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Show The Newspaper Thursday, July 3, 1980 Page 13 by Rick Brough and Richard Barnum-Reccc Five Bucks for a Movie? Not for Jake and Elwood A Classic Recommended Good double feature material "Time-Killer For masochists only Has the bubble finally burst? bur-st? Hollywood executives reportedly are sweating this summer because such films as Burt Reynolds' "Rough Cut," Robert Redford's "Brubaker," John Travolta's "Urban Cowboy," and Clint Eastwood's East-wood's "Bronco Bill" are dead in the water, at the box-office. box-office. Reports say even a film like "The Shining" starts out strong for its opening week, then business drops precipitously. The only film really cleaning up is "The Empire Strikes Back." For the last five or six years, the public's been eager to gobble down escapism, and the summer has been the mpst popular feeding time, thanks to the huge dog-days success of films like "Jaws" "Star Wars," "The Deep," and "Smokey and the Bandit." Now, that could be changing, but why? As a reviewer, I can understand un-derstand the slump. You revel in the fine films, and take a certain perverse delight in the stinkers; but ennui sets in when all you've got is a monotonous string of mediocrities enjoyable, but not exceptional,-like "The Island" or "Headin' for Broadway." (The latter was promoted to the hilt, even to the point that Mayor Wilson proclaimed "Rex Smith Day" in honor of the film's star. Then the movie disappeared disap-peared within a week.) But audiences are notorious for ignoring what reviewers think. So why are they disappointed? Every producer is scratching up two or three reasons for his picture's failure. For "Ur ban Cowboy," some think the picture's theme is too honest for the crowd expecting expec-ting another 'Fever'; others say John Revolta's narcissistic nar-cissistic personality is finally losing its charm. Producer Allan Carr, whose white elephant "Can't Stop the Music" also is losing money, has come up with the best reason yet: high ticket prices. "People don't have $5 to spend tor a movie today," Carr is quoted by columnist Marily Beck, "....we'd be better off lowering prices to $2, at least on weekdays." Prices in Utah are still around $3.50 $4, but overcharging over-charging at the box office is still a problem, especially when it's accompanied by artistic excess on the screen. Director John Landis and his co-scripter Dan Akroyd apparently thought it would be a great joke to wreck literally hundreds of police cars and other autos for The Blues Brothers ('2). but by Rick Lnnmaii The Bubbles of Champagne It surprises many people that Champagne is produced from black (or red) grapes as well as white ones. It also may surprise those of you who enjoy this sparkling delight that only French Champagne can in fact, be called Champagne. An additional amusing aside for the religious teetotalers in our audience is a bit of trivia listing a monk as the inventor of Champagne. Nearly 100 miles east of Paris, in and around the town of Reims, nestles the wine growing district of Champagne. As far as the French are concerned, this district of Champagne Cham-pagne is the only area in France allowed the appellation (name) of Champagne; other areas merely produce sparkling wines. It is the combined soil and climate that produce what has become one of the world's most popular wines. Champagne is really a vast inland sea of chalk beneath a light covering of soil that surfaces sur-faces in a number of places, including the well-known White Cliffs of Dover along the English Channel. This chalky soil produces a high reflectivity that vents the hot summer sun toward the grapes, causing an unusual maturation process. The hot summers, very cool autumns and chalky soil all contribute to the production of certain quantities of unfer-. merited sugars. These sugars ultimately contribute con-tribute an important process to the making of Champagne. Champagne is created from two grapes, the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay. While the Chardonnay typically is associated with Champagne, the presence of Pinot Noir (the grape from which the great red burgundies are made), puzzles many people. Yet the pigments of the Pinot Noir are in the skin and careful crushing produces a pure white grape juice. Pink Champagne, which many consider a special treat, actually is considered inferior by the French and by those involved with wine making in other countries, as well. Champagne originally contained no bubbles whatsoever; an accident instigated by a curious monk gave birth to that innovation. Until the middle 1600s, Champagne had been merely a good white wine. Yet in 1670 a monk named Dom Perignon became the cellar master at the monastery in Reims. During his tenur, he altered history by developing new clarification methods for wine, new corking procedures and techniques of blending. As mentioned earlier, the vines of Champagne Cham-pagne frequently produced a quantity of late harvest sugars. As sugar and yeast ferment to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, it is important to retard the fermenting process prior to bottling. But one year in Champagne, the wine was bottled too early by Perignon, and within a few short weeks, corks were popping throughout the cellars. Dom had created the first sparkling Champagne. While at the monastery, Dom Perignon learned to blend the best pressings from all over Champagne. This practice stands today; when purchasing French Champagne you identify the wine by the shipper, not the vineyard. Perignon created a base blend called cuvee, from which all bottlings were born. In many cases the cuvee was kept from year to year as a method of assuring good quality wine, even in bad years. This practice is still maintained and as a result a vintage year (a bottle carrying one date) is rare. In order to produce the bubbles, Champagne Cham-pagne is actually bottled twice. The first time the wine is made like any other, although some fermentation will take place in the bottle. bot-tle. Unlike other wines, the bottles are continually con-tinually turned with the neck pointed down, a process allowing all sediment to settle on the cork. After three months the bottle is quickly uncorked, allowing the sediment to escape. Following this, a small amount of cuvee with pure cane sugar is added and the bottle is corked a second time. At this point, the cork is wired on and a second fermentation begins. This second fermentation creates the bubbles of Champagne. In France, much of this still is done by hand and hence, the cost of most French Champagne Cham-pagne is quite high. Many American vineyards, vineyar-ds, however, have mechanized the process a great deal and thus our sparkling wines are less expensive and still of good quality. For many, the epitomy of French Champagne is a bottle that carries the name of that gentle, unassuming monk Dom Perignon. It is rumored, for example, that the controversial and certainly sensationalist writer Harold Robbins drinks it by the case; that following parties aboard his yacht the bilges fill with spilled Dom Perignon. For most of us, however, we can settle with the domestic stock and hope for better times. Champagne may not cure our ills but it will certainly make us feel better. Light in character, it provides the perfect accompaniment accom-paniment to summer as well as for a toast to the new year. the laughs from the audience are more from disbelief than hilarity. The movie is capable of the comic inspiration in-spiration of Landis' previous film, "Animal House" (two Nazis chasing the Blueses in a station wagon sail off a freeway embankment at high speed, and before they thud to the ground, experience ex-perience a kind of insane rapture, as if they were suspended miles above the city. "I've always loved you!" one says before the crash). But Landis also has sequences that fall completely com-pletely flat. The wild car-chase car-chase through a shopping mall has exactly two jokes, and you can see them both in the trailer. The movie begins with Elwood (Akroyd) and Joliet Jake (John Belushi) paying a reluctant visit to the King Kong nun named The Penguin (Kathleen Freeman) who raised them. Her foundling home is a Haunted House of God (doors creak open and slam shut on their own) where the Blues boys are forced to sit in their old school desks y'know, the kind where the wooden top pins you stomach back? while the Penguin browbeats them with a ruler into a "holy mission" securing enough money to pay the home's county assessment, which they elect to do by putting their old jazz band back together. It almost seems as they are protected by God. The Brothers are pursued by police, rednecks, National Guardsmen, Nazis, and Carrie Fisher (sexy as hell as the jilted Fatal Woman in Jake's past) who stalks them with flame throwers and bazooka launchers.) But, as it turns out, the Brothers are safe up to the very second they pay the assessment. It's a nice conceit, but The Penguin sequence especially is something we haven't seen before a slapstick treatment treat-ment of a Catholic upbringing. up-bringing. The movie has this playful inclination to poke into unseen un-seen corners. Sometimes it ,; just wants to show us Chicago the outside of Joliet Prison on a dirty mor-' ning, or the cheesebox rooming house above the stockyard tracks. It strives single-handedly to bring back Motown-rhythm and blues, with the frequent appearances ap-pearances of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, and Ray Charles. (Purists originally condemned condem-ned the Blues act as white pollution of rhythm 'n' blues, but that's the basic joke of the duo. Jake and Elwood look like two G-men assigned by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate in-filtrate the musical numbers.) num-bers.) With the settings, joyous music, and occasionally on-target on-target humour, The Blues Brothers seems to be two or three good movies. It's just too bad that, while one story takes its turn, the others stop dead in their tracks. It's also sad that this comedy-musical comedy-musical fails because too often of-ten the fine music carries the weight for the so-so comedy. There are no reports yet on The Blues Brother box-office performance, but the word is out. Hollywood has to raise the standard of its summer pictures, or lower the prices or both. Otherwise, it's heading for a chilly fall. At the Holiday Village: Up the Academy () is recommended for those of you who have a certain perverse per-verse satisfaction in watching watch-ing a bunch of neer-do-well school kids who have been exiled to a military school do their magic on the head of the headmaster. That man happens to be Ron Liebman, (maybe you recall him from his top-rate performance per-formance as the union organizer in "Norma Rae") and Liebman shows us his pure acting skills as he comes on as the Jerk of the Year. But never mind. Our people at the Academy do a number on him. And besides, it is very funny at times. Still, you have to be a dyed in the wool addict. This is better bet-ter than "Wholly Moses," for example, but not quite the classic that the good Mel Brooks stuff is. 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