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Th Daily Tor Heel Leaven reviews Iwcvlay. March ?). !?i7t Demie . ii In about len years it will probably be of some interest to understand why "Fire Easy Pieces" was so highly acclaimed when it first came out. like "Easy Rider", here is a movie with all the graininess . and reticence, and all the depth, too, of a still photograph. This is not to knock the film, but merely to observe that its aims are extraordinarily low. I suspect that this is intentional and that the makers of "Five Easy Pieces" were counting on audience identification to add a further dimension to the film or if not outright identification, then at least the audience's subconscious assent that "Pieces" is in some way a suitable metaphor for a part of their life. Different people react differently to this kind of direct manipulation, and my own response to the film is divided. On the Campus calendar Today is the second day of try-outs for the Carolina Playmakers production of William Hanley's "Slow Dance on the Killing Ground" at 7:30 p.nu in the Playmakers Theatre. Director Patricia Barnett is looking for performers for the following roles: Mr. Rose, middle-aged, a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, close-mouthed, suspicious, anxious to avoid self-involvement; Clarence Williams 3rd, a lithe young Black, a hunted man who speaks in a mixture of jive talk and fancy literary allusions; and Rosie, an 1 8-year-old girl from Riverdale, who has wandered into Mr. Rose's shop after losing her way in the deserted streets while looking for the address of an abortionist. The try-outs are open to the public. Production dates for "Slow Dance on the Killing Ground" are April 27-May 2. The UNC Sailing Club will meet this Wednesday in 304 Woollen Gym. Informal discussions for neophytes and sophophytes will constitute the main part of the meeting. Regular members (i.e. those who have attended a previous meeting) are asked to. bring $1 in dues; other interested persons are urged to attend. Draft Counseling: Monday through Thursday, 3-5 and 7-9 p.m. Suite C, Carolina Union. There will be a get-together of all .Phillips Exeter alumni at 8:30 this .morning in the Carolina Coffee Shop. All FIYW for Student Body Resident Thd Daily Tar Heel is published tn6 . : ' University of North Carolina Student 4 : Publications Board, daily except Sunday, : :. examination periods, vacations and : summer periods. : Offices are at the Student Union building, Univ. of North Carolina. v' Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514." Telephone ; numbers: News, Sports 933-1011, :: .922-1012 ; Business, Circulation, : : Advertising 933-1163. MS Subscription rates: $10 per year; $5 ,:; : per semester. : Second class postage paid at U.S. Post; :: Office in Chapel Hill, N.C. : The Student Legislature shall have -l 3 ; powers to determine the Student':? Activities fee and to appropriate all : : revenue derived from the Student i-:; : Activities fee (1.1.1.4 of the Student.::; : Constitution). The budgetary): appropriation for the 1970-71 academic':::; : year is $28,292.50 for undergraduates-:::: and $4,647.50 for graduates as the'-:-: subscription rate for the student body ' : ($1.84 per student based on fall semester i .enrollment figures). ' :: The Daily Tar Heel reserves the right! : : to regulate the typographical tone of all X; advertisements and to revise or turn X; : away copy it considers objectionable. The Daily Tar Heel will not consider :: : adjustments or payments for anyi : advertisement involving major : typographical errors or erroneous X; insertion unless notice is given to the X; ; Business Manager within (1) one day; jx after the advertisement appears, or -X :: within one day of the receiving of tear ;X sheets, or subscription of the paper. The I ;X ; Daily Tar Heel will not be responsible) :: j: .for more than one incorrect insertion of X; ran advertisement scheduled to run X; : several times. Notices for such correction :: ; must be given before the next Insertion THIS IS TKS MOlP, EH? StW A- LOT CHUCK CCA'THtN V SEE AAE J thrush The week.1 j N bafeJ i if 4f 8 1 TIM ill i n mww whole, I thought that "Pieces" was intelligent and consistently interesting. But I wasn't terribly moved by it, and one reason was probably the realization that I had to bring feeling to the film rahter than vice versa that as soon as "Five Easy Pieces" ceases to be "au courant," it ceases to be intelligible. The hero and subject of "Pieces" is the disillusioned man, who has "no love for himself, no respect for himself," who maves around a lot not because he's going any place, but "to get away from things that are getting bad." As one character puts it, he has "no inner feeling" (whatever that means; actually he has plenty of feeling but no center of values in or out of himself). Most of us today probably have a specially acute understanding of cultural disorientation, Exeter alumni, both undergraduates and graduates, are invited for coffee and breakfast with David Thomas, Director of Studies at Exeter. Tickets for the Smokey Robinson & the Miracles concert are on sale at the Union for $2.25. Ticket sales are limited to students (two tickets to an I.D.) this week. The concert is scheduled for Friday, March 19. Beta Theta Pi presents the second speaker in its Spring series, Dr. Takey Crist. Dr. Crist will discuss population problems and will answer questions from the floor. The program will be held in the Beta House and will commence at 7 p.m. today. All interested persons are invited. RENTA-CAR J : Only : $4.00 A Day, $.04 A Mile (BUT You Must Bring Thb Ad) j CROWELL LITTLE MOTOR CO. Durham 544-3711 .'Dir.. No. 011625- :'. Chips! Hill 423143 ; 'LAUG!M?'$?' TELEPHONE si? Crossword Puzzle ACROSS 3 Part of "to be" 4 Famed 5 Allowance for waste 6 Name 7 Gaelic 8 Compass point 9 Number 10 Ceremony 11 Algonquian Indian 13 Household pets 16 Marking with stripes 19 Couches 20 Inclined . 23 Goes by water 26 Ardent 28 Conjunction 29 Note of scale 31 Man's nickname 1 6 11 12 14 15 17 18 19 21 22 24 25 27 23 29 30 33 34 35 37 38 39 41 42 45 45 Young tree Singing voice Loud shouting Peaceful Corded cloth Trials Greek letter Babylonian deity Colonizes ' Guido'slow note Ancient chariot Note of scale .Meadows Dine Faroe Islands whirlwind South African Dutch Repeating Escaped Knockout (abbr.) Afternoon party Crate Spanish for M4 ft yes Wait on Bone Stupefied Teutonic deity Unit of Siamese 1 33 4 i III 6 7 8 9 10 11 ' ' g 12 13 18 H 19 ' " 20 21 22 23 24 53" 26 33 " ! 34 " "36 37 33 " 3 40 41 42 43 "" 44 T" 3J" w4 1 1 I m55 1 1 1 m currency 48 Royal 49 In favor of 50 Rented 52 Folds 54 Hindu queen 55 Slaves DOWN 1 Gratify 2 Once around track 0L' PITCHER I'LL BET WS OF TIME UP Ht&t. r I I T.7(-i7iVii- S 1 vi -r r S. I H and the chief glory of "pieces" is Jack Nicholson's performance as the hero: he captures the aimlessness of such a life, the exasperation of constantly getting hit by feelings he does not know how to handle and the loneliness of having to associate mainly with people who can't or won't understand him. Nicholson's performance is deeply sensitive, and it heightens my regret that the rest of "pieces" (acting excepted) is so flabby. Where "Five Easy Pieces" falls short is its structure, or, loosely, plot. A movie like this needs a fairly coherent line of action (or a richness of imagery) to vindicate good performances. Otherwise, lacking any of these, the audience loses the sense of direct communication-the film merely throws out hints and reverberations and we hear echoes without ever understanding what caused them. In Nicholson, we are confronted with a character who is literally living a life of quiet desperation; but the question we are almost required to ask is, Why? We know that Nicholson was once a concert pianist; that he has given it up, presumably because the music was no longer meaningful to him; that he comes from a rich and musical family; that he never got on very well with his father (though apparently he did study his music diligently and we can hardly guess what else father and son might have had to disagree about; Nicholson's brother and sister are both reasonably well-adjusted people); and that when the film opens, he has been living for some time with a proverbially dumb blonde whose obtuseness is a source of unending irritation to him. But this information is so scanty that it merely leads us to more unanswered questions: Why, for instance, does he live with Ray? Granted, it's an arrangement calculated to bring out the worst in him, but it might do that to Rent AT-Bird j $aC0A Dsy; O.C3A1il3 OPATCS .f ERNESTINE" tif Answer to Yesterday's Puzzle AMhrMMltlHlelsn t t e r Jal e r t s H T T 1- 1 L IE 1o u 5 tTs I" E JL A LF AJNTE N t e s IIP e a r i mjg taals p a n e steol s jt s IT!ilITii e jsU b e Rp roe I W r riT' RETYPE SR A P j i" AVER Eft I E ELI A S" 32 33 36 37 33 39 40 Preposition Swifter Avoids Fuel Kind of tanned skin Trades for money God of love 43 Woody plant 44 Back of neck 47 Chinese pagoda 49 Baker's . - product 51 Symbol for tin 53 Indefinite article I LOVE &E5ALLY OtRE KlMD OP LIKE ME, ) 8 I OVID PLA AKLKJ5UAL I PONT YOU. CHUCJCTV I BAFSILL EVER fif?L . Y L-r- 1 anyone. What did Nicholson and his father disagree about? What was his father like? Why did Nicholson give up music? This last is important. Wras music at the center of Nicholson's disillusionment, or merely at the periphery? The film provides no answers, and because it doesn't our insight into Nicholson is entirely blocked. Once we understand that, we can also understand that Nicholson's particular situation is by no means "fated" or directed by any unified aesthetic conception. "Five Easy Pieces" could have been about a bowery derilect who once was a plastic surgeon, or an over-the-hill athlete, or a "largely sobered" political reformer or anything. If this particular thinness lets everyone identify with, or react to, the film as he will, it also dried up the film's greatest sources of emotional power by obliterating the main character's emotional connection to his environment. Perhaps symbolic of "Five Easy Piece ses' " preoccupation with almost everything except its major character and theme is the amount of time given to scenes which do not materially increase our understanding of either: a long bit of broad comedy involving a female hitch-hiker who is going to Alaska (it looks very white" in the pictures) to get away form "crap," "stink," and human filth in general; or a stint of what a friend of mine has called "adolescent bullshit sophistication," in which a wierd, wierd WSW AL1UM by 'LOVES, LINES, ray Includes: "Ruby, DontTake Your Love To Town," "Something Burning, Reuben James." & t- i: 10A.M.-10P.M: Mon.-Sat. AT 1MB 10 a.m.-iop.m Mon.-Sat J' OGG JWC SAVE 1EFOH1E iinr """" 'Is-) V r ' J -Hw, " TX lady discourses quite aresively on man's natural propensity for aggression. In all fairness I have to ad nit that these scenes are well done and an argument can be made against their being totally irrelevant. But "Pieces" is not a long movie and they take up an undue amount of it. After all this has been said, however, there is enough substance in Five Easy Pieces" to make it an effective and interesting film. All of the acting is good. I've mentioned Nicholson; but Karen Black, who plays his girl Ray, does a marvellous job of catching all the nuances WGAR rocl airs WCAR, campus radio station, initiated a series of programs devoted to an emerging genre, the rock opera last night. Last night's presentation was 'Tommy", the Who's story of an abused boy who becomes a pop culture hero. Each of the rock operas on successive nights (tonight through Friday) will begin at nine. The Moth Confesses" by the Neon Philharmonic will be aired tonight. The first attempt, at least overtly, at rock opera, the work expresses a deep sense of frustration. Wednesday night "Arthur" by the Kinks, who have displayed considerable staying power in the uncertain world of Reg. $4.33 NOW ONLY ANGLES AND RHYMES' Reg. $4.93 NOW ONLY MEUAA S &Yh3 FQSTT : HIT Reg. $4.93 NOW Manv Oth ONLY,, ir 11 LEASES PMCK La 'SALE ENDS S-Aki U-iS AAA 1 INCREASE closolscil o jr ri of a sightly stu?ic, sl Uy shrewd, slihily everything woman. And Lois Smith's performance as Nicholson's (older?) sister is warm and convincing. The direction is competent, thou-h some of the cuttir h unnecessarily flashy. On the whole, however, it communicates the film's gray mood. When I consider the various parts of "Five Easy Pieces," it seems unfortunate that its makers were not able to pull it together into a stronger movie than it is. Nevertheless, it is one of the better films we have had this year it is current-and it is more than likely to interest today's moviegoer. c opera series rock, is scheduled. "RoHing Stone" ca'kd "Arthur" the best British album of 1969. "Arthur" is subtitled "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire." it is that and much more. Thursday night will be given to the most recent rock opera, "Tombstone Valentine," by Wigwam. The most ambitious and boldest rock opera yet attempted will conclude the series Friday. The record, "Jesus Christ Superstar," tackles its subject in a controversial yet reverent manner. It has been hailed by rock critics and clergymen alike alihguh ..the two aren't mutually exclusive. c " : -4 i . Sunday mMmmmmmmmmm ? 1 i l t1,PJ.L-10P.M. 1 ii "'"" rl " -' 1 'I- "" I ' : : f . i 4 v ! f i !
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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March 9, 1971, edition 1
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