PAPER MOON
D: Peter Bogdanovich; with Tatum O’Neal, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn
Paramount Home Video/laserdisc
It’s difficult now to imagine that when Paper Moon was released
in 1973, Peter Bogdanovich was one of Hollywood’s most promising directors. His
first film, Targets with Boris Karloff (based loosely on Charles
Whitman’s horrific shooting spree) had become a cult movie. Given a more
substantial budget, he made The Last Picture Show and followed it up
with What’s Up Doc?, both of which enjoyed critical and commercial
success. After Paper Moon however, he made Daisy Miller, At
Long Last Love, and Nickelodeon, and the weight of those three
consecutive disasters drove his career into an irreversible tailspin.
Paper Moon is the Depression Era story of an orphaned young girl,
Addie, and her adventures with Moses, a con-man who may or may not be her
father. Bogdanovich knew this was a performer’s picture and gave his actors,
particularly real-life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O’Neal, the
opportunity to carry the weight of the story. The superb supporting cast is
also memorable, particularly Madeline Kahn as Trixie Delight and John Hillerman
as an evil small-town deputy. Randy Quaid also has a small role as the farm-boy
who’d rather fight than switch automobiles. It’s really Tatum O’Neal’s show,
though, and she delivers. The memorable scene where she demands $200 from Moses
is truly hilarious (or not, depending on how much time the viewer has to spend
around precocious and tenacious kids) and makes one wonder just where her
scene-stealing ability came from.
Paper Moon is part of the Paramount Director Series, and this newly
remastered laserdisc features an introduction by Bogdanovich, who briefly
discusses how he approached the film. The movie, which was shot in black &
white, is presented in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio and is in CLV format.
The video presentation is very good and the audio is solid, if unspectacular.
Those who wonder why any studio would give Peter Bogdanovich the money to make
At Long Last Love should take a look at Paper Moon. It’s as good
an answer as there can possibly be.
– Bud Simons
LOUIS CAT ORZE: THE MYSTERY OF THE QUEEN’S NECKLACE
Berkshire Multimedia
God, but I hate history. I could never sit through it in school, and I
find it still to be a painfully dull, if necessary, area of study. Keep that in
mind when I say that the leisurely paced historical mystery Queen’s
Necklace charmed me quite thoroughly. Over the course of a week’s worth of
several short scenes per day, the plot of the disc involves a necklace which is
discovered missing as it is about to be presented by King Henry XIV to young
Mary Adelaide. A great deal of knowledge about 17th-century France, the lives
of the King and those who surrounded him, and the goings on in the world at the
time is required to solve the theft. Fortunately, this information is all
presented in digestible (but not insulting) doses throughout the course of the
game. And though the main characters, a couple of young royals, tend to become
more and more Disney-like as the story unravels, your “host,” a sly cartoon
cat, is entertaining enough to make up for it. And best of all, the game is
geared towards educating you, not punishing you for your mistakes. Ages 10 to
adult.
– Ken Lieck
EBN
Telecommunication Breakdown
TVT Records
The title of the latest from the ground-breaking Emergency Broadcast
System unfortunately reflects all too well the problems I had employing the
visual portion of this program. Stuttering images and sound made much of the
CD-ROM close to useless on one computer, while on another, things ran smoothly,
but with the soundtrack running a second ahead of the picture (the Chronicle
computer team assures me that the machines in question have all the
requirements that the disc demands). Keep in mind that this is a CD album, made
to be sold in the audio bin, but with an interactive video wall and three
full-length videos (for the Mac and IBM) included gratis, as well as a
Macintosh 3.5 floppy with portions of the above for those without CD-ROM
capability. The sound portion of Breakdown is a fine wedding of
rave-ready dance music and, well, substance. EBN (most widely known as the
creators of part of U2’s “Zoo TV” extravaganza) specialize in a sonic assault
of found sounds from the wilds of television and movies, set to a dance beat
and packed through and through with social comment. Their forte, however, is
the merging of those sounds with a mind-bending, state-of-the-art video attack
on the eyes, and without the full technology to recreate that properly via the
CD-ROM, one is recommended to seek out the videotape version of the album
instead.
– Ken Lieck
This article appears in September 15 • 1995 and September 15 • 1995 (Cover).