INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
2009. USA/Germany. Dir: Quentin Tarantino. With Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz. 153 min.
TONIGHT, November 20, 8PM $5
The king of aesthetic violence in cinema returns to the big screen with this rousing, adventurous rewriting of history, ripe with enough blood and guts to last you at least until his next effort. Brad Pitt dons a sweet ‘stache and sports a southern swagger as he leads a band of hilariously vengeful Jewish-American soldiers on a mission across Europe to collect Nazi scalps. However, the real standout performance may come from one Christopher Waltz as the film’s heartless, arrogant, and slimy Nazi-officer antagonist; he's detestable and cringe worthy in all the right ways. BASTERDS is an incredibly wild, raucous film-going experience that will have you wincing, laughing, and shouting at the screen throughout its entirety. The first scene alone is as wonderfully tense as they come nowadays, and the glorious climax is among the most entertaining in recent memory. So before you travel home to eat turkey this Thanksgiving, come by the Goldsmith on Friday and get a nice big helping of some Dead Nazis, courtesy of Chef Tarantino.
***NOTE: This film is replacing 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, which will instead be screened on Friday, December 4
SECONDS
1966. USA. Dir: John Frankenheimer. With Rock Hudson. John Randolph. 100 min.
If you thought that incredibly creepy partial face transplant scene in FACE/OFF was impressive, you cannot miss SECONDS, my single favorite movie from the 1960s. I beg you to trust me on this one—people weren’t even getting plastic surgery back then, but Frankenheimer knew what was good. Basically, John Randolph plays a man in the midst of some good-old middle-aged malaise. Looking for some serious rejuvenation, he joins a secret organization where he’s drugged, killed (sort of), and then given a new face, a new body, and new identity. Enter sexy beefcake Rock Hudson, who tries really hard to stop being so studly so he can philosophize about the meaning of existence and identity. Frankenheimer is completely ahead of his time here, delivering a nightmarish, post-expressionistic sci-fi pic aimed at an intelligent audience.

Argus: When did you first discover the musical?

Liam Stansen: I first discovered the musical my senior year of high school when my friend took me to see it.

Franni Paley: I first discovered "Bat Boy" in middle school when I saw a performance by a small theater company in Boston (SpeakEasy Stage). It was my first exposure to subversive musical theater and completely blew me away. I've seen it again a few times, including my younger sister's high school production over the summer, but none captured the dark and demented feel of that first production.

Last spring, I was in Exley, talking to a friend about how I wanted to try something new senior year. Liam walked by and overheard me saying, "maybe I'll direct a play!" He literally stopped, turned around and recruited me for "Bat Boy" on the spot.

A: What is your favorite song from the musical?

LS: Song generally—“Comfort and Joy”... favorite song and blocking—“Hold Me Bat Boy”

FP: It changes! Historically, it's been "Three Bedroom House," but I'm currently digging "Hold Me, Bat Boy." This show has some of the cleverest lyrics I've seen in musical theater. My favorite rhyme is "Just like Siegfried and Roy/He'll bring comfort and joy."

A: Why did you choose to perform this particular musical?

LS: When I saw it in high school, I thought it was a great show. It seemed so up Wesleyan's alley, and people have tried to put it on before, but it’s never happened. I've wanted to do it for the last four years, and it finally pulled together this semester.

FP: "Bat Boy" has actually been in the works since my freshman year, as far as I can tell. Ask Liam for the full story, but it has been knocking around the theater community for years—but no one ever brought it past the brainstorm phase. I feel incredibly lucky to be at the helm of the first full production!

I think it's a good fit for Wesleyan because of its content: it is ironic, self-parodying, sexually explicit, yet oddly intellectual. You could write a dissertation on its themes of "otherness" or its treatment of women, but I'll spare you. Just come to the show. You'll love it.

A: If Bat Boy replaced Michael Roth as president of Wesleyan…what would happen?

LS: Our school Cardinal would die from blood loss as a result of a neck wound (to be replaced by the twin geese Fricassee and Cacciatore), both evolution and Freud would no longer be taught, and our pre-vet program would really improve.

FP: I don't think the school would be as vegan friendly. That's all I have to say on that issue.

A: Anything else you’d like to add?

LS: Come see the show!

FP: Even though the show is lots of fun, there are some disturbing themes of domestic violence and rape. If these issues could make you uncomfortable, you should reconsider attending the show. Also, if you bring your grandma, things might get awkward.

“Bat Boy” is playing Friday, Nov. 20 at 8 pm and Saturday, Nov. 21st at 2pm and 8pm.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol, the new whiz-bang CGI extravaganza from Robert Zemeckis, takes an aesthetic approach directly opposite to Dylan’s bare-bones holiday cheer; it presents the Dickens story as a gaudy sentimental theme park. As in his versions of The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis employs a performance-capture animation technique, which incorporates actors’ real performances into a CGI world. It looks weird. (This movie has a lot to recommend it, but there’s no getting around the fact that live action/animation hybrid-people look like fleshy holographs.) Zemeckis is very faithful to Dickens’ story, keeping its thick, portentous dialogue and spirited moralism; this is good news with some drawbacks. There are times when the digital wizardry seems bored by the more melodramatic and wordy scenes, decorating them with swooshing camera movements and digital tricks which only drain them of conviction. At its most uncertain, especially early on, the movie threatens to be a spiffy illustrated tour of the story rather than a real adaptation.

But it works! Taken as a whole, the big ol’ contraption is a success. That’s because, like the Dylan album, it approaches Christmas with wonder and awe, with an open-mouthed stare. It has a roundabout way of getting to that reverence, like going to a carnival freakshow to learn about the dignity of the human person. Zemeckis does pretty well with the grandeur and festivity of Christmas, especially in a soaring aerial view of London accompanied by a thunderous choral rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful.” However, he sees that the heart of Dickens’ story is a man in deep need of redemption, the hopelessly depraved miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Jim Carrey portrays Scrooge at various ages, as well as all three Christmas spirits. It helps the film immeasurably to have Carrey’s twisted, elastic presence (and a wonderfully twisted visual design for old man Scrooge) at the center of the film. Because Scrooge is such a grotesque, self-distorted soul—as Scrooge revisits his past, we watch his young, healthy physicality gradually deteriorate into the familiar ugly caricature—the suspicious smoothness of his digital surroundings at least makes sense as a contrast.

Where the film succeeds most spectacularly is fear—that is, expressing the terrifying moral urgency that underlies Dickens’ love for the innocence of Christmas. Scrooge is so far from the spirit of Christmas because he is so alienated from innocence. The film is, of course, utterly unconvincing as a digital reproduction of the Real World, but it comes into its own as Scrooge is confronted with an amazing and mystical Higher Order. Scrooge tries to insist that one ghost is just a hallucination due to an unsettled stomach—“more of gravy than of the grave”—but in the enchanted Christmas hyper-reality, spirits become tangible, full-bodied, and menacing. Zemeckis’ treatment of the final, bleakest visitation, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is his most creatively unhinged moment; it features truly startling imagery of decay, along with jolting hints of a violent Victorian underworld from which Scrooge is socially insulated. In comparison to the fervor of this dream-segment, the post-redemption conclusion, where Scrooge awakens in a state of giddy grace and commits himself to a life of charity, feels like a dream itself—beautiful and true enough, but fragile. Zemeckis gives Christmas a flavor of mortality and fearful retribution; wonder and innocence are precious and easily lost.

Nevertheless, the sentimental charm of “God bless us, everyone!” is kept safe and sound. So is the wonderfully lush, flesh-affirming spirituality of Dickens’ worldview, where Scrooge’s lust for money is manifested, ironically, in a harshly ascetic lifestyle. To conquer his all-consuming materialism, rather than renouncing material goods, Scrooge must join the abundant gift-giving party that is Christmas and enter a whole world of community celebration. In a way, this worldview is deeply conservative, with the necessary change made entirely on the personal level; Scrooge’s newfound philanthropy is presented as a “solution,” at least as far as he is individually concerned, to the horrors of poverty and oppression—the children Want and Ignorance that the Ghost of Christmas Present warns Scrooge about. But that intense appreciation for interior possibility—the conversion of a single wayward heart, innocence gloriously renewed for one lost soul in a vast darkness—is key to the irresistible loveliness of Christmas. With its pile-up of lavish effects and its plethora of star appearances (with Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Robin Wright Penn, and Bob Hoskins in small parts), this Christmas Carol can seem bombastic and overwhelming. But maybe Christmas is worth all that stuff.

Oh, who am I kidding? The Breakfast club is a great movie and all, but Death Match is about who would win in a fight. And would the breakfast club really have a shot in hell of taking on Project Mayhem? I don’t think so. Even this death match guru can’t make that argument. And with that, the rest of the explanation will be given by Tyler Durden himself:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

[Tyler and Narrator are discussing ideal opponents]
Tyler Durden: OK: any historic figure.
Narrator: I'd fight Gandhi.
Tyler Durden: Good answer.
Narrator: How about you?
Tyler Durden: Lincoln.
Narrator: Lincoln?
Tyler Durden: Big guy, big reach. Skinny guys fight 'til they're burger.

A fair number of high school shows are centered on a female protagonist. There’s what I’ll call the “intelligent suburban girl attempts to navigate the social structures of high school” series, exemplified by My So-Called Life or Freaks and Geeks. And the “I may look like a typical California teenager, but I’m actually a bad-ass” story, most easily recognized in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars.

The most recent incarnations of the high school TV show, Glee and Friday Night Lights for example, are rooted in a school-based activity, allowing for a “watch as all these different types of high-school students interact” examination of teenage life.

The topic of high school TV interested me this week because of the extensive and slightly schizophrenic range of reactions to Glee’s representation of people who are typically underrepresented in the media. I watched the first episode of Glee, a FOX show that revolves around a show choir at a high school in Ohio, when it aired in May of this year, and while many reviewers and bloggers went wild over it, I was left feeling ambivalent. (I promise that my ambivalence isn’t related to the fact that during my freshman year of high school in Ohio I cried all through Algebra II when I didn’t make it into show choir.) Glee has become one of the few breakout shows of the new season, and many songs from the cast recording released on iTunes have made it to the best-selling singles list.

This isn’t what bothers me about the show. I recognize that it makes people feel good to watch good singers sing fun songs and do cheesy dances and I have no problem with that. What bothers me is that the show garners so much praise for its diversity: it won a Diversity Award from the Multicultural Motion Picture Association and receives constant (and typically positive) attention from the media. The reaction to the show became somewhat split after this past week’s episode focusing on Artie, a character who is confined to a wheelchair: some gushed over how well the show dealt with presenting the issues that handicapped people face every day. Others pointed to the fact that (among other problems) Artie is played by an actor who isn’t in a wheelchair.

I admit that I have not been following Glee closely. I didn’t follow the show when it started its actual season this fall, and I only watched this past week’s episode after reading the incredibly mixed reactions of critics and bloggers. And while I don’t claim to be a Glee expert, I know that from what I’ve watched of the show, its methods of exploring high school clichés and minority stereotypes seem problematic.

Practically all of the high school shows I mentioned earlier rely on stereotypes, whether to solidify them, subvert them, complicate them, or use them for humor. For example, Friday Night Lights does a great job of knowingly veering away from high school clichés, allowing the characters to become realistic teenagers (despite their incredibly unrealistic level of attractiveness). Glee is touted as a stunning satire of these very stereotypes and clichés, but I fail to see this in the show.

Take, for example, this past week’s episode, which was clearly meant to give Artie depth as a character. It’s true that the show’s focus on underrepresented populations is a good thing, but some of this positivity falls away when we look at how they’re represented. In the first episode of the series, the background characters are pure stereotype. We have the gay boy, the black girl, the handicapped boy, the Asian girl, and they fail to go beyond this tokenization. In fact, throughout this week’s episode much of the humor comes from these characters acting in stereotypical ways (“Oh my god, look at that flamboyant gay boy talk about fashion! Now the black girl’s being sassy to the choir teacher! How funny!”).

Meanwhile the attractive white characters get to be part of the plotline every week, whereas the minority characters get “a very special episode.” In the episode entitled “Wheels” that belonged to Artie, much of the action was devoted to the football player-cheerleader love triangle. Furthermore, within these preachy episodes supposedly devoted to the background characters, they only explore their lives through their status as a minority. It’s important that the show portrays the issues that marginalized people face; these characters, however, don’t get to be real people. They are used to spark a sympathetic reaction in the viewer, before being demoted back to the background in the next episode, popping in every so often with a clichéd remark.

Shows like The OC and Gossip Girl don’t represent minorities at all, and this too is problematic. But they are also not praised for being something that they’re not. The representation of underrepresented people in Glee is in theory a good thing, but we, as viewers, shouldn’t praise the show simply for portraying a character in a wheelchair, or having a diverse cast. What we should push for is interesting, realistic, funny and complicated characters that happen to be diverse. Not diverse but overly simplified characters that allow the show to scream “Look at us! We’re being diverse!”

I arrived at the gallery a half-hour before the events started, and already it was a crowded with students, parents, and visitors, all talking, laughing, and sampling the delicious patties that were provided. PIECES OF PIECES is a small exhibition, but certainly one worth the time it takes to visit. Of particular interest to me was a piece in the back of the room by Eniola Yeates ’10 called “Tabanca.” The only item in the exhibit not a painting, sketch, or print, “Tabanca” is a bottle of what looks like simple water filled at the bottom with sand and some beautiful, tiny seashells. The label on the bottom claims that it relieves symptoms including “homesickness, lovesickness, and nostalgia.” An adjoining plaque explained that “tabanca” is a word from Trinidad used to describe the lovesickness after a relationship ends. Although a relationship with a person seemed to be implied, I thought too of relationships with places, and the feeling (not limited to Caribbean students) of being away from home, of now living somewhere that is, no matter how much I may like it, undeniably other.

The idea of home—and especially of being away from home and struggling against that homesickness—permeated the exhibition. Another highlight, by Kamar Thomas ’12, was a set of three charcoal portraits depicting some of the most influential types of the Caribbean. Called “Gender Bender,” “The Herb,” and “The Ancient,” the portraits showed respectively a young Caribbean man in drag, a wild-haired man smoking, and the face of an wise, elderly woman. What is remarkable about Thomas’s work is his creation of bright, seemingly perfectly defined spaces with charcoal and paper, a murky medium if ever there was one.

As the evening continued, the formal speakers began: Adion Sutherland ’13 gave a few opening remarks, saying that the work “is bold and it is beautiful,” before yielding the floor to Augier, who in addition to speaking contributed two of his works to the exhibition (called “Enlightened Traveler” and “Letter to a Daughter Journeying from Home”). Augier was born in England in 1959 and raised in Saint Lucia. Augier congratulated the students on their accomplishments and celebration before reading a poem called “Esperance,” the fourth in the Vox series in his upcoming book. Nina Simone Moore ’11, a native of Atlanta, then took the floor, reading one of her poems and two pieces of free writing created for Writer’s Bloc. The pieces were especially effective as performance, Moore’s voice capturing the rollicking, galloping rhythms of her poetry and her passion.

The entire event closed with a performance by the Wesleyan Steel Band, which was an unexpected treat. The band, which is quite large, set up in the main hall of the Zilkha Gallery and gave a commanding performance, capturing the verve, joy, and sensitivity that seem to distinguish Caribbean culture. As I listened to the bouncing, pinging notes I was reminded again of Moor’s rhythmic poetry, which I think, perhaps, said best what the entire exhibition expressed. The students who created this exhibition are indeed traveling far from home, as we all to some extent are. Moor’s poem, “Home,” expressed what it is that one misses when far away: “You, my home is wrapped in your smile, your voice,/your memory, your expectations mommy.…When I return, it is in moments with you, memories of them,/and the desire for grounding. Been away too long can/never really go back. Home.”

PIECES OF PIECES: ROOTZ OF ROOTZ remains in the Zilkha Gallery until Sunday, November 22.

This all transitioned nicely into the more poppy, more earnestly energetic sounds of the Postelles, whose harmonies evoke the Kooks but whose quick surges of electric guitar add a harder edge. Of particular note was a cover they did of the Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat,” which, with more tune and tact than the original, captured perfectly this band’s engagement with the classic New York punk sound.

When Yeasayer took the stage, though, even the lighting crew honored the group of ascending indie-rock kings—albeit kings who, just a few minutes earlier, were hanging out by the merch table, selling records and t-shirts and chatting with fans—by manipulating the psychedelic paper-lantern-esque globe lights around the stage so they flashed different colors.

Yeasayer started with one of their new songs from their upcoming album “Odd Blood,” which showcased the “watery samples” that have led one Stereogum commenter to reductively describe the band’s recent sound as “poor man’s Animal Collective.” Whatever its future title, this song inspired much more than yet another comparison to the venerable experiment group. It was an abrasive tour-de-force of electronic eclecticism, with even lead singer Chris Keating’s voice floating under the fog of a voice-deepening modulator.

The exciting reworkings of more familiar songs that followed suggested that the band is closing in on its original creative vision of danceable, exciting Middle Eastern-influenced dreamscapes. Particularly memorable was a sexed-up version of “Worms,” from their first album All Hour Cymbals, that confined the song’s hookah smoke-tinged guitar licks, which originally wafted throughout the song, to shorter, more tense breaks. Guys grabbed girls, girls grabbed guys, guys grabbed guys… and a large contingency started grinding.

Other new songs incorporated influences from every currently popular branch of electronic music—even, boldly, the Looney Tune xylophones of Dan Deacon. The dancing in the crowd eventually grew more heterogeneous, with a little pushing, a little shoving and even a few crowd-surfers, but the crowd was generally packed too close together to be anything other than a closely-packed cluster of peace, love and mildly sexual dancing. The band did not acquiesce to demands of “one more song!” but, to be fair, they had played almost their entire body of recorded work by the end of the show, even the relatively obscure “Tightrope.” The show ended even earlier than expected (around midnight), and tones of mild complaint were heard, but the night was young, and so both the entertainers and the entertained ventured on.

An impressive range of styles was represented—ballroom, tap, hip-hop, modern, ballet, to name a few. A “couples” dance set to “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon and choreographed by Matt Carney and the dancers showcased passion-fuelled, graceful movement, a sort of fusion of modern dance and ballet. In contrast, a section of Wesleyan’s tap ensemble, Tap Attack, brought energy and technical proficiency to their quick, fast-paced piece (choreographed by Lena Solow).

The strong contrasts between styles and paces strengthened the show overall—the transitions (technically very smooth) were distinct but not jarring, and the variety added interest. “I Thought there was a Vaccine for That,” choreographed by Phoebe Stonebraker and featuring a group of dancers in brightly colored blazers and black tights, made a strong visual impression, and the intriguing choreography was brought to life by dynamic dancers. A dance choreographed by Gyrate, to the country song “Stay With Me,” went in the opposite direction, featuring three technically accomplished dancers dressed plainly, literally “dancing” the story of a love triangle. Its stripped-down aesthetic was startlingly effective, especially against the stark surroundings of the World Music Hall.

Ending with a visually beautiful performance by the Terp Core, Terp’s fall was a resounding success that achieved the goal of making dance accessible, fun, and hot.

Norma, Arthur, and their son, Walter, interact this way, with coded sarcasm and affection wrapped in cynicism. Walter makes precocious wisecracks at breakfast; Norma sends Arthur off to work with a cheery “I hate you,” and he replies, “I hate you, too.” Kelly doesn’t hate these people or sneer at them for their strangeness; he takes care to reveal, at key moments, that their arch attitudes conceal much love and tenderness.

However, it seems unlikely that he thinks very much of them, all in all. The film suggests that Kelly might actually take that sentimental notion mocked by Arthur, “the Christmas spirit,” seriously—not because the film even hints at the hope for human transformation and goodwill (as in A Christmas Carol), but because it treats the absence of that hope as the object of overflowing, hysterical menace. In many ways, Kelly’s style and themes recall David Lynch; in particular, the vicious circle of a narrative recalls Lynch’s morbid Lost Highway. Like Lynch, Kelly is fascinated with turning the mundane into the mystical. Yet for Lynch, the “normal” is automatically suspect, and “nice” things are mostly hiding places for evil. By blurring the distinction between dark and light, corrupt and pure, kind and cruel, Lynch casts doubt on everything. What is radically un-Lynchian about Kelly’s worldview is that evil actually leads to evil and good to good; in a fundamental sense, behind all the hallucinations and trickery, things are what they seem. Lynch’s films tend to be fatalistic, suggesting that we can’t really know or control the evil within us; The Box derives its horror from the suggestion that the evil we do is, in fact, pathetically recognizable and preventable.

The set-up is simple: Norma and Arthur receive a box from Arlington Steward (the venerable Frank Langella), an eerily charming old man with a hole burnt in his cheek. Steward informs them that if they press the button on top of the box, two things will happen: a person they don’t know will die, and they will receive a million dollars in cash. What follows is far from simple. Kelly smashes together elements of melodrama, horror, conspiracy thriller, and science fiction, all vibrating within a ruthlessly mannered visual sensibility. The result is exhilarating, confusing, and preposterous.

It is also extremely logical. Arthur works for NASA, and he is fixated on “the Mars project.” Marsden plays him as a manly blank slate, with a tiny glimmer of fanaticism. He has littered the basement with colorfully creepy maps and space-images, including a poster with the words of Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” As Arthur is drawn deeper and deeper into the network that lies behind the box and its power, this lust to unlock some code, to discover the secret formula somewhere between magic and science, colors everything; for him, the movie is a film noir plot where the Maltese Falcon is Knowledge. Langella’s ominous gentleman warns him, gently and repeatedly, to stop playing detective.
Norma is a schoolteacher; we observe her lecturing on Sartre’s No Exit. She seems to vacillate between a Sartre-like existentialist loathing of the Other, as when she appears to recoil at the sight of Langella’s warped face, and a powerful emotional warmth, as when she later explains to Langella that she felt great love when she saw his disfigurement. Diaz is appealing, and we have to believe that Norma is a wonderful mother when, above Walter’s whining protests, she gives him a big kiss before he gets on the bus. Yet she seems to regard Walter with a kind of fear and suspicion at key moments. When she desperately asks Langella what they ought to do, he advises her to “follow your conscience,” then, in an ironic tone, adds that perhaps she should look to Sartre for answers.

So Langella’s Arlington Steward is the voice of conscience, the weary prophet of calamity, the one who sits in judgment. However, there is something lacking there, perhaps deliberately. Langella, for all his grave presence, feels more like a robot than a moral guide. Near the end, he tells Arthur and Norma, very slowly, “First I want to say that I admire you both immensely... but I do wish you hadn’t pushed that button.” His voice is authoritative and chilling; you know that what he says is true, but he drains from you the will to believe it.

Still, this is the god that Arthur and Norma have chosen: philosopher and scientist, existentialist and experimenter. Like any excellent horror film, The Box makes you fear for the world you already know—reminds you how truly strange it is. Things that are normal in the best way are transformed hideously, not because it is bad to be normal, but because we require them to match our strangeness. Kelly envisions a modern world running in vicious circles, asking terrible questions and getting terrible answers. A Christmas Carol proclaims to us that, with a change of heart, everyone in the world can be our family. With equal boldness, The Box insists that if we are not all family, we are all strangers.