mmaraker Fassbinder
found dead in Munich
MUNICH, West Germany (UPI) - His body was found at about 5 a.m. by
Filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz, his film editor and
cult hero of postwar Germany's "New friend, at her home in the Munich ar-
Wave" cinema, was found dead in a tists' quarter of Schwabing.
friend's Munich apartment Thursday. The son of a doctor, Fassbinder was
He was 36. born in southern Germany Feb. 13,
Fassbinder, whose best known films 1946, and made 41 films over a 14-year
were The Marriage of Maria Braun and career that established him as the hero
Despair, was found lying nude on a of the West German "New Wave," a
mattress with a notebook under his group of mostly young filmmakers
head and a video cassette player still based in Munich who created a
running, showing a film he was working renaissance in the West German
on. movies.
I
I
Folk singer finds a home in Ann Arbor
By Robert Weisberg
IF FOLK music's your bag, you'll
have a good opportunity to check out
some blossoming local talent this
weekend at the Ark. Connie Huber also
appearing in Jay Stielstra's North
Country Opera, will be there on Satur-
day, and the duo Kahoots, featuring
Julie Austin and Gary Reynolds, will
play tonight.
Kahootsis led by Austin on guitar and
recorder and Reynolds on a versatile
banjo as well as the trumpet. Bill Bar-
ton, known for his slide guitar but also
a fine fiddler and mandolin player, will
join them on Friday.
Austin says that Kahoots, which
sprang out of an amateur night in-
troduction to Reynolds at the Ark in Oc-
tober, will be playing a lot of original
material and compositions by other
Ann Arbor performers such as Elec-
tricity's Bob Lucas. Her own material,
she says, is very jazz-oriented.
"I spent the last two summers in the
jazz studies program at Neuropa," she
explains. Austin also studied with
Ralph Towner (formerly of the Paul
Winter Consort) with whom she worked
on jazz-influenced instrumentals.
'A lot of times I sat and watched people in the
audience get drunk when I wanted to talk to them
and by the time I finished playing they were so
drunk that I couldn't.' -Julie Austin
They'll also be delving into more
traditional bluegrass and other folk
musics, as well as swing, standards,
and some country-flavored songs. Julie
says that they "tend to like lively
stuff"', so feet should be stomping.
Much of their reportoire will be un-
familiar to the average Joe, says Julie.
While the bars that she's worked in of-
ten tend to restrict groups to well-
known material, folk clubs like the Ark
allow a musician to try different things,
she says.
Austin has been many places musically
(and personally) in her short life. She
began playing pop standards on the
organ on radio in Dearborn as a grade-
schooler. She's just now bringing some
of those tunes back into her repertoire,
-transposed for strings. "They're just
really in my blood," she says.
As the sixties pop-folk scene sprung
up, Julie tired of the organ and taught
herself guitar. After playing locally -
never for money - through high school
she says, "I decided to be a classical
guitarist." She studied at EMU and
later in a masters class in Mexico City,
but found after a while that the lifestyle
drove me up a wall."
So she took up renaissance and
medieval music. She qualified to study
the lute at a prestigious Swiss
Academy, and played here in the
original Jongleurs, an early-music
group.
But Austin soon tired of that too, and,
seeking a "new experience", hitch-
hiked out West, joining a friend with
whom she had played with in a rock 'n'
roll band. Instead of staying for a
couple of months, though, she stayed
for two and a half years. "That's when
my life took a big turn," she says.
She wound up living in the mountains
of British Columbia "with a crazy ar-
tist-potter who didn't play music the
way I'd learned playing music is sup-
posed to be." Accompanying his
haphazard improvised pisno on guitar,
she says, "bent my whole con-
sciousness around."
She eventually moved on to Van-
couver island, where she "hopped into
the active bluegrass scene" for the first
time. She played five nights a week at
different bars in the city, where she
learned some of the pitfalls of being a
solo performer. "I felt lonely. A lot of
times I sat and watched people in the
audience get drunk when I wanted to
talk to them, and by the time I finished
playing they were so drunk that I
couldn't."
So when she came to Ann Arbor her
interest naturally led to group playing,
where you have, as she says, "someone
to support you"; thus Kahoots.
As for the future, Austin, also a local
teacher, says "We'd like to work
towards playing festivals next sum-
mer." She hopes to work often at par-
ties, where interaction with the audien-
ce is at its maximum - something she
sorely missed asa classical performer.
The group is beginning to send demo
tapes around to clubs up north, too.
They made their first radio appearance
on WCBN's "Studio Live" last week,
and while Kahoots would probably need
to add a couple of people to do any
recording, Austin says she could see
pressing some vinyl in the future.
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