The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, April 01, 1976, Page Page 7, Image 9
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By Chuck Cromer
The Russell House University Union
Cinematic Arts Committee has one of the
most highly regarded college film
programs in the nation. Showing films
seven nights a week, the committee
provides an assortment of American and
fnrpion film rlaccirc thnt arp chnwn frpp
for the student body and their guests four
nights a week, while more recently
produced and fairly expensive to rent
pictures are brought to the theater three
nights a week with a minimal charge of $1.
io rouna oui ine semester, tne
Cinematic Arts Committee has scheduled
numerous American film classics from the
1930s and 1940s to entertain or educate the
average moviegoer.
At 8:30 p.m., April 6, the committee will
once again present comedy films in the
Golden Spur. The program that ran for
four weeks in the Snur earlier in the
semester was quite well received and has
warranted two-week continuation.
Tuesday night the feature length film,
The Golden Age of Comedy, along with the
shorts The Music Box and The Great
McGonigle will be shown. The Golden Age
of Comedy, starring such movie greats as
Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, Harry
Langdon, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard,
Ben Turpin, Edgar Kennedy, Charlie
Chase and the Keystone Kops, was the first
in Robert Youngson's series of silent
comedy compilations and it won an
Academy Award. It concentrates on Mack
Sennett and Hal Roach Productions made
between 1923 and 1928.
Among the directors featured are Frank
Capra, Leo McCarey and George Stevens.
There are scenes of slapstick with the
Keystone Kops and Billy Bevan (creating
the battle with the oyster gag), sequences
from Laurel and Hardy's We Slip Up, The
Second Hundred Years and other zany
nuns, iiieediiy win apuuia ui iuui
Mix, Douglas Fairbanks arid movie cenPonty's
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By Kd Turner
Jean-Luc Ponty first came to my attei
bought Elton John's Honky Chateau sever,
The most notable thing about his perform
recording is the difficulty with which it is di
the rest of the instrumentation.
I again noticed his name when it was poir
that he had joined John McLaughlin's Ma
chestra. Having a particular aversion to be
to McLaughlin's work, I placed Ponty's
category with those who may have poten
wish to exploit it.
I stand corrected.
Ponty's second release on Atlantic recort
prowess as a violinist to the fullest. lndee<
recordings he has worked on are good,
masterpiece. Ponty has shed all but one of
present on his first release and has formed ,
base upon which he expands with grace and
II would he extremely uimcuii u> alien
Polity's style beyond the general descriptioi
electric violinist. Any further descriptio
invite comparison, most probably a compai
not exist.
The music contained in this recording i
well defined Each piece seems to be an c
Though there are recurring themes thri
individual selection seems quite capable <
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sors; memorable scenes with Harry
Langtion; Ben Turpin's take-offs of Erich
Von Stroheim and the Merry Widow; Jean
Harlow losing her dress in a taxi door ; and
Andy Clyde playing checkers with a cat.
The Great McGonigle is actually a fiveminute
W.C. Fields short taken from his
feature length film, The Old Fashion Way
(1934). In this particular sequence, Fields
exhibits his old vaudevillian abilities in a
comic episode of mistaken identity on a
train.
Once again, Laurel and Hardy's
Academy Award winning short, The Music
Box (1932), has been booked.This crowd
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team attempting to deliver an upright
piano to a plush residence located at the
top of a hill, reached only (or so they
thought) by a long flight of stairs. The
battle of wits between Laurel and Hardy
and a piano that seems to possess a mind
of its own has kept movie goers laughing
for more than 40 years.
un Apni iz, iwo memoraDie Blister
Keaton pictures will be featured. The
General (1927), possibly Keaton's bestremembered
film, has the "great stone
face" in a Civil War epic trying to prove
himself a valuable commodity for the
unsympathetic Confederate Army while at
the same time attempting to recover both
his scatterbrain girlfriend and his
locomotive from the Northern aggressors.
The General was both an entertaining
tale of adventure and a comic masterpiece.
The story is essentially a true one of
the daring Civil War raid led by Captain
Anderson, a Northern spy, who penetrated
Southern lines to steal a locomotive and
wi cva i,uiiiiiiuiiiv,auuud.
Keaton is hilarious as he battles both his
girlfriend and the Keystone Kop-styled
Northern Army to save his locomotive.
One of the most memorable film scenes of
all time has a train chasing Keaton, then
crashing into a river as a trestle
collapses.
ora shows
-defined tal
ition when I its musical integrity wil
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ance on that "Is Once Enough?"
scerned from maintained by Polity's
times Pontv manages I
itcd out to me electric guitar, blasting
havishnu Or- to searing climaxes,
ing subjected "Renaissance" is mu
; name in a integrated because of il
t i rt I hill Hnn't nmcuiianc nra
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showcases the work of i
and Patrice Kushen on
Is exploits his
1, if the other Stuermer's acoustic
Aurora is a and tasteful and lend:
the musicians Kushen's piano work is
i\ hne musical might snow promise ot
flash. ot "Renaissance" is
ipt to classify struments as element*
ti that he is an
n would onlv ' 'u> ttack. "An
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MSOn Ulcll (IOC'S " *'iii m iuii.^uiu'. n
its final throes is full of
is diverse and shows his expertise as
ntitv in itself. wonder where lie has b<
Dughout, each and straightforward, v
)f maintaining t'oniy complements ?
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numpnrey nogari ponrays man uog nine
as he makes plans for an upcoming job in
Cops is a Keaton short with our hero
being pursued throughout a city by
Keystone Kop policemen after he totally,
destroys their parade for the mayor by
driving a runaway horsecart through the
middle of their ranks.
Both The General and Cops are silent
and will be shown once, beginning at 8:30
p.m.
Coming Monday night to the Kussell
House Theatre is Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream (1935). The allstar
cast includes James Cagney as
Bottom. Dick Powell as Lvsander.
Mickey Rooney as Puck, Joe E. Brown as
Flute and Frank McHugh as Quince.
As one critic wrote, "The conception was
German theater director Max Reinhardt's
full-blown German Expressionism, a
production of a major Hollywood studio
(Warner Brothers) at the height of its
resourcefulness, the underlying interpretation
was Shakespeare's
Elizabethan romantic fantasy, and the
nominal subject was ancient Athenian
legend. Out of these seemingly incompatible,
competing world views
emerged, perhaps surprisingly, a
coherent, even fantastic film."
A comic double feature in the theater
April 12 has the classics Adam's Rib
(1949), and His Girl Friday (1940) together
~~ThcT
ent
thout having to rely upon support and tasties
you have 1
is the opening selection and is McKendre*
flash and speed on the violin. At "Aurora'
:o make the violin sound like an a\\ 0f the
r?ffs across the band and soaring Knc? nnH n
and "Lost
ch more subtle and more closely doesn't ex
Is acoustic nature. Often, electric manages t
: at acoustic work. "Renaissance"
['onty, Darryl Stuermer on guitar "Betwee
piano. recording.
, it r "Waking 1
guitar work is exceptionally fine
more sub
s a nice (oel to the composition. . ,
, , . . . i i obviously
not only good, it is exceptional and ... .
??,. . Orchestra
genius, i ne mosi sinning icaiure aspects 0f
the total integration of the in- f-'ictor'evc
? <>t ihe total composition convey hb
... . makes onr
rora, is a complete turnaround . , ,
has a definite electric base and in S ,! ?.
fire and flash. This time Stuermer
:m electric guitarist It makes one
'en all this time. His work is clean Ponty's '
et It moves like lightning. recordings,
i'iii I iiiv x wiiii somr oi ino lasiesi ciecacie s 11
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High Sierra, i film coming to the Rutcfl
House Theater later this month.
in what might be termed Women's Lib
night. The two films highlight a malefnm
ulo ctnirtrtlfl fnr ru\ntnr in *Ka
AV1IIU1V UVI U^IV *V1 pV TT VI Ul W tUVll UIV
females end up the winners.
Adam's Rib was the best of the films of
the famed team of Spencer Tracy and
Katharine Hepburn. In this picture, Tracy
nnH Hpnhnrn nlnv Hurt hannilv m arricrl
and successful lawyers who become bitter
rivals when Tracy becomes the
prosecuting attorney and Hepburn the
defendent'sattorney in a case where a wife
shoots her husband after she catches him
in bed with another woman.
The case becomes a battle of the sexes
between the formerly happily-married
couple as Hepburn finds the courtroom the
perfect soapbox for her theories about
women's rights.
His Girl Friday is a remake of the 1928
movie The Front Page and starred Cary
Grant as newspaper editor Walter Burns
who connivingly attempts to retain the
services of his ex-wife, star reporter Hildy i
jonnson inosaiina uusseii), oy having her 1
cover the scoop of the year: the hanging of ]
a pitiful young man for killing a !
policeman.
Grant and Russell sparkle under the
talented direction of Howard Hawks a^ a
breathless staccato-paced dialogue and
Sec CLASSICS. Pagej 8
t licks I have ever heard played on the violir. If
been impressed by Dr. Michael Dreyfuss of
? Sprint*, vou ain't heard nothin' vet.
" seems to be the recording's take-off point, ind
following compositions maintain the elec ric
ire quite well done. "Passenger of the Da k"
Forest" keep Ponty in control Although he
hi bit the exhuberance of "Aurora." he still
o cook.
n You and Me" is the tone-down point of the
featuring Rushen again as jazz pianist
r3ream" finishes out the album with a much
lie touch than was expected.While Ponty is
inflni'iiepil hv his stint viith tho M^hacichnn
, he has managed to shed the more offensive
that experience. Instead of total discord, a
r present with McLaughlin. Ponty manages to
i music by using harmonic devices The result
1 fool that the basic Mahavishnu concept is ver\
y it takes someone like Ponty to put the music
ntifiably.
'Aurora" is fast becoming one of m\ favorite
and has the potential of becoming one of this
ner instrumental classics.
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