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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
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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.
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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