Previews spoil 'Down to Earth'
BY SARAH SUMNER
If you want a movie that has
n't been redone and redone and
redone. Well, you aren’t going to
get it with “Down to Earth.”
This is the third time that this
idea has been made. “Heaven
Can Wait” with Warren Beatty was
a remake of “Here Comes Mr.
Jordan,” and the remake of the
remake is with Chris Rock.
Rock, who is an Saturday
Night Live alum and has had
parts in “Dr. Doolittle” and
“Dogma,” is Lance Bartlett, a no
talent comedian trying his best to
be one of the last comics to
appear at the Apollo before it
doses. He is killed before his time
(★★TO
and gets a second chance in an
old, rich white man’s body.
Rock is funny and makes out
rageous, hilarious facial expres
sions. He delivers his jokes well
and seems to be at ease with the
comedy part of the movie.
Of course he is. The romantic
side is a bit different He is not an
actor who can play off cheesy,
love scenes. He can’t help but
smile during the sweet scenes.
Regina King plays a social
rights activist and Rock’s love
interest. King, from “Enemy of
the State,” “Jerry Maguire,” and
the 1980s TV show “227,” has ver
satility to perform in dramas,
actions and comedies and comes
off as understanding her role by
playing it welL
Chazz Palminteri is Mr. King,
a sort of manager of heaven, who
makes sure that things run
smoothly. Palminteri is charming
and graceful in his acting tech
nique. Although he is a large fig
urehead in the movie, he isn’t in it
much, but when he is, he is the
focus of attention, demanding it
with his presence.
The movie is strong at the
beginning with joke after joke,
but unfortunately it is all seen
during the previews; it’s nothing
new. That is when the movie loses
a little oomph. It is still funny and
flowing, but it begins to repeat
the same dilemma that it had just
solved a few minutes before.
“Down to Earth" is a
mediocre movie that is funny in a
21st Century mind. It has good
jokes, but the love story is unreal
istic. Toward the end, it starts to
make you want to roll your eyes
and furrow your brow because
you know the happy ending is a
cop-out
“Down to Earth.” Starring
Chris Rock, Regina King and
Chazz Palminteri. Directed by
Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz.
Rated PG-13 for sexual humor,
language and drug references.
Showing at the Plaza 4 and East
Park.
Folk singer Moore
focuses on real issues
LAFTAfrom page 8
-^- T/1/5 is a piece that is
“He does a great mix of not typically heard in
acoustic blues, folk, original, . „
serious and funny music. Every COncen.
song doesn’t sound the same,”
she said. Joe Kraus
Hogue also appreciates the president, Lincoln Friends of
real life issues reflected in Chamber Music
Moore’s writing, which high- --
lights everything from relation- One song Hogue particularly
ships to kids. likes is called "Waitresses,”
“He writes real interesting which Moore wrote about differ
songs about all sorts of subjects,” ent waitresses he has come in
she said. contact with over the years.
Painter draws upon slavery
I He ASjUCIATcD Fticoo
As a young painter influenced
by the Harlem cultural
Renaissance and its expressions of
freedom, Jacob Lawrence blended
art and storytelling to portray two
blade icons’ triumph over oppres
sion. •
Inspired partly by his own
family’s slave past, Lawrence
chose Frederick Douglass and
Harriet TUbman as heroes for a
series of paintings tracing the abo
litionists’ lives from bondage to
champions of freedom.
Lawrence's tribute to their
unconquerable spirit is a 63-piece
exhibition on display at the Speed
Art Museum, a short distance
from die Ohio River that once rep
resented a springboard to free
dom for runaway slaves. Museum
• officials expect at least40,000 peo
ple to see the show, which opened
in early February and continues
through April 22.
Lawrence’s classic in narrative
art, painted in casein tempera on
hardboard panels, took three
years to research and paint, from
1938 to 1940. He wrote the cap
tions to accompany each paint
ing. Ihe series hdped catapult the
artist to a lofty [dace among 20th
Century American painters.
Lawrence died last June at 82.
“He had an intuitive sense of
howto tell a story visually, even at
a very, very young age,” says Lou
Stovall, a Washington, D.C., artist
and silkscreen printer who was a
friend and assodate of Lawrence.
Stovall, who printed many of
Lawrence’s works, says Lawrence
excelled at tapping historical sub
jects to mix social lessons into his
art
“Jacob used history to try to
teach some sense of tolerance and
racial equity at the same time as
making his art,” Stovall says.
Lawrence’s mixing of art and
history produced other acclaimed
series featuring Toussaint
L’Ouverture, the Haitian slave who
led his country to freedom from
French rule, the white abolitionist
John Brown and the great migra
tions of blacks from die South to
the North and West Fifteen screen
prints from the L’Ouverture series
are also on display as part of the
Speed exhibit
Artist Sam Gilliam recalls
watching four white women weep
as they toured Lawrence’s migra
tion series at a gallery in
Washington, D.C. It showed the
7 don't like black art be
particularly when we at
and outnumbered. Art t
the next step is very pox
I like about the Lawrenc
appeal of Lawrence’s art across
ethnic lines, he says.
“I don't like Made art being just
for black people, particularly
when we are against a high wall
and outnumbered,” says Gilliam,
who had a long friendship with
Lawrence. “Art that is open and
• shows the next step is very power
ful, and thatis what I like about the
Lawrence series.”
Lawrence’s own surroundings
- growing up during the
Depression, when culture thrived
in Harlem - nurtured him as an
artist and inspired him to portray
Douglass and TUbman.
Trained at the Harlem Art
Wbrkshops, he wasnt yet 20 when
he started working in die studio of
painter Charles Alston. It was
there that Lawrence met and
learned horn such intellectuals as
philosopher Alain Locke, writers
Langston Hughes and Claude
McKay and painter Aaron
Douglas.
Douglass and Tubman
remained inspiring figures in
Harlem, their names invoked by
street orators as the spirit of black
consciousness bloomed during
the era. The horrors of slavery
were also personal for Lawrence,
whose grandparents and great
grandparents had been enslaved
His Douglass-Tubman series
conjures powerful images of suf
fering, social turmoil and the ulti
mate triumph of the human spirit
over evil
The Speed’s exhibit hall is
filled with contemporary record
ings of spirituals that had been
popular among slaves. Some of
die songs offered more than com
fort, revealing clues that were
passed among slaves about safe
routes north# they should escape.
The series takes a sequential
glimpse into the abolitionists’
lives.
One painting shows a young
Douglass standing with two other
children watching the flogging of a
slave named Millie. She clutches a
tree whose branches reach out,
hg just for black people,
e against a high wall
hat is open and shows
verful, and that is what
e series.”
Sam Gilliam
artist
ominously, toward the black chil
dren and Millie.
“You feel the tension of die fig
ure of Millie as she is grabbing
onto the tree, trying to maintain
some sense of control and fighting
the overseer,” said Kim Spence,
the Speed Museum’s associate
curator.
As a young man, Douglass is
seen in another painting over
powering a man known as a “slave
breaker,” who is attempting to
beat him into submission.
TUbman felt the wrath of an
angry overseer in her own youth. A
painting shows TUbman stretched
on the ground after being struck
on the head with an iron bar. A
snake dithers nearby, a reference
to evil that appears in many of the
TUbman pictures as a denuncia
tion of slavery.
The next painting depicts
another traumatic moment from
TUbman’s childhood. She watches
as shadowy figures of women
slaves beg for mercy while being
flogged by an overseer, whip in
hand, who stands over them.
“His profile becomes very
wolf-like and very ominous,”
Spence says. “It is an incredibly
moving image because he uses sil
houette and form to tell such a
story.”
Another haunting painting
shows TUbman’s perspective from
the auction block, with subtle
hints of the hardships awaiting
her as prospective buyers size her
up with sinister, gray eyes. One
man holds a whip, another has a
holstered pistol. Barren trees
highlight the landscape.
The series shows the escape of
Douglass and TUbman from slav
ery and gradual rise to the fore
front of the abolitionist move
ment
The series takes Douglass and
Tubman through the Civil War
and ends with uplifting messages
of hope - an American flag and
yellow tulip in the Douglass series
and a bright, starry night in the
TUbman series.
String
trio hits
Sheldon
TRIO from page 8
the show’s program notes, with
Douvier stating that he "started
playing violin when he realized
that his older brother didn’t like
it,” and Hirth-Schmidt reveal
ing that he really wanted to
become a veterinarian, but he
“knew that laziness was not
compatible with the study of
veterinary medicine.”
The three musicians, how
ever, are very serious perform
ers, memorizing all of their
music.
This is rarely seen in cham
ber music, but it is something
that Kraus believes adds to the
audience’s enjoyment.
“When they play by heart, it
leaves them free to think about
the essence of the music,”
Kraus said.
Please recycle your
Daily Nebraskan.
Remembering Dr. King: Nebraska 1964
Only three weeks after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in
1964, the Reverend Dt Martin Luther Kingjt brought
his message of peace and hope to Lincoln.
At 3 p m. Sunday, Feb. 25, hear the great civil rights
leader’s speech in its entirety along with the reflections of
special guests who were in die audience that day
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