The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 80, No. 13, Ed. 1 Friday, November 20, 1992 Page: 10 of 20
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10 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1992 THE RICE THRESHER
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
^QRkccmdu: Watch fomfcat-
F R I Ing chic kens and sodomizing
cows In Marquis (1991), a French
barnyard animal muppet version of
the Merquie de Sade's tale. At 7:30
and 9:30 pjrru, Rice Media Center, $4.
Rice Dance Theater's fed concert, "A
Monk's VMon and Western Skies." Harjo
Studio, Gym, 8 p.m. 547-4308
Rwc cmqma: Two fHms by French
sat dbedorandartistJeanCocteau.
Beauty and tha Beast (1946), at 7:30
p.m., and Orpheua (I960), at 9:30 p.m.
Rice Dance Theater, 8 p.m.
Houston's Presbyterian Players wW per-
form Baekat by Jean Anoullh. At 2 p.m.
In the Rloe Chapel. Free.
t
22 ^ cwema: Italian director, Pier
sun Paolo Pasollni's Taorama
(1968), structured around the visit of a
stranger to a Milanese household and
the changes that follow. At 7:30 p.m.
Shephero School Faculty Chamber Music
Concert: Music by Haydn, Debussy, and
Brahms wiN be performed. 8p.m., Duncan
Recital Had. Free.
Coffeehouse: Sid Rich College night.
Shepherd Singers: Klmberty Camp
m o n conducts music by Bach, Ravel,
and others. 8 p.m., Stude Concert Had.
Free.
Brown theater: Try outs for Tha Effect of
Gamma Rays on Man-in4he-Moon Mari-
golds, by Paul Zindel. Five female roles
are needed. 8 p.m., Brown Commons.
For mote info, call Todd at 8104.
Coffeehouse: Hanzen College night.
Ben & Jerry's Traveling Show from 12:4S
to 4:15 p.m. on the playing field next to
Jones. $1 ice cream!
Becxer, 7 p.m.
*2^ Real Issues: Happiness is Not
t u e Fun! 9 p.m., at Sammy's
Brown theater: Tryouts for Tha Effact of
Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Mari-
gOldS, 8 p.m.
Coffcbmuse: Massil Sare, "Muslca en tu
Idioma."
2£7*ice c,nema: ^ foreign Affair
F R I (1948), at 7:30 p.m., and Man-
power (1941), at 9:40 p.m.
23 Rice cinema: Accident (1967),
s a T at 7:30 p.m., and Tha Servant
(1963), at 9:30 p.m.
Rice cinema: Pier Paolo Pasollni's
sun brilliant film, Medea (1971),.
At 7:30 p.m.
Coffeehouse: Stress reduction
m o n tea, sponsored by Health Edu-
cation.
Coffeehouse: Wiessmen on caffeine
tue
Coffeehouse: Hipnopop
w e d
3 Coffeehouse: Katie Krolicowski,
t h u Dave Edelman, sax.
Recent Color Photographs by Stephen
Scheer, are on view at the Media Center
until Dec. 5.
Texas Folk Art, at the Sewall Art Gallery
through Dec. 12.
Bonfire of the vampires?
An exercise in gorgeous grand opera style—Dracula'
by kristian Lin
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a rather dry novel
that has all its ideas straight, but just doesn't
deliver much excitement. Bram Stoker's
Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is a
movie that makes for good spectacle, but messes
up Stoker's ideas.
The story is fairly well-known. Count Dracula
(Gary Oldman) is a vampire who comes to 1897
London for fresh blood and sets his sights on
Mina Harker (Winona Ryder). A group of men
led by Dr. Abraham van Helsing (Anthony
Hopkins) must rescue her from Dracula's
clutches.
Screenwriter James V. Hart's adaptation of
the Stoker novel is closer to the novel than the
original Dracula made in 1931. Hart retains
some of the famoas lines from the original ("I
never drink... wine," and "Children of the night.
What music they make.") and doesn't retain
some of Stoker's incredibly bad dialogue.
However, Hart adds on a subplot: Mina looks
exactly like the Count's bride of four centuries
ago, who committed suicide in the mistaken
belief that he was dead. Dracula's bloodlust is
turned into love gone wrong.
Casting Gary Oldman as Dracula was a stroke
of genius. Oldman has played everyone from Sid
Vicious (Sid and Nancy) to a Shakespearean
courtier (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
Dead) to Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK). His
chameleon-like quality suits Dracula well, since
he appears at different times as a wolfish
creature, a young dandy, a humanoid bat, a
warrior king, a green mist and a hideous old
aristocrat. His Dracula is seductive and charming,
but also cruel and repellent.
Ryder is achingly beautiful and has the sort of
intensity that terrifies. That's good, because her
character (like most of the others) is so under-
written that by the end of the movie there's
nothing left to sustain her except that intensity.
Hopkins's batty Dr. van Helsing is in many
ways the comic relief in this movie. After Lucy's
death he asks for post-mortem instruments. He is
asked, "Why? Do you want to perform an
autopsy?" He replies, "No, 1 just want to cut off
her head and take out her heart" His quirky sense
of timing is one of the oddest things in this weird
movie.
British actress Sadie Frost plays Lucy
Westenra and convinces as both outrageous flirt
at the beginning, and bloodthirsty vampire at the
end. The other notable performance is from Tom
Alternative?
Waits as Renfield, a
businessman driven insane
by Dracula. The four young
men who team up to save
Mina are hardly distin-
guishable from each other
in the book, and their lot
isn't much different here.
Keanu Reeves, Richard E.
Grant, Cary Elwes, and Bill
Campbell, who play them,
are all swallowed up by the
show.
The real star of this
movie, naturally, is
Coppola. He has always
had a tendency to overdo
things, and excess is just
what the horror movie
thrives on. Apocalypse Now
is, properly speaking, a
horror film that fails
because it assaults the
senses and sensibilities
without regard for the
audience's intelligence.
Dracula doesn't try to beat
the audience into submis-
sion, making it more
successful. Some of
Coppola's visuals are
disgusting (Dracula licking
the blood from a razor,
various beheadings) and others make no sense.
Coppola's shots of blood corpuscles and absinthe
bubbles almost might have been parodied in
Woody Allen's pictures of sperm cells in
Husbands and Wives.
Nevertheless, there are some beautiful things
here. Kudos should go to Michael Ballhaus
(cinematography), Thomas Sanders (production
design), Eiko Ishioka (costumes), Roman
Coppola (visual effects), and the rest of the
production staff. Coppola the director creates
some striking pictures of tomato-red sunsets and
the Count dancing with Mina in a room full of
candles. There are shots where Sadie Frost looks
unnervingly like a woman in a Pre-Raphaelite
painting. Even at the most ludicrous moments,
everything looks the way it should in this movie,
and this more than anything else recommends
Dracula.
Dracula is dried out somewhat by its
morbidly humorous moments (which Apocalypse
Now was sorely lacking in). Coppola plays tricks
Winona Ryder swoons prettily In the arms of Dracula (Gary Oldman).
with Dracula's shadow, which doesn't always
move with him, and creates a nervy visual joke
right after Lucy's beheading (I won't spoil it).
The problem is that while the movie succeeds
in providing little shocks and good-looking
pictures, it never achieves any great emotional
effect. That's trouble, particularly for what is
supposed to be a love story. If it weren't for the
energy of Oldman and Ryder, the love scenes
would be, well, lifeless.
Dracula, like Apocalypse Now, starts out
intense and has nowhere to build to. The opening
scenes in Transylvania look like something out of
a Sergei Eisenstein film, replete with
Prokofievian music by Wojciech Kilar.
The whole thing is basically grand opera, and,
well, grand opera can be fun and impressive.
That's what Dracula is, but it also leaves you
cold. Film critic Pauline Kael once referred to
Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible as a brilliant
collection of photographic stills. Dracula is more
than that, but not much more.
KTRU's head spouts off on college charts and grunge fashion
by shaila k. dewan
As debate about alternative music rages, and
people threaten to vomit if they hear one more
word about the Seattle grunge scene, we
interviewed KTRU's general manager Heidi
Bullinga, and we only mention Nirvana once or
twice.
What is alternative music?
Do you want my definition or corporate
rock's definition?
Both, in order.
My definition is that it's*Dther music not
offered to you by the commercial radio spectrum.
The other definition is sort of a marketing
conspiracy designed by corporate rock to
infiltrate college radio, in order to turn us into
part of the machinery of selling music.
And how do they do that?
They pump everything up. There's a lot of
hype surrounding their releases....It's not like
when somebody just sends out a CD and people
listen to it and slowly they develop a liking or a
taste for it Music is just what it is, it's not
surrounded by all this hype and buildup of
extramusical things....We get so many CD
singles in, which is the most useless, boring,
predictable, environmentally unsound format. It's
designed to create a hit... [Corporates] generally
just spend a lot of money that independent record
labels can't afford to do. They just outspend
them. If we get a couple of 7"s in, I think it's
more important to listen to those, and nobody's
going to tell as to listen to those; we have to do
that on their own initiative, because [indies] don't
have the money to call as up and harass us....
So part of the responsibility of an alternative
station is to listen to everything that comes in
the door?
Well, unless you can tell by the cover that it's
total swill. You can't listen to everything. And if
it's going to be played by commercial stations we
Tgj'ijjg don't listen to it either. But yeah, it's a
lot of work....We've started getting a
3S8S lot more music in, because we've gone
XBj&P' up in power, and we've increased our
| market share, supposedly, though we
few" don't really sell anything. We're now a
1 high-profile station and major labels
really try to push their stuff on as.
Q It seems like KTRU's sort of the
beginning of the media food chain, so
to speak. You dig out something,
«sst drag it out—
Sometimes that happens, sometimes
the music that we play will never, ever
become commercial. And how do you
decide what goes on the playlist?
That's a tough one. [Music
gSSP** directors] Kyle [Bruckmann] and Keith
. gg [Rozendal] spend a lot of time doing
PSftfct thai And there's endless debate and a
considerable amount of dissension within the
station about what constitutes good music and
deserves to go on playlist....We try to keep it
really diverse.
And then the DJ has to play how much from
the playlist?
Roughly a third of what they play.
Major labels are picking up a lot more on
bands like Mudhoney, which is constantly
mentioned as "not popular yet." They were
picked up by Warner Bros. Are they still
alternative? Are they commercially viable
now just because they're on a major label?
A
No, there are some bands that have achieved
major-label status that will never become
commercially viable. At this point, Mudhoney
won't, because they're unwilling to compromise
their sound, but a major label picked them up
because they have a big underground following.
Mr. Bungle—they're commercially viable
because they can sell albums, but they'll never be
played by commercial radio because they can't
be used to sell advertising time. Naked City is
another really good example of a band that hasn't
sold out their musical style at all, but they've
done commercials for Nike now.
But Naked City hasn't sold out?
The reason they were chosen for the
commercials is that what they're playing is so
radical and so different and that was the image
Nike wanted to sell. So they've managed to make
money, but they haven't compromised.
What is this whole idea of this kind of music
being ased to sell? There was that story on
grunge style that we k)oked at. It's being
appropriated by people with money. They're
saying, look, I have greasy hair, I'm grunge,
and I'm spending a lot of money to be that
way.
I can't really explain fashion. That article was
really depressing. Somehow all the vitality is
being stolen by those people.
What about all the commercial stations doing
shows like "120 Minutes" or 101 doing
alternative rock shows? Is it commercially
viable if it's ghettoized?
They're trying to penetrate a college market
by creating a niche.-# you actually listen to "120
Minutes," it's very narrow...
But they can sell certain ads which go with the
see Alternative, pace 14
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Kim, Leezie & Carson, Chad. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 80, No. 13, Ed. 1 Friday, November 20, 1992, newspaper, November 20, 1992; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245826/m1/10/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.