Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 19

rz Herald Review Decatur Illinois ENTERTAINMENT THE ARTS Friday, February 20, 1998 1 3 i 'I 1 It V9' i i i it il 1 Looks aren't the only reason this 1 1 -year-old is The Little Mermaid' DEAR OLD DAD: Hedy Burress plays Tom Selleck's daughter in the new sitcom The 'Closer' to success Former Millikin student Hedy Burress is back on TV, opposite Tom Selleck By DAVID BURKE Staff Writer om Selleck wants you. It's an enviable position for any woman to be in, but none more than Hedy Bur ress. The former Millikin ''X I 1 i n- irf in Ifffciw, Herald ReviewHerb Slodounik BEWITCHING: The sea witch (played by Susan Kok, left) looms over Mara (Heather Burkett), 'The Little By DAVID BURKE Staff Writer Show info 'Palmetto' "Palmetto" wants it both ways to be simultaneously a sexy film noir thriller and a spoof of that overworked movie genre It works only part of the time. On the plus side, director Volker Schlondorff (best known for the Oscar-winning foreign film "The Tin and screenwriter E. Max Frye have fashioned one of those narrative twisteroos that seem to be going north but which, the hero and the audience realize too late, have actually been going south the whole while.

The problem lies in the execution. "Palmetto" never quite finds the style required to achieve both of its ambitions. Woody Harrelson stars as Harry Barber, a sleazy newspaper reporter who tried to blow the whistle on political corruption in little Palmetto, and instead was framed and sentenced to prison. Now, after two years, new evidence has cleared Harry and he returns to Palmetto and the arms of his girlfriend (Gina Gershon). But a regular job sounds like way too much bother, and when he encounters the gorgeous young wife (Elisabeth Shue) of a dying millionaire, Harry starts getting ideas.

The wife, unable to make ends meet on the allowance provided by her husband, has devised a plan to fake the kidnapping of her adolescent stepdaughter and collect a fat ransom. The money-hungry teen (Chloe Sevigny) has agreed to cooperate in extorting money from her papa; Harry is needed to make a couple of threatening phone calls and collect the cash. For his efforts he will get $50,000 and lots of scream-out-your-lungs sex. What could go wrong? Just about everything. The film's running joke is that Harry is a complete screw-up.

If he isn't walking into walls, he's trying to light cigarettes with matches that refuse to ignite. He leaves a cigarette with his saliva (and thus his DNA) at a crime scene. After using an old typewriter to create a ransom note, Harry tosses it off a causeway, only to see it land in an inch of water. Worse, the fake crime quickly turns into the real thing, with a bona fide kidnapping and murder. All the evidence points to the befuddled Harry.

Schlondorff dishes numerous visual jokes, from esoteric parodies of classic film noir moments to one outrageous moment when he cuts from a corpse dissolving in an acid bath to the remains of a spaghetti dinner going down the kitchen sink. But "Palmetto" lacks any sort of glue to hold it all together. Harrelson's Harry is an amusing bumbler, but one can hardly get worked up about the fate of such a jerk. Shue is miscast as a calculating woman: her trademark girl-next-door aura is at odds with the character's lascivious behavior. And Gershon, whose career is a sterling example of turning a pig's ear into a silk purse, is underutilized as Harry's loyal girl.

The film's main attraction is its narrative sleight of hand. But it's too little too late. Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Star 'Senseless' The title is just asking for it, but while "Senseless" is pretty senseless, it's also pretty funny. Marlon Wayans plays an enterprising economics student who just wants to make a lot of money on Wall Street someday (and bring it back to the community Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn).

Hurting for tuition, he enters an experimental drug study at his university. After injecting some glowing green goo, he develops supersensitive senses, but when the experiment goes awry, his unreliable superpowers wreak havoc with his love life and his future career. It's mostly the same old adolescent comedy drill, including tons of toilet humor, borrowed sitcom humor, black pop culture humor, hockey humor, frat house humor, class struggle humor, economics humor (believe it or not), a Patrick Ewing cameo and cuties in both varieties (a nice girl and a prostitute.) But Wayans' rubber face and gift for wild physical comedy put a little extra spin on things. Director Penelope Spheeris slaps a wide-angle lens on him occasionally to increase the distortion, but it isn't necessary his face is a special effect on its own. As the experiment plays out, he pushes his contortions farther into Jim Carrey territory.

But unlike Carrey, when MARQUEE Continued on C8 University student was picked by Selleck to play his daughter in "The Closer," a new CBS sitcom that premieres Monday night. Burress, a 24-year-old Worden native, was asked several times to audition, but she wasn't sure she wanted to. "When they came at me the last time, in December, they said, Tom wants to meet with you I was like, well, OK, sure," she said from her dressing room on the Warner Bros, lot in Burbank, Calif. "You don't tell Tom Selleck no for just about anything, and I think there's plenty of women who would agree on that one." She assumed Selleck had viewed clips from her work on the NBC sitcom "Boston Common," which lasted 1 12 seasons, before requesting her. She finally agreed to do the role on a Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning she was in a read-through with the cast, which also includes Ed Asner and Penelope Ann Miller.

Selleck plays Jack McLaren, an advertising hotshot who is fired from his firm for beating the president at golf and opens his own Denver ad agency. Burress plays his 18-year-old daughter Alex, who, in the opening episode, tells Selleck she's quitting college to become a professional snowboarder. "It's sort of a mini-version of his character. She comes into the situation, assesses it in a moment and takes control," Burress said. "I'm the only one who can give him what he gives everyone else.

I'm a good match for him." She watched Selleck's previous TV incarnation, "Magnum, P.I.," and said, "It was a huge part of my adolescence." "If you would have told me when I was sitting in front of that television watching Tom Selleck that someday I would be on a show with him, I would have told you to go fly a kite," she said. Working opposite Selleck is a fantastic experience, she said. "He's got it," he said. "He knows HEDY Continued on C8 t's that long, curly red hair that made Heather Burkett the natural choice for the title role in Storyteller Theatre's "The Little Mermaid," right? "We know when everybody looks at her, that's what they're thinking," said Sue Powell, producer-artistic director of the Decatur Park District Recreation Department children's production. "But it never really occurred to us (Powell and director Angela Bayler) until after she was cast.

"She just had a real presence, a real energy about WHAIi Storyteller Theatre production of "The Little Mermaid" WHERE: Decatur Civic Center theater WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28; 2 and 5:30 p.m. Sundays, March 1 and 2 and 6 p.m. Saturday, March 7 TICKETS: $5, from the Decatur Park District recreation office, 610 E.

Riverside Drive, 422-8535. i serer as Neptune. This is the 16th year for Storyteller Theatre, and Powell said the attractions this time around include an on-stage ship, with a 20-by-8-foot deck. "It actually rocks on hydraulics in the storm," she said. The set design proved more interesting this year, Powell said.

"The real challenge has been how to create an underwater effect," she said. "Starfish and sails and sand are not something everyone has lying around in their closets." Bayler, in her first time directing a children's show, said it's a different experience than with adults. "It's been challenging, to say the least," she said. "I have to be a lot more creative in my ideas and how to bring them across to the kids. "But the great thing about kids is once they have an idea, they'll take it and make it their own and make it bigger.

It's fun to see." Powell said she wouldn't dream of taking a break from Storyteller Theatre. "We have such a huge response from the public," she said. "For us to have seven shows sell out like that every year is close to phenomenal. "We have people who just wouldn't miss the show for anything. I have adults who come year after year who don't have kids." her, a real facet of open-eyed innocence.

She has a good sense of herself." Bayler, in her first year directing the children's production, agreed. "I saw the spunk we needed for 'Little Bayler said. "We needed some backbone, and we needed a lot of character. And she's got a wonderful stage presence, good instincts." A sixth-grader at Decatur Christian School, Heather said this isn't the first time she's been a mermaid five years ago, in her first Storyteller role, she was "the red mermaid" in "Peter Pan." "I just thought it'd be neat" to try out and get the title role this year, she said. In the play adapted from the Hans Christen Andersen tale, the title character's name is Mara, not Ariel as in the animated Disney version.

Heather said she has watched the movie several times for ideas on how to move. Moving is also difficult in her costume. "It's kind of like a tube; there's a hole that goes out where your feet go in," she explained. Others in the 40-member cast include Susan Kok as the sea witch, Michael Hunzinger as the prince and Chris Heis- Tape is 'Critical' Patients stranded in limbo between life and death is the subject of the hospital drama "Critical Care," which is among new video releases this week. It stars James Spader, Kyra Sedgwick, Helen Mirren, Anne Bancroft and Albert Brooks.

Copperfield appearing at Assembly Hall CHAMPAIGN Magician David Copperfield will take his "Dreams and Nightmares" production to the University of Illinois Assembly Hall for two shows Wednesday, April 1. The show, which Copperfield debuted on Broadway, includes Claudia Schiffer's fiance being severed at Baez whose album "Gone From Danger" received high critical praise last year will perform at the University of Illinois at Springfield's Sangamon Auditorium on Friday, April 17. Her opening act is singer-songwriter Richard Shindell, who wrote two of the songs for the album. Tickets at $30, $25, $23, $21 and $15 are available from the Sangamon ticket office, 786-6160 or 1-800-207-6960. Tickets are $17 at TicketMaster outlets or by calling (309) 556-3815.

Jody Watley blooms again in Tlower' Former best new artist Grammy winner Jody Watley blossoms again with "Flower," one of several new releases on music shelves this week. Also new are new soul acts Destiny's Child (see Billy Tyus review on Page C3), Jagged Edge and Kimberly Scott; German instrumental group B-Tribe, "Sensual Sensual;" Broadway's Michael Crawford's religious album "On Eagle's Wings;" rockers Deep Forest with "Comparsa;" former "Chicago Hope" doc Mandy Patinkin with the Yiddish "Mamaloshen;" Chris Hicks walks "Funky Broadway;" and Austin Lounge Lizards, "Employee of the Month." And flash back with the two-CD "Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers At RKO," "There Will Be No Sweeter Sound: The Columbia-Okeh Post-War Gospel Story 1947-1962" and Music Club's compilations "Live from Planet Ska," "This Is Reggae" and "This Is Soca: 14 Massive Carnival Hits." i I the torso by a laser beam and walking -n" I Also new are "The Devil's Advocate," where lawyer Keanu Reeves discovers boss Al Pacino is satan; "The Matchmaker," a romantic comedy set in Ireland and starring Janeane Garofalo and Denis Leary; "Most Wanted," with talk-show host Keenen Ivory Last weekend's box office leaders: 1. "Titanic" through the blades of an industrial fan called the "Death Fan." Tickets $39.50, $32.50 and $19.50 go on sale at the Assembly Hall tick Wayans 'Most Wanted 2. "The Wedding Singer" 3. "Sphere" 4.

"Good Will Hunting" 5. "As Good As It Gets" 6. "The Borrowers" 7. "Replacement Killers" 8. "Great Copperfield April 1 show et office, 333-5000, Ani DiFranco set for Illinois Wesleyan BLOOMINGTON For fans of folk music on the modern side, singer Ani DiFranco will be at Illinois Wesleyan University's Shirk Center for a Friday, April 17, show.

DiFranco's 17th album, "Little Plastic Castle," was released this week, and she's gained a large cult following. Her Illinois Wesleyan show is the singer's only Midwest performance. Wayans as a war hero stuck in a covert operation and framed for killing the first lady; and "Good Burger," with Nickelodeon teen faves Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell as silly fast-food workers. Compiled by David Burke with rws services 9. "Blues Brothers II i i yv beginning at 10 a.m.

Saturday, Feb. 28. Tickets are also available at Ticket-Master outlets, including WDZ-WDZQ in Decatur and Bergner's in Forsyth. Baez to play Springfield SPRINGFIELD Folk legend Joan 1 2000" 10. "Wag the Dog" Exhibitor Relations Co..