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6The Daily Tar HeelThursday, March 15, 1984 'Dresser ' easily earns Academy nominations 'Strange Invaders' is a tribute to '50s sci-fi flicks By JEFF GROVE Arts Editor Palpable and intense, the aura of live theatre leaps from the screen in The Dresser, the film adaptation of Ronald Harwood's play about an aging Shakespearean actor and his dresser. Dressers have gone the way of the Model T, so the term may require some explanation. In the days when a play's star was the entire show, any actor with visions of greatness had a dresser, a servant whose duties included helping the performer into and out of makeup and costumes. Other duties, not specified in the dresser's contract, might include serving as nurse, psychiatrist, pep club and confidant to the star, and so it is in The Dresser. Norman works for an actor known only as Sir. In England during the heat of World War II, Sir and his band of actors mostly old men and cripples, Sir com- plains, because all the young men are in the army travel the provinces performing. Primarily, The Dresser shows Norman cajoling Sir through a performance of King Lear while the actor suf-. fers a physical and mental breakdown similar to Lear's.: In the course of the performance, the many aspects oft Norman and Sir's love-hate relationship come to the fore.. Certainly the film as a whole is" ah experience td be treasured; it richly deserves its nomination for this year's Best Picture Oscar. But the acting is superior to the vehi cle. Albert Finney as Sir and Tom Courtenay as Norman are both up for this year's Academy Award for Best Ac tor, but their performances take entirely different paths. Finney, one of the greatest living British actors, chews up the scenery in his part. He does not exploit blind rage, though. Sir is a multi-shaded character; he is spoiled, demanding and obstinate yet vulnerable, child-like and pitiable. Courtenay's work, more genteel and more detailed, is arguably better. Watch his hands in any scene. They are never still, always expressing something. Courtenay, who originated the role of Norman in London's West End and on Broadway, is a maryelously controlled ac tor, achieving subtleties of voice, expression and posture in almost every scene. His is a performance to be seen twice; too many nuances can be missed in a single view ing. . Eileen Atkins plays Madge, the company's stage manager, in a powerful display of repressed emotions. The part of Sir's common-law wife, known as Her Ladyship, suffers in translation to the screen because it n i .ir n 1. 1 'i f i n " " m ii 1 1 1 1 ii n 1 1 f 1 1 in i iii i urn in n. i milium .iniiiiiiiiiiijijiijiiiiiif.uuiiiii 1111111111 uiiun n. nam 1 iihium.i.ihi luiu.uliuuiih iiiumiuihiii win miinniiiiMijuuiuiiiw.M inim MTTii-rrmr ttt rT 1 ' 1 - - - Xv v" " " I - n Albert Finney as Sir is attended to by his faithful dresser (Tom Courtenay). has been pared down and sanitized no reference to the fact that Sir never divorced his first wife or that he never really married Her Ladyship. Zena Walker is unable to fill in many of these ideas with her low-keyed acting. The other characters are mostly bit players, with the acting uniformly impressive. Peter ifates is a "hit and miss" director that is, his films are as likely to be very bad as very good. Among his hits he numbers Bullitt, The Hot Rock, For Pete's Sake and Breaking Away; among the misses, Mother, Jugs and Speed, The Deep and Krull. The Dresser belongs firmly in the hit category, rivaling Breaking 4 way in its skillful leadership and blending of diverse characters and character types. Yates also has been nominated for an Oscar for The Dresser. Harwood adapted the screenplay himself, earning the film its fifth Academy Award nomination. While certain details are, regrettably, obscured, the play does gain a lit tle in the translation. . . Such details as the widely-held actor's superstition of Macbeth's being a jinxed play were more fully explained in the stage version. The film only glances af them, ar)d audiences unfamiliar with the theatre may be put off momentarily. The portrait of the theatre company, however, is more carefully painted in the film. Harwood himself served time as a dresser in a touring company, and his ex periences provide a rich palette. Cinematographer Kelvin Pike perfectly captures the squalid settings so the audience can almost smell the mildew of the backstage facilities. A set and costume staff of 15 technicians headed by Production Designer Stephen Grimes earns laurels for its recreation of Britain in the '40s. While the technical work is impressive, it is not ob trusive. The script and, more importantly, the acting are allowed to carry the film, and they carry it to perfection, never mind th: theatrical mumbo-jumbo, thank you very much, ducky, as Norman might say. Eddie Murphy's Grammy winning album is funny By LOUIS CORRIGAN Staff Writer Slick and bursting with an irresistible confidence, 22-year-old Eddie Murphy weaves a hilarious collection of impres sions, stories and observations on his se cond album, Eddie Murphy: Comedian, recorded live at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Comedians are judged on their ability to uniquely capture themselves and their culture in . performance, soi it is ; no mistake tftat Murphy's Comediajtx&ent-; ly won a Grammy Award as Best Comedy Recording. Review Born in Brooklyn, Murphy rose to fame as a member of the revamped Satur day Night ,Live cast on the 1980-81 season. Murphy recently announced plans to leave the show. He has also co starred in the movies 48 HRS. and Trading Places, both huge successes. Murphy, refusing to do any of the SNL routines live, performs only new material. Perhaps the best of this new material is the series of fantastic impressions that il lustrate Murphy's ability and creative genius. Feigning the sensitive Michael Jackson, Murphy sings a few lines from Jackson's "She's Out of My Life" and reaches the highs perfectly. He does im pressions of Teddy Pendergrass and Elvis Presley as well. The most hilarious moment on the album is Murphy's James Brown imita tion. Murphy says the R&B great is proof that you don't have to be able to talk to sing. Murphy also addresses and even im itates people who complain that his Stevie Wonder impression, a Saturday Night Live highlight, is in poor taste. He says he has told Wonder, a personal friend, that he is not impressed by the musician's singing or piano playing. "You want to impress me, take the wheel for a while," Murphy insists. The second side of the album opens with a story called "The Barbecue," about relatives seen once a year at the family barbecue. There ' is pyromaniac Uncle Gus, who demands to be in charge of building the fire and uses two gallons of gas. There is Gus's wife, Aunt Bunny, who has such a thick mustache that the six-year-old Murphy refuses to kiss her. Hit with a shoe by his mother, Murphy flees to his room, where in childish anger he cries what every child has cried once in his life, "God, please kill her!" Nowhere is Murphy's power of obser . vationf and ability to bring a simple oc 'currence to brilliant living color as radiant as in "Ice Cream Man." The ice cream truck bell sounds, and a younger Murphy cries, "The ice cream man is coming! The ice cream man is coming! Mom, throw down some money!" After chasing down the truck, the younger Murphy, with the ice cream melting onto his hand, looks to the kid who doesn't have any ice cream and sings, "You don't have no ice cream. You .didn't get none'. 'Cause you were on the welfare and can't afford it, and your father is an alcoholic." America is alive and, if not well, then real. The second half of Side Two breaks down into a series of observations or social comments on a range of topics from politics to race relations to films. Murphy , refers to movies like Poltergeist and says, "Why don't white people just leave the house when there's a ghost in the house?" In a funny white man's voice used several other times, Murphy mimics the actor finding blood in the toilet in The Amityville Horror. 'That'peculiar.'t. . Comedian offends surprisingly r few people. The most blatantly assaulted group is the gay community. Murphy says, "I kid the homosexuals a lot, 'cause they homosexuals." The language used in this routine, however, should offend most listeners. Eddie Murphy: Comedian captures a hilariously funny performance by one of America's hottest comedians, but it is truly sad to hear the best resorting to pre judice and the use of graphic profanity like it was drinking water. Why is good humor inevitably trashy? r 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 V'. m tit t o SUIt UP FOR SUMMER It's not to late to get in shape for summer. Join now for 6 months and we'll freeze your membership while you're out of town. You'll have the entire fall semester left to work out at 1 mi vo 503 C. 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Telephone 212-823-8044 or 914-631-8301. Or write direct to Middlesex Polytechnic Summer School, Trent Park, Cockfosters Road, Barnet, Herts EN4 OPT, England. Telephone 011 441 886-6599. Pte23 eund 3sta of Sumrnor School In London. Nsrr ; ; ; ; ; Address -C804 nil ;1Z2S2X Cfrjytsclinic GRADUATING SOWS? Ml ff Ufa J3 Ask Peoce Corps volunteers why rheir ingenuity ond flexibility ore os vitol os their degrees. They'll tell you they ore helping the world's poorest peoples attain self sufficiency in the areas of food production, energy conservation, education, economic development ond health services. And they'll tell you about the rewords of hands on career experience overseas. They'll tell you it's the roughest job you'll ever love. RECRUITERS WILL BE ON CAMPUS MARCH 20, 21 AND 22. SIGN UP FOR INTERVIEWS IN THE OFFICE OF CAREER PLANNING ANT) PLACEMENT , HANES HALL AND ATTEND A PEACE CORPS RECEPTION ON MONDAY, .MARCH 19 FROM 1PM UNTIL 6PM IN GRAHAM UNION. By JEFF GROVE Arts Editor It's sad when a film distributor writes off a good movie just because it fails to rake in millions of dollars in profits right away. Such is the shabby treatment Orion Pictures has accorded Michael Laughlin's Strange Invaders, an excellent film in its own right but also a fine tribute to science fiction films of the 1950s. Released last fall, the film received general critical praise with some mixed reviews, but it was slow to build solid box-office business. It is only now mak ing its North Carolina premiere, and that is in the form of a late show. Orion has purposely dragged its heels in promoting the film, making things difficult for would-be exhibitors. There is no good reason for this to hap pen, although it is almost understandable because some critics, usually more perceptive, misread and misrepresented the film to their readers. Strange Invaders features a stalwart hero, Charles Bigelow, fending off an in vasion from space. Bigelow, an entymology professor at Columbia University, investigates the ap parent disappearance of his ex-wife in the archetypal small town of Centerville, 111. Stumbling onto an alien plot against the earth, he high-tails it back to New York. Along the way, Bigelow enlists the aid of scandal sheet reporter Betty Walker and mental patient Willie Collins. They are menaced by one Mrs. Benjamin, an official of a government center establish ed to study Unidentified Flying Objects, and by Arthur Newman, an old man who runs a boarding house in Centerville. The story has been called a spoof of the "invaders from space" genre popularized by such films as The Thing, The War of The Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snat chers and The Day the Earth Stood Still. While Strange Invaders owes much to these films, sometimes making direct references to them, it is not a send-up of them. The film takes itself seriously, never indulging in the self-mockery of movies like Airplane! or Young Frankenstein. It is a film for the '80s shot in the style of the '50s. And it's a whale of a good time in the theatre. Strange Invaders benefits from its strong cast. Several of the actors have worked under Laughlin's direction before, so it's easy to see why things click so well between them. Like the movie itself, Paul LeMat's performance as Bigelow gets off to a slow start. As the film's style gels, so does LeMat's, and he soon has the audience rooting for him. Nancy Allen makes a lovely, lively heroine. She also offers trenchant insights on the world of tabloid journalism. Michael Lerner's resolute Willie holds a few surprises for the audience. A character actor of the first rank, Lerner pulls off the twists with cool expertise. In the roles of Arthur Newman and Mrs. Benjamin, Kenneth Tobey and Louise Fletcher provide villains who are fun to watch in spite of their evildoing. Fletcher, a UNC graduate, picked up an Oscar in 1975 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The-, part of Bigelow's ex-wife, Margaret, calls for a catatonic perfor mance. Diana Scarwid, seen earlier this year as Cher's lover in Silkwood, does the role justice. Fiona Lewis, Wallace Shawn and June Lockhart are also good in their smaller roles. Veteran character actor Charles Lane is a riot in the mandatory Voice of Scientific Reason role. He's the one who gets to say things like, "Son, I've been an astronomer for, 40 years, and I've seen some mighty strange things, but..." Laughlin's direction shows that he has the '50s technique firmly under control, especially when he depicts Bigelow's trip to Centerville by superimposing a road map onto shots of Bigelow driving. Laughlin collaborated with William Condon on the script, which also displays evidence of a careful study of sci-fi films of the '50s. The dialogue is often inten tionally unintentionally funny, and it's frequently punctuated just a little too much by John Addison's ominous music. The special effects are competent but, again intentionally amateurish in places. Anyone who remembers staying up to watch the local TV station's late-night re runs of old science fiction and horror movies will have a blast with Strange In vaders. But the film isn't all borrowing and homage. It stands well on its own with legitimate shocks and thrills, so even the uninitiated can enjoy it. J Campus Calendar The Carolina Student FundDTH Campus Calendar will appear every . Monday and Thursday. Announce ? ments to be run on Monday must be placed in the box outside the Carolina I Student Fund office on the third floor I of South Building by 3 p.m. the Friday before they are .to run. Announce- ments "to be run on Thursday must be placed in the box by 5 p.m. of the pre ! ceding Tuesday. Only announcements from University recognized and cam I pus organizations will be printed. I Today I 3-30 p.m. UNC Pre-Law Club meeting in Union. 3:45 p.m. Nutrition and Behavior seminar by the Department of Nutrition. 231kosenau, School of Public Health. I 7 p.m. Northwest IVCF large group meeting in the Chapel of the Cross parlor. Sports Club Council meeting in tne union. Maranatha Christian Fellowship uill cVirtu f"Vi a ri rt c rf Firf" in ' Hamilton 100. 8 p.m. South Campus IVCF meeting in 1 Avery Social Lounge. I 9 p.m. University of New Hampshire Exchange informational meeting in Union. I I Friday ' 5:30 p.m. Campus Y Dinner Discussion at I the home of Charles Jenner. I 7 p.m. IVCF Off-Campus Chapter I Meeting in the basement of the Bible Church. - 7:30 p.m. IVCF Northeast Chapter Meeting ai cnapei oi me ross. Saturday 9 a.m. P.E. majors will sponsor a Jump Rope For Heart in Woollen Gym. Call the American Heart Association at 968-4453. , 9:30 a.m. Anglican Student Fellowship breakfast at Chapel of the Cross. 7 p.m. Maranatha Christian Fellowship Worship Service in Room 224 of the Union. Sunday 7 p.m. Baptist Student Union Choir Re hearsal at BSU. Monday 2:30 p.m. "Behavioral Approaches to Obesity," Seminar by the De partment of Nutrition , in 231 Rosenau Hall. 7 p.m. UNC Audience for Jazz meeting in the Union. Music Critic for Down Beat magazine will speak. Sociology Club will show "Kill ing You Softly" and have a dis cussion. Place to be announced. ITEMS OF INTEREST National Teacher's Exam is April 14. Specialty Exam On ly. Late registration accepted ir received by Monday. March 19. Last specialty exam until November. Forms available in Nash Hall. Dental Cofege Admissioa Test is April 14. Registration must be received by Monday, March 19. Forms in Nash Hall and 201 D Steele. Applications are now available for students interested in serving on a CAA committee. Pick up applications at Union desk. Applications wiH be avaaaMe ant3 March 28 for Assistant Attorney Generals, Attorney General's staff, and Under graduate Honor Court. Applications available at Union Desk and in Suite C. A demonstration of Videodisc Technotogy to coincide with the Videodisc display in the lobby at noon during March in Room 201 of the Health Sciences Library. Free. Group dkcusskM with graduating students about life after college in 218 Union. Wednesday. March 21 at 3:30 p.m, .1 BUY ONE. Medium 2-ingredient pizza, get one of equal or less value for $2.00 Medium 3-ingredient pizza, get one of equal or less value for $1.00 Medium 4 ingredient pizza, get one equal or less value FREE Expires 33084 one selection per coupon DELIVERY ONLY Reg. crust only 968-UNC1 An Exciting Alternative for Today's Singles - Pursuit' of Acceptable Intelligent Relationships You choose: age range, educational level, whether or not you prefer . non-emokert, etc. Our computer' PAIRS you with others who hare the same preference and similar interests and attitudes. An Organization Designed for Discriminating And Busy People To request information and questionairet contact PAIR 304 Woodland Church Road, Goldcboro, North Carolina, 27553 Ph. 919 735-2305 ' locally owned and operated
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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March 15, 1984, edition 1
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