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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 29, 1985)
-3- Movies This ‘Baby’ came a long way By MARCY BASILE Movie Reviewer The other day five intelligent college students and one pro fessor sat around fondly re counting their favorite Japa nese monster movies. The consensus was that although the lip synchs were atrocious, the special effects made the movies. Even today those great monster movies come back to entertain us. Take Touchstone Films latest release, “Baby.” Baby, a dinosaur hatchling, lives in the 20th century. Now, to you and I, the 20th century is a fairly decent time period. To a dinosaur hatchling, it’s no paradise. Baby is discovered in the jungles of Africa by a hus band and wife team, played by William Katt and Sean Young. When Baby becomes separated from her mommasaurus, Katt and Young set out to unite the two, and set them free. (Believe it or not, this is a semi-tear jerker.) The folks at Touchstone (a subsidiary of Walt Disney stu dios who released “Splash”) must have spent long hours in front of their television sets, too. Watching mommasaurus charge after the bad guy re minded me of how Godzilla used to stomp people in Tokyo. I felt like a kid again, knowing how bad the special effects were — and loving eveiy mo ment of them. Even in today’s world of high-tech megabucks special effects, “Baby” works. Perhaps budget restrictions caused the lapse into pre-Star Wars era monsters or maybe the dino saurs were meant to resemble Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Pa rade balloons. Who cares any way? The main point of the film was the relationship between Baby and her adopted parents, Katt and Young. After witnes sing the kidnapping of Baby’s dinosaur parents, Young de cides that Baby needs her pro tection if the dinosaur plans to stay dive. More than once, Young has to remind herself— and the audience — that Baby is not her child. Baby needs to go home. Despite this dinosaur/human relationship, Katt and Young gave believable performances. Even the climate could not fal ter their performances. Filmed on location in a dense jungle, the cast and crew were subject to all the dangers involved with jungle interiors. (Katt even went so far as to drag the di rector into the water.) It’s refreshing to see a sci-fi movie that concerns itself with the emotion of character relationships than with the precision of the mechanical equipment. To those of you who revel in the realistic world, this movie will only be disappointing. But, if you’re like me and still become ab sorbed in the old monster mov ies — “Baby” comes highly rec ommended. \ Basile bashes Behlen In case youVe forgotten, Shavra and Marcy had a small bet riding on the Aca demy Awards. Well, here’s the final picture (no pun in tended): They both had hor ribly wrong predictions, but Marcy did win and Shawn lost Even though nobody’s taking me to dinner, I’m happy because now maybe the two of them will hush. —-L-E.C. PICTURE: “Amadeus.” ACTOR: F. Murray Abra ham, “Amadeus.” ACTRESS: Sally Field, “Places in the Heart.” DIRECTOR: Milos For man, “Amadeus.” SUPPORTING ACTOR: Haing S. Ngor, “The Killing Fields.” SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Dame Peggy Ashcroft, “A Passage to India.” FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: “Dangerous Moves” (Switzerland). ORIGINAL SONG: “I Just Called to Sav 1 Love You”. (“TheWomaninRed”). Music Tears for Fears: new albui 11 sure to be hit By WALTER LEE SMITH Music Reviewer Tears for Fears. A thought-provoking name for a truly unique musical group. “Songs from the Big Chair” is their newly released second album and it’s as exciting, if not more so, than their critically acclaimed debut LP, “The Hurting.” They defi nitely have accomplished their original goal of cre ating “music for the body, the heart and the mind.” Curtis Smith (vocalist and bassist) and Roland Orzabal (vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist) met as schoolmates in their hometown of Bath, En gland. Wlien they were 19 they started their first band. Graduate, which eventually metamorphosed into Tears for Fears. * Ironicallv, these Britons garnered the attention of the'East Coast dance clubs before the}’ managed to impress their homeland’s music followers. The U.S. music press seemed to have only complimentary comments for their debut LP. And the same thing should happen for their new album as well. Tears for Fears use their musical intelligence and creativity to their full potentials in “Songs from the Big Chair.” Likewise, their song lyrics deal with is sues deemed important by their worldy vision. Al though they are deep, they sucessfully side-step the pomp and pretense that often envelope a “thinking man’s” band. Their music sometimes seems somberly pessi mistic on the surface, but beneath the pain is their underlying pleasure. It’s the basic “make-the-best- out-of-a-bad-situation-’cause-eveiy-cloud-has-a-si- Iver-lining” message (only not with so many hy phens). “Shout,” an intense song with wispy keyboards and ominous bass and percussion, hit Britain’s Top Five when the new LP was released in Europe. The “SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR” TEARS FOR FEARS MERCURY RECORDS album’s first single in America, however, is “Every body Wants to Rule the World,” an AOR-type song featuring an opening line of “Welcome to your life, there’s no turning back.” Other choice lyrics come from “The Working Hour,” a high-energy number that demonstrates the joy of sax: “Fear is such a vi cious thing, it wraps me up in chains.” Change is a key concept in Tears for Fears’ song writing. They keep things moving by constantly al tering the orchestration and/or tempo of the song. “Listen” opens with sparse music and female oper atic vocals and manages to weave its way into a rather primal tune complete with chanting. “Bro ken” is another song featuring this concept; one moment it’s a rock anthem (i.e. wailing guitar solo), the next it’s bordering on becoming a lullaby. In order not to alienate any particular audience segment, the band supplies “Mothers Talk,” a mov ing number in the urban contemporary vein, and “I Believe,” a “torch song” dedicated to someone named Robert Wyatt. “Broken” is the remaining tune on this eight-song LP. Tears for Fears, during the two years they’ve been on vinyl in the U.S., have developed a substan tial following through extensive airplay on student and alternative radio stations. Their first album, “The Hurting,” received little exposure on cor porate radio stations, but did through the advertis ing magic of MTV. Despite the record’s limited pro motional campaign, the LP still sold over a million copies worldwide. “Songs from the Big Chair” should do even better than its predecessor. It has all the necessary ingre dients for success: excellent songs, emotional depth, and intellectual substance. It is definitely the album to buy with your IRS refund check (isn’t that a contradiction in terms, sort of like military intelligence). \