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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 24, 1997)
4,19? latn Wednesday • September 24, 1997 Entertainment a Thousand Acres Taking a byte from the Apple suffers plot drought Student makes feeble attempt to join the computer age 2 JED By James Francis Opinion editor T he corn fields in A Thousand Acres take the imagination to the horizon and beyond. The plot of the film, however, seems to have been planted with powerful seeds that were only watered in se lect areas, thereby stunting the growth of what could have been a Michael Schaub columnist ;md two A CHICKS!, e A UH|« environmentt ce for the re'i all, it’s aeattj t opportuie (tending tit the Wehw , Septemte m and 4pt l AJORS All D TO AM starting waje /dental op«' is advanced opportune i Target and fcj tunities, visiil impus. Wel«i| 1 to seeing H a opportunity («#| mittedtodsmoWl drug-free w^l I A Thousand Acres Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange Directed by Joceyln Moorehouse Rated R Playing at Hollywood 16 ★★★ (out of five) pleasing, dramatic movie. The film opens with on-loca tion footage of Rochelle, Illinois. Cameras span the green prairie of farm fields, white picket fences and exhausting stretches of paved roads. But underneath the beauti ful countryside, exists dark story lines of marital infidelity, child hood abuse and inner-family hatred. Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange portray two sisters, Rose and Ginny, respectively. They live what appears to be normal lives in the country; tliey work on their farms, prepare grand meals for family dinners and share the com mon bond that most siblings ex hibit in late-night conversations about the daily conflicts in life. ]ason Robards plays the role of the girls’ father, Larry. He is also the reason that so many problems arise between members of the family. At a point in the film, Ro bards decides to split Ills farm (the family farm passed on to him by his father) into three divisions, each third going to one of his daughters — Pfeiffer, Lange and Jennifer Jason Leigh, a lawyer and the youngest of the three children. Everything begins to fall apart when Leigh decides she has to think about whether she wants to take a third of tlie farmland agree ment. Leigh’s indecisiveness angers her father, and thereafter he almost completely disowns her. This prob lem only scratches the surface of Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer star in A Thousand Acres. the disturbing family troubles re vealed throughout the film. Although the various family problems make the film interest ing, they also take away meaning from the attempt to develop a cen tral plot and theme. The first half of A Thousand Acres seems to have in teresting characters and a story that will keep the audience’s attention. The latter part of the film, how ever, when most of the problems begin to emerge, seems to fall apart in a 15-minute resolution. With as many secrets and lies that are brought to light toward the middle of the movie, the ending of the film deseives at least 30 minutes more to allow the audience a sense of atonement, rather than simply stat ing, “Here’s the end, hope every thing works out for the best.” The more notable aspect of the film was the performances. Pfeif fer is in excellent form as she bat tles with childhood memories of physical and sexual abuse, a life plagued by the ills of breast cancer and a marriage that is often not standing on solid ground. Pfeiffer’s character transforms from an at tractive, strong-willed woman to a person fighting for life until her last breath. The other actors and actresses showcase great supporting roles. Lange, Robards and Leigh add depth to the film and its disturbing family elements. But in the end, the characters seem to lose their persona; they become opposites of tlie people they were at the start of the film. A Thousand Acres is a clear representation of what embodies filmmaking — great characters, an in-depth account of tragedy and pleasing cinematography. But with so many gaps in the plot, A Thousand Acres does not lend itself enough land to culti vate a fine harvest. I think I missed the en- , trance onto the informa tion superhighway. In fact, I am somewhere on the information rural route, 27 miles from the nearest his torical marker, buying a lukewarm cup of coffee at the truck stop. I escaped high school without knowing how to work any computer that did not use vacuum tubes and punch cards. Inexplicably, my computer science credit from high school was enough to satisfy Texas A&M’s computer course requirement. Not that I’m complaining. The fact is, I am quite the expert on program ming BASIC on a Commodore 64. OK, maybe not an expert. But I know how to make certain phras es scroll across the black and amber computer screen. For example: 10 PRINT “I BLAME REAGAN” 20 GOTO 10 Of course, I never figur ed out how to make it stop. Something with the escape budon. Imagine the career opportunities tiiat await me with such technological savvy. But when I came to A&M, computer literacy became a matter of survival of the fidest. I was rendered extinct my first day. My best friend from high school moved to Ver mont to atiend college. We exchanged e-mail ad dresses. I promised myself I would leam the mys terious world of computers. So I e-mailed her my phone number, and she e-mailed me hers, and we ended up with long-dis tance bills the size ofVermont’s annual state econ omy. TWo years later, I use my e-mail for littie more than receiving lists of jokes from my brother. But the advantage is obvious. If he were to send me jokes in the mail, it might take two days to reach me. And timeliness is the key when you spend a good part of your evenings malting fun of people. My roommate for my first two years at A&M was a computer engineering major, so my life was pretty easy. He was always available to decipher techno-jargon for me: MIKE: Hey, Chris, my computer’s broken. CHRIS: OK. First, you need to turn it on. MIKE: Is that tiiis button here? CHRIS: No. That’s the microwave. After a semester, Chris was downloading secret files from Mossad and screwing with Venezuela’s defense capabilties, and I was still learning how to work a mouse—literally. After I complained to my roommate that the littie arrow tiiingy on the screen was not moving like it should, he advised me to clean the mouse. So the next day, I disas sembled the mouse witii a screw driver, JAMES PALMER/The Battalion and set to work with some cotton swabs. Chris walked in and stopped in his tracks. “What,” he said deliberately, “are you doing?” “I’m cleaning the mouse,” I said. Chris informed me I actually did not need to take the mouse apart to clean it. Apparentiy you just pop the littie ball out. I swallowed my pride and asked him if he knew how to put it back to gether again. “I don’t know,” he said, amazed. “I’ve never seen the inside of a mouse before.” Eventually, I bit the bullet and learned how to “surf” the Internet, which was established in the ’80s by computer scientists for the purpose of making pornography easily accessible to every one. And pornography is the only thing I can consis- tendy find on the Web. Even without looking for it. Just type anything into your “web browser,” and you will find some site from the Netherlands fea turing models doing unmentionable things with all manners of animals, vegetables and minerals. It seems like everyone has their own web site these days, anyway. My anarchic friend Mad had to set up one for his architecture class. Granted, all it has is a cover of a Minor Threat album and the words, “This is all about selfish littie me... La dee daaaaa...,” but it is more than I can say for myself —though not much more. It was last semester when I was struck by a brilliant idea for the Internet. I was doing research for a paper on “The Merchant ofVenice,” when I saw a niche open up. The business majors call it “defining a need.” Here it is: an adult Shakespeare site. We could have Elizabethan women and men in various states of undress, with captions like “The quality of sexiness is not strain’d, as Portia sentences Bas- sanio to a night of passion.” It is a start for me. I have to find something productive to do with computers. My hilarious roommate Sara has changed the screen saver on my computer to say “Ditto Rush!,” and I am getting sick of looking at it. I miss the ’50s al ready, and I was bom under Jim my Carter. I am trying to lobby The Bartalion to ditch their com puter system and go back to the idyllic days of movable type. We would have an old typesetter with white hair and a green visor. Old Walt, we’d call him. It would be like a Jimmy Stewart movie. “Hey, Old Walt,” I would say as I walked into the newsroom. “How’s tricks?” “Not bad, Schaub,” he would reply. “I got the funniest e-mail joke yesterday.” A man can dream. Michael Schaub is a junior English major. trities Class ield iwer tzig iver id rwood :oe der rren >aman ite nson more mg Today is Get-Your-Picture Made-For-The Yearbook Day. Class of ’98 pictures are being made for the 1998 Aggieland at A R Photography Texas Avenue TAMU Campus So is tomorrow. CD fX> OTQ CO oo £= 1410 Texas Ave. (between Jason’s Deli and Academy) Drop by A R Photography at its new location on Texas Avenue, or call 693-8183 for your appointment