Arts/ Reviews Fantasy means The Second Chance in baseball flick FIELD OF DREAMS. Starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earle Jones, Burt Lancaster, Ray Liotta. Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. At Cineplex Odeon theatres. Reality is knocking at the door. The farm’s mortgaged to the hilt, you’ve torn up some crucial hectares of corn to build a baseball diamond, and the business inter- ests that hold your mortgage are poised to foreclose. But there are more important things in life. You hit the road in search of a long-lost writer who lives halfway across the United States, and subsequently on a quest to finda small town Minnesota doctor who almost made it to the major leagues and who’s now dead. If only you knew why you were doing this. Fantasy is the lubricant that lets things happen, but the things celebrated are base- ball, the Spontaneous Act and Getting That Second Chance. They are-all to be found in the unabashedly sentimental Field of Dreams, the latest entry in a genre of movies paying tribute to America’s great pastime. And Canada’s, as well. Field of Dreams is the U.S. film industry’s version of Shoe- less Joe, the acclaimed novel by Canadian writer and White Rock resident, W.P. Kin- sella. When it comes out on video, it will make a good companion piece to last winter’s release, Eight Men Out, by director John Sayles. Sayles’ movie dealt with the infam- ous “Black Sox” scandal in which eight players of the top-rated Chicago White Sox were found guilty of taking bribes to throw the World Series (while the club owners who exploited them and the sleazy gamblers - who set the fix got off scot-free). The most notable of the players whose careers were trashed was “‘Shoeless” Joe Jackson, an illi- terate southerner who wound up playing anonymously in the minor leagues. In Field of Dreams, the eight are back. Only this time, they’re ghosts. It begins when Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears a voice while walking through his rows of corn. The voice whispers, “If you build it, he will come.” “It” turns out to a baseball diamond, complete with bleachers and night lights, which costs Ray and his family all their savings, not to mention part of their crucial cash crop and Ray’s credibility with the neighbours. After doing this thing, Ray waits. And the next summer, with the glare of the lights picking out the diamond in the darkness, comes the first visitor. It’s Shoeless Joe. Joe asks if he can bring some more play- ers. Sure, Ray replies, bring all you want. And soon, Ray and his wife and daughter are sitting in the bleachers day and night, watching baseball’s early greats — the Chi- cago White Sox eight — going through practice rounds. But it doesn’t end there. Ray gets another message: “‘Ease his pain.” And he’s off to Boston to look for Terrance Mann (James Earle Jones, whose character is a stand-in for the novel’s J.D. Salinger, a real-life author who did not wish to be mentioned in the film). Mann is a Sixties-era author and guru whose works have been under fire by irate parents at a parent-teachers associa- tion meeting. He has given up writing and lives in closely-guarded obscurity in Boston. Field of Dreams makes no bones about its appeal to our romanticism and sentimen- tality. Lush music accompanies scenes such as the one in which Ray meets the spirit of Archibald “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster), a country doctor who is the embodiment of the ideal of homespun warmth and selflessness. The music is there (or seemed as if it was) when Ray tells Mann ‘his lifelong regret that he never apologized to his working-class father for slandering the man’s hero — Shoeless Joe, no less — - before leaving home at age 17. Field of Dreams harkens back to the sentimental movies of the Forties in its rejection of Eighties cynicism, and for the most part it works — although the film lags in a few spots and overkills with homilies about baseball and its integration with the American psyche. Field of Dreams stands out because of its sense of mystery: What do all these dispar- ate elements have to do with each other, and why the quest? Its characters are unconven- tional: Ray and wife Annie (Amy Madigan) are hardly typical Iowa farmers, being former Berkeley student radicals who listen to The Lovin’ Spoonful over dinner and who speak out against “book burning” in the conservative Bible Belt. And the film has humour in the unantici- pated answer. Ray tells his wife he’s been hearing voices urging him to do something without specifying exactly what. Annie’s response: “Don’t you hate it when that happens?” Field of Dreams gives us some traditional BURT LANCASTER, GABY HOFFMAN, KEVIN COSTNER in Field of Dreams. values without the right-wing politics. And it, along with some other successful entries in the crop of baseball flicks, makes us yearn for the sandlot. Now, where did I put that glove? — Dan Keeton Reads like a good mystery, book links arms and capital THE SWORD AND THE DOLLAR: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race. By Michael Parenti. St. Martin Press, New York. $24.95, hardcover. Available at People’s Co-op Bookstore. The Sword and the Dollar is so well writ- ten and interesting that it holds you as if you were reading a mystery thriller. However, it is the story of imperialism, capitalism and the effects on the peoples of the world from international monopoly capitalism. “Neither Liberals or Conservatives,” author Michael Parenti writes, “seem to have anything to say about economic impe- rialism as practised throughout the world by corporate and financial interests in the United States and other capitalist countries. They never consider whether capitalism, as a global system, has any integral relation- ship to their foreign policy.” Therefore, “these remarkable omissions are a central focus of this book.” Parenti takes us through what he calls “the mean methods of imperialism:” the military clashes of people; expansion; the policy of divide and conquer; the use of mercenaries — all the devices to plunder the riches of the land at the expense of the people who live in it. His descriptions of “imperial state terror- ism,” from the French occupation of Alge- Give Peace a Dance; Christy Moore Lower Mainland folks can do their bit for southern African liberation and rock the night away at the third annual Give Peace a Dance in Vancouver on Saturday, May 13, 4 p.m.-midnight. Performers include Skaboom, Powder Blues, Roy Forbes, Ghana Dance Troupe, Universal Gospel Choir and several others. Between sets, prizes and contests are offered. Pro- ceeds go to the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa. Tickets are $12.50 through May 11, $15 after, and are available at all Ticketmaster outlets. Phone 732-4723. Sea 2 ¥ Lovers of traditional Irish music and its innovative forms will want to attend the Christy Moore concert at the Commodore Ballroom, Sunday, May 14, with doors opening at 7:30 p.m. Moore’s work is probably best known from the former group Planxty, but he has also had a long solo career and includes progressive mate- rial in his vast repertoire. Tickets are $14 at all Ticketmaster outlets, $16 at the door. It’s sponsored by the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Timbre Productions and Vancouver Co-op Radio. * * * The Vancouver East Cinema presents a retrospective on the Sixties with Growing Up in America on May 12-14, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. It features interviews with, and old footage of, luminaries like Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg and the late Abby Hoff- man. ~* * * The Tube: KCTS, Seattle’s public televi- sion, features ’’ Israel: The Covert Connec- tion” on Frontlines, running one hour on May 16, 10 p.m. It concerns the long rela- tionship and secret strategic alliances between Israel and the United States. Closed-captioned for the hearing impaired. Also on KCTS is “Testimony” on Great Performances, concerning Soviet com- poser Dimitri Shostakovich, based on his memoirs. It stars Ben Kingsley and airs May 19, 9 p.m. Closed-captioned. 10 e Pacific Tribune, May 8, 1989 ria in 1830 to present day American military intervention in Latin America, are graphic and horrifying. And he doesn’t mince words about the terror, the murders, and the use of trained mercenaries to control people who want self-government and a decent life, most notably in Central Amer- ica today. Parenti refutes the idea that Third World countries are underdeveloped or developing nations. ““Third World countries are over exploited and mal-developed,” he says, and Third World poverty and multinational industrial wealth are directly linked to each other. And since multinationals do not have to pay income tax on profits made in other countries, the cost of the U.S. global empire to the American working people is consid- erable. With the export of capital, technol- ogy, factory and sales work to Third World countries where wages are at starvation level, one out of three workers employed by the U.S. multinational companies are now in countries outside the U.S. The American people, says the author in the ironically humorous way he has of put- ting things, “have a habit of drifting off into reality, and worry about such things as money, jobs, homes and the quality of life.” This, he claims, is a major problem for U.S. policy makers and corporate leaders. So the people must be brought back repeat- edly to the harsh illusions propagated by their rulers. And when all other interven- tionist arguments fail, there is always the “Great Red Menace.” “The American people might balk at sending their sons off to die for Exxon, Chase Manhattan or I.T.T., so the ruling elite must keep pounding on about U.S. interest, national security and the threat of communism.” The Cold War, which supposedly sur- faced after World War II, is given a lot of attention and Parenti outlines the terrible cost to all of us. The arms race, which he calls The Arms Chase, and the whole insan- ity of the military build up is discussed in depth. “Nuclear weapons,” he says “are an integral part of the U.S. effort to maintain global influence.” Parenti writes in a vivid, dramatic style. He is a Marxist and he is knowledgeable, factual and explicit. This is the best book on political econ- omy I have ever read. Any layperson can understand it. — Jonnie Rankin