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PAGE 6—January 10, 1974
TV Movies
(V LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
SUNDAY, JANUARY 13 — 7:30 p.m.
(ABC) -- TRUE GRIT (1969) -- Great, rousing
Western based on the Charles Portis novel,
and starring Kim Darby as the justice-minded
little gal with true grit, and John Wayne as the
one-eyed, boozy U.S. Marshal who helps her
out. Glen Campbell is along for the ride, too,
The story has Mattie Ross (Miss Darby) on
the trail of her father's killer, joining up with
Marshal "Rooster” Cogburn (Wayne) and
Texas Ranger “Le Boef” (Campbell), who is
on the trail of the same man. Their adventures
and scrapes with death are furious and
action-packed, and the whole thing is
leavened beautifully with earthy, very human
touches and humor. See it as a family. (A-l)
MONDAY, JANUARY 14 — 9:00 p.m.
(ABC) -- FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)
Risque but routine James Bond
fantasy-thriller, starring Sean Connery as 007,
Danieia Bianchi as a scrumptious
double-agent, and Robert Shaw as a sinister
Russian hit man. The plot involves the
Russians’ attempts to eliminate Bond from
the international espionage scene, and the
action, as we all know, involves our hero’s
impossible feats afield and, alas, abed. Mucho
violence, plenty sex, all of it pure fantasy, but
bothersome nonetheless. (B)
9:00 p.m. (NBC) -- THE NAKED
RUNNER (1967) -- Frank Sinatra is decent,
non-pro Sam Laker, American exile and
ex-sharpshooter manipulated by British
intelligence to kill an "enemy of the people”
in this suspenseful though wildly improbable
yarn from Francis Clifford novel, directed by
Sidney J. Furie. Furie’s concern with official
ruthlessness that uses a man so is remindful of
his earlier Ipcress File. Very intricate plot
sometimes proves hard to follow, but
interesting premise, exceptional scenic
composition, artful color phqtography make
for an absorbing Couple of hours. With Nadia
Gray and other able supporting players.
(A- III)
TUESDAY, JANUARY 15 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - MRS. SUNDANCE -- Allegedly a
sequel, this seems more like a rip-off of
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE
KID. Storyline here casts Elizabeth
Montgomery as Sundance’s "widow,”
returned from Bolivia after the big shoot-out
that ended the original film (and she thought
the Kid’s life as well). She tries to live a quiet
life, but finds that bounty hunters are after
her -- and perhaps the Kid himself, who is
rumored to have survived the gunfight...
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16 — 8:00 p.m.
(ABC) -- THE NIGHT STALKER - Original,
ninety-minute television feature about a
hard-boiled newsman’s fight against
censorship by his paper. The paper is
complying with the Las Vegas police
department to kill a story about a vampire
who has been terrorizing the casino strip. If
you can believe all of that, you might as well
tune in. Darren McGavin, Carol Lynley,
Simon Oakland star - but we won’t say which
is the witch.
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - SOME KIND OF A
NUT (1969) -- A bank teller (Dick Van
(Dyke), picnicking in the park with his
financee (Rosemary Forsyth), is stung on the
chin by a bee. This painful condition forces
him to grow a beard. The beard in turn earns
him an unjustified reputation as a
non-conformist which he feels obliged to
defend rather than knuckle under to his
employers’ petty officiousness. Fellow
employees and associates choose sides in the
dispute which develops into a protest
movement, in the course of which the hero
rediscovers the sterling qualities of his
about-to-be-ex-wife (Angie Dickinson). Buried
somewhere in this plot is a pleasantly
whimsical examination of contemporary
man’s search for intergrity and individuality.
(A-l II)
9:30 p.m. (ABC) - SCREAM OF THE
WOLF -- TV feature stars Clint Walker, Jo An
Pflug. This is a horror-thriller about the
hunting down of a wolf-turned-man (or is it a
man-turned-wolf) who’s been putting the bite
on the local yokels. Big Clint is the man with
the gun.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 17 — 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) -- THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET --
No, folks, it’s not the chicken casserole served
by the stewardess. As if flying in a jetliner
isn’t enough of an adventure these days, this
made-for-television fantasy dishes up a
cantankerous ghostly presence that manifests
itself at a high altitude. The ghost is pretty
scary in its own right, but wait until you see
what happens once the passengers realize all
that’s needed to quiet things down in a
human sacrifice! Ghoulish.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 18 — 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - THE UNDEFEATED (1969) - Solid,
unpretentious Western has old-fashioned
movie virtues and the great strengths of John
Wayne and Rock Hudson in the key roles.
Wayne and Hudson, are, respectively,
ex-Union and ex-Confederate officers leading
bands toward Mexico for a new start. They
meet, clash a bit, and gradually develop a
deep respect for each other, all the while
taking adventure and adversity by the horns.
Good viewing for ail. (A-l)
8:30 O.m. (ABC) - SKYWAY TO DEATH
- Adventure-action drama centers on a rescue
attempt when an ariel tramway ( a funicular
conveyance, for your information) gets stuck
halfway up a perilous mountainside, with a
carload of interesting folks and a big storm
approaching. Gasp! Bobby Sherman, Stefanie
Powers, John Astin, Joseph Campanella are
some of the folks on board.
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - THE ARRANGEMENT
(1969) - Kirk Douglas stars in this Elia Kazan
movie based on an Elia Kazan novel based in
part on Elia Kazan’s life. The story is the
not-so-savory tale of the rich-but-unfulfilled
life of a high-powered advertising exec, who
has certain “arrangements” - for example,
with his loving wife Deborah Kerr, and with
his loving mistress Faye Dunaway. But we all
know that success is never enough - right? (B)
0000000.0000000000000000000
Film Classifications
A — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
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/// / // /ui y \ i
DON'T LOOK NOW (Paramount) . . .E-
ngrossing, maddening, “psychic mystery.”
British cinematographer- turned-director
Nicholas Roeg has to date made three
pictures. The first was a muddled Mick Jagger
vehicle entitled “Performance,” which Roeg
co-directed with Donald Cammed; the second
was the far more fascinating "Walkout”,
which set in the exotic environs of Australia’s
vast Outback. With his third feature, “Don’t
Look Now," Roeg Seems to have settled into
a pattern in which he relates a complex theme
of illusion and reality by way of a series of
distractingly beautiful and maddeningly
symbolic visual references-which do not
necessarily add up to a complete plot or, for
that matter, a very interesting story.
Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a
distraught English couple awash in an
off-season Venice, he ostensibly there to
supervise the reconstruction of a crumbling
church, she ostensibly to keep him company,
and both in reality to escape their
Herefordshire mansion where their little girl
was accidentally drowned. They are also
attempting to regain their balance as man and
wife, in Venice, which Roeg and cameraman
Anthony Richmond capture in a state of cold
and moist decay, Sutherland and Christie
gradually become aware of Sutherland's
psychic “gift” of second sight - a power
which he is loathe to recognize, but which she
regards as a key to their emotional difficulties
and also as a means of access to their lost
child. Through a chance encounter with a pair
of touring British sisters, Miss Christie
becomes convinced that their little girl is
trying to reach them, more specifically, trying
to warn them that Sutherland is in grave
danger. Other plot complications flow freely,
some credibly, others no so; all of them lead
to a climax and resolution that are neither
shocking nor satisfying, but which follow the
basic direction of the Daphne DU Maurier
story upon which the film is based.
As described and executed, “Don't Look
Now” is a visually engaging but dramatically
unrewarding film that has its main appeal in
its location and in the fine performances of its
two stars. Apart from the inappropriateness
of its title, which suggests, say, a Jack
Lemmon comedy, there is nothing in the film
that places it outside of the broad middle
range of film achievement. There is, however,
a long sequence in the middle of the film - a
sequence of explicit love-making in the
afternoon intercut and ironic flash-forwards
of the couple dressing afterwards - that will
make the film somewhat of a problem for
most viewers. In a film that is basically a
psychic potboiler, is it necessary to bathe us
so much flesh, for so long? (B)
HAPPY NEW YEAR (Avco-Embassy)
Happy New Year, indeed! This delightful,
sophisticated caper-comedy from French
director Claude (A MAN AND A WOMAN)
Lelouch has just the right blend of tension
and warm comedy to keep us all glowing. The
film centers around a tough-but-tender fellow
played by Lino Ventura, who with a genially
bumbling partner masterminds the robbery of
the chic Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry shop in
Cannes. The scenery is lovely, as the tale
unfolds in flashback, but complications set in
when Ventura gradually falls in love with
Francoise Fabian, an independent gal who
runs the antiques shop next door to the geme
emporium. There are several twists to the tale,
all delightful and revealing of human nature,
and Lelouch’s deft touch with both intriguing
story and attractive characters in evident.
Enjoy, enjoy. (A-l11)
CINDERELLA LIBERTY (FOx) With
James Caan, Marsha Mason, and Kirk
Calloway as an unusual family unit,
director-producer Mark Rydell has fashioned
a transparently “adult” soap opera frothing
with heartbreak, misery, pathos and, of
course, a happy ending. The story involves
sailor Caan’s involvement with bar-girl Mason
and her half-back son Calloway, who is quite
naturally surly towards his mother’s
night-time visitors. After many false starts,
Caan and Mason fashion a stable arrangement
of sorts, and Caan and Calloway chip away at
a “father”-son relationship - only to see it all
brought to the brink of ruin by all softs of
theatrical devices and sappy plot twists. The
film is far too long in terms of its pretensions,
far too “adult” for its lack of credible drama.
It does have a lot of clever dialogue and a few
humorous scenes, but these cannot overcome
its gratuitous use of nudity and what must be
presumed to be the language of today’s Navy.
(B)
FANTASTIC PLANET (New World) This is
an extraordinarily lovely and haunting
animated feature set in the distant future and
related in surrealistic terms. Backed by an
eerie electronic soundtrack, with expressively
dubbed French, the story is one of reversal —
humans are miniscule vermin in a world of
purple giants who are human in form but
reptilian of feature. The Traags, as the giants
are called, periodically exterminate the Oms,
or humans, just as people today routinely
exterminate rodents and roaches. Aside from
occasionally se ving as pets for Traag young,
the Oms have no place in the Traag’s scheme
of things. Hence their existence is a contest of
survival, which is complicated further by their
inability to get along tribally with one
another. The film is told from the point of
view of one of the Om leaders, who
eventually escapes from being a Traag pet to a
scarcely more secure world in the savage wilds
of the strange planet’s wilderness areas. He
eventually leads a band to another planet, a
move ultimately resulting in an uneasy truce
between Traag and Om. For adults, the
picture, the creation of Rene Laloux and a
French-Czech production team, can be a
fascinating experience, full of liquid beauty in
sight and sound; for teens and emotionally
mature adolescents, a trip to see “Fantastic
Planet” could serve as a springboard for
discussion of man in the universe. The very
young, however, might be disturbed by the
occasional brutalities and the type of nudity
associated with tribes living in a savage state.
(A-l II)
THE DEADLY TRACKERS (Warners) is
an endless and almost unendurable account of
one sheriff’s relentless quest for revenge.
Kilpatrick the Irish lawman (Richard Harris)
sees his family murdered by a swaggering
outlaw named Brand (Rod Taylor) and his
unseemly cohorts. Kilpatrick follows this ugly
crew to Mexico, renounces his earlier
commitment to justice and pacifism, and kills
the villains one by one. The twist in “The
Deadly Trackers” is that a Mexican sheriff (Al
Lettieri) also wants Brand for trial; when
Kilpatrick kills Brand, the sheriff’s passion for
law and order drives him to kill Kilpatrick.
Much of “The Deadly Trackers” is a graphic
delineation of Kilpatrick’s trials and
tribulations. In addition to the problem of
killing his enemies one by one, Kilpatrick is
often beset by Mexican villagers, and is
hindered by the sheriff's commitment to law.
Thus, much of “The Deadly Trackers”
consists of bloody fights; Kilpatrick’s lust for
revenge is paralleled by the director Barry
Shear’s fixation on gore. And to this
sensationalism the simplistic notion of law so
often expounded in the film, and “The
Deadly Trackers” offers a trail most audiences
would be wisest to avoid. (B)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
Day of the Dolphin, The (Avco) - A-ll
Fantastic Planet (New World) -- A-lll
Jimi Hendrix (Warners) - A-lll
Papillon (Allied Artists) - A-lll
Willie Dynamite (Universal) - B
Mind Games
We’re playing those mind games together,
pushing the barriers, planting seeds.
Playing the mind gorilla, chanting the Mantra,
peace on earth. -
We all been playing those mind games forever, some
kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind gorilla, some call it magic,
the search for the grail.
Love is the answer, and you know that for sure,
Love is a flower,
you got to let it, you got to let it grow.
So keep on playing those mind games together,
faith in the future, outta the now.
You just can’t beat on those mind gorillas, absolute
elsewhere in the stones of your mind.
Yeah, we’re playing those mind games forever, projecting
our images in space and in time.
Yes is the answer, and you know that for sure.
Yes is surrender,
you got to let it, you got to let it go.
So keep on playing those mind games together, doing
the ritual dance in the sun.
Millions of mind gorillas putting their soul power
to the karmic wheel.
Keep on playing those mind games forever, raising
the spirit of peace and love.
(I want you to make love, not war. I know
you’ve heard it before)
p 1973 EMI Records Limited
(John Lennon - BMI)
Man lives in a world of noise. From the blare of transistor radios to the
V
background music of the doctor’s office, there’s hardly a place he can go to
escape it.
It’s no wonder that man is uncomfortable with silence - it doesn’t produce
any results, you can’t measure it and it seems like a waste of time. But silence is
essential to man. Without an appreciation for silence he risks losing his peace of
mind.
More and more you can see groups concerned with the recovery of the value
of silence in life. Schools of transcendental meditation draw much attention and
the interest in Eastern religions is affecting the West as never before. Such
groups, however, are not so much interested in silence for the sake of silence,
but they stress a far more important reality: the constant discovery of man’s
spiritual or interior life, for which silence is such a necessary first step.
John Lennon’s “Mind Games” reminds us of the importance of paying serious
attention to the interior life. The words seem to refer to a particular system of
mysticism, but the song says much about Christian meditation and prayer as
well.
It is interesting to notice some of Lennon’s attitudes that seem to result from
his spiritual exercises - love as the answer, patience in love because it has to
grow, faith in the future, yes as surrender, raising the spirit of peace and love.
These are very wholesome values but there still seem to be unanswered
questions. What is the basis of faith and love? To whom or to what are you
surrendering?
Christian meditation and contemplation has an additional important
dimension. Here the silence involves not only the self or some cosmic influence
of the universe, but it serves as the space for the encounter with a personal God.
Silence allows a person to be himself before God with no need to pretend for
He knows us just as we are and He knows just what we need. It’s in the silence
that one gains a true feeling of dependency upon God - taking God on His own
terms for a change without worrying so much about what we would have Him
do. It’s in the silence that man learns to listen to the Word of God alive in his
own heart, ever calling him to love. It is in responding to this love that man
learns more and more who he was meant to be.
(Direct all correspondence to: The Dameans, St. Joseph Church, P.O. Box 5188,
Shreveport, La. Z1HJX)
COMMUNISM TODAY, by Douglas
Hyde. University of Notre Dame Press.
(Notre Dame, Ind., 1973) 173 pages,
$7.95 ($2.95 paper). Reviewed by
Joseph R. Thomas, NC News Service
For those wary - or weary - of the
anti-communist polemics issuing from
the far right, here is a timely volume by
an expert in the field that puts the topic
in perspective.
Douglas Hyde - for that new
generation of readers who may not be
familiar with his name despite the 14
previous books he has written — is
England’s Louis Budenz, an author and
lecturer who left the Communist party
and became a Catholic.
But unlike many authors who desert
one cause for another, Hyde is able to
discuss historical aspects of communism
and current communist strategy with
equanimity and objectivity. And unlike
Budenz, he doesn’t assume any great
amount of prior knowledge of
communism on the part of his audience.
Budenz, someone once said, “writes
like a communist,” meaning that his
work was frequently difficult to
decipher, almost as if he was trying to
obscure his real meaning. Not so with
Hyde, who forsakes communist jargon
for the Queen’s English. The result is a
primer on the development of
communism, its philosophical ideas, its
tactics, its influence and its
contemporary directions.
That this is an updating of his first
work, “The Answer to Communism,”
written in 1949, ought not put the
reader off. For one thing, it is an
extensive revision of that book. For
another, it represents the analysis of a
man who not only knew communism
from the inside but has kept in touch
with its changing strategies and fortunes
through travel and research.
For the reader, one value of
“Communism Today” is that Hyde does
not engage in condemnations, warn of
impending disasters, fret over
communist advances nor attempt to
rouse the troops - hallmarks of much
that is being written about communism
today.
Rather, he explains its beginnings,
examines its basic aims and beliefs,
details its strategy (then and now),
outlines its “ethics,” reviews its
evolution and probes its problems.
Through it all, he views communism as
communism views itself-a revolutionary
force bent (in its purest form) on
improving the lot of man (even if it
must first crush him to do so).
Hyde writes from the realization that
the world has changed, that communists
and Christians alike are aware of this,
and that dialogue has replaced
confrontation. He concludes that
revolutionary fervor-at least in Russia
and Europe -- has warned with
increasing affluence, although it has
increased elsewhere, notably in Latin
America and the Far East.
One result, according to Hyde, has
been a fragmentation of communist
effort with the emergence of
Trotskyites, Maoists, and Fidelistas
alongside Stalinists and traditional
Marxists. His explanation of how one
differs from another does much to
explain some of the tensions within
communism today.
Examining the possibilities for
dialogue, Hyde notes: “Traditionally,
Christians have been more concerned
with the individual than with social
change whilst communists have been
more preoccupied with social change
than with the individual. It is here that
dialogue may have most to offer - in
enabling the two sides to explore what
they have to learn from each other,
although in the process Christians have
already learned how much the Church
has to say on the need for social change
whilst communists have discovered how
much Marx wrote on the individual.”
After making that observation, Hyde
closes with an analysis of Marx’s theory
of alienation, a reading of which is
familiar ground for anyone conversant
with contemporary human problems.
All in all, here is a book that is
important reading for anyone hoping to
understand the forces at work in today’s
society.
(Joseph R. Thomas is the managing
editor of The Advocate, the Newark,
N.J., archdiocesan newspaper.)
BLIND EXECUTIVE -- Joe Lomangino, blind business executive of
New York, laughs with his friend, Franciscan Father Charles Repole. Mr.
Lomangino is the founder and director of The Workers of Our Lady of
Mount Carmel, whose 300 members spread devotion to the Mother of
God. (NC Photo by Chris Sheridan)