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PAGE 10 -. UAYEILOO WICLE. It is dark, dreary and cold. What better time for I trip to Bermuda? For those unable to pack spltrcases and climes. the Golden Tri- Northern Silence talks too much As it is, it contains a lot of talk which-merely duplicates what readily can be seen, and for a movie with not all that much to say in the first place such duplication becomes not only pointless but tedious as well. Drawn from a best-selling au- tobiography set in the Canadain north of the 1920s and 1930s, Silence Of The North is the story of Alta Goodwin who changes her name to Olive when, against her family's wishes, she marries wandering trapper Walter Reamer. By VICTOR STANTON Silence ot The North might have been a better movie if it had lived up to its title. Bermuda 'trip' held Her experiences as she follows her husband ever northward in- clude attacks by bears, wolves and mad trappers, fire. blizzard and the bearing of three chil- dren. After her husband's death by drowning, she survives and pro- vides for her children by farming and hunting on her own. Eventu- ally, she finds romance again with John Fredrickson who years before had saved her and Reamer's life. Since it was the memoirs of Olive Fredrickson which provided the movie with its story, the outcome of this ro- mance is not going to be any sur- prise. That these episodes fail to be either particularly exciting or involving for an audience is the movie's major flaw. As Olive, Ellen Burstyn creates a character which is seldom more than one-dimensional, a heroine almost in the mould of some long-ago serial queen. Indeed, scarcely anything in this movie is allowed to happen in any way that isn't predictable, and at the same time, due to the almost constant voice-over nar- ration by Olive, redundant. Actually, Patricia Louisiana Knop's screenplay and Allan Winton King's direction make for a virtual catalogue of melodra- matic clifmanger-type episodes. Only Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, as Fredrickson, brings to the screen someone who re- sembles real flesh and blood. The rest, including Tom Skerritt's Reamer. are stock characters whose motivations and actions seem contrived and artificial. Despite an almost unbelieve- able (except, of course. we are told this is a true story) prepon- derance of action-filled se- quences, Silence Of The North seems dull and plodding. And, while there's a certain austere beauty in the northern Ontario and Alberta locations. Richard Letterman's photogra- phy, like the story itself unfor- ttmately, doesn't generate any MOVIE REVIEW gather with the Cmr. The sumer Travel Centre. Sunda offer an evening's re- p.m. 1 spite from winter's at Bl worst-a slide Show of Kitettt {alloyed ttt a wager! The movie, written by Stanley Shapiro and directed by Michael Schultz, nicely manages to bal- ance the serious aspects of story and theme with humorous situa- tions and characters. This way the audience is not being preached to but actually enter- tained in an insightful manner. George Segal, as Whitney, and newcomer Denzel Washington as his son provide both convincing and likeable characterizations. Other performers, including Susan St. James as Whitney's wife, Jack Warden as her father and Dick Martin and Paul Win- field as lawyers, are effective in what are basically caricatures. The plot revolves around a highly successful white business executive - a Jew who has changed his surname to the more WASP-sounding Whitney - who one day learns he is the father of a black youth. (There is more realism in this situation than in the pictures Watermelon Man (1970) and Fin- ian's Rainbow (1968) in which bigoted white men learn at first hand of the black man's experi- ence by being magically trans- formed into black men them- selves.) Carbon Copy is primarily a table. and certainly it's a picture that bucks the cynicism of most current so-called comedies. This in itself is a novel feature to recommend it. Even though thematically it contains echoes of at least two other movies going back a de- cade and more ago, Carbon Copy comes across as refreshing in its entertaining approach to a serious subject. The revelation of this to his bigoted socialite wife and her pragmatic father, who employs Whitney and had long ago coun- selled him against marrying his black sweetheart, results in the loss of home, car, job and social status. Whitney is forced into the kind of menial existence that many victims of prejudice must accept throughout their entire lives. Carbon Copy is a movie that in many ways is more original than most these days. Basically it is a movie of visual, verbal and musical cliches, some of which are more likely to arouse laughter than empathy for the characters and situations. This is not an entertaining movie, nor one that even SUC- ceeds in creating an engrossing sense of nostalgia. And as a portrait of a coura genus woman, it is largely unin teresting and lacking in convic tion. particular excitement. Sunday, Nov. 39 at T: no p.m. (tom Ballroom A at Bingeman Park, Kitchener. and the jazz mean begins at 8:30. Admission Is 32 for club KW Musical Productions has found such a singer in Waterioo's Linda Stromberg, a Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) music department graduate whose vocal instruction in opera and Operetta has well prepared her for the near- operatic demands of such songs as Yes. My Heart and I Hate Him. You only have to listen to a couple of the songs from the musical Carnival to understand why a classically trained singer is required for the leading role of Lili. Stromberg, who continues to study voice with WLU's Dr. David Falk, teache piano locally and is director of music for Mount Zion Lutheran Church, was asked to audition for the role of Lili. Only a little over I month Mo, Stromberg also was performing on the Centre in the Square stage as a chorus member in the Oktoberfest operetta The Merry Widow. During her high school years in Western Canada she played flute in as many as four different bands. She also was a member of an International Music Camp band which toured Europe. Her studies at WLU, and at the Associated Royal Conservatory of Toronto. were primarily in piano performance, and it was while a staff pianist at WLU that she began seriously studying “I learned the audition pieces in a very short time. and I did a good job. I guess." The production, which is being staged by professional Canadian director Alan Lund, opens at Kitchener's Centre in the Square tonight (Nov. 25) and will be performed nightly through Sunday (Nov. 29). with a matinee performance also scheduled for Sunday. Stromberg, who is a native of Calgary, has wanted to be involved in music virtually all her life, starting by learning to play the piano when she was five years old. "I Just absolutely wanted to take piano lessons. it was such an incredible urge with me to perform, to be a musician. To be in music, that's always been Just my one thrust in lite." "Something like singing takes a while to get Into rotationally. You have to be ready for It, you Just can't do It when the urge strikes you." Now, her ambition is to become a professional Stromberg sings way to success Lewis (Jen Banks) and John (Gordon Pinunt) star in Silence of The North. By VICTOR STANTON The local productlon of Carnival has been in preparation for six weeks. with as many as five three-hour reheamls per week. The My gteeftr-ms begin at tr o'clock. while Sunday's matinee “an: at 2 p.m. Unlike the title character in the movie. which was played by Leslie Caron. Lili in Carnival is not required to dance all that much. That suits Stromberg fine. because her only previous dancing experience was in The Merry Widow. The ignites! challenge of the' role, says Stromberg. is "learning to play the emotions "ttttr then letting the emotions play you." "There's a tot-ot emotionaiiim." She breaks down maybe three or four times. and she doesn't really gain control and mature until the very last "The hardest thing is to learn to control the emotions so that you have enough energy to get through the whole Show. That kind of emotion- altsm can really take Its toll." (This is basically the same story used in the movie, but none of the movie's Oscar-winning music - including the hit song Hi Lili Hi Lo _ was carried over into the stage version. Carnival did, however, produce its own hit song, Love Makes The World Go 'Round which Lili sings.) . "I'm really considering doing some more in this area of music, if I can, this summer. either up in Orillia, or in Banff." In Carnival, an award-winning Broadway musical of 1961 which was based on the 1953 movie Lili, Stromberg plays the orphan Lili who arrives at a small European carnival looking for a friend of her dead father. Taken in hand by the carnival folk, she is at first attracted to the show's magician, Marco the Magnificent, but soon comes to realize she has a deeper affection for Paul, a lame and misanthropic puppeteer. During the last few summers. Stromberg has taken part in the Mohawk College Summer Opera Festival and has sung in concert performances of operas in Toronto. While her musical interests are primarily in the classical field, she doesn't put down other forms or styles of music. "If I did, then I would be narrowing myself quite a bit. I've always looked at myself as a versatile musician. and I think there's more possibility for making a living in music if you are willing to be versatile." Carhival is her first experience in musical theatre as such, and she describes it as "refresh- ing."