OCR Text |
Show Page B6 Thursday, June 18, 1981 The Newspaper Bfldl b.v Kick Kroiig'h i ii CUSTOM PARK MEADOWS HOME r i - aJ6 3 bedrooms, TA baths, den, ' JenrvAire, greenhouse dining room 2 car garage, large lot, .' hugh master bedroom, S154.900 with S82.000 assumable at low interest. June Shuput, Agent 277-5640 Owner 649-8375 Tour Seasons': salute to virtues of friendship is a four-fledged delight A Classic Kt-commt'iiricd ioo (Imil)lt' feature in ;i tTi:t i Time-killer For niasothists onlv RESTAURANT1 Park Gtn's Tinest Restaurant Open nightly except Monday 6:00-11:00 " i Sundaybrunch 11:00 r 2:00 Live entertainment Fri. & Sat. TomDistad 1 649-7U7 Four Seasons Love is overrated. Friendship Friend-ship is underrated. And writer-director Alan Alda's film on the subject is hard to overrate. It is a warm, sometimes bitter, and funny survey of companionship companion-ship outside the nuclear family. The three married couples we see Jack and Kate (Alan Alda, Carol Burnett), Nick and Anne (Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis) and Claudia and Danny (Rita Moreno, Jack Weston) are so perfect per-fect they should get a medal from the U.N. They take pride in "huddling "hud-dling against the cold winds of divorce" that have struck down their friends. They take their vacations together, to-gether, laugh to the point of hysteria, find a certain nirvana in each other's quiet company. They hop from one new experience to the next-exotic next-exotic cooking, motorcycles, sailing. Their lifestyle is like a Pepsi commercial for adults and it would be insufferable if the actors did not bring it to life with an infectious gaiety. All in the group are career professionals except for Sandy Dennis, ,Anne, a mousy housewife whose most creative avocation is shooting photos of vegetables. vege-tables. This hairline crack in a perfect six-way friendship develops into a fissure, as Nick decides to divorce his wife during their annual spring get-together he's starved for intellectual stimulation, he pleads. Suddenly, jump ahead to the group's next outing a lazy summer boat trip on the ocean. Anne has been cut out of the picture, and replaced by Ginny (Bess Armstrong), a fresh, bikini-clad sprig who is stimulating all right (perhaps (per-haps more than in the intellectual sense). Their moonlight-bay orgasms in their cabin are enough to capsize the boat and scare away the fish. Alda and Burnett have the best comedy come-dy scene of the year here, as they desperately attempt to be courteously oblivious to the noise, and dissolve into helpless giggles (along with the audience, which by now is crying in the aisles). But Nick and Ginny are jjim&Mimiim coupon mmmmmm The cast and crew applauds Park City on Thurs., June 18: $1 discount with this coupon. Show continues Fri. and Sat. ' All performances: 8 p.m., Silver Wheel Theatre . Ticket information: Kimball Art Center, 649-8882 rocking the boat in more serious ways. And through the four seasons of the year, the friends struggle to deal with this rupture in their lives. Alda's screenplay reveals how people who love each other also can callously take each other for granted. Friendship is not only a joy, it is a continual struggle in understanding relationships. Without that, even well-meaning well-meaning gestures, a hug or a candid flap of the lips are miscalculated. They aggravate ag-gravate the problem instead of solving it. Nick's divorce inflames a variety of suppressed feeling and gripes in the group. Jack, the reasonable man who always wants "to get to the heart of this," gradually has to see that his self-appointed self-appointed role as group therapist is his way of guiding the discussion away from his feelings. Danny, the dentist obsessed with death, grows increasingly desperate desper-ate because his friends treat his outbursts as background noise and tune it out. The adult problems even ricochet into the second generation, as Alda-Burnett's daughter tries to deal with Cariou-Dennis' Cariou-Dennis' girl, who is neck-deep neck-deep in depression over the divorce. (Amazingly, they' are played by sisters Alda's daughters Elizabeth and Beatrice, respectively). Sooner or later, everybody gets a chance to sound off about his or her bottled-up frustrations. It has the uncomfortable feel of the perfect, well-made play. Fortunately, it is brought to life by the perl ect ensemble. Alda and Burnett are touted as the film's stars. "Here's to our friends," they toast in the ad, "and the strength to put up with them." But their friends would have as much reason to say the same about them. Both stars blend into the group perfectly Alda, with all the skill he has displayed in "MASH, and Burnett, with the sober, light comedy style that she usually disrupts, dis-rupts, with a Tarzan yell or something, in her TV sketches. Here, we don't miss the yell at all. Sandy Dennis as the rejected re-jected woman, and Rita Moreno's no-nonsense, fiery wife fit easily into their roles they've played them before, but here they do it with renewed feeling. And Jack Weston is perhaps the best of all, bringing fresh poignancy to the sweaty fallguy role he has played so often. As for Len Cariou and Bess Armstrong, you might call them the one loose thread in the well-made play. The problem of Nick's divorce isn't resolved by the film's end, and you might still be resenting Nick a problem Cariou does not attempt to cover over with false charm. Armstrong is ingenuous and compassionate enough to help you understand why the group accepts her in spite of their feelings for Anne. Alda has compartmentalized compartmen-talized his story into four seasonal meetings of the friends, and often caps each segment with some mild slapstick a style you might quickly think he adopted to pander to the audience. But as the director, he stresses atmosphere and comic incidents with a certain cer-tain nostalgic warmth. These are moments we know will be remembered around a fire side "How 'bout that spring when it rained like a bitch?," or "Remember when we ran the boat into a sandbar?" He can even get away with facile dramatic devices (Nick and Ginny "rocking the boat!') because he is casual about them. While most movies are concerned with boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl-into-bed, "The Four Seasons" deals with those people who share our intimacii s without sharing shar-ing our blankets. "I don't want to be just one of two people at the end of my life," says Burnett. "I want to have friends." ' Wiumpiie by Rick Lanman Ad lib ' " "i - w ii ..... . wim o tt -r w ft Mu n i 1 to stfVstrra ) Jill 9" -m mmh 1 , : y: TV" L :-i f' m-?U; 7ijt-x-n vnifit..)e "r,oti"X D Wine frequently is a serious subject, complete with stuffy connoisseurs and grape descriptions in three languages. Lengthy debates center around the proper temperature tempera-ture for serving wine, the right type of wine for the proper entree' and the search for the perfect bouquet. While some of us may worry that our Lafite lacks a huge "nose," we would all do well to examine the lighter side of wine. Although "In Search of Historic Humor" may fall short as an apt description for the science of oenology, producers of wine have more than compensated for such shortcomings through their advertising. Allowing for some preconceived notions, Winepress picked its way through April's Gourmet Magazine, from back to front (the only logical way), in search of historic, if not amusing, advertising. In due course we found some. In fact we found quite a bit. Stretching the boundaries to include all liquor provided some additional insights, and so with some trepidation, we present these here. Mind you, the humor does not leap out, many ads were analogous to those wonderful New Yorker cartoons; they don't really make you laugh, yet any attempt to supress an emerging smile is in vain. In Gourmet, we found an ad claiming "The Glory of 800 Years." No small claim to fame, but when you're selling Spanish wine, you go for broke. The ad continues, "Here, . the blessings of nature and the skill of man combine to produce the world's finest wines. It's time you discovered Riojas." Please don't write in asking for a pronounciation. I don't even know what a Riojas is. Finally, a mad rush must be anticipated as the final line reads, "Great (not, mind you, good) wines still available at sensible prices. On page 141, Louis Martini claims to have talking glasses. The headline reads "Savor our family history. Every glass tells our story." Were the tale believable, one might expect very noisy wine drinking. The closing remark asserts, "Our family history speaks for itself." In retrospect, better the history do the talking than the wine. As wine increases in price, advertising appears to direct itself more often to value, quality and reasonable prices. On page 137, we find a personal letter from Sam Sebastiani, current proprietor of Sebastiani Vineyards. The ad announces, "Eight-year-old California wines that you can afford to drink." The message is simple. "Because I want you to have the rare opportunity to discover the pleasures of older vintage Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and Barbera, the cost of this extensive aging is not reflected in our price." Obviously the poor Sebastiani family is selling their wine at a loss. On page 135, a gentleman dressed in a velour shirt states emphatically the following about Puerto Rican Rums: "I never knew gold rum tasted like this." Poor fellow, we did! On page 133, Christian Brothers is busy pushing their Cream Sherry.. The ad claims, "This premium California Sherry, gives you all the luxurious taste and character you could want... without demanding an import price." The headline blurts out "Get a little richer with Meloso Cream." Another winery opera ting at a loss! On page 123, we learn that the world has only five great liqueurs. For Scotland its Drambuie, Ireland has its Irish Mist. France owns both Cointreau and B&B. What hath America? Wild Turkey. Enough said. Quiz time. Where are the greatest wines in the world really grown? No, not France. Germany? No. Greece how did you know? On page 114, we discover to our shock that while the rest of the world was living in caves, Greece was making wine. "From the People Who Taught the Rest of the World to Make Wine," declares the ad. Their 4,000-year-old secret formula wine is called Demestica and it comes in red or white. Domestic red, isuiuoilt, WIMW. IIC pi U11113C UUl IU CUlllillCIlt further. The full-page color ad on page 111 wins our prize this week for best ad in a performing role. In large bold type it states, "Wine Editor Applauds Classic White." James Villas, wine editor for Town and Country Magazine, tells us mai we re ODViousiy aeaung witn a very gifted winemaker. The winner Monterey Vineyard Classic California Dry White." Mr. Villas tells us "The Monterey Vineyard Classic White is a steal." Apparently for this one, we need not pay at all. Yet another viney ard operating at a loss. -'-" The ad on page 96 wins the Simplicity award with only 22 words of copy. Drinking this wine also totally eliminates the need for sleep, making it a must for The Newspaper staff. The ad, in its entirety: "Close friends. Close talk. Close feelings. Just say the word, and the evening doesn't have to end. Say Galliano instead of goodnight." I could, of course, go on all day, but I will attempt to restrain myself. I leave you all with some slogans taken directly from the "The size of the winery has nothing to do with the quality of the wine. For wine grapes, no earth on Earth matches our Pinnacles Vineyards in Monterey Country," Paul Masson. "The taste that's been 300 million years in" the making," Idaho on their potatoes. wny via wand Dad 114 Barrel Proof is the most expensive Bourbon in the world," Because it's got the highest alcoholic content J & B Scotch: "It whispers" Another talking liquor. FAMILY FUN...CLOSE TO HOME... MAY -NOVEMBER STEAK RIDES PACK TRIPS TRAIL RIDES HUNTING FISHING In The Wasatch National Forest tii m,, V.rL PIUTE CRSfitt OUTFITTERS UfC ROUTE 1A, KAMAS, UTAH 84036 Phone 488-2607 or 783-4317 Write or Call For Fr Color Brochun and Raaanratlona |