MEDIA COOL

MEDIA COOL

This month�s Media Cools were written by Bill Holdship, Michael Lipton, Vicki Arkoff and Karen Schoemer.

PROMISED LAND (Vestron Pictures)

This coufd well be one of the best pictures of 1988. Basing his screenplay on a true story, writer-director Michael Hoffman has created a portrait of small town America during the Reagan era that, in its own way, is as harrowing as River�s Edge was last year. Anyone who grew up in such a town will see familiar images and characters here. There are striking, subtle touches throughout: i.e., the way Reagan�s background �eagle on the mountaintop� speeches come across as comical and ironic, as well as delightful secondary characters and some hilarious albeit bittersweet scenes. The acting is superb; Kiefer Sutherland gives his most sensitive performance thus far as Danny, the town loner/loser who runs away from home, and Meg Ryan goes out on a limb, forsaking her �cute� image to play Bev, a tough, coarse and amoral vagabond. Of course, the tragic ending may seem to have no apparent rhyme or reason—but I think that�s exactly the point. Promised Land could haunt you for a long time after you leave the theater. B.H.

AMNESIA Written by Thomas M. Disch (Electronic Arts Computer Game)

I�ve never been a big fan of computer games. For me, computers mean work. Even those flight simulators, realistic as they may be, aren�t what I call �fun.� Amnesia, written by sci-fi author Thomas Disch, is half-novel, half-game: what the folks at Electronic Arts call a �text adventure.� Here�s how it works: you�ve awakened in a strange hotel room in Manhattan, with no clothes and one dollar to your name—which, if you could only remember, would solve half of your problems. A strange woman wants to marry you and an even stranger man is trying to kill you. The state of Texas wants you for murder. There are no graphics, just dialogue. Just type in almost anything you can think of and the computer answers. According the the manual, Amnesia has the largest vocabulary ever used in a text adventure game—over 1,700 words—and even more incredible is that, programmed into the game is a honest-to-god street and subway map of Manhattan and close to 4,000 separate locations. In your travels you�ll encounter junkies in �shooting gal-

leries, panhandlers, muggers, bag ladies and pay phones that eat your quarters. Don�t ask me how the game ends because I don�t know. I�ve died more times than I can recall, gone to purgatory, committed suicide, stood in front of a firing squad, rotted in jail, had a piano fall on my head... M.L.

MUSIC BY RHIL.IR GLASS By Philip Glass (Harper & Row)

The daring �operas� and performance pieces by avant-garde composer Philip Glass have received more bad reviews than Chuck �Nuke �Em� Eddy has written. So this professional autobiography (i.e., no sex scandals) is a godsend for those who admire Glass or simply believe that his music is actually much better than it sounds. In very dry detail, Glass discusses his Akhnaten, Satyagraha and Einstein On The Beach works, as well as collaborations with Robert Wilson, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, etc. But most interesting are the operas� full libretti (a sort: of bop poetry, much of which was written by an impaired 14-year-old), unexpected links with Ravi Shankar and John Lennon, plus surprisingly simple explanations to enigmatic titles, staging and composition structures. I you love him, Music By Philip Glass is a brilliant, if somewhat colorless work. If you agree with his bad reviews, you�ll think it�s as boring and artsy-fartsy as the music Glass�s detractors say he produces. V.A.

CANDY MOUNTAIN (Xanudu Films)

Julius (played by Kevin J. O�Connor, from Peggy Sue Got Married), a petulant guitar god hopeful with a weird, tremulous voice, boots off down the road in search of an unattainable dream disguised as a curt old curmudgeon named Elmore Silk, who builds custom guitars with wallpaper stripes and neon strings. Along the way he trips over endless caches of woebegone people: a woman who uses deserted summer homes for deer blinds; a whiskeytoothed pickup driver; a knotty-mannered justice of the peace and his bickering son; a pretty but weathered French girl who used to screw Elmore; Elmore�s brother, a rich, cigar-chewing codger played by Tom Waits in a banana-yellow putter�s sweater; and finally, Elmore himself (Harris Yulin), who sucks eggs and washes them down with whiskey in between scattering women and dousing Julius�s dreams. Directors

Michael Frank (Cocksucker Blues) and Rudy Wurlitzer enlist Buster Poindexter, Dr. John, Leon Redbone, Joe Strummer, Rita MacNeil and Arto Lindsay for cameo roles, so the audience, as well as Julius, gets more than they bargained for around every dumb bend in the road. K.S.

SHE�S HAVING A BABY (Paramount)

Another film about having a baby? Well, actually this is a comical view of young married life in general from writer-director John Hughes, who is definitely improving with age. Again, he goes back and forth between reality and the absurd—but because he�s now working with �adult� actors (Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern this time around), it�s a lot more effective than it was with teens. It�s especially interesting to see how Hughes transforms his basically dark view of life into some hilarious situations, although—as in Planes, Trains & Automobiles—he should shy away from sentiment, since he falls flat on his face in these scenes. Be sure to stick around for the closing credits to catch some of the film�s funniest bits. B.H.