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(11/29/07 5:00am)
All the elements of an action-thriller are here: the body count, the chases, the suspenseful camera shots of doorknobs and grizzled men with guns. Yet "Die Hard" this ain't. \nTaking the genre exercise seriously, the Coen Brothers craft each scene to perfection. There's just enough shaky-cam in those chases, and for a movie with this much wanton slaughter, it's not sloppy. Every shot lasts just long enough to establish something -- a man sawing a shotgun or a cop drinking a glass of milk -- then moves on, with nothing left to spare. \nThe plot of the movie, based faithfully on a Cormac McCarthy novel, is an old one: Our hero finds and takes someone else's money, and then everyone tries to kill him, with the cops in clumsy pursuit. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), the ex-Marine with the misfortune of taking the drug money, finds himself pursued by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a psychopathic hit man with no morality and the worst pageboy haircut this side of He-Man. Tommy Lee Jones plays the cop two steps behind, and Woody Harrelson provides unexpected comic relief as a hit-man competitor.\nBefore I get to Bardem's dead-eyed performance, which will dominate any conversation following the movie, I want to mention how hard it is to evaluate "No Country." On one hand, everything about it is formally faultless: from the lighting and soundtrack to the acting and directing, nothing falls out of place. But this technical precision makes the movie all the more unsettling, because it exudes nothing but death, nihilism and testosterone-fueled masculine apocalypse. \nLook, for example, at how blood oozes everywhere in "No Country for Old Men." Across hotel room floors and down limping legs, we see that sticky red mess spreading out, but Chigurh always picks his feet up, checking his boots for any trace of his victims.\nAnd it's the assassin Chigurh who transfixes us, daring us to laugh at his ridiculous non sequiturs (and hair) right before he blows our brains out. Bardem turns in an extraordinarily sinister performance, sure to draw comparisons to Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. Bardem's character, however, has none of Lecter's sophistication; he's a force of nature independent of civilization or society. As Harrelson's character says, Chigurh lives by a different but severe moral code.\nPerhaps, then, this is where my problem with the movie lies. Its dips into metaphysics can't compare to the magnificent and hypnotizing storytelling, and much like their murderous creation Chigurh, the Coens create swaths of violence without passion or purpose. Then, when all the carnage rests and the credits roll, they put their feet up and check for stains. Sure, the filmmaking stretches miles beyond "Hostel II," but is the message any different? Is mankind really doomed to hideous violence?\nThere's no doubt that the Coens have made a masterpiece. Whether you'll enjoy it is another story.
(11/29/07 5:00am)
No longer anyone's prodigy, Alicia Keys has solidified into a confident musician in every respect: writing without regret and singing without apology. Even her production has eased into a groove of older R&B and soul classics, steering away from the hip-hop overtones of her last album. Yet all this confidence makes me wonder whether a little more vulnerability could do her some good, especially since Keys' poise seems misplaced at times behind clunky lyrics and mid-tempo snoozers.\nYou can see some of these highs and lows on Keys' first single "No One," which rings like a true pop single should, with a straight, uncomplicated beat and simple pop lyrics ("I don't worry 'cause everything's gonna be all right"). But beneath the technical perfection of each hyper-enunciated word, I wonder whether the song could have been something more. For a songwriter who has tacked her autobiography so close to her work, such a song feels less like a creative work and more like a meticulous copy of a 1970s Stax single. \nI don't mean to put down the album too heavily. There are plenty of highs, like the smoky funk throwback "Where Do We Go From Here?" and the anthemic belting of "Go Ahead," the album's raucous opener. I just wonder whether all that talent and praise (along with those shout-outs in Bob Dylan songs) have hampered Keys' development. Gone are the humor of Diary of Alicia Keys and the white-hot passion of Songs in A Minor, replaced by a hyper-produced smooth automaton declaring, with no irony, "I'm a Superwoman!" It's not a raw feminist ballad; it's star-glorifying schlock, and Keys can do better.\nPerhaps most telling of the over-polished Keys is "Lesson Learned," her collaboration with Tiger Beat guitar idol John Mayer, whose talent (and ego) seems comparable to hers. Instead of following her proper muse, Keys' voice drowns beneath the lame descending riff, while Mayer adds a frightening double-track of his own bland voice (Multiple John Mayers? Shudder). At this point, both artists are so sure of themselves that it's hard to find humanity in their colorless tune.\nNext time, Alicia should stop trying to be Aretha or Janis and just be herself, as she is.
(11/27/07 2:50pm)
Often, we journalists wonder why no one takes us seriously. We wonder why we’re considered so untrustworthy. According to a CBS News/ New York Times poll, only 15 percent of people trust the media “a great deal.”\nWe often say it’s because the media just puts out the garbage that people want.\nBut here’s the truth: We suck. A lot.\nThere are few occupations as self-righteous as “journalist.” No other job so readily calls itself “courageous” and “important,” and none pats itself on the back as gleefully. It’s no wonder that the biggest target of “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show” is the media, not President Bush.\nFor all that we talk about representing the people and defending a higher right to a free press, journalists seem to be doing very little with those rights. It’s easy to blame Fox News for everything, but perhaps people went to Fox because normal news blew so much. Would people read about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears if journalists hadn’t enlarged their own statures? We thumb our noses at the masses for loving Paris, but we’re the ones who made her. Did we ever consider that we’re the reason people hate us?\nLook at our track record: If news media had been doing their jobs in 2003, maybe someone would have figured out that the run-up to the Iraq War was a sham and that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Rather than questioning anyone, the talking heads and pundits nodded approvingly, urging everyone onwards to war. Then, once the sham was revealed, journalists acted duped, as if they weren’t the ones who should have gotten the right information in the first place.\nNow, in the run-up to a new election, journalists are playing the same old tricks again, choosing personality over substance, and polling over issues. During the unending presidential debates, the questions are hand-picked by the networks and unsurprisingly highlight wedge issues and “gotcha” moments squeeze candidates again and again. Of all the questioners in the debates, it’s the journalist moderators who do the worst job. Consequently, the most asinine questions, like the soft-ball “diamonds or pearls?” question for Hillary Clinton, turn out to be specially selected by the networks.\nInstead of fighting for the most accurate story, news organizations scramble to get the fastest story. Instead of treating the public as people of intelligence, who can understand complex issues, we treat them with contempt. Instead of talking to “the people,” powerful journalists gravitate to the same circles. \nWe read daily about the increasing ignorance of the American public. People don’t vote, don’t know who’s running for President and don’t know who their congressional representatives are. The news media moan in anguish that people don’t care about what’s important. Yet, no guilt ever seems to fall on the journalists, whose only job it is to distribute the information and judge what’s important. \nIf journalists wonder why people loathe them so, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.
(11/08/07 5:00am)
"This is America." The statement, uttered by the titular gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), resonates throughout "American Gangster," and the movie proves its Americanness to a fault. A sprawling, sometimes plodding, often confusing epic, "Gangster" is American through and through, tracing the rise and fall of Frank Lucas in Harlem.\nDon't believe the hype. It's not the black "Scarface" or the black "Godfather." Comparing "American Gangster" to other gangster movies misses the mark, because few others wear their morality on their sleeve the way "Gangster" does. By refusing to choose between a bleak crime saga and a cat-and-mouse cops-and-robbers tale, director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian try to find a middle way.\nPlaying the adversary to Frank Lucas' "honest gangster" is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), the "honest cop" who is trying to take down the mysterious super-pure heroin flowing through New York. As it turns out, Lucas is smuggling the drugs in the coffins of dead soldiers being sent home from the Vietnam War.\nBoth actors are at the top of their game, each playing a layered character without chewing up the scenery with showboating Best Actor bait. Washington plays Lucas without expression, taking the businessman mentality to its extreme, only occasionally flashing violence; even then, he barely blinks. Crowe, muddling his Jersey accent, seems to bumble about as Roberts, but that dazed expression hides the single-minded intensity of his pursuit.\nDespite these solid performances, the film's real star is Ridley Scott, whose directing turns down the action to a slow boil -- occasionally too slow -- but usually just enough to keep our interest without turning into some testosterone-drenched '80s cop show. Even though the movie stretches events out, the action set pieces work, too, including a riveting chase in a housing project. The whole contraption moves with the exactitude of a Swiss clock.\nPerhaps, then, it's this cool precision that makes the movie feel too disconnected from its viewer. The frigid menace of Frank Lucas seems like Superfly without the soul. His whole idea of family, though he constantly refers to it, also seems distant. None of his brothers or partners in crime distinguish themselves from each other.\nThe myriad of supporting characters, Lucas' interchangeable brothers included, serve as further distractions from the central plot. The honest cop even has a host of "Serpico" refugees as teammates. Sprawling out too far, the subplots that slow the movie's pace also zap its passion. If anything, this is less a story of American gangsters than of American corporations, headed by cold-eyed CEOs, hounded by relentless investigators.\nIn the end, Denzel and Russell still make it worth the price of admission, but "American Gangster" could have been much more.
(11/08/07 5:00am)
For every light, there must be darkness. For every peak, there must be a valley. For every best, there must be a worst.\nAnd the Best of Bloomington is no exception. So, here, I give you the darker side of our fair city, those moments and places in dear old Bloomingburg that we wish we could forget -- the Worst of Bloomington:\nWorst Annual Event -- Move-in week. As much as IU hypes Orientation, the actual move-in day becomes a god-awful mix of crammed elevators, sweaty parents and some grandpa driving the wrong damn way on Third Street. (Furthermore, "Orientation"? I'm not one to pull the race card often, but come on. Would you have "Western Europation"?)
(11/05/07 12:58am)
We do not torture.” So says George W. Bush. Without telling us what constitutes torture or telling us what methods our interrogators use, President Bush wants us to simply take him at his word. And, like the spineless pushovers they are, the Democratic Congress gladly acquiesced, with many voting for the Military Commissions Act in October 2006 that essentially ended any judicial review for terror detainees.\n Now, Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, refuses to call waterboarding torture. What is waterboarding? Someone raises your legs, straps you down and pours water into your mouth to simulate drowning. On average, a CIA officer can take 14 seconds before caving in. It is a simulated execution, which is banned under international law and the Geneva Conventions, of which the United States is a signatory. The Khmer Rouge used it. The Nazis used it. We use it. \n Mukasey, like all the torture-enabling cronies that Bush loves, dances the same semantic line as his peers. Mukasey, at his confirmation hearing, said, “If (waterboarding) is torture, then it’s not constitutional.” Yeah, and if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hopped. \n Supporters of Mukasey might say that it doesn’t matter that he waffles on waterboarding. After all, who cares? He’s only the nation’s top lawyer. What does it matter if he knows what’s legal and what’s not – let alone what’s right and what’s wrong?\n Luckily for Bush, it turns out that Senate Democrats care about the moral high ground about as much as Republicans. Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., both members of the Judiciary Committee, have said that they will vote to send Mukasey’s nomination to the full Senate, where more of their feckless colleagues will surely bend over for the Bush Administration. \n The Democrats, after seizing control of Congress with a promise to change Washington, have instead given Bush everything he wanted. Iraq funding with no strings attached? Here you go. Kids need health care? Eh, not worth the fight. Immunity for illegal wiretaps? Why not? \n After railing against Bush for illegal domestic surveillance and the Iraq War, Democrats proceeded to enable Bush’s schemes, while successfully enacting no legislation of their own. \n When you refuse to sacrifice anything to stand up for something, were you ever really standing for it in the first place?\n When will the Democrats realize that politics is the ultimate zero-sum game? There are a limited number of offices, and if you lose, they win. Every time the Democrats give Bush the benefit of the doubt, they give him more than he deserves.\n Americans today are more fed up with the government than ever before, and their anger now translates to both parties. \nTorture is torture. Waterboarding is torture. No matter what former CIA director Porter Goss says, waterboarding is not a “professional interrogation technique.”\n By approving Mukasey and his reasoning, every one of us is a torturer. \n If Democrats won’t stand up for what’s right, then America should find someone who will. Otherwise, we’re not choosing the lesser of two evils. We’re choosing the same evil.
(11/01/07 4:00am)
Robert Plant has always had a soft side. Even underneath those Led Zeppelin yowls, the folk singer lingered in songs such as "Tangerine" and "Black Country Woman." \nNow, with a chance to let that voice shine through, Plant, with collaborator and bluegrass diva Alison Krauss, hushes and vocalizes lyrics in tender, haunting renditions of folk standards by the likes of Tom Waits, Gene Clark and the Everly Brothers. Their two voices work in fascinating tandem, with Krauss' beautiful feathery soprano floating in thirds above Plant's tempered howl, mimicking the close harmonies of the Everly Brothers, whose songs they cover. \nI should mention, though, that their devotion to classics doesn't make them overly reverent. They avoid the mistakes of Eric Clapton on Me and Mr. Johnson by choosing to truly adapt each song to their unique vision. Additionally, Krauss and Plant refuse to turn these tracks into yet another tiresome duet album by ensuring that they harmonize in spirit and sound. \nThough you might expect a jarring dissimilarity between their timbres, they dovetail perfectly, creating a cosmic beauty you wouldn't anticipate. After first performing together, fittingly, at a Lead Belly tribute concert, Plant and Krauss began discussing this project, searching for the elemental roots of folk music. Under the production of T-Bone Burnett, the weirdly familiar tunes sound alien, with voices we know singing in ways we don't quite understand.\nTake, for instance, "Killing the Blues," written by Rowland Salley and made famous by John Prine. Krauss and Plant trade in the folk guitar for wavering electric tones that fill the space between slower punctuated downbeats, all the while adding their own vocal harmonies that open and close delicately.\nThen, when rockabilly is called for on a tune such as the Everly Brothers' "Gone, Gone, Gone," understated percussion keeps the song churning beneath a hypnotically alternating guitar riff, and Plant gets in his wails within the boundaries of the tune.\nIn their quest for roots, Krauss and Plant succeed as collaborators and musical explorers, probing the origins of both their genres. Though media might ballyhoo the "odd couple" pairing, this album doesn't exasperate its listeners with harsh mishmashes. Instead, it weaves timeless songs and singers at the top of their craft into one of the year's best albums.
(11/01/07 4:00am)
Boston's getting some serious attention these days. After "The Departed" and "Mystic River," "Gone Baby Gone," based on a book by the same author who wrote "Mystic River," shares the dark colors and darker sentiments of the other two films. In his directorial debut, Ben Affleck navigates murky ethical waters in search of a missing child. Despite the terrible title and a few lines of regrettable dialogue, the film seethes behind the cold intensity of Affleck's younger brother Casey Affleck's baby blues staring out into darkness.\nCasey Affleck's understated performance grows more complex as his character progresses. A cocksure private eye in search of a missing girl, Casey's Patrick Kenzie descends into an ever-deepening hole of moral ambiguity, losing more than he ever expected on one case that seemed straightforward. \nI won't reveal the movie's many twists, but every character hides a secret motive or tainted past, and the deeper Casey digs, the more his Bah-ston wiseguy manner falls away, replaced by confusion and isolation. From the less-than-ideal mother to the neighborhood toughs to the smirking cops, everyone is hiding something, most significantly the hard-nosed cop played by Ed Harris, who turns in an outstanding performance that is as explosive as Casey's is muted.\nIn a movie about child abduction, the meditations on lost childhood resonate throughout, from pedophiles to deadbeat parents to the police's constant comments about Patrick's age and baby face. Even Patrick's own ruminations on his beloved Boston hint that his childhood, too, went astray, while his partner-lover's (Michelle Monaghan) noble thoughts on motherhood belie their childless relationship. Thus, the title, though clunky, suggests the missing child in every facet of the movie.\nBen Affleck does fall into some typical first-time-director troubles. The shadowy moral decisions come across best through the characters' actions and reactions, not through bland explanatory dialogue, which Ben allows to slow down the film. Additionally, he feels compelled to include lots of outside shots of Boston and its residents, as if we'd forget where we were, with dialogue less crackling but just as vulgar and bah-stardized as that of Mark Wahlberg in last year's "The Departed."\nRegardless, the Brothers Affleck have combined to make a powerful film that will have you talking about the movie for hours afterward. With this film, they have proven that Boston's dark potential has yet to be exhausted.
(10/18/07 4:00am)
Most of the mainstream buzz about In Rainbows concerns the unorthodox selling/leaking method that Radiohead employed for it, leaving the actual music on the band's first album in more than four years to fly under the radar. Though their online direct selling may start a revolution, the songs on Rainbows -- and they surprisingly are distinct songs -- show Radiohead growing out instead of surging forward.\nWithin the atmospheric haze of this album, the rhythmic interest keeps it from drifting to bed. From the drunken 5/4 stumble of the opener "15 Steps" to the most live-sounding percussion I've heard in a while on "Reckoner," the off-kilter, unexpected turns in the beat and meter work well with Thom Yorke's pleading vocals. Even on tracks without heavy percussion, the low rumble in the bass sets the melancholic tone.\nPerhaps the only revolution here is the album's romantic feel: strings soaring, lyrics verging on Motown ("You're all I need"), hidden melodies humming old pop songs at the end of "Reckoner." It seems that, at long last, these paranoid androids have learned to love, but love in the kind of duplicitous frozen way that only Yorke's wail can muster.\nThose hoping for a return to OK Computer and Pablo Honey will be disappointed, but the rock-out rages of the past resurface in places such as the guitar fuzz of "Bodysnatchers" and the raucous high-hat on "Jigsaw Falling Into Place." We don't see a new Radiohead; instead, we get a hybrid mix of all the old Radioheads, from the folksy "Nude" to the electro-rock "15 Steps."\nIn Rainbows, then, rescues otherwise colorless lyrics ("I don't want to be your friend / I just want to be your lover") with its resonance, creating a true wall of sound, hitting at every register to fully envelop the listener in eerie rapture, reminding us after four years why Radiohead was so great in the first place.
(10/11/07 4:00am)
The greatest band in the world just released a full-length record, In Rainbows, for free. \nWrap your head around that for a second. A group of people who ostensibly make a product, and who make a damn good one, are giving away that product for nothing. OK, technically it's "pay what you want," but for our generation, that translates to "pay as little as you want." How little confidence do they have in the medium if they won't charge money for it?\nTo paraphrase David Byrne, how did we get here? The obvious answer is "the Internet," but the record industry has long been suffocating from its own excess. Even as the record industry scores a symbolic legal victory against downloaders, the bulk of online downloading continues to be clandestine file sharing. The industry's unfair pricing has driven its fans into the arms of file-sharers and copiers, who are becoming tougher to prosecute and tamp down. As a result, we consumers spit on their overpriced, outdated plastic discs. \nNow an album means nothing to us. Perversely, the music industry's high-priced discs eventually drove us to music sharing, making us the generation that feels it deserves free music. We'll drop $50 on a concert, even though we balk at buying the actual album. We won't shell out 10 bucks for a good band's new CD, which took months if not years to craft and move to production, but we'll sure spend $20 on the T-shirt with cheap screen print from a Malaysian sweatshop.\nWe've all known for a while that only a small fraction of a CD's sticker price goes to the artist (even on iTunes). What we hadn't figured out was how to construct a new model that bypasses the record industry entirely.\nRadiohead has found a way. Mustering its significant resources, the band is selling directly to the customer, with all the profits going to them. Rather than accept a royalty rate of pennies to the dollar, Radiohead's members can simply cut out the middleman, taking the bulk of the price. Even though Radiohead is giving away music for free, people are still willing to pay an average of about $10 (5 pounds) for the album. Fans know what they're getting with Radiohead and are willing to shell out big bucks. If anything, the In Rainbows experiment shows we're more than willing to help out our favorite artists; we just refuse to continue feeding the major-label machine.\nWhy do we need record companies these days, anyway? To "find" artists? The denizens of MySpace are five steps ahead of the record companies when it comes to finding new artists, such as singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat, whose MySpace phenomenon became a real hit. \nDeveloping bands and musicians? Please. Record companies stopped doing this 10 years ago. Now they're only searching for instant hits. It took Ray Charles more than six years to break onto the pop charts, with the artistic freedom Atlantic Records granted him allowing him to find his trademark sound. Can you imagine any artist getting a similar break today? The music industry today demands ready-made stars, not works in progress. \nRecently, in a rejection of the old recording model, artists as diverse as Prince and Nine Inch Nails have started giving away music for free. Music has gone from service (live performance) to goods (vinyl and plastic) back to service (concerts, streams and downloads). Basically, we've got musicians playing for tips again. And honestly, it's not that bad. The "pay-what-you-want" creates a more dynamic economic model, where the price is exactly what you're willing to pay, with a high ceiling on the number of potential downloads. Plus, more musicians get to hear more music, creating an exciting environment for new music and genre-hopping.\nThe common argument against such models centers on the struggling artist in need of the incentive to keep playing. But the digital age puts that possibility of incentive much closer at hand than it used to be. We've reached a do-it-yourself era in which anyone can plug in a Mac, soundproof their garage and start selling their tunes online. From small-scale garage bands to the best band on Earth, the twilight of the major labels has arrived.
(10/09/07 1:59am)
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” – Allen Ginsberg, “Howl.”\nThough you may not always know it from the usual themes of my columns, I am an English major through and through. I love nothing more than reading literature and sharing it with others. But sadly, in the last 50 years, our society has become even more ruthless in its declaration of “obscenity” in thoughtful or intellectual circles, while permitting ever-wider latitude for violence, crassness and brashness in general. \nTake, for example, Allen Ginsberg’s iconic poem “Howl.” In 1957, a highly publicized trial cleared Ginsberg’s work of obscenity. Yet today, TV and radio stations fear the Federal Communications Commission fines that inevitably await a broadcast of “Howl.” Fifty years after a court ruled children could read it, you can’t hear this public masterwork on public airwaves. \nIt would be easy to say that our culture has become even more sanitized than it was in 1957, that the “culture warriors” have achieved their victory. Yet, vulgarity and obscenity have not exactly vanished. We can discuss a starlet’s lack of underwear in the public square and violence porn like “Saw” can become a sequel-spawning box-office smash.\nEven with “Howl,” one can easily find copies with a quick Google search or a trip to the library. So why does it matter?\nWhat concerns me is the bizarre double standard of our society’s stance on unpleasantness. When we see Peter Griffin & Co. projectile vomiting on “Family Guy,” we can shrug it off. But when something offensive highlights substantive problems, we’d rather not discuss it at all. If the obscenity is frivolous, we tolerate it; if essential, we forbid it.\nTake, for instance, the images we receive from our wars. People within media and government have decided that we shouldn’t see images of American casualties. Brutality on both sides is cleaned up. Famously, the pictures of the “Falling Man” from the World Trade Center were excised from major media outlets, while the Defense Department tried to quash the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos. Our wars, for the sake of sensitivity, have drifted away from us, now distant and incomprehensible.\nIn the meantime, we can all sit back, watch “High School Musical 2” and forget the troubles of the world, without its ugliness around to bother us. We have cut the raw power of visceral images and feelings from our lives, living in an unreality, deliberately out-of-touch with everything outside our insulated bubble.\nI mention “Howl” in particular because it rages political agitation in verse, demanding no less than an urgent rejection of greed and its ills. But instead of repeating it in our public spaces or on our public airwaves, we’ve shunted the poem, casting it into a corner rather than inspecting it in the light. \nWe’ll perform any gross act as long as we get famous. We’ll fight any war as long as we don’t see the consequences. We’ll spew all the vulgarity we want as long as there’s no meaning.\nThe best minds of our generation, destroyed by madness.
(10/04/07 4:00am)
Morality stands as the central focus of Paul Haggis' movies. As in "Million Dollar Baby" (for which he wrote the screenplay) and "Crash" (which he wrote and directed), Haggis forces viewers to navigate murky moral waters in the film "The Valley of Elah," this time addressing the impossible morality of the Iraq War: Its soldiers, its conduct, its home front.\nThe film follows ex-military man Hank (Tommy Lee Jones) on a quest to find out what happened to his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker), who dies in a brutal murder after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. A detective from the local police department (Charlize Theron) helps him battle the military cover-up. \nSure, the plot veers from humdrum whodunit to clunky thriller to overly somber Oscar bait, but how do you make an Iraq War film, anyway? The fog of war still sits atop us, as it does in the movie, pulling a dull khaki palette across the screen and washing out every performance to a blank stare.\nJones carries the whole movie on his world-weary face. The old hand seems never to change expression, but as the dehumanizing grind of war creaks onward, the wrinkles seem to carve deeper into his face. Theron works well as his pesky foil, but Jones' minimalism owns the picture.\nOf course, Haggis, being Haggis, can't resist a few images telling us Very Important morals (see: the ending), but the movie's biggest weakness lies in the unfortunate plot device of a series of Mike's cell phone videos decoded slowly, coming in choppy snippets throughout the movie at convenient times. Each one offers a low-fi glimpse into the hell on earth in Iraq. Like "Elah," the little clips -- disjointed and blurry -- represent the movie's jumbled artistic view of this war: Drowning in images but cripplingly unable to understand.
(09/27/07 4:00am)
After naming your album Ultimate Victory, anything less than that seems like a letdown. Chamillionaire, Houston's latest hit-maker, should have solidified his position as a rap star after mainstream success with "Ridin' (Dirty)." Alas, despite high hopes, this album stands as an admirable, preachy failure.\nOn Ultimate Victory, Cham's had enough with bling 'n' bitches and tries earnestly to inject true politicization into a genre that has only dabbled occasionally and laughably in social criticism ("George Bush doesn't care about black people," "Vote or Die," etc.). His sincerity even makes him swear off swear words and abstain from the N-word, staples of the hip-hop world.\nIt's hard not to applaud him for his attempt, but sadly, Chamillionaire's commentary can't sparkle like his more traditional party tracks, such as the album's two great collaborations with each member of UGK: the one-hand-on-the-steering-wheel of a low-rider "Pimp Mode" with Bun B and the menacing bass line Southern anthem "Welcome to the South" with Pimp C. \nIn Cham's solemn sermon on media bias (seriously) "The Evening News," he commits some rhyme atrocities to fit his nonsensical observations (Does "one" rhyme with "him?"). Despite capable beats and a neat violin hook, criminal lines such as "The White House is gonna stay white/ even though we know that Obama's black" sound terrible regardless. From 9/11 conspiracies to Flavor Flav, Cham sounds as self-righteous as a hip-hop Art Garfunkel -- "7 O'clock News/Silent Night" with a drum machine.\nAside from his unfortunately popular "Hip Hop Police," the track on the album that most epitomizes the face-plant of this audacious experiment is "Rock Star," featuring Lil' Wayne, a wailing guitar-crunk sound, the thumps of "We Will Rock You" and meaningless idiotic rhymes. At once meditative and blustery, bashing materialism while basking in its spotlight glow -- and rapping poorly -- Cham can't quite tie together this mixed bag, but damned if he doesn't try.
(09/25/07 3:55am)
The Rocky Mountain Collegian, a free, student-produced newspaper at Colorado State University, published a two-word editorial on Friday, stating: “FUCK BUSH.” In the ensuing uproar, the newspaper has already lost $30,000 in advertising, prompting 10 percent employee pay cuts across the board. \nHow DARE they? How dare they deliberately attack “The Commander Guy” during a time of war with such crude profanity? As we know, only the president and his cronies are allowed to swear in public:\n“There’s Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New \nYork Times.”\n“Big time!” – then-Gov. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Sept. 4, 2000, Naperville, Ill.\n“Fuck yourself.” – Dick Cheney to Sen. Patrick Leahy, June 22, 2005, Washington, D.C.\n“Get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.” – President Bush, to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, G8 Conference, July 17, 2006, St. Petersburg, Russia.\n“We’re kicking ass.” – Bush, responding to an inquiry into our success in Iraq, Sept. 5, Sydney, Australia.\n“Fuck.” – Said multiple times by Bush in a Talk Magazine interview with Tucker Carlson. Bush’s campaign staff then demanded that everything be stricken from the record.\nLook, I don’t doubt that the Rocky Mountain Collegian made a poor decision by publishing its editorial. It should have put at least some discussion of the terms it used and why on the page to explain itself. A two-word headline like that could still have the desired effect of “causing a stir.”\nBut the right-wing noise machine, from Rush Limbaugh to blogs to Fox “News,” has demonstrated the absurdity of the conservative base. They all love Bush for being a down-home guy who loves to cuss, but when others use similar language to disparage “The Leader,” they revolt. \nWhen John Kerry said he hadn’t realized how bad the Bush administration was going to “fuck it up” in Iraq, he got lambasted by Bush. Apologies were demanded! Yet, where was Bush’s apology for Adam Clymer, the “major league asshole?” Nowhere to be found. As concerned parents try to filter profanity out from the television set and the movie screen “for the children,” a tirade of profanity from the President of the United States, arguably the biggest role model in America, brings nary a peep. \nI don’t support the coarsening of our public dialogue, and I agree that profanity in public discourse leads to dangerous overgeneralizations and crassness. But honestly, no side has been particularly polite. Do Americans truly imagine that their leaders speak in dignified, elevated tones, never using a personal attack? Haven’t these people been around during election season?\nEventually, all the fracas over profanity and insults becomes misdirection from what really matters. While the U.S. Senate wasted the time it took to vote on and condemn MoveOn.org’s “Petraeus or Betray Us” ad, Republicans refused to let a bipartisan bill on extending troop leave reach an up-or-down vote. While Bush derides the ad as “disgusting,” he continues to run the most disgusting act of all: the Iraq war. Human lives mean less than a newspaper ad to this man.\nTo paraphrase Dick Cheney: Bush, go fornicate yourself.
(09/20/07 4:00am)
It's impossible to hear Northern State without thinking of them as the female Beastie Boys. The three "Lon Gisland" girls, Hesta Prynn, Spero and Sprout, punch the last beat just like the Beasties ("Knock knock. Who's there? Prynn, how you BEEN?/ Do you still have my copy of Huckleberry FINN?"). They dabble in rock and experimental production just like the Beasties. They're white, bright and geeky just like the Beasties.\nAnd just like the Beasties these days, they suck.\nDespite critical love, Northern State sounds like a bunch of privileged white girls play-rapping for a summer camp talent show. While they should have unique perspective in a hip-hop world dominated by lewd misogynists obsessed with their own greatness, they simply cannot rap, reminding me of Blondie's "Rapture," with equally comical lyrics. \nTake these sample rhymes from the highlight on the album, the Seussically suggestive "Things I'll Do": "Call me any time, I'll manage your damage/ I'll balance your budget then make you a sandwich." Ugh. While the production behind them evokes a funky double-dutch, the three girls' flabby rapping fails to illuminate their admittedly humorous, political perspective. Rhyming "2008" and "candidate" seems like the domain of local campaign staffers, not purportedly professional musicians.\nOn their third LP, Northern State has produced a record that spans genres and styles from the post-punk rock-out of "Cold War" to the old school wiggles of "Sucka Mofo." Each track begins with exciting sonic territory, but then these amateur karaoke-hour hacks sadly enter the stage. Ad-rock's production provides the Beastie blessing on boards, and their admirers are many: they've toured with De La Soul, Le Tigre, and Tegan and Sara. With pedigree like that, I want to like them a lot -- but just because they're the best rapping liberal Whole Foods intellectual girl group doesn't mean they're any good.
(09/13/07 4:00am)
"When I picked that date, I was like, 'Yo, people are going to talk about this so much.' People are going to remember this date.'" So spake Kanye West, remarking on his new album, Graduation, released head to head against 50 Cent's Curtis, in a rap scrum to the top of the charts, accompanied by the normal bellicose chest-thumping one expects from rap feuds. Indicative of the exaggerated importance of this event, the release date that Kanye said people will remember fell on Sept. 11. Hate to break it to you, Kanye, but I'm fairly certain people will remember 9/11 for other reasons. \nAt the same time, Kanye's prophecy came true. I am, after all, writing about the potential crowning of a new king of hip-hop. But one wonders: what's so great about being king?\nThough 50 and Kanye may both claim a desire to hoist the crown, I think both are wary of the title. Like Elvis bloated in Vegas, musical kings don't age well. Observe Diddy peddling Burger King and Jay-Z running his empire ("I'm a business, man"), leaving the real rapping to those schmucks still making music instead of selling product. King of rapping is only a stepping stone to leaving legitimate rapping altogether. There's a reason 50 said he would quit solo work altogether if Kanye won the week's record sales. All the kings of hip-hop either end up in an office (the Dr. Dre model) or in an early grave (the 2Pac model).\nAs more pundits decry the death of hip-hop, it's hard not to feel the genre has run out of thematic fuel. Gangsta rap has reached its logical extreme, with the Clipse documenting the meticulous details of a criminal empire, while "conscious" hip-hop has been blinded by dreams of fame ("First nigga with a Benz and a backpack"). Honestly, the most exciting hip-hop is the self-proclaimed stupidity of hyphy and YouTube videos of dances like walkin' it out and crankin' dat. These songs continue to capture hip-hop's energetic bounce, but where is hip-hop's soul?\nThe problem is not unique to rap. Rock and roll was running out of steam in 1975, but then came Born To Run, exploding across the stereo to revitalize the art. When Paula Abdul and Michael Bolton ruled the charts in 1991, Nevermind brought about the grunge revival to save rock and roll one more time. Where is rap's savior? Is a sole superstar possible in the newly decentralized hip-hop environment, where any kid with a video camera can become a rap phenomenon? In the further diversified scene of contemporary music, it hardly seems to matter who rules an increasingly tiny kingdom. It could very well be Kenny Chesney who outsells both blustering rappers this week.\nStill, for all the funerals for hip-hop, it's easy to forget how fertile the genre remains. The upcoming months promise new albums by Chamillionaire, Big Boi of Outkast, Lupe Fiasco and Lil' Wayne, along with commercial stalwarts like Nelly, all circling the Nov. 13 release of 8 Diagrams, by the re-unified, ODB-less Wu-Tang Clan. Thematically bankrupt or not, the massive, heaving contraption of hip-hop continues to putt along.\nWith this continuing creative drive, does rap need a king at all? Sadly, the vacuum in the heart of hip-hop has hurt it badly. Andre 3000, the genre's most exciting innovator, has wandered off into historical archives, while its past kings have receded to the front office. Just as the '50s needed Elvis and the '60s needed The Beatles as the center of rock, so does hip-hop today need a new center, a new king. \nWill it be 50 Cent or Kanye? Bless them both, but neither fits the bill. Both have been players in the game for too long to truly effect a sea change in hip-hop, save for the release of a colossal historic masterpiece. Neither Curtis nor Graduation qualifies. My prediction? Rap's savior will come from among one of those webcam kids who has heard it all and has something new to say. The next king is just waiting for his cue. So are we.
(09/06/07 2:58am)
On Sep. 1, alarmed that there were Arabic-speaking men who “looked mean” on her late night flight from San Diego to Chicago, Leigh Robbins demanded to get off the plane in order “to protect her kids.” Her commotion forced the men to be questioned and searched by American Airlines and airport security, with no probable cause other than Robbins’ unsubstantiated panic. \nNever mind that these seven Iraqi and Iraqi-American men were working as consultants at Camp Pendleton helping to train U.S. Marines. Never mind that one of the men said his mother was killed by Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime. Never mind that the airline and airport police officers probably violated these passengers’ Fourth Amendment rights.\nInstead, I’d like to focus momentarily on Leigh Robbins, the 35-year-old homemaker who raised the “alarm.” What made her do it? It’d be easy to chalk up her response to xenophobia, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Robbins is trying to contact the seven men to apologize and seemed genuinely frightened for her children, who were with her at the time. \nRather than Arab-hating, Robbins represents the fear-driven world that Americans inhabit these days. As she said, “I can’t describe how afraid I was. … How can you overreact when it’s your children?” This gut-wrenching fear caused her to toss all reason out the window and caused the airline to illegally search seven men for flying while Arabic. The same fear has caused our elected officials to strip us of our First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendment rights without so much as a peep of discontent. \nThe specter of 9/11, which has loomed for nearly 6 years, has brought our public discourse to a standstill. We can all relate when Robbins says, “All I could think of was 9/11.” I admit, it’s hard not to think about the risk of catastrophe on the horizon.\nAt the same time, think about all that this bunker mentality has cost us. All the goodwill the world showered upon us has evaporated after two bungled wars and a prickly foreign policy that is all stick and no carrot. We’ve lost all the aforementioned rights, along with any semblance of the rule of law. In six years, we’ve lost what it ever meant to be an American.\nAfter all this, the spirit of America still lives on in this story, but not in Leigh Robbins. It lives on in David Al Watan, one of the “very frightening” men who so scared Robbins. Born in Nasiriyah, Iraq, he fled the country, first to a refugee camp then to the United States, where he now works as a consultant for the Marine Corps. Humiliated, he did what a good American should do: he filed a complaint in a court of law. Al Watan stated, “I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it.” As long as Al Watan is willing to die for a country too scared to sit next to him on an airplane, there’s hope for us yet.
(08/27/07 12:15am)
Are we getting dumber?\nOn the one hand, our civilization is more technologically advanced than ever, and thanks to the Internet, we now can access vast stores of information, from the Library of Congress archives to every Letterman Top Ten List.\nBut a number of observers have noted a dumbing-down of society. More Americans can name the three American Idol judges than the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Try it. One in four Americans didn’t read a book last year, because we can’t stay awake. We’re glued to the tube when Paris Hilton goes to jail, but two-thirds of us admit to ignorance on global politics.\nPerhaps most shocking is our demolition of science, where teachers tell kids about the Earth being 6,000 years old and political parties with dubious motives stifle government scientists’ reports.\nThis all sounds pretty bad, I admit. And from the sound of shriller critics like Al Gore, American society is sliding into a pit of dumbassery unprecedented in human history. An unending string of Jackass reruns and dancing penguin videos has lulled us into a terrible ignorance, while we poison ourselves with a Thickburger and murder our earth. Yeah, we’ve heard this spiel before. \nFrankly, there’s nothing new about the phenomenon of cultural ignorance. In 1900, 11 percent of Americans were guaranteed not to pick up a book. They couldn’t read. The Lindbergh baby story captivated the masses just as the Natalee Holloway story captivates today. \nWhat is new about this age is that we are choosing ignorance. Whereas in the past, poor schooling and inaccessibility of information made continuing education impossible, it’s surprising that today in the Information Age, we’re rationally choosing to be ignorant and irrational.\nConsider this economic setup. You can either know about global warming, becoming miserable and worried, or you can remain in the dark, gleefully putting along in your SUV and running the A/C on the Arctic Tundra setting, while consuming one of those tasty Thickburgers. It’s no wonder that we choose to be irrational. After all, there’s nothing in it for us to learn, and there’s seemingly no price to pay for our actions. \nIt may be good for society that I know the names of my representatives in Congress, but I certainly get no benefit from it, other than the occasional patched pothole. \nI’m not endorsing this mentality of willful idiocy, simply highlighting its allure and prevalence. And if you think you’re immune, you’re wrong. I mean, did you get the five freedoms? Hell, I only got four (those pesky petitioners).\nIs this endless stupidity inevitable? I am not nearly so pessimistic. Look at the dying support for the Iraq war, or increasing awareness of global warming. It may be selfish, but we need incentive to care. Only after the choice of ignorance extracts a personal cost will we learn to read up in a hurry. \nSo, are we getting dumber? Probably no dumber than we’ve ever been. \nBut there’s definitely room for improvement.
(08/23/07 10:37pm)
You’ve done it. I know you have.\nYou’ve read columns and editorials, and while reading some particular injustice, you’ve grumbled, “Even I could write better than that.”\nWell, now the chance has come to take your rightful place among the Indiana Daily Student Editorial Board luminaries.\nI think it was Socrates, or possibly Rodney Dangerfield, who said, “Everybody’s a critic.” These days, it’s truer than ever, as punditry becomes its own profession, and highly opinionated, reader-less blogs multiply like rabbits. Perhaps you, like me, author one of these blogs.\nWhile all these talking heads float about on YouTube, CNN and Entertainment Weekly, as well as the empty expanses of the Internet, giving commentary on everything under the sun, it might seem like the copious amount of opinion makes it less valuable. Yet, as the mass of uninformed opinion grows, the importance of high-quality opinion, grows too. If anything, the current fluid environment of opinion means that well fleshed arguments can find audiences quickly and change minds. That’s why we need smart people talking – to stand out from the crowd of dim mouth-breathers.\nThis is where you come in. The IDS is read by everyone who’s anyone on campus, and commentary is one of our prime assets. You can give something that readers don’t find in The New York Times or the The Wall Street Journal. After all, a clear informed opinion from a student is more persuasive than an inscrutable one from some “expert,” whose writing style is as dull as his recycled ideas.\nThe torrent of opinion is unending, and with all this discussion circulating, you might wonder whether your voice will sound original amidst the din. Fear not. The IDS strives for a diverse editorial board, with many viewpoints represented, so long as they are well-argued and well-written. Furthermore, a disinterest in politics is no deal-breaker. Columns on culture, campus life or even a beloved pet can compel, while boilerplate foreign policy polemic can bore us to tears. \nAll the chatter veils the unfortunate truth that so many of the opinions we hear come directly from official sources in an extensive stage show, choreographed by the powers-that-be. Look at the staged “questions” of town hall debates and the rhetorical chest-thumping on Sunday morning talk shows. Instead, you can tell it like it is and liberate debate from the depths of skullduggery. \nBy writing a column, you can help shape what people talk about and how they talk about it. If you don’t think you’ll have readers, the volume of mail hitting the Opinion desk every week will speak otherwise. \nWhy do we need your opinion? In short, because we want to hear what everyone has to say. If you have a story to tell or a point to make, it’s time someone other than your cat has the opportunity to hear it. \nYou can pick up a copy of the application in the IDS newsroom in Ernie Pyle Hall 120 or online at idsnews.com on the Opinion page. We need you!\nOpinion may be cheap in the world, but we’re buying.
(07/12/07 4:00am)
Shot and released just last year, "Okonokos" was shot at the Fillmore in San Francisco and captures one of the most exciting and dynamic live bands around. Director Sam Erickson has done a wonderful job of capturing not only the energy but also the atmosphere of an MMJ show. \nJim James's voice is as hauntingly beautiful and reverb-heavy as ever, and the band is at the top of their game. The set list spans their entire catalog, everything from the heartfelt melodies "Golden" to the spacey riffs of "Gideon" to southern jams of "Mahgeetah." Buy this DVD and be taken to another place.