Show lopl VMM ? Page 16— The Herald Journal Logan Utah Saturday May 13 2000 SHERMANS LAGOON wotutucrnfm tsssL: fpnlwvArVIv HhCMt f TPS- a runs out of steam Hum - By Robert Denerstein Scripps Howard News Service Wj written and lacking narrative drive “I Dreamed of Africa" mostly offers the pleasures of expan- CATHY r nwr 00 NDU Mr! MEAN now you rmmo WOMEN FEEL SUM&f NON YOU KUDU) UMAX WE HM ARE 0UT7T X NEED POCKETS TO CARRY ALL SN STUFF f SPOKTCORTb fiOTWUUMI EOE IN DAS' OK MOMENT Of TRIUMPH HAS ARRIVED" f HERE MU YOU PVT ALL THIS VS0URPUR8E? Of TRIUMPH "MOMENT OF TRIUMPH STILL A LOWr-TER60AL NANOSECOND" ft sive scenery in the breathtaking Kenyan wilds Based on a true story the movie focuses cm Kuki Gall- -' mann (Kim Basinger) a woman who travels to Africa with her new husband Paolo (Vincent Perez) and her son from a previous marriage (Liam Aiken) Kuki decides to leave Venice after a terrible automobile accident brings her with the realization that her life is a failure probably because it lacks challenge and risk Despite objections from her ocnpps nOwVu pnoio with her new hus- face-to-fa- ce Kim Basinger plays - BEETLE BAILEY mother (Eva Marie Saint) Kuki makes the journey to Africa Upon arriving she stands up in a truck thrusts her arms into the air and exclaims "Africa!” It’s a word that should have been left unspoken Same goes for many of the lines in Susan Shilliday’s episodic and frequently pompous script Once in Kenya Kuki and her new husbandbuyla rundown cattle ranch and begin : frontier-styl- e experiencing hardships These are exasperated by Paolo’s restlessness He likes to wander off with his hunting cronies In his words he’s living in the moment testing his reflexes in the demanding immediacy of Africa HAGAR THE HORRIBLE The movie is narrated by Basinger’s character whose diction self-importa- nt fre- quently calls attention to itself have never been here before and yet I feel like I have returned” “I am alone ("I a woman who travels to Africa band and her son but runs into trouble and yet I’m never alone I played by Garrett Strommen) am surrounded by Africa”) Deaths births storms It doesn’t take much reflecattacks by poachers and other tion to realize that Basinger primal events dot the screendid a better job with the pulp play arriving in the movie like dialogue in her last movie care packages dropped by heli "LA Confidential” for copter which she won an Academy ' So are visits from Marie Award as best supporting Saint’s character who has the actress She does what she can thankless task of turning up at with the material but seems to funerals she’s the dramatic have overdosed on its serious- - equivalent of a visiting dignitary The charming Perez' most Mostly we get scenes of familiar from French movies Basingers Kuki holding down shows an engaging smile and the fort while her loving husband pursues his adventures not much more Director Hugh Hudson is no She negotiates with a local stranger to bad movies having chief over water rights makes made the abysmal “Revolhousehold repairs and writes ' ution” Here the man who began his career with the estimable "Chariots of Fire” inherdiaiy often allows the story to leap forward abruptly During tire course of the movie Kuki’s son grows into adolescence yet Basinger’s character hardly seems to age Must be that dramatic tension not to mention a sense of passion to animate its pretty pictures The bottom line: There’s far too much dreaming and far too little drama in this African foray Rated FG-1- 3 ' Grade: C (2 stare) Nothing wrong with episodic movies but this one needed Kenyan air invigorating (Kuki’s son as a teenager is PEANUTS Joanne Weintraub Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - has a ship that looks like someone fished it out of a bathtub and a charging bull that compares unfavorably to die mechanical one John Travol-ta rode in “Urban Cowboy” It also has dorky gods I’m porry if that sounds blasphemous but wait until you see Zeus (Angus MacFadyen) and Hera (Olivia" Williams) foiling around in die clouds and bick- ering in those fruity English accents that all Greek gods seem to have picked up in boarding By What do you call a miniseries swarming with centaurs harpies dragons and Hellenic heroes? I’d have gone with “Freaks and Greeks” but NBC settled for “Jason and the Argonauts" (9 pm Sunday and Monday) Whether you want to settle in for two nights with Jason & Co is entirely up to you Perron- ally I’d like a refund on my four hairs lire unchallenged maestro rtf the miniseries Robert Hal mi Sr has produced much of the brightest and a quite a bit of the dimmest the networks have offered in the past five years from the gleaming “Gulliver’s Travels” “The Odyssey” “Alice in Wonderland” and last MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM school : enjoyed Pelias’ priestly adviser (Greg Hicks) a Creepy piece of work with black curls plastered all over his head like dried kelp I suppose Halmi will just keep making these epics until he runs out of time or money He’s certainly not going to run out of stories world literature's got a million of ’em ' Four hours of “Medea”anyone? week's “Arabian Nights” to the ghastly “Noah’s Ark” “Cleopatra” and “lie 10th Kingdom” His latest doesn't quite make it into the latter category where you’re likely to find yourself laughing in all die wrong places In fact there were moments as I sat numbly before “Jason” and hoped for a spark of feeling intelligence drama — anything — that I didn't think I’d ever laugh again You're not expecting me to repeat the story are you? Oh all right It’s about a prince (Jason London) whose father is murdered by a vile grasping uncle (Dennis Hopper) and who instead of making a lot of speeches about it like FOXTROT — Short Takes I'm not sure what to make of “Geppetto” (7 pm Sunday ABC) an unnecessary but not unpleasant odd but not awful musical in which an unbelievably sincere Drew Carey trills his way through the role of the kindly puppeteer who gives birth sort of to a little wooden son named Pinocchio ' Carey’s voice will do if actual tenors are in short supply and Julia does a turn hilarious as the Blue Fairy Stephen Schwartz’s ("Pippin") score is melodic but wordy with way too thymes “Windowchagrined many Please Cate De Angelo (Mary-LouiParker) is sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along but she gets over it in about a minute Before you can say “So long sucker” she's ditched Mr Wrong and is happily hitched to Mr Right (Peter Gallagher) Hamlet sails off in search of the Golden Louis-Dreyf- Fleece which he eventually finds but not with- out getting many of his friends killed and stir-ring up quite a few dungs better left unstirred including Medea (Jolene Blalock) who as we know from a later story with her name in the title really isn’t cute whim she's angry One of the puzzling things about Halmi is not just the highly variable quality of his projects but the relative sophistication of their special effects which range from stupendous to tacky “Arabian Nights” had smashing ones “Jason" REAL LIFE ADVENTURES " BtTX YtSTeRQAYHoivevEkt LUFFY Sir Winston Churchill said “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" There is an enigma in bridge too: When you have game vid- fit in a ues with an eight-car- d major and two balanced how do you decide when to rather play in three than in four of that major? I know of no good answer And today's deal which occurred in a duplicate played in Moscow last year left some pairs happy and others shaking their heads that ms wsr Live mth far-fetch-ed se transfer bid then bidding three no-tru- COULO us Win dt bridge CLOSE TO HOME By Phillip Alder FIRST MAMMeO Me The mortals aren’t much better unless you count Hopper’s Pelias and Frank Langella’s Aertes two bracingly hateful kings I also i TOO MUCH OONT TRY TV CONTACT no-tru- East opened with a weak showing some 0 points and a decent suit Smith's natural 6-1- two-bi- d high-car-d overcall promised 16-1- 8 points Now North offered his partner a choice of games first showing five ’spades via a stupid they look In dog sweater I I Some Souths retreated to four spades others were happy with three trump In three no-tru- no- South won trick one with the heart king played a diamond to dummy’s jack and a diamond to his king and West’s ace Back came the diamond 10 South won with the queen cashed the spade ace and played a spade to d&mmy’s jack The finesse lost but declarer had nine tricks: four spades two hearts two diamonds and one club Most declarers in four spades though cashed the spade ace at trick two then finessed dummy’s jack terl After winning with the Disas-six-ca- rd queen East returned the heart West ruffing away declarer’s second top heart Now a club switch left the jack contract two down The defense took one trick in each suit and the heart niff ’ |