10 THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 199!

CITY OF HOPE Film reviews Espemnos lac. Pawkier,. Sarah Green, Maggie Renzi ' Screenerriter-director-edivor John SaYlm Director rlphotography . Robert Richardson Rambling Reporter `City of Hope Music Masan Daring Production designer ....Dan Bishop, Dianne Rea, By DUANE RYRGE Editor John Say]. PARK CITY, Utah — For corrup- Color/Stereo Robert Osborne tion, crudity, graft, kick-bucks, pay- Nick Vincent spawn

offs and organized thuggery — you Joe Tony Lo Bianco ssass'ns, assassins, everywhere: Right on the heels of can't heat the East Coast. On the eve Wynn Joe Morton of this Super Sunday, it's hard not to Rizzo Anthony John Denison A Stephen Sondheim's newest musical "Assassins" open- Zip Todd Graff get lumpily sentimental that one of ing off-Broadway this Sunday, that so-called "Oliver Stone Remha Angela Bauch the two competing teams Angela Barbara Williams Project for 1991," which is actually a big-screener about has got Jimmy Hoffa sliced and Mayor Louie Zonch Running time — 129 minutm the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, is being compressed under the corner of their geared for an April 15 start in Dallas. It'll film there for six cast end zone. Those who savor this weaves a multitude of personal story weeks before moving on to New Orleans. And, to show the aspect of Americana will love John lines, hopping back and forth be- size of the project, no less than seven casting agents are Sayles' "City of Hope," which is a tween neighborhoods, chronicling working between the two coasts to find the right faces for real bonfire of a movie, not just some the nasty underbelly of civic corrup- the various roles ... Last weekend, director David Galli- dandy's distanced perspective of the tion. it's Sayles' best and most ma- Lure work — he has the confidence gan's "A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening" kicked off at melting-pot fires in today's big-city America. "City of Hope" is a nasty, not to show his themes, a la "Eight the Coast Playhouse; this weekend, the Galligan-directed Scorsese-like smear of the disenced Men Out" or "Matewan" — and it Southland Theater Artists Goodwill Event benefit salute to innards of a dying city. holds you by the throat and, accord- Rodgers, Hart and Hammerstein (with proceeds going to Next to swilling coffee all night in ing to your sex, something else. help AIDS victims) unfolds for two nights only at the Em- a Hoboken diner and downing a A crazy-quilt of cross-purposed bassy Theater in Los Angeles. ("I must be crazy," admits month's issues of the Jersey Journal, individual stories, "City of Hope," Galligan.) But, crazy or just crazed, Galligan and his musi- you couldn't get a better insight into centers on Nicky's (Vincent Spano) cal director Rob Abel have quite an eyeful and earful lined today's municipal government sewer downward-spiraled life. Bored out of up, with a cast including Roger Rees and Jane Carr doing a systems than in Sayles' searing story. his skull and coked to combustion, duet (now both bonafide TV stars, both once tred the A front page-like pastiche of big- Nicky's so screwed up that he quits city, East Coast news, "Hope" cross- — continued on page 28 boards here in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of "Nicholas Nickelby"); also Lucie Arnaz, who belts with the best of them; Carole Cook (putting some of her unique `Heaven and Earth' zing into "Zip"); Marilynn Lovell, Frank Langella, Gogi By KIRK HONEYCUTT HEAVEN AND EARTH Grant, Donna McKechnie, Pamela Myers, Penny Fuller In "Heaven and Earth," a histori- Triton Pictures and other names, equally talented. You'll do yourself a fa- cal epic of feudal Japan, filmmaker Director Haruki Kadokawa Producer Yutaka Okada vor when you check out one of these evenings. Only one Haruki Kadokawa can't decide Writers Toshio Knmata, Imo Yoshilmra, problem: It can be sobering, and slightly depressing, when whether he's a director or a general. Haruki Kadokawa Kadokawa composes every battle Based on n novel by annum Kaionp you see all that sensational musical talent sashaying across Director of photography Yonero Maeda scene with loving care. Each chess Hiroshi Tokud, the stage, much of it sending chills up the spine, then you Production designer move by opposing samurai warlords Music Tetsuya Kornoro realize there's so few outlets for that kind of talent today. Ednor Akira Suzuki, Robert C. Jones is painstakingly analyzed. Virtually no one writes musicals anymore, and there's no Costume designer Yoko Tashiro Yet Kadokawa, like those war- Cotor/Stereo market for Real Singers. Damn depressing, because these lords, observes the hostilities from a are people who should be allowed, and hired, to do this sort distant mountain top. lie displays Kagetors Takaski Enoki Takata Masahiko Tsugawa of thing day in, day out, not just once or twice a year at a little interest in climbing down into Nami Atsuko Amino benefit. the grit of story or character. 1.1ssml Taunehiko WgHla Yoe Naomi Zaire° The result is less a movie than Kakizaki Bmpachs Ito ake a bow, academy. That new/old building that now Japanese calendar art. Knatuko Imo Natsuyagi While pleasing to the eye, "Heav- Narrator Stuart Whitman houses the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scien- Running time — 106 minutes T en and Earth" is unlikely to move ces' library and archives on La Cienega Boulevard is a stun- MPAA Rating; PG-13 either at the boxoffice — at least in a Godsend. And it was quite a who's ner, a boon, a treasure, this country. Other than Japanese failure as a film dramatist better who of Oscarites who turned out Wednesday night to have a history buffs, few are likely to em- than the virtual absence of a hero. preview first-look at the facilities, too (officially it's the brace so coolly cerebral a film. The film recounts events leading Center for Motion Picture Study) before the doors open to Nothing exemplifies Kadokawa's — continued on page 28 one and all Monday ... There were all sorts of former Academy presidents there (Walter Mirisch, , Cable TV review Dan Taradash, , Howard Koch, Fay Kanin, Richard Kahn, Gene Allen) as well as current president `Women on the Inside' Karl Malden also Oscar winners such as , By RICK SHERWOOD share a texture and tone of gritty Eva Marie Saint, Shelley Winters, and With a name like "Prison Stories: realities of prison life, too, but some- Louise Fletcher, the latter two with "One Flew Over the Women on the Inside." the HBO how they all played with individ- Cuckoo's Nest" in common Inside the former water- uality. program sounds like it would be an- treatment plant, and at the adjacent tent where a post-tour other one of those titilating looks at "Esperanza," directed by Donna party was held, catered by Along Came Mary, the word was the seedy side of life behind bars. Deitch, is the most emotional of the definitely positive, and the faces were familiar: Diane Ladd, Instead, it's an intelligent, well-writ- three. It tells the story or a woman so ten and well-acted trilogy of dramas bent on finding the man she loves — Sam Goldwyn Jr., , Henry Winkler, Lainic Kazan, Ed Asner, Carroll O'Connor, Frances Lederer, that are nothing short of captivating. who literally left her holding the bag The three segments, made under (drugs) — that she inadvertently Mario Puzo, Gil Cates and a myriad of others. If you want the auspices of three top women di- drives her young son to follow her to be proud of Hollywood, and the movers and shakers with rectors, all focus on female prisoners felonious lead when he senses his a respect for its history, check out that new center. and children — having them, loving secondary importance to her. Rachel them, keeping them, losing them. All — continued on page 52