REVIEWS For With and the Young ot Meart Consens with “Pour bhags 3 Day.” Diamond’s new record release A+ with kids 10 CARROT DIAMOND. Songs and stories by Charlotte Diamond. Produced by Paul Gitlitz and Charlotte Diamond. In LP or cassette. I brought this record home a week ago and it’s already had more air time than the average top 40 single. We get requests for it before breakfast and after supper and a good many times in between. Even when it’s off, we get back the echoes from our seven-year-old who already knows most of it by heart and from our two-year-old who’s trying her best to do the same. You'll go a long way to get a more gold-plated recommendation for a children’s record than that. Many readers will be familiar with Charlotte Diamond as a member a number of years ago of Bargain at Half the Price, as a performer in such productions as The Chile Show, and more recently, for her concerts for children. This is her first recording, but new as itis, it will certainly give her a solid place among Canadian singers and songwriters for children. Much of the material is her own including the delightful “Octopus” and “Four Hugs a Day”, the latter done in collaboration with Earl Robin- son, as well as “The Sasquatch Song” and “Why did I have to have a sister?” which demonstrate the point that good children’s songs are more than engaging melodies — they also have insight. It’s put together in a well-balanced mix with other material that includes such songs as “I ama Pizza” and David Mallett’s “The Garden Song” as well as traditional pieces, one of which is the internationally-known “May There Always be Sunshine.” I must admit to a small disappoint- Tucut that she doesn’t sing the verses of that last song, bur it is a small point; she does, after all sing the chorus in six languages, backed by children’s voices. Understandably, for a new record, there’s a strong influence, both in the presentation and the arrangements, from another popular children’s group, Sharon, Lois and Bram. But in some cases, Diamond does it better. The musical arrange- ments, which utilize a wide range of instruments, from piano, timbales and synthesizer to violin, guitar and mandolin, are first-rate, with some nice subtle touches. And the children’s voices — provided by students from L’Ecole Bilingue as well as by The Sasquatch Gang which includes Diamond’s own two children — add an energy and immediacy to the record, complementing Diamond's own voice and enthusiasm. The record and chromium cassette both sell for $9.95 — and I'd suggest you get one soon because I think its popularity will catch on quickly. Various record outlets carry it as well as People’s Co-op Books. Mail orders are also avail- able but add $3 for postage and mailing and send to: Charlotte Diamond, Box 58174, Station L, Vancouver, V6P 6C5. — Sean Griffin 10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 13, 1985 Films Pitfalls of masculinity — 90 DAYS. Directed by Giles Walker. Written and directed by David Wilson and Giles Walker. A National Film Board pro- duction starring Stefan Wodoslawsky, Christine Pak, Sam Grana, and Fernanda Tavares. At the Royal Centre, Van- couver. To counter all those cynics who think Canada can’t make a decent movie, along comes the National Film Board’s 90 Days. Probably the best all-Canadian comedy in several years, 90 - Days proves that enriching and entertaining feature films can be made here without American involvement and without a make-believe American setting. The film offers believable con- temporary characters in a location that is unashamedly Mont- real. It’s the story of two friends with bruised male egos who find themselves in unusual circumstances with new women. Blue, played by Stefan Wodoslawsky, has invited his Korean penpal to Montreal to marry him. They began writing after he found her name in a Korean newsletter called “Cherry Blossoms”. Embarrassed about the situation, he tries to keep his private life out of the sight of friends and family. He denies even to himself that Hyang-Sook is a mail-order bride and describes her as someone he fell in love with through correspondence. A humiliated Alex (Sam Grana) has been thrown out of the house by his wife and in turn rejected by his girlfriend. In a hotel bar, he is approached out of the blue by a stunning, mysterious woman who makes him a strange business prop- osal. Deadpan, macho Alex is out of sorts dealing with a desirable woman who is both inaccessible and in complete control of the relationship. He goes to extraordinary lengths to please her. Despite his hopes to the contrary, she is only interested in his sperm. She represents a childless client willing to pay top dollar for a healthy Italian-Canadian’s seed. Alex goes through the clandestine meetings, the medical forms, and the sperm test just to see his mystery woman. He finally feels - insulted when she informs him that the test indicates that he has “lazy sperm.” Christine Pak gives a marvelously warm portrayal of Hyang-Sook as a demure woman in an alien country trying desperately to fit in. If she and Blue are not marrried by the time her 90-day visa expires, she must return to Korea empty- The tragedy of self-deception COLONEL REDL. Directed by Istvan Szabo. Written by Ist- van Szabo and Peter Dobal. Starring Klaus Mueller Bran- dauer. A Hungary-FRG-Austria production. 1985. In German with English subtitles. At the Bay Theatre, Vancouver. The mystery and intrigue surrounding the suicide of Colonel Alfred Redl, a high-ranking intelligence officer in the pre- World War I Austro-Hungarian Empire, has long been a subject of debate and creative speculation, as in British play- wright John Osborne’s 1956 drama A Patriot For Me. Interna- tionally recognized Hungarian director Istvan Szabo’s film Colonel Red! which won the Critics’ Prize at the 1985 Budapest Film Festival, the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and was screened at this year’s New York Film Festival, is distin- guished from prior works on this subject by its unique socialist perspective. In Szabo’s film, the main character is viewed, not as an individual who is only incidentally part of a larger historical picture, but as a character of complex social dimensions, both in terms of class dynamics and historical tensions. The fil- mmaker’s interest here is therefore not in the bourgeois empha- Klaus Maria Brandauer is stunning as the ruthlessly am- bitious career soldier in Colonel Redi. handed. She is forced to deal head-on with Blue’s doubts and hesitations about marriage. He constantly avoids the question until the conflict is laid bare in a hilarious encounter with the immigration officer. Afterwards, in the park, Blue finally reveals a pretext for his hesitation. They haven’t had sex; what if they get married and it isn’t good? “But I’m healthy!” Hyang-Sook protests. 90 Days is a surprising sequel to last year’s critically panned, The Masculine Mystique. Made with a budget of $448,000, 90° Days gets part of its spontaneity and simple charm from its cast of mostly untrained actors and from their collective improvisa- tion. The humor is laid-back and comes naturally. There are nd sight gags or ludicrous characterizations. The laughs come from the doubts, conceits, and sensitivities of the adult roles. — ~ = Mark Conway Stephan Wodoslawsky and Sam Grana in 90 Days. sis on the cult of personality, but rather in the choices, conflict5 and destiny of a man who finds himself cast into the currents of history, the fatal irreversible events culminating in World Wa! I, but unfortunately swimming against those treacherous tides. In the film, Alfred Red] rises from humble origins as 4 descendant of Galician peasantry, to a top position in th Hapsburg military. Driven by his ambition and unquestioning obedience to the Austrian monarchy, he conceals and rejectS- his own economic class and family. Military promotion pro vided a means to escape one’s class during those times 0 hereditary title, but Redl is nevertheless the object of contemp! — and scorn by his aristocratic fellow officers, for his peasant origins, his unwavering allegiance to a crumbling system, an his role as informant against disgruntled and corrupt office! When Redl’s inteligence expertise leads him to discover a plot in high places to wrest power from the monarchy, he becomes 4 political scapegoat and sacrifice of those who would soon lea the world into the carnage of machine-age war. In this engrossing and haunting film portrait, Redl himself embodies the tragedy and fate of a man who, having detach himself from his class and family ties, makes pretensions to # social class that accepts him only as long as he serves thei! purposes and grasps frantically at a deceptive identity that ® ultimately transitory and with no stable foundation in reality: In the end, he is adrift among the chaotic power shifts prior World War I, perhaps himself the first casualty of that conflict Like Szabo’s prior award-winning film, Mephisto, about pre-World War II German actor who attempts to accommo date his art to Nazism, Colon Red likewise sacrifices his sens’ — of self for his political ambition and his inflexible belief in? _ doomed social reality. Szabo reflected on the film at the Festival press confereno® where Western journalists tried unsuccessfully to bait the filmmaker into “confessing” that the movie must be an ant communist “parable.” He commented, “Red has left his fa ily, friends, his social class. ..He is one who doesn’t have th courage to live the life of his own class the family, to live h® own life. ..Without these roots, and only the mask, the v0” form, one will perish.” Colonel Redl succeeds with brillian© and clarity in capturing through the life of one man the histo™ cal implications of this entire era. — Prairié