V o l u m e I V, N u m b e r X I C e l e b r a t i n g t h e P r e C i o u s h u m a n t a P e s t r y n o v e m b e r 6 t h , 2 0 0 9

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BY SAMANTHA SHOKINEditor

Ben Folds is just an average, laid-back guy who happens to play jam-packed con-certs across the country. Also, he just so happens to be famous.

But fame hasn’t stifled this quirky music-geek from rockin’ out hard to the beat of his own drummer. Folds’ popularity can be attributed to the fact this music resounds among an especially large demographic: the everyday, run-of-the-mill college kid.

And so last night at Gosman gym, Folds performed to an audience of average col-lege kids rocking out hard right along with him. He entered the stage sporting a plain red t-shirt and trademark glasses, look-ing not unlike someone sitting through a morning class lecture. Then he started pounding away at his grand piano under the blazing white stage lights, his music chords blending in with the howls and applause of the audience, and one thing was suddenly clear—Folds seems like an average guy, but he’s actually a rock star.

Folds explained his state of affairs in an intro song: he’s the same dude he’s always been, except now he gets free coffee on occa-sion, and when he gets stopped for speeding he gets off with a warning instead of a ticket. (Although he could’ve used the free coffee back when he couldn’t afford it, considering now he’s rich and all). Folds’s melodies are powerful, catchy and upbeat—no surprise that his childhood idol was Billy Joel. The similarities are there, except Folds takes the whole ‘average-guy-turned-singer/songwrit-er’ shtick one step further: a lot of his lyrics sound as if he just took a random conversa-tion and put it to melody, expletives and all.

And the crowd loves him for it.Folds incorporated plenty of audience par-

ticipation during the show. For a couple of the songs, he encouraged audience members to sing along. Here his music-geek side really shined through: he managed to get the audi-ence to (rather successfully) break into three and four part harmonies. He explained that the reason he agreed to play at Brandeis, after rejecting the gig twice in the past, was because he received a “very nice letter” from a female student at Brandeis convinc-ing him to. Folds also wanted to commend his dear friend “Snüzz,” who is suffering from Lymphoma. Folds honored his songwriter friend by having the audience sing an excerpt from one of his pieces and requested them to record and upload those clips to YouTube.

Folds’s stage presence is unbound: at one point, his playing was so intense that a key broke off from the piano. He held it up, say-ing that he wished he could throw it into the audience but wasn’t allowed. Despite the unsturdiness of said piano, Folds insists that it’s a quality instrument (apparently he has the same brand piano in his own studio). Folds resumed the concert, avoiding tunes in D major.

The concert was enjoyable, but that’s no a surprise. Folds’ music (and personal-ity) is hard not to like. His is the anthem of the everyday; the soundtrack to our standard, unspectacular daily lives. The audience rejoiced to his fantastic piano chords and melodic voice—a voice that, in all its modesty, has become a voice for the people (the college people, anyway). A voice that can even take a rendition of Dr. Dre’s “Bitch’s Ain’t Shit” and make it relevant for a Brandeis crowd—now that’s entertainment.

PHOTOS BY Max Shay/The Hoot

November 6, 2009 Diverse City 9

VISIONS

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Nov.5,

2009

PhotosBy Max Shay

10 Diverse City

CHORUSNovember 6, 2009

Some writers say that the differ-ence between a comedy and a trag-edy is that the former begins with a bummed out protagonist and ends with a happy one while the latter starts with a happy protagonist and ends with a bummed out (or dead) one. So how do we classify the new Coen brothers movie, "A Serious Man," that is a downhill slope from beginning to end? In this critic’s humble opinion, hilarious.

Hollywood unknown Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a physics professor and father in the 1960s Jewish suburbs of Minnesota, an ostensible mensch who suffers a string of highly unfortunate events. His wife, Judith Gopnik (Sari Lennick) demands a divorce so she can marry the uproarious, bear-like, underhanded Cy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Then he gets caught in a scam compromising his academic integrity. Later he and his nebish brother (nisht a kluger, you might say) are forced to move into a motel. The list goes on.

But the film isn’t really about the plot. Yes, we cringe every time Larry slides a notch down, but after a while we get the pattern. The Coens don’t want us to lament the fate of this more or less innocent fellow. They want us to see our-selves in him. This identification might seem more geared toward Jewish audiences, but the issues explored go much deeper into the universal human experience. It’s as

if they want to establish shlimazil as an existential category.

As Larry embarks on his quest for meaning, it’s hard to sustain the initial superiority we feel over the protagonist. Stuhlbarg’s acting does a great deal to keep the pathos from becoming over-whelming. Somehow he manages a kind of high-strung buoyancy that belies the “seriousness” of the title. Ultimately, however, the story makes us feel more uneasy than smug when we think about how Larry’s story intersects with our own.

The Coens cleverly reveal how

the Uncertainty Principle Larry teaches in his physics classes ulti-mately comes back to haunt his personal life. He desperately and naively begs guidance from a series of rabbis, which even in sixties American suburbs serve as the ultimate repositories of wisdom. Most troubling are not the inci-dents that appear meaningless but the ones that seem fraught with meaning that proves inaccessible. Larry wants the hidden formula for the dismal facts of his life, but the rabbis’ answers only point back to uncertainty.

There has been some contention

A comedy with a whole lot of tsuris

In recent years, television has known no shortage of serialized sci-fi dramas—from “Battlestar Galactica” to “Lost,” networks have tried time and time again to capitalize on the trend, not always succeeding (remember “Surface” or “Invasion?”). ABC has added yet another entrant to the genre with Tuesday’s debut of “V,” a remake (“reimagining” in television parlance) of the classic 1983 miniseries.

“V” stands for Visitor—the term for a race of aliens whose bevy of spaceships hover over the world’s major cities as the first episode begins. The Vs appear completely human and appar-ently speak every language. Their leader, Anna (Morena Baccarin), calmly assures Earth that her race comes in peace, declaring that they “will leave [humans] better than [they] found [them].” The Vs soon gain a kind of cult of per-sonality among humans, partially a result of their ability to cure a plethora of human diseases.

However, all is not as it appears. FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) soon discovers that the Visitors are actually reptil-ian creatures with nefarious plans in mind—uh oh. Along

with Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch), a priest, and Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut), a Visitor intent on helping humanity, Erica forms a resistance group against the Vs—even as her own son, Tyler (Logan Huffman), is recruited by them.

To be honest, there’s not much that can be called new or original in “V”—a fact that should per-haps be unsurprising considering that it is, after all, a remake. Its basic plot has been done time and time again—aliens arrive on Earth, claim they want to do good, and then—gasp!—turn out to be lying… and evil… and pos-sibly intent on eating everyone.

The opening visuals, in which the Visitors’ spaceships hover menacingly over city after city, has been done before in films ranging from “Independence Day” to this year’s “District 9.” The show is, however, conscious of its debts, cheekily acknowl-edging them in a scene in which one onlooker compares the alien arrival to “Independence Day,” while another person chimes in claiming that that particular film was a “rip-off of any number of alien invasion” films—just like “V.”

“V” also lacks the complexity of shows like “Lost.” With the excep-tion of the Visitor who switches

sides, there’s an “absolute good versus absolute evil” mental-ity present. This is not to say that the series does not make attempts to add depth to its plot. The original mini-series served as an allegory for the rise of Nazism, and elements of this have been retained—Tyler, for instance, is recruited into a Visitor ambassa-dor program designed to spread the Vs’ message, echoing the practices of the Hitler Youth.

“V” has tried to update this allegory, however, by choosing to instead focus on issues of trust in a post-9/11 society. Erica, a counter-terrorism agent, initially suspects the human resistance movement of being a terrorist sleeper cell. It’s also not immedi-ately clear how to differentiate a human from a Visitor in disguise, casting suspicion on virtually everyone.

The main cast of “V” is uni-

‘V’ mainly victorious: ABC’s modern take on a classic mini-series

BY MAXWELL PRICEStaff

BY SEAN FABERYStaff

as to whether this film is typical of the Coen catalogue or a stand-out. To the extent that it employs absurd comic situations, involves dark subject matter and explores the idiosyncrasies of a particular subculture, I feel it hits the mark. But the fact that it doesn’t strongly resemble any one film in their film-ography serves as a testament to the new territory this film mines.

Structurally, "A Serious Man" does include some Coen hallmarks that keep us anchored amidst the chaos that engulfs Larry’s life. For example, the film begins and ends in the same place, making us ques-

tion whether anything has actu-ally changed. And then there are those wacky dream sequences that serve as parallel universes guided by Larry’s unconscious desires.

Overall, however, it’s really the painfully earnest humor that makes this flick a mekhaye. It’s not the standard, “life sucks so let’s laugh about it" formulation, but the more Woody Allen-esque notion that the humor is found at the root of life’s misery.

Even if you’re not a fan of reli-gious pessimism, see “A Serious Man” for the belly laughs. You’ll be glad you did, beemes.

formly strong. Elizabeth Mitchell, best known for playing Juliet on “Lost”, proves to be the stand-out as Erica, creating yet another complex portrayal of a strong, independent woman. Mitchell has strong chemistry with Logan Huffman, who portrays her V-enthusiast son. Morena Baccarin lends Anna an eerie, antiseptic quality that repels even

See V, p. 13

PHOTO from Internet Source

PHOTO from Internet Source

‘V’ IS FOR VISITOR: ABC’s remake of the 1980s miniseries presents yet another sci-fi drama about evil aliens, only this time with a post-9/11 twist. With a strong cast and engaging plot, “V” has potential to stand out among other alien invasion shows.

END-NOTENovember 6, 2009 Diverse City 11

VH1 has long been the bastion of reality shows that aren’t classy enough for MTV’s high standards, including a neverending series of reality dating shows and the “I Love Money” competitions. But the absur-dity of reality programming is probably best captured in the completely ridiculous “Tool Academy 2.”

The basic principle behind the “Tool Academy” series is that girls with terrible boyfriends can bring them on this show to undergo couples’ counseling, with a British-accented counselor (for a legiti-macy factor), and compete in challenges designed to rectify faults in their relation-ships. Most of the boyfriends involved have cheated on their girlfriends multiple times, treat them terribly, and have abso-lutely no respect for women.

But of course it wouldn’t be reality TV if anyone on the show displayed elements of self-awareness. Each woman on the show gladly points out the faults in everyone else’s relationship while defending her boy-friend’s complete and utter lack of basic human decency. What’s worse is that most of the time after a guy has been kicked off (signature host line: “I’m sorry, but you’re just a tool.”), his girlfriend chooses to continue the relationship after some vague halfhearted promises to change.

Truly the highlight of “Tool Academy” is the fairly non-standard ‘therapeutic’ techniques the show employs. Last sea-son, in order to prove fidelity, contestants had to learn to dance a tango with their

girlfriends, as though that would prove them incapable of cheating. This season, the men were put in clothes and makeup to look like old men, so that they could somehow better have a conversation about maturity and the future of their relation-ships. Most of the competitions are repur-posed general reality show competitions like relay races, simply forcing the couple to compete together.

Though it’s almost certainly unintended, “Tool Academy 2” does serve as an excel-lent critique of gender roles. The men on the show constantly engage in male pos-turing with other contestants, and assert extreme feelings of ownership and pos-session over their girlfriends. They tend

“I don’t like people who order weird sandwiches.”He told me, looking up from hiscaramel macchiatowith a lip ring where his lip should be.

He didn’t clean the grime under hisfingernailsbecause that would show that he caredabout the grime, andabout the fingernails.

He didn’t cut his hair, either—That would show that hecared about his hair,and about the cut, too.

Taking a pull from hisclove cigarette,he told me everythinghe did not care about,and apparently,he did not care about anything.Although he cared,about not caring,about not anything. So then I thought,as I inhaled his exhales ofcigarette smoke andapathy,he cared about not anything—And not anything, clearly,is everything.

“Another caramel machiatto, please.”He said, careful with his lip ring.And I thought,he might as wellhave ordereda weird sandwich.

Weird Sandwiches

BY SAMANTHA SHOKINEditor

BY DANIELLE GEWURZEditor

VH1 is too ‘Tool’ for school

as it attracts. Scott Wolf contributes a strong performance as an unscrupulous journalist who secures an interview with Anna, after agreeing not to ask her any tough questions. Finally, Morris Chestnut and Joel Gretsch, as the other prominent figures in the resistance, also give char-ismatic performances — though the first episode gives their characters little screen time.

In addition to its cast, the show’s plot is its other strength. It may be derivative, but it’s certainly engaging and suspenseful. Unlike typical first episodes, the “V” pre-miere was not bogged down in exposition, allowing it to immediately submerge you in the action. At the same time, the amount of action presented in the first episode alone could pose a problem in the future—hope-fully the show won’t cycle through its ideas too quickly and will instead take the time to delve into them more deeply.

“V” certainly garners a recommendation based on its first episode alone, though viewers shouldn’t expect a show steeped in symbolism and its own mythology a la “Lost”—at least not yet. Considering the sizable audience its debut netted—over 14.3 million viewers—the series should stick around for a while. It will hopefully cash in on the promise its cast and narra-tive verve have so far presented.

‘V’ classic sci-fi with

modern twist

to be extraordinarily jealous even as they repeatedly cheat. The show’s presenta-tion of these guys as overaggressive, vain, immature idiots is in many ways a critique of this kind of behavior.

Of course, every bit of progress is undone by a counselor who seems to believe in tra-ditional gender roles and women who seem both slightly terrified and a bit flattered by their boyfriends’ possessive behavior. Still , one can’t really expect anything from VH1.

When it comes down to it, “Tool Academy 2” is infuriating, but perfectly mindless entertainment that requires lit-tle attention and even less analysis. But it’s also a show you don’t want to watch alone, simply for fear of losing IQ points. Nonetheless, it’s probably one of my favor-ite ridiculous things to watch, and this week’s season finale is likely to be epic, if last year’s impromptu marriage is any precedent.

PHOTO from Internet Source

V (from p. 12)

Poetry