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Show Page B6 Thursday Kcbruui 1. I 'Ml I Newspaper ATMOSPHERE UNDER GLASS III:!-'.!'' ! v by Hick Brough pmeilngJJDu I- A r- 'I ' - ' om glass structure design, production and installation oil for a Free Cost Estimate and ask about a complimentary catalog. 1560 East 3300 South Salt Lake City. Utah 84106, 801-467-1539 "Raging Bull" is about boxing, not boxers A Classic Recommended Good Double feature material Time-Killer For masochists only HOMKALT &ASSOCIATES "I want to help you save money on homeowners insurance." And offer you the outstanding service State Farm is famous for. ST ATI FARM Max O. Vierig 1700 Park Ave. Mt. Air Mall 649-9161 Mon.-Fri. 9-5, Sat. 9-12 STATE FARM Fiti and Casualty Company Homi Olltca: Bloomington, Illinois INSUR ANCI Uke a good neighbor, State Farm is there. '2Kaging Bull As a kid, I never understock under-stock why real boxing on TV was different from movie boxing. On the tube, the fighters never seemed to hurt each other very much: in the movies, every punch was a death-blow. And it certainly cer-tainly hasn't changed for Raging Bull ' .lake 1-a.Motta. the l!)4iis middleweight terror, was famous for a stvle in which he charged into his opponent, op-ponent, absorbing as much punishment as he had to in order to get in his licks. Martin Mar-tin Scorsese's direction follows the violence with incredible in-credible force. The camera jabs with every punch and the sound is like a sledgehammer; the net ion slows down to watch the gloves bash into the boxers' sweat-soaked faces. Blood vessels burst or noses are crunched into pulp in a kind of floating agony. Photographers' cameras around the ring snap their pictures with a crack like lightning In view of this, it's hard to believe the filmmakers when they say that the movie isn't about boxing, but a guy who happens to be a boxer. The visceral hallucinogenic power of the fights dominates the whole movie. The rise and fall of Jake LaMotta is portrayed in. starkly physical terms. As played by Robert DeNiro. LaMotta has a ferocious drive to be champ. (He's frustrated because he'll never be able to face heavyweight champ Joe Louis. For that matter, he's denied a shot for years at the middleweight title because he rejects the overtures of the mob. i La.Motta's pride revolves around one fact win or lose, he's never been knocked down. When he finally makes a deal with the mob 1 he'll throw a fight for a shot at the titlei, he can't bring himself to take a dive. In- IPairk Citty Mve!i ' Ail i v tunic aiuuH' filffi hnntQ 7 Original . JWII Prfcss 4 V !-; f . stead, he puts on a wrist-slapping wrist-slapping fight that is so patently phony the crowd immediately smells fraud, and the boxing commission suspends him. (Supposedly, La.Motta's name still is infamous in-famous in boxing circles for that bout. I Jake becomes middleweight mid-dleweight champ, but his short reign is ended by Sugar Ray Robinson (who pulverizes LaMotta but never knocks him downi. The ex-champ settles quickly into fat and a pair of double chins, and opens up a nightclub in Florida. The movie constantly draws out attention to Jake's physical presence first, as bloodied young lighter, then pudgy entrepreneur. (DeNiro gained 50 to 60 pounds to show the later stages of his life. If the picture isn't a classic, it is at least a tribute to one actor's dedication. ) At his lowest point, LaMotta LaMot-ta is thrown into jail on a morals charge allowing underage girls into his club and is left, banging his head and fists against the walls, shrieking that he isn't an animal. But the only way he can deal with the shame of being in jail is to drive it away with physical pain. He's not an animal he's animalistic. But he'll show his worst moments of emotional pain to those around him. LaMotta is closest to his brother (Joe Pescii and second wife i Cathy Moriarty i but he also is chronically suspicious of them. He even begins to .believe he's being cukcolded behind his back, and he finally drives them out of his life. What makes him do it? Is it the animal in him? And if LaMotta is such a simple-minded simple-minded savage, why do his brother and wife put up with him for so long? It's enough, the movie seems to say, that he has a raw physical power, that he's a "raging bull." "Raging Bull" shows skilled direction and three strong performances from its stars. But it reminds me of "Altered States." It establishes a volcanically strong atmosphere (in this case, the boxing ring) and fails to relate it to the human story in the picture. The picture pic-ture stirs you up, but leaves you feeling confused and a little empty. 'Bread and Butter' will appear at the Carbide Lamp this weekend. Looking for some live action? ac-tion? Something to listen to or dance to? Here it is, live from Park City . . . Country-Western music by Bread and Butter at the Carbide Car-bide Lamp on lower Main Street, Friday and Saturday from 7:30 to 11 p.m. Caribou plays coun-trvrock coun-trvrock at the Rusty Nail Monday through Saturday from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. There's a $2 cover charge. John Hansen plays' contemporary con-temporary guitar music at the (Irubsleak Restaurant in Prospector Square Thursday through Sunday from 8 to 10 p.m. Juice Newton returns to the Cowboy Bar Thursday through Saturday from 8:30 p.m. until closing. There's a $4 cover charge Thursday, and $5 on Friday and Saturday. Satur-day. Listen to rock 'n roll music at Judy's on Main Street Tuesday through Saturday from 9 p.m. until closing. There's a $1 cover charge during the week, and $2 on the weekends. Trivia Test No one came up with the correct answers to last week's Trivia Test. Apparently we're not being trivial enough, so this week we're asking some pretty easy questions. If you're the first person to correctly answer them, you win a free lunch compliments of the Main Street Deli-Market. Deli-Market. ' In case you're wondering about last week's ' test, the answers were : Blackford Oakes was the : fictional spy hero created by political commen- ?, tator .William Fi Buckley;- Morgul the' Frienidly Drelb appeared in "Laugh-in," Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is a character on the "Muppet Show," and Uncle Roy the babysitter can be found on "Saturday Night Live ; ' ' and Park City allocated 1 AAA f frtm f V", (- iArtrA few f V, miKtlinpn Awf 4-Vf "Jaws of Life" device. But don't concern yourself with what's bygone; just think hard about this week's questions. Submit your answers to The Newspaper at 419 Main Street, or call 649-9014 by noon Tuesday. This week's questions are : 1. What is the name of the character who is the object of Charlie Brown's perennial, frustrated love in the "Peanuts' ' strip? 2. Where did the climax of Hitchcock's famous thriller "North by Northwest" take place? 3. What play will begin the third season for the Intermountain Actor's Ensemble? Sunday Sunday e Ammw mmm Reserve your copy at: The Main Street Deli, 525 Main Street; The Village Store, Park City Resort; 7-11, 1500 Park Avenue; Alpha Beta, 1800 Park Avenue. For "Doorbell Service" call 649-4545 leave message. (IDMcIknes by Rick Brough dminrau o ritip, fnmnm 4 ft, Rubber Tree Plants Large glossy green leaves Indirect lightsoil barely moist $28.00 Kagemusha Akira Kurosawa's epic is a visual feast and you'd better bet-ter learn to chew slowly the film adopts a slow, majestic style for its three-hour three-hour time span. The story? In 16th-century Japan, the country's mightiest warlord, Shingen (Tatsuya Nakadai) is mortally wounded, and, realizing his enemies will attack at-tack after " his death, instructs in-structs that a double impersonate imper-sonate him. Kurosawa gives his images an almost Shakespearean potency the warlord's funeral urn is dumped secretly into a lake, heard as a mighty splash swallowed up in the fog; gusts of rain and wind sweep over the characters; and Kurosawa loves to watch the ebb and flow of opposing armies, like surf, breaking over mountains or through smoke. Despite this larger story of rising and falling empires, the director also keeps our attention rooted on the Double i we don't know any-other any-other name for himi who finds for the first time in his life an identity; a loyalty to something larger than lulu-self lulu-self : and a personal attachment attach-ment i to little Takemura the warlord's grandson and heir.) These he ultimately loses. The story often moves with a monolithic slowness (that's why we've taken thi rating down a half notch from the last review hut the Kurosawa's "shadow" hero is kept poignantly in focus. Altered States The bold premise about consciousness-raising and evolutionary regression is swallowed by special effects that aren't mind-blowing, just hysterical, and by gaps in logic. Edward Jessup i William Hurt) is the Faustian hero, a young professor questing for the ultimate Truth with a passion akin to horniness. He wants to consumate his existence with the first spark of Being, and manages to enlist the cooperation of his wife i Blair Brown) and two wary, but intrigued, colleagues ( Bob Balaban, Charles Haid). Using a college's sensory-deprivation sensory-deprivation tank, Jessup jumps from hallucinations to small physiological changes, to full-blown transformation into a Neanderthal man, i during that phase, he nearly kills , two night- ' security men). Nevertheless, Never-theless, his friends don't call a halt to the experiments, and the university never becomes curious about what he's up to, even though one of his cosmic "trips" nearly destroys his lab. Jessup is such an obsessively neurotic figure to begin with, that we wouldn't let him near a tube of airplane glue Ultimately, the movie i says that Jessup's salvation really lies in his love for his wife, rather than a lulile quest for Meaning. But this moral is blasted away by the flamboyant performances, the esoteric science-riddled dialogue (rattled off by the actors with self-intoxicating flair), and the crazy special effects. The Jazz Singer First, the title. If Neil Diamond is a jazz singer, I'm the ghost of Christmas past. Second, since when does a mediocre talent like Diamond get equal billing with Lawrence Oliver? Then there is the script . . . This story has as much to do with real life as we know it as, say, the brothers Grimm. This tale of a fifth-generation fifth-generation Jewish cantor who becomes an overnight pop star throws it away and then comes back to, you guessed it, stardom again, is so filled with impossibilities stacked upon cliches it staggers the mind. As an actor ac-tor Diamond acquits himself adequately but the "story" combined with some truly terrible cinematography (in one memorable lequence the film is reverted and Diamond suddenly becomes a left-handed guitar player) and Diamond's vacant, overblown tunes, is all just too much to take. If Diamond waited for years to make this pompous turkey, what sort of junk did he turn down. Like his music, this is a great deal of sound and little fury signifying nothing. David Proctor |