MEDIA COOL

media COOL

This Month's Media Cool was written by Joe Fernbacher, Frank Fox, Ann Marie Fazio, Mark J. Norton, David Keeps and Richard C. Walls

MEISTER BRAU BEER Ever since beer guzzling became popular—back with Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile—brewmasters the centuries over have been seeking out the best tasting and best-selling combination of carbonated waters, hops, barley, rice, whatever, in hopes of creating the ambrosia of beers: the sweet nectar that'll send you off, willy-nilly, into the swirling lands of drunkenness without an after-taste and, more importantly, without an extreme hangover. So when a new brew hits the streets, and especially because it's specially priced, the avid beer sucker will steal pennies from old ladies, mug children for their milk money, and gather up empties from strangers' apartments in order to get the cash to purchase a case or two of the new brew on the block. Being no exception to any rule, I gathered my meager coin and made my purchase of this new arid highly touted—at least if you want to believe TV commercials—beer called 'Meister Brau,' which translated from Kraut means 'Master Brew.' Unfortunately, this beer—which they claim tastes better than Budweiser, that's if you're a corpse or in the middle of the desert—sucks. It's bitter and goes down like razor blades, and, worst of all, it'll leave you with a hangover reminiscent of a hockey puck being shoved around in a Stanley Cup finals match. Buy it at your Own risk. J the F

THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS by William S. Burroughs (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) Reading this, you can easily hear Burroughs's voice: dry, nasal, cold, dripping with irony and marvelously funny. This book is hallucinatory and erotic, a feverish dream of sweaty sensuality and sudden violence. Times and space, settings and characters bubble and erode in swirling visions of nightmare and wonder, horror and wit. It's a reeling journey through Burroughs's distinctly original universe in which memory and fantasy reflect down an endless mirrored hall of tortured imagination. A place where Wild West shootouts blend into spaghettidrenched Mafia killings amidst meditations on the precarious immortality of Egyptian mummies. It's very strange indeed, and quite delightful. F.F.

THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE

(Orion Pictures)

From the first time we heard about this movie, we knew it had to be either a whopping success or whopping failure. It's based on a John 'Garp' Irving novel and, as if that wasn't enough, stars an amazing amalgamation of talent ranging from unknown to notorious: Rob Lowe, Beau Bridges, Amanda Plummer, Paul McCrane, Matthew Modine, Jennie Dundas, Wallace Shawn, Jodie Foster, Nastassja Kinski and more! On the surface, it's unbearably tragic and grotesque, featuring rape, suicide, murder, maiming, taxidermy gone wild and every form of sexual abberation imaginable. It's almost ridiculously disjointed, jumping from scene to scene with no apparent connection and dotted with cameo appearences that pop up • out of nowhere and disappear as often as they reappear.Yet the film is held together by an intense macabre optimism. And its biggest problems are at the same time its most interesting assets. Those selfcontained performances and scenes are natural and convincing, despite the bizarre characters and situations depicted. Not quite ensemble acting, these are terrific individual performances united by a strong, invisible force. Which is probably why the film manages to be believable and likable, in spite of its fantasy-inreality's-clothing plot. Characters/ people who stick together for unknown reasons, hopelessly depressing situations which are somehow transcended. The Hotel New Hampshire is an exaggerated imitation of everyday life that urges us to keep passing the open windows and assures us that life really is worth living. A.M.F.

THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE DOORS by Danny Sugerman (Morrow)

This is the bible for fans of America's greatest rock band. Graphically, the book is stunning. There are scads of previously unreleased photos, shots varying from when the Lizard King was in' his sex-symbol phase all the way thru to his bard/old man of the mountain look. Sugerman wisely includes reviews both pro and con, which is indeed wonderful when one considers it could've been nothing more than a blow-job-in-print (ugh). The Doors are dead—long live the Doors. M.J.N.

CORRUPT

(New Line Cinema)

Talk about yer opaque Italiandirected murder mysteries! This one stars Harvey Keitel as Fred, a narc on the take who gets a big kick out of sipping scotch with his kickbackpartner Bob in their Central Park coop. Both of them are getting a little uptight about the rash of recent cop throat-slittings, especially after Fred notices he's being tailed by a creep who looks exactly like Johnny Rotten. Leo (played by Mr. Lydon/Rotten hisself) soon confesses to the murders and is held captive and —ugh — largely unclothed by Fred. Fred discovers that Leo is a rich kid and leaves him locked up in the can so he can pay a visit to his decrepit auntie (Sylvia Sidney, a great star of the '30s and an even better battle-axe today). When I saw this flick the reels suddenly got disorganized and the once-dead Bob springs back to life, while Fred tries to force Leo to off Bob's wife because he fears she knows he killed Bob. Confused? Good. Even unwound properly, Corrupt is a painfully tedious exercise in the suspense genre and a shameful waste of the slimy charisma of both Keitel and Lydon. D.K.

TAKING IT ALL IN by Pauline Kael (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) Collected New Yorker movie reviews covering mid-'80 to mid-'83, including the piece Why Are The Movies So Bad Or, The Numbers. On The Shining: 'We're starved for pleasure at this movie; when we finally get a couple of exterior nighttime shots with theatrical lighting, we're pathetically grateful.' On Tender Mercies: 'proof that a movie doesn't have to be long to be ponderous.' On Rich And Famous: 'a hopelessly demented movie.' Pick up a copy, let a little sunshine into your life (but seriously...prickly and entertaining and highly recommended). R.C.W.