short takes (3)

* After years of delay, Kenneth Anger has unveiled the first half-hour of his latest experimental film, Lucifer Rising. The rest will follow when he has raised enough money to complete it. Over the years, Mr. Anger's interest in supernatural "magick" seems more and more childish and this undermines his new opus, which had its premiere at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Though it's visually thrilling to see a flying saucer zooming through the skies of ancient Egypt, most of the images seem rather tired. Mr. Anger is an influential figure: For just one example, his "Scorpio Rising" prefigured the soundtrack of the popular drama "Coming Home" by many years. But for the moment he seems to have lost the urgency that marked such earlier monuments as "Fi reworks" and "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome."