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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 28, 1984)
Entertainment Thursday, June 28, 1984/The Battalion/Page 9 Review: Top Secret’ is :-a$low but good slapstick ions fo r ire avail- juU T'l By SHAWN BEHLEN Staff Reviewer STop Secret” would make a great movie for dollar night, but it’s really not worth four bucks. Unfortu- naltly, it doesn’t live up to the past sijccess of its writers and directors, Abrahams and David and Jerry ker, who were responsible for lie highly popular “Airplane!”. ■■he film revolves around the mis- lentures of a famous Elvis-style rock singer, Nick Rivers, who arrives at the portal of fame and fortune be cause of his hit skeet songs. (Yes, skeet songs. How does “Skeet Sur fin’” and “Your Skeetin’ Heart” sound?) He travels to present-day East Germany to perform in a cultural festival and bring rock ’n’ roll to the commies. Of course, just a bit more than that happens to our hero. He gets caught up with a group of revo lutionaries that are trying to stop the takeover of West Germany by East Germany. Suddenly, he is rescuing damsels in distress and singing, get ting thrown in jail and singing, par achuting out of a plane and singing, falling in love and singing, and res cuing an imprisoned scientist and singing. Oh yeah, he also sings every once in a while. “Top Secret” is a spoof of World War II adventure films and every El vis film ever made. It tries to do to those two genres what “Airplane!” did to the airport movies, but it doesn’t cut it until the end. There are inspired momehts throughout, but generally, the first half of the movie is just way too slow. For a while, you get a gag about every three minutes and that, friends and neighbors, is dragging. Once Nick hooks up with the rev olutionaries, things start rolling and then the movie accomplishes its goal. It seems as though the writers were sitting around one day and came up with, “Hey, let’s do a spoof of the big rescue scene in all those old war movies.” Then they had to write a beginning to get us there. Some of the best lines in the film are near the beginning but just flounder. “In a woman’s tennis match, I always root against the het erosexual,” is priceless. Also, a short spoof of “Blue Lagoon” is great. It makes that movie seem sillier than it did when I first watched it — a feat I didn’t think was possible. The slowness of the first half is really my only complaint. Other than that the movie was the high- spirite’d spoof that I expected. Val Kilmer is great as Nick Rivers. His Elvis gyrations are authentic without becoming maudlin (see Kurt Russell). He places himself above the gags and, therefore, gives them an air of authenticity. Also, Lucy Gutte- ridge is appropriately vacuous as Hillary, the damsel in distress. The scene-stealer, though, is Christopher Villiers, an English actor, as Nigel, the leader of the revolution. He and Daisy the Cow are above reproach. y! i a free ly! ney for ntrants TYPING kinds. 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Available in one and two bedroom floorplans. Also featuring a fcs #$ Ltion 4 Developed by Guy King Enterprises Incorporated Walden Pond 700 FM 2818 ofFFM 2818 at Holleman 696-5777 Bird songs hit big on record charts Big top is back in town Here’s your chance to run off and join the circus: The 113th edition of the Ringling Bros, and Barnum 8c Bailey circus is coming to the Summit in Houston Tues day July 17 for 18 performances through July 29. The show, produced by Irving and Kenneth Feld, will feature Gunther Gebel-Williams, re nowned for his big animal acts. Gebel-Williams will perform with elephants and Lippizan stal lions as well as with his troupe of lions and tigers. This year Gebel- Williams’ 12-year-old son Mark Oliver will debut with his per forming goats. Also in the show is the usual entourage of acrobatic, highwire and trapeze acts, including the high-walking Carillo Brothers. New this year is a pack of trained baboons, an act that has been ab sent from the long-running circus for over 50 years. If for no other reason, at leasl go see the clowns — they’re what make the circus special year after year. Tickets are on sale at the Summit box office and at all Tick- etmaster and Ticketron locations. United Press International LONDON — The latest long-play ing BBC record is strictly for the birds. Or rather, from the birds. “Your Favorite Bird Songs” is pre cisely that — an uninterrupted re cording of the songbird pop charts, chosen by serious fans casting write- in votes. “So now we have a Top 12 chart recording, for all time, of the Frank Sinatra of the bird world,” said BBC executive James Fleming. Britain abounds in nature lovers, including an army of binocular-clad bird watchers who find nothing odd in a record jacket phrase describing the willow warbler’s “lyrical cadences epitomizing the joy of spring.” Recently the British Broadcasting Corp. tapped this enthusiasm by asking readers of its “Wildlife” mag azine to vote for the birds whose songs they love best. Votes poured in for 74 different species, said John F. Burton, who not only piroduced the resulting re cord but recorded 10 of its 12 wild birds. The winner was not the night ingale or wren but something of a surprise. “The most melodious and No. 1 song bird,” Fleming said, “turned out to be the blackbird.” The British species sings only from February to July amid the glo ries of an English spring. “I was pleased when the liquid voiced curlew had a respectable fol lowing,” BBC wildlife expert Tony Soper said. He added he “found it difficult to imagine jays, sparrows, peacocks and sedge warblers” col lecting “best singer” votes. Instead of arranging the chart toppers in winning order, Burton said in an interview, “we use the lis tener’s imagination, take them on a sort of country walk. “So you just lay back, close your eyes and pretend you’re on that walk.” Soper’s description of this imagi nary stroll “through the trees to wards the pasture land where distant rooks can be heard above the bleat ing of the grazing sheep” verges on the rhapsodic. He writes on the record jacket of the “rollicking ditty of a chaffinch,” of the “chatty sub-song” of the black cap while “the trilling of a wood war bler wafts to our ears from the cop se.” “Suddenly a smallish brown bird rises from the grass ahead,” he writes, “a skylark! as it spirals up, it bursts into its glorious, exuberant song ...” Fans voted the song thrush and skylark into joint second place in the BBC top-of-the-bird-pops poll. Bur ton said. They were trailed by the nightingale — “the conventional choice for first place,” the British ro bin — a different bird from the North american variety — the mistle thrush, wren, willow warbler, black cap, chaffinch, woodlark and garden warbler. “The thrush family rivals that of Maria von Trapp with a chorus of seasoned performers,” Soper said, which explains why several relatives of the thrush family made the songbird pop chart. No matter how they thrill their human fans, Soper said, bird “sing ers, of course, are sublimely indiffer ent to your opinion of their perfor mance. “They sing in defense of their homes and to impress potential mates,” among other reasons. Yet “like seasoned pop stars, birds make sure they can be heard while they vo calize. The song-post is chosen with care ... to make sure their voices are distinctive.” The men behind “Your Favorite Bird Songs” make it clear that this is not a technical recording for scien tists but one aimed at wide-selling popular enjoyment. They know that despite the poll results, as Soper put it, “there will never be an end to the argument over which bird has the most beauti ful song.” So Burton is now turning to an even more ambitious birdsong re cord project. “We’ll need cooperation from the Russians and the americans, of cour se,” he said, for a possible double al bum. “I’ve been to Moscow already and I expect to go to Cornell Univer sity, which has the largest collection of wildlife recordings in the United States.” The tentative title of this multi-na tional forthcoming blockbuster, he said, is “Wading Birds of the North ern Hemisphere.” \ ■ SELECTED SPORTSWEAR, COORDINATES, DRESSES PECK G PECK 0 Post Oak Mall College Station 764-0080 Layaway Available Visa • Master Card