The Battalion y • April 15,1951 areas mmerman, The Baito# >w banner designs inners next monlli. eness. om the Commurj le Arts Council, eorge Bush Presi 1 which of the 12 f recognition anil ; a reception later astalled. the Color of Col- st banners will be i mid to I ate May, e recital lyn Struve, The BATMlrt liege Stationpla)? s/orld's Largest Of- , Night News Enn» life Editor Sports Editor o Editor ch, Graphics Enm* phics Editor Benson, Eleanor CoW idra S. Rasmussen, Erd , Kristina Buffin, Amltf , leremy Hubble, |ol ,,, -len Clancy hil Leone, Lisa Nantf laxter, Rob Clark, Erir ine Mejia, Chris MillC Valson :riwan, Amy Brownin? n Zimmerman Hey, Jill Mazza, Tife p ' Soodwin, John LeM 115 leyard & Chris Yung , Mandy Caler, A^'lJ e, :< tJis ability to switch from the slow speaking, stuttering Stampler to his fierce, abusive alternate personality, Roy, and back again is extremely con vincing and amazing to watch. His smile has the ability to be gentle and crazed at almost the same instant. The only drawback to his performance is that it had to be buried among the clutter of Primal Fear. Gere is his usual cliche self, bringing nothing solid to the film. His character is a fast-talking, phrase-slinging, arrogant lawyer who has a habit of leaning forward when he is talking to people as if to add some sub stance to his commentary. Instead, he ends up being nothing more Edward Norton (Aaron Stampler) is accused of murdering an archbishop in Primal Fear. than a pretty face for a static character. His romance with Venable has little if any chemistry. Linny’s performance as the hard-working prosecuting attorney is hollow and weak. Her attempt to portray a chain smoker is hard to believe. Every time she lights up, she looks like a teen-ager trying to smoke behind her parents’ backs. Her lines are forced and shallow, as is most of the material in the movie. Primal Fear is in need of a good fine tuning. Its superfluous plot lines and plastic characters make the case for a good film weak at best. Flirting with Disaster filled with chaotic humor Flirting with Disaster Starring Ben Stiller, Patricia X Arquette and Tea Leoni Directed by David O. Russell m i6 ***** (out of five) By Wes Swift The Battalion Watching Flirting with Disaster is like watching a Generation X version of Ameri ca’s Funniest Home Videos: half of you wants to believe that everything happen ing is too crazy to be true, but the other half is more than certain that it is. Overflowing with chaotic plot twists and subtle humor, the frenzied Flirting with Disaster is the tale of one man searching for the lost part of his life. Ben Stiller plays Mel Copland, a 20- something-approaching-30-something who jaunts off across the country with his wife, Nancy (Patricia Arquette), and social services worker, Tina (Tea Leoni), in search of his real parents. Mel feels so incomplete because he doesn’t know his real parents that he won’t even give his new child a name. But what begins as a quest to find his past turns into chaos as the trio zigzags through a wild goose chase filled with mis information and bum lead after bum lead. And when Mel finally finds his true parents, the entire story becomes even more warped. Director David O. Russell deftly mixes the over-the-top plot twists and subtle laughs throughout the film’s 92 minutes. The laughs are gutbusters, granted, but more chuckles come from the back of your mind because you just can’t believe that each mishap is smothered by anoth er, funnier mishap. The film also has a fair share of bril- (from left) Lily Tomlin, Alan Alda and Glenn Fitzgerald star in Flirting with Disaster. liant one-liners. When Lonnie, Mel’s brother who wasn’t given up for adoption, gets fed up with his parents’ (played wonderfully by Lily Tom lin and Alan Alda) stories, he blurts out the funniest line in the movie, “Jerry Gar cia! Blah! Blah! Blah!” Stiller, Arquette and Leoni, while giv ing good performances, are eclipsed by the peanut gallery of supporting characters. George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore are superb as Mel’s neurotic, adoptive parents, and Alda and Tomlin brilliantly play Mel’s goofy real parents with a shady past. The script’s hectic pace doesn’t allow audiences to snag a quick breath be tween laughs. In fact, its high-speed energy is the film’s strongest asset and adds to the al most suffocating chaos. In the end, audiences probably should take a respirator or a pacemaker to get through Flirting with Disaster, or they may be flirting with disaster themselves. Psychological thriller evokes Fear in audience Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg star in Fear. ~ Movie Review Fear Starring Mark Wahlberg, Re< ^ Witherspoon and William Pete m *** (out off five) By Kristina Buffin The Battalion Disturbing is the only word that can describe a truly bizarre, yet good psychological thriller. Nicole Walker (Reese Wither spoon) is a 16-year-old who is re belling against a father whom she thinks abandoned her when her parents were divorced. Nicole meets David (Mark Wahlberg) at a rave one night, and he woos her with his sensitivity and polite manners. However, Nicole gets more than she bargained for. Nicole’s first sign that David is not what he pretended to be is when he kicks Nicole’s friend Gary (Todd Caldecott) in a jealous rage because David thought Gary was coming on to Nicole. From this point on, it is obvious David is missing a few marbles, and his obsession to have Nicole, at any cost only proliferates. Steve Walker (William Peter son) is the protective father who knows from the beginning that David is not the caring, polite indi vidual Nicole sees. In fact, he finds out David is an orphan who has been bounced around by the system and has a criminal record. It becomes Steve’s mission to keep David out of Nicole’s life, no matter what the cost. Wahlberg does a superb job of portray ing the obviously men tally unbalanced David. There is some thing about his eyes and the looks he gives that can make anyone shiver from fear. Although this is only Wahlberg’s third film, he per forms like a veteran. He is able to make David seem charming, yet he can turn the character into a psychopath. Perhaps what makes this movie work is the combination of jsound and imagery. With songs like “Machinehead” and “Come down” by Bush and The Sun days’ “Wild Horses,” it only in tensifies the scenes between David and Nicole. The suspense thriller keeps audience members on the edges of their seats. You never know what David may do next to get Nicole, and you never know when he will finally snap and go absolutely berserk. The ending is perfect for this movie. It leaves the audi ence with the feeling of “Wow, what just happened?” White hits sophomore slump with new album By Will Hickman The Battalion Bryan White is back with a new album after his immensely successful debut effort — the eponymous Bryan White. How ever, despite the fanfare, he seems to have fallen into the sophomore slump, and sadly, Between Now and Forever has little to offer a listener. His cliched topics of “lament ing love lost” and “following the girl wherever she goes” on the first half of the album tend to bore, but for some reason, he saves the few “good” songs for the end of the album. The first song, “Sittin’ on Go,” has a rather quirky beat, average verses, but great har monies in the chorus. From there. White next sings “Still Life,” a song about the one that got away. Good story, but the song is just too slow. Another disappointment, “I’m not Supposed to Love You Anymore,” is a love dirge where the narrator expresses, with woeful angst, the difficulty in getting over his lost love. It is a decent piece, but the deep depression the listener has already been plunged into due to the other songs makes this one hard to stomach. There are a few highlights in this oth erwise lackluster al bum. The single that has been released, “Between Now and Forever,” is White’s one shot at reclaiming the glory he achieved with his first smash, “Someone Else’s Star.” It tells the story of a girl he’s not wishing for, but wants to spend eternity with. Another highlight is “A Hundred and One.” It is a toe tapping, new generation coun try song that just feels good. The steel guitar and rocking beat are a pleasant surprise af ter all of the other mediocre tunes on the album. It seems as if this second ef fort did not receive the type of attention that the first album did, and it remains to be seen if the momentum from White’s first release can be maintained throughout his junior and se nior years. It appears as if the album was just meant to capitalize on the Bryan White name, but clearly, he is going to have to put in a little more elbow grease at the recording studio if he wants to move from “up-and- coming” country talent into a full-blown Nashville star. Whether he becomes the next Billy Ray Cyrus (one-hit wonder ... for those of you who have forgotten him already) or a household name like Garth Brooks is up in the air, but the Billy Ray option seems more likely at this point.