The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 27

Ze a el 11! fr ellt 7,4 Xt. l. 11-1 11 3 Entertagnm I i ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR BART JACKSON 732-2120 FAX 732-2521 Friday, January 21, 1994 MOVIES COLUMN Wit and realism make The Snapper charming comedy KATHERINE MONK i 4 Sun Movie Critic 'kV A iki'. It' i 4 t. ,4.1 4.

7,. people to leave her alone, and Pat Lai' fan is classic as the pathetic goof who her got her pregnant. It's hard not to like everyone in this movie. Not only are they all talented actors, but they are written to be real people. How can you resist a Wee baton twirler m'ho practises with shaving cream on her lace? Or an eight-year-old who wears cycling spandex but doesn't own a bike? And you know what's even better? They all look real.

Forget the perfectskin-perfect-teeth American myth. Frears, director of My Beaut01 drette, Sammie and Rosie Get Laid and Hero, is not interested. The people in The Snapper wear the same pair ofjeans in every shot, their teeth are crooked and Sharon actually slept with someone downright icky. Very real, very witty and very gentle, The Snapper -ill reward anyone with a penchant for the odd with lots of laughs. MCOLM MEANEY interview, Page C7 THE SNAPPER Starrin9 Co Im Meaney and Tina Kel legher.

Directed by Steven Frears, written by Roddy Doyle. Vancouver Centre. 14 years. ory of her unique buffjob with her forever. And believe me, it's cringe material.

The whole scenario could easily be hell. But Roddy Doyle's dry wit saturates the script and Stephen Frears1 subtle direction keeps us well within the human dimension where nothing is ever as bad as it seems. The result is a charmer of a comedy Ts that doesn't take itself all too serious- ly, but has a healthy dose of heaviness IT to keep things balanced. So while Kay and Dessie (Ruth McCabe and Colm Meaney) might rail at daughter Sharon for her flagrant forgetfulness, Dad still cajoles her into having an after-fight pint. DOUGLAS Campbell returns to Vancouver this summer to play the title role in King Lear and direct The Merry Wives of Windsor for Bard on the Beach's fifth season.

The overwhelming success of its 1993 season, featuring sold-out productions of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, has prompted the company to extend this year's season to 78 performances. The season will open in the last week of June and run until the third week of September. Stratford veteran Alan Scarf() is to direct Lear, while artistic director Christopher Gaze plays Falstaff in Merry Wives. The rest of the casting will be announced in April. Tickets go on sale April 1 at all TicketMaster outlets, 280-3311.

SPIRIT MOVES YOU DON'T think unwed motherhood is anything to laugh at? Well then, you're not Irish. In Ireland, it seems, you can hammer down the Guinness until you get to the delivery room. You're better off saying you slept with a Spanish sailor than a married man, and not once do you talk about the word. Poor, 20-year-old Sharon Curley. She got all liquored up one night and found herself in a shock absorber test on the hood of a parked car.

Too bad she came to her senses a wee minute afterwards and realized her gross very gross error in judgment. Now the poor lass has to pay the price: tell her mother, father and umpteen brothers and sister she's "with child," then live with them in a tiny house for the next nine months. Not only that, she has to carry the mem So SHARON CURLEY (Tina Kellegher) made a big mistake but her story doesn't end in tragedy 7 1g Meaney repeats his perfect paternal performance from The Commitments as the hard-line dad who continually makes a jackass of himself Tina Kelleher is amazing as the unwed Sharon who just wants Jungian analysis. Christian mysticism. Roger.

Ian psychotherapy. The new Cathedral Centre for Spiritual Direction blends them all together in workshops, retreats and seminars. Operating out of Christ Church Anglican Cathedral in downtown Vancouver, the centre begins a three-week series on Jan. 26 that looks at the teachings of Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and Thomas Merton. On Fob.

5, a half-day workshop fuses Carl Jung's psychology with spiritual direction. The centres leaders explore St. Augustine's understandings of the soul in a March 5 workshop. And on April 23, a session looks at the place of sexuality, imagination, aggression, fear and desire in prayer. For more information, phone 683-5505.

Douglas Todd RINGERS WON'T TOLL Vancouver scenery shines at Intersection Fresh exposure speeded Sharon Stone's rise from B-bimbette to Hollywood A-list I .0 PETER BIRNIE Sun Movie Critic Call it the curse of The Sun's listings. The Dead Ringers show at the Commodore announced in Thursday's Calendar section has been cancelled. (A couple of band members are dealing with earthquake damage to their homes in the Los Angeles area.) Refunds are available at point of purchase. And Lost Durangos appear at the Malcolm Lowry Room (in the North Burnaby Inn) tonight and Saturday. Admission is free.

Wendy Bird will still be warbling and Greg Potter will still be playing guitar. CUFFS OFF MOVIES Column One reported recently that Vancouver Playhouse audiences were having trouble getting the title straight for If We Are Women. The Arts Club Theatre has its own story to tell about muddled titles. The box office received a call this week requesting tickets to Lettuce and Bondage. From a seniors' group, no less.

There is a scene with an axe, but sorry, no bondage in Lettice and Lovage. The Peter Shaffer play, starring Shirley Douglas and Nicola Cavendish, starts previews Saturday and opens Wednesday at the Arts Club main stage. PANTS OFF New York Times ill New York Times 1 queen SUZANNA ANDREWS SUZANNA ANDRP iI It was more like the Men in View festival than Women in View this week at the Station Street Arts Centre. A couple of male actors were just about to disrobe for a nude photo shoot for the Arts Club-Pink Ink-Touchstone production of Lilies when they were interrupted by a group of female artists and their children on their way to rehearsals for the women's festival that starts this weekend. The lads managed to keep their clothes on until their "preview" audience had moved on.

Barbara Crook I MAY BE MADE for America, but Intersection is all Canadian and the best evocation of Vancouver ever seen on screen. This dreadfully romantic soap opera is all dolled up vith huge homes. expensive cars and beautiful people: you know this ain't Rowan ne when the troubled marriage of Sharon Stone and Richard Gere is threatened by his love for Lolita Davidovich. The story is a simple tri- git INTERSECTION angle between a husband- Starring Richard Gere i and-wife team of brilliant Sharon Stone and Lolita architects and the brilliant Davidovich journalist "other woman." On a TV soap these caricatures Capitol Esplanade, Richmond would stand as thin as card- Centre, Station Square, Eagle board, in elegant clothes and Ridge, Guildford, Towne, bad moods, and it would take 'Harris Road. Mature.

six months of episodes before Gere made up his mind do I stay or do I go now? Intersection opts instead for a confusing flashbackwithin-flashback format that's one hard act to follow. Is this the architect before he met the journalist at Deep Cove or are they now rolling around in bed at a Gastown garret? And with all this fast driving on the Sea to Sky highway, when the heck is tragedy going to strike? Director Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond, For the Boys) works hard and fast to keep us from seeing how thin this material really is. Gere has been harnessed here, so his patented smirk actually works beneath that grey mop of hair. Since he's always been a troubled person, at least until the Dalai Lama came along to turn him on to Tibetan Buddhism, Gere can easily switch on the most charming look of complete befuddlement Davidovich is restricted to a kind of idiot savant role, where an apparently intelligent writer happily waits by the phone for her man to call when she isn't drinking too much and showing up to embarrass him at the Museum of Anthropology, But in a polished performance it's Stone who gleams as a frosty member of the Upper Levels crust. The kind of West Vancouver woman whose perfect teeth light up the photo in a NIalcohn Parry Town Talk column, she's believable as the victim of Gcre's hormonal excesses.

Add up all the cliches (beautiful daughter takes ballet, harmonica plays to pump up the poignancy, architect fights for his project) and this doesn't Vo7 I come to much more than an entertaining romance plea for polygamy. s' 1 The best reason to see Inter- l''' section lies in its love affair with the Wet Coast. It Rydell makes no effort to 4 4 0 dress us up as Seattle or Port 0- 10 4 4 le, land or Bugtussle. 'ash. The Maple Leafilaps from flagpoles 1,, I 'Y jr- A and postage stamps, all those .41., 1,, 0 1 luxury gas-eaters sport B.C.

licence plates and Davidovich 4 shows up for work at Vancouver Step magazine in a Vancouver Gere in Intersection Taxi. Rydell and his director of Pilot ography, Vi I mos Zs igmon d. have captured perfectly the blue-grey mood of this city. Rain ranges from full flood to drizzle, sunlight sparkles on Sound and even the drabbest of days have a compelling texture to them. Where the Saturday lineup for Bar None crosses the coffee crowd at a Starbucks, that's where you'll find i ersectot, Gere in Intersection tuwo, M.

10 It ilz 7 41' tN ti' ,,11 '4 I 1, 40.. 6 4 a At 1.1 is." i I ii A 4' 4.00'110 lot 4.4, WRONG ADDRESS Arts Club stage manager Lou is-Marie Boum'. vat thought it would be a simple matter to get a refund from an incomplete phone call he made in Los Angeles. Wrong. insisted on mailing him a cheque.

But the U.S. long distance carrier's computers in Jacksonville, decided Bournival's False Creek address was really somewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They diligently sent the letter to the war-torn country via the United Nations. It was forwarded to Denmark and then to BosniaHerzegovina before it reached Bournival in Vancouver this week. All that for a 75-cent refund.

Barbara Crook Y- Ae te' le; tt 0 DIRECTOR Mark Rydell remembered being corn- pletely uninterested when Sharon Stone asked to read for a part in his movie Intersection. "I never had her in mind," Rydell recalled. "I suffered the prejudices that many people suffer in relation to Sharon. They think of her without admiration because of her image and all that publicity." In his reluctance to consider Stone, Rydell held a view shared by many since she became famous playing the sexually liberated Catherine Thimell in the 1992 movie Basic Instinct that she was not particularly talented, and that she vbas best suited for -i i parts involving lots of sex '1-, ,1 and nudity. Stone had to telephone -AL Rydell more than a dozen 'J 1 times before he agreed to 4 'Itr, see her.

Even when he 0t, i did, he intended to test her not for the part of 4 Sally, the chilly, aban- (toned wife of Vincent Eastwood (Richard Gera but for his journalist girl- friend, who is seen in the opening scene naked and in SHARON STONE and bed. But Sherry Lansing, the head of Paramount Pictures, which is releasing Intersection today, had a different impression of Stone. "I saw her just after Basic Instinct, before her celebrity became so enormous, and I was very impressed," said Lansing. "I showed her an early version of Intersection, and I told her: 'Don't go for the obvious, the girlfriend. Look Please see STONE, page 09 SHARON STONE and i "kW i' i -f vitos 1" .1.

0 1 vk, a ''i 4 1,, i 4 1 1 RADIO HIGHLIGHTS Richard A profile of pianist John Browning is featured at 7 p.m. on CBC Stereos The Arts Tonight. Lister Sinclair delves into the thoughts and music of Romantics Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner in the third in his series The Gold Thread on ideas at 9 p.m. TV HIGHLIGHTS ARTHUR ERICKSON, the real architect, Page C9 LA IIMNN ti; Barbara Eden, not long ago voted the sexiest woman on television by the adoring and somewhat nearsighted American public, stars in the new made-for-TV movie, Visions of Murder, at 9 p.m. on NBC.

It's about a psychotherapist whose paranormal experiences involve her in a murder. It was 50 years ago that everyone's favorite movie well, almost everyone's Casablanca was released, so an anniversary celebration is appropriate. Casablanca: The 50th Anniversary (11:30 p.m. on KM'S) is just that as well as a compilation of clips and anecdotes of and about the film, Here's looking at you, kid. If you can stay up, an oddity: Tony Bennett Introducing a retrospective of Frank Sinatra's Career on In Concert (2:05 a.m.

on ABC) that Includes a clip of Sinatra and Bono singing i've Got You Under My Skin. Nicholas Read AMON, 6111 a gettrOOVOW900000fterifittlMe.01PW, -11' 44 I I 41 JAMIE! I ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES FILM-MAKER Mark Rappaport cuts and splices his way through Hudson movies to show ample evidence of the star's closeted homosexuality ,1 0,0 -4 VI, 4' 'c 4 i '41 er.g.'.1C11,9, 4 .01, I 1 St fe i 1 A 0 ''t 'A, Al. Ji THIS FILM IS AN erotic ode to Spain where women retain their lives I women retain their lives 4 and the macho men drown in testosterone' C6 1 k9.