Considering LASIK Surgery? Come meet Dr. Geoff Tabin, fletcher Allen’s own corneal specialist, who performs LASIK and can help determin if this procedure is the right choice for you. Geoff Tabin, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and is Board Certified by the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Dr. Tabin has over 7 years of experience in corneal refractive surgery, including a refractive surgery fellowship, and has been published widely throughout the medical field
review
To determine if laser vision correction can help reduce or elimi nate your dependence on glasses or contact lenses, call Fletcher Allen Health Care at 847-0251 F le tc h e r for a FREE CONSULTATION A l l e n y*r h i a i t m
C
A
i t a ^ > A
.
b r e a t h ... R e la x ... C a rp o o G et H a p p y . C all
1-800 685-RIDE to d a y !
PEARL HARB0R**1/2
•Dreams and the Creative Imagination A 1 0 - d a y r e s i d e n t i a l r e t r e a t, w i t h 6 c o lle g e c r e d its .
•Arts, Activism And Social Change P o litic s , D a n c e , T h e a te r , P u p p e ts , M u r a l s a n d m o r e ... ( I n s t i t u t e f o r S o c i a l E c o lo g y )
• Film Production I B a s i c f i l m m a k i n g t e c h n iq u e s . O p e n t o H . S. s e n i o r s & a d u l t s . L im i t: 1 6 s t u d e n t s —h u r r y !
•Water World “...th e w a y o f t h e s o u l le a d s to w a te r .” -J u n g
BORA! BORA! BORA! Aside from its centerpiece attack sequence, Bay’s latest is anything but a blast.
Call 862-9616now for yourfree catalog!
many more.
9 5 N O R T H A V E N U E , B U R L IN G T O N VT 0 5 4 0 1
W W W .BURLINGTONCOUEGE.EDU
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay clearly hoped to transcend their dated, formulaic action origins and make a motion picture with social significance. They succeeded. The two may have done more to spare future generations the scourge of war than anyone in history. Wars, after all, lead inevitably to the making of big Hollywood movies about them and, faced with the prospect of more extravaganzas this superficial, hokey, sanctimonious and overlong, people dealing with global conflict are likely to try harder than ever to keep the peace. Let us pray, by the way, that Pearl Harbor is not “the movie of the summer,” as so many are calling it. I’d certainly hate to think things aren’t going to get a hell of a lot better than this in the course of the next 12 weeks. Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale star in Bay’s $140 million depiction of the 1941 Japanese attack and the havoc it wreaked on the love lives of three young Americans. (Fun fact: That $140 million is more than 10 times what the government spent to build the USS Arizona.) Like most films that are really just excuses for extravagant digital-effect displays, the movie has one or two powerhouse sequences and a whole lot of filler on either side of them. Early on, we watch as Affleck and Hartnett grow up together and share a fondness for airplanes and the idea of flight. Later, the best friends enlist in the military and become fighter pilots. Affleck and Beckinsale, who plays an Army nurse, fall in love, he volunteers to fly with the British and gets shot down. Which drives Beckinsale into the comforting arms of Hartnett and a whole new romance. At least until — surprise — Affleck returns from the dead and his old flame is forced to figure out how to handle the sudden boyfriend surplus, not to mention the fact that she’s become pregnant. Well, that’s the first 90 minutes — the entire run ning time of many movies. Bay could actually recoup a significant portion of his pictures cost by selling its first hour and a half to Lifetime as a detachable, self-
contained chick-flick. Just a thought. Finally, though, the Japanese arrive and pull the plug on the soap opera. The 35-minute centerpiece sequence is a state-of-the-art theater-rocker, evocative in places of both Saving Private Ryan and Titanic. (Though, as I’ve pointed out before, the hair-raising bullet effect employed in both war films was actually pioneered by Robert Zemeckis in Forrest Gump.) This is a director who specializes in action and explosions. Clearly, Bay had the time of his life pulling out all the stops. Historians have pointed to inaccuracies in the director’s portrayal of the surprise attack. (It was never intended to be a surprise, for example. A diplomatic snafu prevented the official warning which was intended.) But its power is beyond doubt. The sky darkens with war planes, bullets streak down in all directions, giant ships buckle, blow apart and slowly roll over. Chaos and carnage have seldom been ren dered as effectively. For a minute there, the terrible flesh-and-blood tragedy of what took place is painful ly palpable. Then the Japanese planes return to their carriers and we return to the Hollywood hokum already in progress, with its plot written in shorthand, its stickfigure characters, the macho posturing, dumb John Wayne dialogue and wooden performances from unconvincing, underfed twentysomething thespians. More than anything, Pearl Harbor conjures for me the idea of a high school drama club offering with a hundred-million-dollar second act. It’s just unbelievably ham-handed in places. So, what are you going to do? This sort of thing would appear to be the future of American film. The immediate future, anyway. Until audiences tire of movies that put computer effects before character, we’re going to get pictures like Twister, Godzilla, The Lost World and Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941. A date that will live in infamy. Something tells me the latest film inspired by it won’t fare all that much better, when it comes to the test of time. (7)