Word: screens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Those who do not yet know about her soon will. Hollywood tom-toms are all but nominating her for an Academy Award for her first screen role, in The Rose. The movie, the story of a doomed '60s rock star, is one of the few commercial hits of the fall season, and enthusiastic word of mouth is proving more potent than any advertising. Meanwhile, for those who can make it to Broadway, the lady's other, outrageously funny side is on view at the Palace Theater in Bette! Divine Madness. It is the hottest ticket in Manhattan...
...even laughs at her own pretensions to stardom. She announces that she is "a screen star, in the tradition of Shirley Temple, Liv Ullmann and Miss Piggy." When the audience good-naturedly boos one of her jokes, she exclaims: "The crowd turns on the diva. [Pause] But the diva doesn't care!" Her singing, much of it done with three saucy young women called the Harlettes, is no threat to Streisand, or even Minnelli. But it bursts with feeling-almost too much for mere lyrics to express...
...bales of straw or garbage bags full of leaves against the outside of drafty house foundations. Cora Lee McKnight, 68, a Decatur, Mich., grandmother tells of Depression-era schemes to beat the cold: smearing a paste of flour and water into cracks, stuffing thickly folded newspapers between window and screen. "And we usually put hot-water bottles into our beds to keep our feet warm," she says. Other sug gestions: wrapping water heaters in blankets, insulating windows with corrugated cardboard and placing old carpets under new ones...
While it was generous of Spielberg to employ so large a percentage of the Screen Actors Guild, the huge cast almost immobilizes the movie. It takes too long to establish who everyone is and to knit all the plot strands together. Even though the film is relentlessly busy - there seems to be a physical gag in every shot - it has little of the director's usual narrative drive. The movie's story does not so much move forward as gradually selfdestruct. At times 1941 drags to a com- plete and stultifying halt: a lengthy dancehall brawl, conceived along...
Since Spielberg gives each actor the same small amount of screen time, the audience has no one to root for, and the stars have few chances to make a strong impression. Often the frothiest bits, such as the doubleentendre courtship of a secretary (Nancy Allen) and a young soldier (Tim Matheson), are suffocated by John Williams' excessive musical score. Only Belushi upstages the chaos around him, and even his repertoire of eating and belching jokes seems strained when separated from the scruffy, modest context of Animal House...