Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 1990)
Arts & Entertainment |Film bad enough to give audience ‘Tremors’ By June Naugnton Senior Reporter “Tremors” is the type of movie that the producers should pay you to go see. Pretentious as this may sound, it’s mo^gj" true. Reality check? This movie needs one. It’s not loo much to ask, is it, just for a plot that has some degree of believability? This movie has none. What it has is four, humongous, snake creatures, a cute leading man (Kevin Bacon), some desolate, Cen tral California desert and a lot of comball lines. Everybody is after these four snake creatures that have taken over the entire, fictional area around Perfec tion, Nev. (The real-life filming lo cale was Lone Pine, Calif., a small town on the south-eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.) Bacon plays Valentine, a real, down home, straight-shootin’ Westerner. Down to the “Aw, shucks.” ^ Bacon’s character plays on every| stereotype of cowboys in existence.! Valentine and his buddy Earl, played! by Fred Ward, arc the first people the I audience sees -- the heroes. 1 The two are the handymen in the! 14-person town (and while these snake ' creatures are around, the population of Perfection diminishes rapidly). The two drive around in their beat-up pickup -- and later in a tractor — trying to save the town, while the snake crea tures devour eight humans, two horses, one generator, one station wagon, one pogo stick, three bombs, a lot of ammo, numerous cows and a flock of sheep. They must have been very, very hungry. Michael (“Steven Keaton”) Gross pulls an abrupt about-face from his kindly Family Ties character to play Bert, an elephant-gun-toting, bomb building maniac. He and his wife, Heather (played by country western singer Reba McEntire) own an arse nal the Soviets would envy. These people have enough guns and ammo to supply half the world for a year. Their Bronco license plates read “UZI 4 U.” Maybe that should have been a premonition of how bad the movie was going to be. Finn Carter, perhaps best known for her role on the soap opera “As the World Turns,” plays Rhonda, a seis mology student who’s up in Paradise Valley to check out what’s happening to the university’s seismographs. She nearly gets eaten by the strange crea tures but manages to stay alive long enough to get it on with Bacon. Victor Wong plays Walter, whose general store is eaten for lunch by the snake-things. Wong’s character was the appetizer. Oooh, yummy. Carter, Bacon and Ward have charisma, but their roles are not writ ten to suit their talents. If your friends ask you to accom pany them to the next showing of “Tremors,” please -- Just Say No. ‘‘Tremors” is playing at the Plaza 4, 12th and P streets. Andy Manhardt/Daiiy Nebraskan ‘Roger & Me’ a realistic slap in the face By Julie Naughton Senior Reporter Wcndey Stansler is a woman with a mission. Her goal is to help Film directoi Michael Moore and his crew inforrr the United States of the trying eco nomic limes in a town called Flint Mich. Stansler is the associate producei and co-editor of the Warner Brothers film, “Roger & Me,” which opens ir Lincoln Feb. 9. “Roger & Me” is the story of th< problems in Flint that occurred aftei General Motors Corp. closed dowi and moved out. The film is more thai a movie. It is a slap in the face by reality. Flint was the birthplace of GM. General Motors was the main indus try in town until GM Chairman Roger Smith decided to move the factory south of the border to Mexico. Smith’s decision was inspired by the fact that GM could pay hungry Mexican work ers 70 cents an hour. The GM move devastated Flint’s economy. People relied on their jobs at the factory to be able to put food on the table. The move eliminated 35,000 jobs in a town of 150.000 residents. Michael Moore, a Flint journalist, : wanted to do something to warn oth • ers that what happened in Flint could i happen in other cities. He called people \ that he’d worked with -- old friends -- people he thought could help. One of these people was Stanslcr. She liked the idea of making a movie to illustrate what had happened to Flint. She has been with the project “literally, since day one.” “Michael had been a writer for so long that he thought he’d try some thing different,” she said. Stansler said the crew wanted to bring the situation in Flint to the nation in a commercial way. “We didn’t want to make a heavy handed documentary,” Stansler said. “People wouldn’t be interested in a heavy-handed documentary.” Instead, they used humor. But the Film still brings up big questions about the fairness of the American economy. “Is it democratic?” asked Stansler. “You notice that we don’t try lo give the answers in the film. We don’t have the answers. We all need to work together to try to find the an swers. We feel that the film summa rizes the’80s.” Although the docu mentary style meant that the com pany had to depend on people’s will ingness to participate, Stanslcr said, the crew had no real problems round ing up participators. People were open to being filmed for the movie, she said. “For once, people felt that they were being heard, that their stories were being told,” she said. Stories like getting evicted on Christmas Eve, Stansler’s own favor ite scene. “You’re not going to see that on Ihc 6 o’clock news because nobody wants to see it,” Stansler said. Stansler wears a jacket made espe cially for the promotion tour. It says “Rogerama Tour 1989-90.” Some people, said Stansler, are suggesting that the film is unfair to Smith. “Malcolm Forbes said in the New York Times that the film isn’t fair to Roger Smith, that he’s a warm man, which is what a GM lobbyist says in the movie,” Stansler said. “It’s kind of ironic that they use exactly the same phrase.” She snorts. “Roger doesn’t see this as a prob lem,” Stansler said. “After all, he 50I a $2 million raise the year the ?lant in Flint closed.” —---1 Magic Slim calls Zoo Bar ‘home away from home’ By Michael Deeds Senior Editor Magic Slim and the Teardrops “Magic Slim Live!” Plymouth House, Inc. He ain’t slim, but he sure is magic. Anybody who has seen the jolly, jammin’ giantknows that Magic Slim pulls no punches when it comes to the blues. And the Chicago-based blues man is the first to say that Lincoln’s own Zoo Bar, 136 N 14th St., has become his home away from home. So why not release a beautiful compact disc featuring the sounds of the magic man and his band? Thank you, Plymouth House, for the insight and musical awareness. “Magic Slim Live!” is exactly what it says. The recording, which took place from Sept. 4 to Sept. 9, 1989, epitomizes a Magic Slim show perfectly. As the CD begins, the band is grooving and the rhythm guitarist is howling about “Let’s hear it for the star of the show.” And of course, the star is not on stage. So, as usual, the band keeps encouraging Magic to step down from the bar and mosey on up to the Zoo stage. Magic likes to have his drink be fore he plays. But when he finally rambles over to the microphone and picks up his guitar, it’s time to sit down in your scat. Anybody who has been smart enough to catch Magic Slim live will menially picture the entire show throughout this recording. Who needs MTV? “How y’all doin’?’’Magic hol lers, and the sparks fly. The band grooves through ten classics like “My Buddy Buddy Friends,’’“Mustang Sally, and the hilariously harmonized “Not The Same Person.’’ The big man rocks on lead guitar and grunts, wails and weeps out his grinding, blues vocals. Slim’s band, the Teardrops - Nick Holt, John Primer and Michael Scott — is always steady. But Slim isn t. He just rocks his audiences out of their seats with a style like, but unlike, Albert Collins and B.B. King. And to think the 52-year-old ex construction worker couldn t make a living playing his stuff until just over a decade ago. His first road trip out of Chicago was in 1975 when he came to Nebraska, and, yes, the Zoo Bar. “I know more people here than any place I ever played out of town, ’ ’ Slim has said. “So, here I am still at the Zoo 14 years later. “That’s a long time.” One hundred more years to you, Slim. “Magic Slim Live!’’ is a must for any true blues fanatic. Meat Puppets Diversity limitless in bluegrass band By Michael Deeds Senior Editor The Meat Puppets brought their barnyard punk style to a less-lhan packed Ranch Bowl in Omaha Saturday night, showing that musi cal diversity has no limitations. Outside, snow fell and traffic lined up as the icy terrain slowed Omaha lifestyles. Inside, the Pup pets look their amphetamine-driven blucgrass to a new level of heated metamorphosis. The Meat Puppets areacosmic mixture of form and fusion. First and foremost arc the hairy Kirk wood brothers, who front the eclec tic band. Lead vocalist Curl Kirkwood plays his guitar in a startling style -- he could be the result of a genetic experiment between Roy Clark and Steve Vai gone astray. Kirkwood is fast, frenzied and flailing as he plucks his guitar in a down-home, fingerpickin’ style. But, just as easily, he slides into a distorted reverb ecstasy; feed back and channels of mush pull his audiences into lost caverns of echoing horror when he ties a lead together. Kirkwood has a voice that could fit readily into any college band, from R.E.M. to the Cure - watch See MEAT on 11