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IN

NEW VELVET

After the spectacular disaster of If Ever I See You Again, Joe Brooks seems to have fled the United States and taken up movie butchering in England under the nom de film of Bryan Forbes. For his first opus under his new name he chose to write, direct, and produce the sequel of National Velvet, that MGM classic which introduced the 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor to movie audiences.

The laughable title, International Velvet, is only a small clue to how totally absurd the whole movie is. Velvet Brown, the character originally played by Liz, is now middle-aged and boring. and living in sin with a writer who is much too kind and understanding to be human. Their idyllic English existence is suddenly interrupted when Velvet's niece, Sarah Velvet, comes over from America after being orphaned by a car accident.

Sarah Velvet is the classic ungrateful brat who does not get along with her Aunt Velvet until it is discovered that niece and aunt both suffer from a very intense horse fetish. With so much in common how could they help but become friends.

While the original Velvet ignited one of the legendary movie careers, the new movie may end one of the most promising. Tatum O'Neal, who up to now has always been cute, often very talented, and never less than in-

Tatum O'Neal in International Velvet teresting, is downwright obnoxious as Sarah Velvet. How could Ms. O'Neal let herself get involved in such an unworthy project. In this movie she is ugly in her first scenes, and even though they eventually get around to fixing her up a bit, her character remains whiney and static.

Also, Sarah Velvet ages from twelve to eighteen, but the only thing that changes is her flip. It gets more severe as time goes on. She acts the same, talks the same, and even rides horses the same. The crucial problem is that Forbes could not make up his mind whether he wanted to make a movie about Sarah Velvet or About Aunt Velvet, and he obviously is not talented enough to make a movie about both at the same time. Tatum sounds like ten year old who looks like fourteen year old with a lot of make up on her face. Eye shadow and rouge just aren't enough, no matter what Craig Russell says.

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To make matters worse, Forbes cast his wife, Nanette Newman, as Aunt Velvet (the next best thing to playing the role himself, I guess). You can say all sorts of things about Liz in her present state, but there is no way that Velvet could have grown up to be as excrutiatingly dull as Ms. Newman and the script make her.

Luis Palomares

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