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Rip It Up, Issue 140, 1 March 1989, Page 25

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SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME Director: Ridley Scott If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Ridley Scott has put his hard-earned cash behind some of the best-looking films of his generation ( The Duellists, Alien, Legend, Bladerunner] but as far as Hollywood's concerned if it earns less than sl s million, it's not even warm. This is unfair as Ridley is not an indulgent man and in fact a pretty damn good maker of films; the stylistic and thematic innovations of those last three have been imitated at regular intervals, and all for lots more money you can bet. * So one supposes it was up to old: Ridders to come up with the cash himself for this one; fortunately cash is something Scott, one of England's top -

directors of television commercials, is not short of. Someone To Watch Over Me retains the art style of his earlier films but there are bold concessions to commercialism here bold because no director should have to cope with a dead-shit audience raised on ET. and Willow. Ridders added a rock soundtrack, set Someone To Watch Over Me in real life New York and made it a romantic thriller. Also note that Mimi Rogers is blonde: in America, blonde girls are good girls—remember Cocktail? As far as thrillers go, Someone To Watch Over Me is hot, a second adventure in the life of Rick Deckard sans spaceships, a film noirguns'n'roses shootout that hinges on the magnetism between a convincingly thick Tom Berenger and the cushioned sensuality of Ms Rogers. Dumb cops, mean robbers, defiant low-life vs a padded upper class; we're talking fluent film - noire here, hand-stitched together by Scott's impeccable pacing and woozy visual nonchalance. Calm, Luxe et

Volupfe. Hitchcock did a better job with ■Notorious, butthen again Hitchcock always did a better job ... mustn't get off on a tangent. '.; ’ It's also pretty relevant to point out that the script is lifted straight off Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep - the book which Ridders was . supposed to be dramatising when he made Bladerunnerand... look, ask me about it sometime. Mimi Rogers is also married to Tom Cruise.

CHAD TAYLOR

ITAWAPUDDYTAT Merry Melodies (MGM/UA)

Art's a funny thing, folks. There's just no explaining why Salvador Dali is (quite rightly) acclaimed as a genius yet somehow gems like the Merrie Melodies get brushed under the rug of popular culture, dismissed as naive, slightly unhealthy kids' fodder. There's some evil stuff in here, too: some of the best gratuitous violence since Nightmare On Elm Street Part Whatever, a cliched Sambo character [Little Inki] and hell, that Cat even dresses up as a woman in one scene. But forget all that— just sit back and thrill to some of the most action-packed surrealism you'll ever see. There's a lion with switchblade claws, hens in boxer shorts, an unexplained expressionless bird who wanders around stomping everybody and Butch the Bulldog (the

greatest movie canine since The Amazing Dobermans). The whole lot of them flow together in a wonderful, brutally nihilistic slapstick ballet with no real winners—except for maybe Tweety (although after feeding Sylvester to Butch he says "I get rid of so many cats that way" — I never really trusted him).

This collection is just one of a series featuring all the Warner greats, like Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and (my personal favourite) Daffy Duck. It's a nice idea, timed to match the resurgence of interest in classic comic art. From the reprints of the likes of Barks' Uncle Scrooge, Eisner's Spirit and Herriman's Krazy Kat to the runaway success of a

contemporary piece like Roger Rabbit, the becoming is becoming aware of quality cartoonsagain. In an age when Orson Welles ends his career playing a planet in the Transformer Movie, it's sort of refreshing to watch a canary beat the daylights out of a bulldog. Dali would have most certainly approved. KIRKGEE