SIX PACK

title: SIX PACK

year: 1982

cast: Kenny Rogers, Diane Lane, Erin Gray, Anthony Michael Hall, Terry Kiser, Barry Corbin

rating: **

When people think of acting it's usually how a performer speaks his or her lines. But acting is just as physical as verbal. How a person walks, runs, sits, stares in repose/reflection, is just as important as line delivery, and Kenny Rogers does it all horribly. Witnessing a fat Kenny (with an always perfectly combed shaggy dog beard) playing a car racer who every woman on earth is nuts about (including Erin Gray) hanging out with a bunch of orphaned freewheeling car thief kids (including Diane Lane and Anthony Michael Hall) is as entertaining for bad movie fans as a bad movie gets. Just sit and stare at Mr. Rogers, who fully realizes there is a camera pointing at him, and you will be thoroughly entertained on a level impossible to explain till you experience it for yourself. For those who live for cinematic torture, I recomend this highly.

BOUND FOR GLORY

year: 1976

cast: David Carradine

director: Hal Ashby

rating: ***1/2

I love the late David Carradine as an actor but in many films he seems to be sort of... not trying very hard. Well this might be because he often played characters who were cool enough to NOT HAVE TO try very hard but rather to be themselves: cool dudes who can kick ass if need be. But here he's really acting and at the same time is completely natural and doesn't seem to be trying at all: but with excellent results. And that's him singing and playing the guitar, as you need to be a REAL musician to portray folk music icon Woodie Guthrie: the man who did to music what John Dillinger did to the depression. Hal Ashby in his Robert Altmaneque style of letting nature take its course allows everything to fall into place JUST RIGHT, and the film - although centering on a very political man - never gets too preachy. If it were made today, I doubt political-subtlety would prevail.