Movies

MOVIES

Things been getting you down lately? Are you the little guy who is often picked upon? Tired of your job and never been out of Washtenaw County and you're overweight? Don't let anybody kick sand in your face!! Turn to the Martial Arts, or at least to Enter the Dragon. The romance of the Silver Screen, the joys of escapism, and the thrill of seeing blood that isn't your own can now be had at the Fox Village Theater.

Enter The Dragon works on that stock plot of the violent adventure film- heroin ring operates out of remote exotic hideaway run by ruthless Oriental who reigns as the Cruelest Man in the World. A renowned Hire-A-Spy organization sends in their virile man of steel to sniff and snuff them out. Guess who wins? But here the agent of violence is not a series of Bond-like super sonic ingenious weapons, such as the deadly ejecto-chair, or the fatal laser ring. Here the weapon is Man Himself, through the skills of the martial arts.

The martial arts movies follow a direct line of descendance from diffuse and noble ancestors of the Film Fad Family-the surfin' orgies, the motorcycle cruisers, and the everlasting great vampire genre. The appeal of the martial arts apparently is that anybody can do it: an attractive way of thought to all us Americans rooted in the philosophy that anyone can be President. You need money to buy an arsenal, you have to be blonde to be a surfer, and you must have a gutteral voice to be a biker. But to be a karate champ, all you have to do is go down to your corner karate school and sign up.

Enter the Dragon and other martial arts films of course suffer from the same weaknesses that plagued the other fad genres. The plot is hokey, the script is mundane, the acting is forced, and the music is ridiculous, but the martial arts movies have something unique-an audience-involving series of sound effects!! 

The ANN ARBOR SUN invites you to participate in its first Scripted-Auditory Skill Test. Can you identify seven out of the following eight sound effects from Enter the Dragon? For correct answers, see box at bottom of this page: 1) KKRRRFF, KKRRRPF. KRRRPFFF, snap, snap, snap. 2) WHHHZT, WHHHHZZT. 3)SCRUNCH. 4) KRRRRSLAM WHUMP. 5)THHHHHT. 6) PAD, PAD, PAD. 7) WHHHUMP. 8)EEEEEIIIIIOOO! Ahem.

The New Land, playing at the Campus Theater, is a Swedish interpretation of the expansion and settlement of the nineteenth-century American West. Because it is Swedish, it has no obligation to protect or demolish the myths of the West that have been developed in our movies and literature. It is a fairly realistic and moving chronicle of the life cycle of these Swedish settlers who thought life might be better in America.

The New Land flows into a pattern of recent American Westerns (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Little Big Man, etc.) that have tried to show what it was actually like to have lived through this difficult and aggressive period. The Swedish film is unique though because it occurs over a span of forty years, the 1848- 1890 era when the west changed from wild isolation to a settled farming community. The struggles and tragedies of this Swedish farming family are the film's way of showing the changes in the West as a whole. It is an honorable and lyrical way to tell history. -Ellen Frank

ANSWERS TO QUIZ ABOVE: 

1) Crunching bones and snapping vertebra.

2)  Flailing flingers flying towards target.

3)  A fish in the nose.

4)  Guy thrown over champ's shoulder and onto the ground.

5)  Claws ripping skin.

6)  Moving about.

7)  Fist hits stomach.

8)  What a Karate champ should say before killing someone

Perhaps this is neither the time nor the place, but spend at least one evening at King Pleasure over Thanksgiving to hear Esther Phillips. Did you know that Aretha Franklin, after winning this year's Grammy for Best Female Rhythm & Blues singer, announced that "This should go to Esther Phillips."? She gave her the trophy later on.