ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 1, 1997 TAG: 9701020014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: LINDA LEE N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
For all of the hype and bluster attached to the year's ``event'' movies - in which twisters ravaged Oklahoma, Madonna WAS ``Evita,'' aliens invaded (twice), and Tom Cruise hovered over a top-secret computer - the year's most important films seemed to drift in quietly from someplace other than Hollywood. Many were made abroad, and even those that weren't had the feel of imported products.
The idiosyncratic ``Fargo,'' Joel and Ethan Coen's droll spoof of Minnesota folkways, became the highest-grossing Coen film ever. A laconic tale of Texas lawmen past and present was told by John Sayles in ``Lone Star.'' Stanley Tucci's ``Big Night'' had the feel of an Italian ``Babette's Feast,'' even though it was in English, and ``Secrets and Lies,'' about working-class motherhood, was from the British director Mike Leigh.
Even ``The English Patient,'' which was produced by Americans, had an exotic air: the only American in the cast was Willem Dafoe, who played a Canadian thief. ``Trainspotting,'' a film that offered Scottish losers struggling with drugs, was among the most talked-about movies of the year, inspiring headlines and a flurry of articles about Heroin Chic. And though few foreign-language films made much of an impression, ``The Postman'' (``Il Postino''), released in 1995, became the all-time box-office champ, earning more than $21 million.
Back in Hollywood, the big news was ``Independence Day,'' a summer movie heralded by movie trailers six months in advance and television commercials during the Super Bowl in January. Apparently the barrage of publicity worked: The film dominated the Fourth of July weekend, bringing in a record $100 million in its first week.
Hollywood gave children Eddie Murphy in a comeback (the mean-spirited ``Nutty Professor''), evil aunts (``James and the Giant Peach'') and a cuddly outcast (``The Hunchback of Notre Dame''), complete with a Disney-style marketing blitz.
Audiences got the chance to find out what would happen when a Hollywood actor was paid $20 million to do whatever he wanted. The first actor to hit that mark was the funny man Jim Carrey, who had scored in several crude comedies. What he wanted to do this time was make a dark comedy called ``The Cable Guy.'' It bombed.
As for the classics, which don't necessarily do well at the box office but offer prestige and have video and cable potential, the year saw the end of the Jane Austen cycle, with a luminous Gwyneth Paltrow in ``Emma."
It was also a banner year for Shakespeare: a bouyant ``Twelfth Night,'' Kenneth Branagh's lavish four-hour ``Hamlet,'' Al Pacino's idiosyncratic documentary ``Looking for Richard'' and the kinetic, MTV version of ``Romeo and Juliet,'' complete with neon. Is a ``Titus Andronicus'' by Tim Burton next?
It was the year Greer Garson, Dorothy Lamour, Howard Rollins, Marcello Mastroianni and Claudette Colbert died. Michael Ovitz and Disney parted ways. And fresh faces arrived: not only Paltrow but also Emily Watson, Renee Zellweger, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Liv Tyler and Matthew McConaughey.
Among the biggest movie stories of the year were films audiences didn't get to see, notably ``Crash,'' David Cronenberg's ode to eroticism and car accidents, and Adrian Lyne's version of that ode to pedophilia, ``Lolita,'' starring Jeremy Irons and a 15-year-old newcomer named Dominique Swain. Maybe next year.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Daring duos in dismal duds: Tom Cruise and Emmanuelleby CNBBeart in "Mission Impossible" (above) and Helen Hunt and Bill
Paxton in "Twister." color KEYWORDS: YEAR 1996