6A
Entertainment
Thursday October 22,1998
Ryan Sturch, Chicago senior, is a disc jockey for the reggae show "Irle FM" on 90.7 KJHK. Sturch, speaking in a Jamaican accent, can be heard on "Roots Ryan and the Serious Sturch Signal" from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday's. Photo by Augustus Anthony Piazza/KANSAN
Reggae radio host really Chicago native
By Augustus Anthony Plaxxa
Kansan staff writer
Despite being a Caucasian from Chicago, Ryan Sturch has believed for years that there was some rasta in his soul.
Sturch's voice, which sounds Jamaican, can be heard on 90.7 KJHK from 4 to 6 p.m. during the reggae show "Irie FM" on Saturday nights.
Reggae is a popular music of Jamaican origin with a strongly accentuated beat.
"If you were to just listen to the show, and you never met me, you would think that I was Jamaican," said Sturch, a senior.
Craig Martin, professor of biology, said that he thought that Sturch was Jamaican the first time he listened to Sturch's show in June.
"I thought for the first time in 15 years, there was actually a Jamaican doing the Reggae show for KJHK," Martin said.
Martin wanted to meet him, so he visited him at the Ramada Inn, 2222 W. Sixth St., where Sturch spins regae records from 9 p.m. to close Thursday nights.
He said that he was surprised to find out that Sturch wasn't Jamaican.
Sturch, who is known on his show as "Roots Ryan and the Serious Sturch Signal," was introduced to the Jamaican culture when he and his family vacationed there when he was
4 years old. When he was 11 years old, he started to pick up on the Jamaican language and developed a love for Jamaican music.
"Everywhere you go in Jamaica, you hear music no matter if it's morning, day or night." Sturch said.
"I think there is a big Lawrence scene, but I don't think I have tapped into it yet," Sturch said.
Sturch said that although a reggae scene existed in Lawrence, there wasn't a music forum that compared to the scene in Jamaica.
Sturch said the amount of listeners that called up during the show varied each week. He said the most calls he had ever received was 19, but there had also been days when he received no calls.
He said that the amount of calls a disc jockey received during a night was the only way to gauge the amount of listeners.
Sturch said that he tried to bring some of the Jamaican culture and atmosphere to his show.
"Itry to spread a positive message of Jamaican culture," he said.
Sturch said that he had two sayings that he used during his show: "I'm jammir' down excessive amounts of niceness" and "Unifying Lawrence through reggae music. When me done, Lawrence become one."
After graduation, Sturch plans to apply to law school, but if he is offered a job disc jockeying, he will pursue it.
Cliché-filled formula for SLAM fizzles
Bv Jeremy M. Doherty
Kansan movie critic
Note: In addition to his duties as the Kansan movie critic, Doherty also dabbles in espionage for the CIA. In 1997, he secretly observed a meeting in Hollywood about the prison-poetry drama SLAM, which was then in development. The following is a transcript of the conversation between studio heads.
Studio president: (coughing) But not everyone is aware of Pauly Shore's emotional depth. That's the audience we've got to pull in.
Studio president; Eh?
Junior executive: Right on. I was thinking that we could run Pauly's movie on a double bill with SLAM.
Junior executive:(sound of tie loosening) SLAM. It's a harrowing, gritty urban tale about a young man who uses the magic of poetry to survive in the violent prisons of Washington, D.C.
SLAM
Studio president: Poetry? Man, what've you
Kansas rating: ★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rated R for proficiency and super-deep poetry
Opens tomorrow at the Manor Square Theatres in Kansas City, Mo.
been smoking?
Junior executive: Well, it's not so much poetry. Heck, it just sounds like that confounded rap music the kids like so much these days.
Studio president: (unintelligible)
Junior executive: Sir?
Studio president I said, what about that urban angle? Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society — all that stuff was big in the early '90s.
Junior executive: That was our assessment, too. But the director, Marc Levin, absolutely sold us with his story pitch. He told us that it would be like Shawshank Redemption meets
Studio president: I like it. But will women go see it?
Malcolm X.
Junior executive: Yes. Although the main character Ray, played by poet Saul Williams, is a drug dealer and hangs out with gangbangers, he's sensitive. In prison, he catches the eye of a young female English teacher. Naturally, we're going to beef up that romance.
Flunky intern: Wait, doesn't a romance seem kinda out of place for this kind of story?
(10 seconds of silence accompanied by coughing.) Studio president: So, tell me about the movie's look. Are we going to give SLAM the "Oliver Stone" treatment — lots of crazy camera angles and kooky lenses?
Junior executive: Nail on the head, boss. When the audience sees this movie, we want them to feel like they're watching a super-big rap video.
Studio president: Guys, you're doing a bang-up job with this movie SLAM. Is it too soon to talk to McDonald's about a corporate tie-in?
(Meeting concludes.)
Tobey Maguire, left, and Reese Witherspoon play two '90s teens who find themselves sucked into a 1950s sitcom in the comedy *Pleasantville*. The film's cast also includes Joan Allen, William H. Macy and the late J.T. Walsh. Contributed Art.
Pleasantville blasts present into the past
By Jeremy M. Doherty Kansan movie critic
Ozzie and Harriet fans ought to avoid Pleasantville unless they want to watch their beloved "50s sitcoms receive a good drubbing.
The rest of us, however, can delight in this clever satire about the "perfect" decade in which Ike was in the White House, and people used phrases such as "swell" and "keen."
Pleasantville excels at peeling back the decade's picket fences and manicured lawns, revealing the fears and racism lying underneath. Though it never loses its comic spirit, this could go down as 1998's most cynical film.
The movie was directed by Gary Ross, whose scripts for Big and Dave focused on ordinary guys placed in extraordinary circumstances. Pleasantville continues this theme, telling the story of two '90s siblings, David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) who find themselves sucked into the world of "Pleasantville," an Elisen-hower era sitcom.
David, who thrives on late-night marathons of TV reruns, is overjoyed at being able to act out some of the show's memorable episodes. He takes a job with Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels) at the neighborhood soda fountain. All the players on the basketball team shoot perfect free throws. Dad (William H. Macy) and Mom (Joan Allen) send him off to school each morning with a Everest-size mountain of cholesterol-soaked flapbacks.
But Jennifer, a chain-smoking teen in tight skirts, has difficulty fitting in with her classmates, who
PLEASANTVILLE
Kansan rating:
****1/2 out of ****
Running time: 2 hours
Rated PG-13 for profanity and trips to Lovers' Lane
answer to names such as Betty Jean and Mary Sue. Unable to keep her libido under wraps, Jennifer seduces the captain of the basketball team during a trip to Lovers' Lane, the local "holding hands" roost for teens.
From this point, Pleasantville begins to behave like a colorized Ted Turner movie that's stuck in reverse. As the '90s sensibilities of Jennifer and David begin to infect the town, colors gradually seep into the previously black-and-white landscape and its citizens.
The town elders, led by city official Big Bob (J.T. Walsh), resist the Technicolor invasion. Here, the movie turns dark as divisions rise between people who are "normal" and those who are "colored."
While making a plea for diversity, Pleasantville is sure to infuriate some for the thinly-disguised contempt it holds for its characters. When faced with unusual circumstances, the citizens respond with hatred and, in some cases, violence.
But scenes in which a gang trashes Mr. Johnson's soda fountain for its "colored" artwork should remind anyone of similar, real-life acts of hatred that erupted in the South during the push for civil rights legislation.
Thoughtful, engaging and consistently funny, *Pleasantville* is not to be missed.