media COOL

media COOL

DEPARTMENTS

This month’s Media Cool was written by J. Kordosh, Bill Holdship, Joanne Carnegie, Frank Fox and Everyone In The World With Taste.

WOMEN’S BITCHOF-THE-MONTH 1986 CALENDAR (Rockshots, Inc.)

Wait until next year and be the last person on your block to have your very own 1986 Bitch-Of-The-Month calendar. One that’s bound to set feminists a-fumin’, and with good reason. Filled with “things women do” (Oct. 30, 1986: stock up on Midol), and kinda nice, old b&w photos with captions underneath them (“Yes! Yes! I shot my boss! It was PMS!!”). Even if it is supposed to be humorous, it really isn’t. Bitch-Of-The-Month will, however, be a dan-dee conversation piece for some silly person’s office wall—guaranteed to keep the whole staff steered clear of one’s cubicle. What’s most confusing about this piece of...thing, though, is its subtitle: Classic Complaints Of The Modern Woman. No smart, modern women are anything like this. Oh, I get it...they must be kid-

ding! We can, unfortunately, expect to see 1987’s Bastard-Of-TheMonth calendar. Can’t wait. Note: This calendar is put out by Rockshots, Inc., not to be confused, please, with CREEM’s unparalleled Rock-Shots. J.C.

REVEREND WONDERFUL by Jack T. Chick (Chick Publications)

Dr. Arthur G. Westhall is the most beloved “man of God” on earth— so beloved that he’s known far and wide as “Reverend Wonderful.” He helps feed the poor. He builds

orphanages. He preaches that “All of us are going to the same God— Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Moslems.” Then, at the peak of his career, he is tragically killed in a plane accident. While the world mourns, Reverend Wonderful stands before Christ, who has just let a prostitute/drug addict/alcoholic into Heaven. Is Christ pleased with the works of this man? No! “I know all your motives, thoughts and secrets,” He says, as well He should. “You honored that false Christ sitting on his throne in the Vatican. You didn’t love the Catholics, nor warn them to come out of that system.” And he didn’t! What’s worse: “To stay popular, you preached love and unity instead of separation and holiness.” Well, that’s that: it’s off to hell for

this miserable preacher of love and unity! Get samples of this astonishingly mean tract from the publisher at P.O. Box 662, Chino, CA 91710—a rare look at “the hangin’ Christ,” indeed. J.K.

WORST MOVIE POSTERS OF ALL TIME by Gregory J. Edwards and Robin Cross (Sphere Books)

This book is a shrine to bad taste and a tribute to shameless exploitation. It’s full of impossible promises, improbable metaphors

and obvious lies. Ghastly artwork in lurid colors promotes forgotten films of rubber aliens from cardboard galaxies, spaghetti-epic gladiators and bikini beach sex zombies. F.F.

ST. ELMO’S FIRE (Columbia Pictures)

Hot on the heels of The Big Chill, The Breakfast Club and other “socially relevant” ensemble films, we now have aspiring yuppies on parade. The most “likable” character here is the young writer (Andrew McCarthy), who sleeps in a coffin, has a terrible attitude and constantly proclaims that “Love sucks!” The film only seems to confirm his premise by the end. His friends and fellow Georgetown graduates include a coke-snorting party girl (Demi Moore), who has a huge mural of Billy Idol on the pink walls of her apartment; an aspiring politician (Judd Nelson), who changes from Democrat to Republican because the latter “pays more,” and is convinced that he can stop sleeping around if his live-in girlfriend (Ally Sheedy) will only marry him; and an unemployed musician (Rob Lowe), who has fathered a child, sleeps with everyone but his wife (though he gets in a fight and calls her a “slut” when he sees her with another man)—and believes that life should be one big, drunken fraternity party. There’s also the romantic law student (Emilio Estevtez), who’s in love with an elusive doctor (he’s convinced that money and social status are what it’ll take to win her love), and the poor little rich girl (Mare Winningham) who works in a welfare office out of guilt and gets deflowered by the musician. The acting here must be good because the characters all come across as so deplorable. This movie left me feeling empty when I left the theater. It may be the truth (though it’s pretty one-sided), but does Hollywood have to glorify it? B.H.

PERFECT (Columbia Pictures)

Heee!

E.l.T.W.W.T.

LOVE ALWAYS by Ann Beattie (Random House)

The brilliance of Ann Beattie’s writing has always been that she creates strong, sympathetic characters in situations with which the reader can .either identify or at least be familiar. No one has written better or more movingly about the ’60s generation lost in the ’70s. Chilly Scenes Of Winter out-chilled The Big Chill, and was a deep personal statement to a great many people. Unfortunately, Beattie opts for comedy and social satire while taking on the ’80s in Love Always.

The novel concerns Lucy Spenser, who writes a love advice column under the pen name Cindi Coeur for Country Daze, a yuppie-lifestyle magazine based in rural Vermont. She’s having an affair with her married editor/publisher (the type of person who looks for things “with the right ambience”)—and her 14-year-old niece Nicole, the star of the hot TV soap opera, Passionate Intensity, is spending the summer with her. Once again, Beattie is illustrating the ways people deal with the emptiness/loneliness of life, but Love Always is full of self-centered, uncaring characters who are hard to get involved with. There are some great comical moments (Piggy Proctor, Nicole’s Hollywood agent, screams “plagiarism” when he discovers the soap opera’s title is the same as a poem by Yeats), and some inspired lines (“It’s a thing from your generation that people have friends,” Nicole tells Lucy). But overall, this is disappointing when compared to Beattie’s terrific previous work. B.H.

BACK TO THE FUTURE (Universal)

At presstime, this film’s been out one week and has been the highest grossing film of that week. By all indications, it’ll probably reign as such for the summer, too, and deservedly so: Michael Fox is fast becoming his generation’s most amiable actor, turning in perhaps his most facile performance here. Although Steven Spielberg seems to be running on a hit-and-miss basis lately, his light touch in Back To The Future— particularly in contrasting the junk cultures of 1955 and 1985—is on the money. Anyone interested in rock history will get a bang out the 1955 school dance scene, and only the most jaded viewers will fail to enjoy the offbeat (yet not wholly unexpected) ending. Look for Huey Lewis as the nerd teacher in the first 15 minutes. J.K.