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Show Saturday, January 24, 1998 The Park Record B-3 Notes from the dark Brough takes on the You may be wondering who is going to give the best Posey Performance at this year's festivalthat festi-valthat is, what actress will (in the tradition of Parker Posey) play a character who is exasperating, eccentric if not downright crazy, but thoroughly charming. Kip Koenig's How to Make the Crudest Month (l2) may have too much predictable quirkiness, but lead actress Clea Duvall marks herself as a personality to watch maybe, as a nominee for this year's Posey Performance. As Bell, she's a chain-smoking, cranky, endearing, neurotic mess with a prematurely-whiskey-soured voice and a habit of confiding confid-ing her innermost thoughts to the camera. On Dec. 1, she suddenly becomes anxious to deal with her two unfulfilled New Year's resolutions resolu-tions to stop smoking and to fall in love. It's hard to tell what will ultimately ulti-mately happen, because there are three outcomes, all of them likely, by the standards of modern romantic comedy. One, she might settle for her long-suffering boyfriend Leonard (Gabriel Mann) although, in a grumpy mood, she's capable of trying to run him over and then leaving him naked in the middle of the country. Two, she might discover she's a lesbian, though she says she hasn't wanted to make love with a girl since high school. Or three, she might hook up with the sexy OB-GYN who's treating her pregnant sister. Duvall, who has the offbeat attractiveness of a Garafalo, is surrounded sur-rounded by a rag-tag collection of family members and eccentric friends in the film's college-town . setting. Among the sub-plots, Bell's father may be cheating on her analyst mother (Mary Kay Place). Leonard, who lives only on pancakes, is being sought by Bell's sister and by a soon-to-be divorcee (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, the black adopted daughter from Secrets and Lies). Her husband (Dennis Haysbert) is convinced that a conspiracy of Brits is out to get the rights to his TV fishing show. A hulking-slob professor has secrets you don't want to know about.. And horny obnoxious geek working outside the dean's , office gets sadistic pleasure in watching students march to their doom. And for the perfect rag-tag touch, the very first shot of the film shows a boom mike bobbing into view. The title of Theresa Connelly's film Polish Wedding (l2) refers to an occasion where the bride and groom are less than nine months away from a blessed event. (Thanks to the more-worldly Parkite who informed me of this.) The film concerns the romanticsexual roman-ticsexual misadventures of an ethnic eth-nic Detroit clan, where such a wedding is practically a family tradition. tra-dition. With sometimes uneven results, Connelly gives us the kind of kitchen-sink comedy-drama that Hollywood produced four or five decades ago. Lena Olin as the mother is a pickle-chomping housewife, a stern mother of her brood, and still an erotic force of nature. On the nights when she steps out, smartly uniformed for meetings of the Polish Ladies Auxiliary No need to It 0 V N E STAY c DIGITAL PCS 60 MINUTES 200 MINUTES $24.99 $39.99 VOICE MAIL, NUMERIC AND TEXT MESSAGING INCLUDED WITH THE FOLLOWING 400 MINUTES 600 MINUTES 800 MINUTES 1200 MINUTES $49.99 $69.99 $99.99 $119.99 Sundance Film Festival League, she's actually meeting with a lover an executive in the building where she cleans toilets. The father (Gabriel Byrne) working a nighttime bakery job, nurses his suspicions while kneading knead-ing dough. But behind his comical glares, there's a real pain. Olin and Byrne are the heart and soul of the picture a comfortably com-fortably resigned couple letting their marriage wither because each assumes their partner wants it that way. They coupled, wed and raised a family, but did they ever have the chance for a romance? The parallel plot is less engaging, engag-ing, with Claire Danes as the daughter in heat who sneaks out the basement window every night, and finds herself pregnant by a local cop just as she's chosen to lead the procession at the Festival of the Holy Virgin. You have trouble believing that the WASPy Danes comes from this family. Instead of feeling that her willful, confused personality marks her as a younger version of Olin, Danes just comes across as immature and short-sighted. (You'd think even a hormonally-hyped hormonally-hyped teenager would think twice about teen sex while living in the same house with the most relentlessly relent-lessly squalling baby in the Midwest.) Aided in particular by an impish imp-ish score from Luis Bacalov, director direc-tor Connelly can be ardently, gently gen-tly romantic, but she can also lurch badly in mood, with a couple of scenes that turn from strained "wacky" comedy to stark seriousness. serious-ness. After other festival years that emphasized women, blacks or gays as filmmakers, Sundance '98 is showing the emergence of Native Americans as feature-film artists. Smoke Signals () emerges as one of the most thoughtful, heartfelt heart-felt and entertaining films of the festival. On the Salmon Indian Reservation in Idaho, young Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) has grown up to be tough, cynical and bitter about his father, who left the family years ago. His would-be buddy, Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) has had a conservative upbringing (his hair is in braids'andis-the' Native1! equivalent of a dweeb. He. aspires to fill the traditional role of chronicler chron-icler or storyteller (and often does show a flair for it) but he doesn't have an edit button. Thomas can even recall, with relish, the exact meal he had at Denny's on some favorite or special day. When Victor's father is found dead, in a lonely trailer in Arizona, he and Thomas embark on a road trip. During the journey, Victor confronts his feelings and memories of his father; Thomas lets his hair down; and the audience audi-ence learns more about the childhood child-hood incident that links the two young men: a house fire that took place during the white man's Bicentennial, where baby Thomas; parents died and he was saved by Victor's father. The film's director Chris Eyre, and its writer Sherman Alexie (whose name is even placed above the film's title) tell a universal family story from a Native American perspective that is intelligent, intel-ligent, acutely sad but often funny. The story is suffused with references refer-ences to Custer, John Wayne, media depictions of Indians (Thomas notes that since their Wits, T7 '1 i ii By Rick Brough tribe were historically fishermen, their movie would be called "Dances with Salmon"); the cosmic cos-mic power of a good piece of fry-bread; fry-bread; and how to intimidate white people by "getting stoic." The two leads are excellent (and Adams in particular isnt a stereotype he gives his comic character a sweet, callow dignity.) And the film provides a good showcase for Native American actors like Tantoo Cardinal (Victor's mom), Irene Bedard (best known as the voice of Disney's Pocahontas) and especially especial-ly Gary Farmer as the father whose conflicted personalities (jovial romantic and brutish drunk) leave his son with a painful legacy. Under Heaven () has . unfortunate timing. Conceived as a modern re-make of Henry James' Wings of the Dove, it follows fol-lows the official costume-drama version by only a few weeks. But it has rewards of its own to offer. Molly Parker plays Cynthia, a young woman desperate to escape a dismal life with limited options waitressing; putting up with a substance-abusing boyfriend; or having a brood, like her mother, in a decaying lumber town. She manages to get a job as a caretakercompanion of Eleanor (Joely Richardson), a young heiress dying of cancer. Eventually, boyfriend Buck (Aden Young), who's made a genuine How to save on your house payment! FREE report reveals 10 secrets your banker doesn't want you to Know! Call 888-895-3231 24hrs For recorded message! U Join us at Bistro 7000 & enjoy all the Action on our 61" Big Screen TV Open 3pm - 10pm Bistro 7000 is located in the Lodge at the Mountain Village, at the base of the Park City Mountain Resort, and just west of the ice skating rink. Join us at GutM. A Mtn. View Restaurant 655-0070 C T E WJU rrtr w A: LNEW RATES! effort to kick his habits, turns up and Cynthia passes him off as her half-brother. While she cares for Eleanor, Cynthia gradually begins to entertain enter-tain a plot Buck, who's been hired as a gardener, will marry the heiress and come into her estate after she's dead. But, as in the original James story, the plot transforms all three people in unexpected ways. Joely Richardson gives a quietly quiet-ly triumphant performance. What's distinctive about her dying swan is the clear-eyed reticence she brings to the part, whether Eleanor is relishing in flowers and sunshine, expressing forgiveness or anger, showing her appetites for sex or love. Aden Young skillfully handles a long transformation in which his shiftless loser turns out to be a stronger, more compassionate person per-son than we could have imagined. And Molly Parker's Cynthia is presented in the early scenes as if she were the major character. When the script pulls her into the background to become a less likable lik-able person, Parker keeps her from being unlikable. Director-writer Meg Richman creates a story that is sober, graceful grace-ful but emotionally solid. The setting set-ting has been transformed to the Pacific Northwest and Seattle, and it's interesting to see how the locale from the Seattle fish market mar-ket to the spotted-owl controversy controver-sy has been integrated into the story. HIIiKIS 2L 7000 D 901 CALLER 100 OFF PEAK MINUTES $2.99 A MONTH 50 OFF INCOMING CALLS $2.99 A MONTH r D D ( rmuAw Main D n n D n Not valid with any other offer. till! aur n i... i3j Tax, beverages and gratuity not included. Valid with this coupon between November 22 - January 31, 1998 only. Herbal Supplements, Organic Juices, Sandwiches & Soups, Vitamins & Minerals, Gifts, Bath & Body Care, Aromatherapy, Iridology & Kinesiology M f OR mm 645-3944 PARK CITY HERBS FOR. HEALTH. ...STORE IN A COOL PLACE!!! 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