DELIGHTFUL AS SIN
Movie Review: Sin City
9/10
by Raph Tombasco
Frank Miller’s Sin City is one hell of a beast. The comic book series that served as the film’s inspiration reinvented the film noir genre through the medium of ink and pen, and delivered a dark, compelling view of the vices of temptation, corruption, and love. Miller’s work was so poignant that director Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado) insisted the writer co-direct the film adaptation for the sake of remaining faithful to the unique vision of the narrative. But because Miller wasn’t a card-carrying director, this personnel move did not fit the standards of the Director’s Guild of America, so Rodriguez decided to leave the esteemed group and make Sin City with Miller’s assistance. The resulting film is proof that this was a terrific move, as it stands as one of the truest comic book adaptations since Ang Lee’s terribly underrated Hulk.
The film masterfully weaves together the three major story arcs from the Sin City comics: The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard. These stories stand on their own in their brutal depictions of life in the fictional metropolis of Basin City, and their combination on screen gives the film an epic feel. The stark contrast used in the black and white photography and subtle flourishes of color add to Miller’s concept of noir and help the film remain true to the original artwork of the comic.
Sin City boasts an excellent ensemble cast consisting of Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Nick Stahl, and Elijah Wood. The film begins with the story of Marv (Rourke) in The Hard Goodbye. Rourke plays an ex-con framed for the murder of the only prostitute that ever gave the brutish thug a chance. His quest for vengeance leads him to the Roark family that holds the city in an unclenching grip of crime and fear. This story then gives way to The Big Fat Kill, in which Dwight (Owen), a fugitive with a shady past, gives in to love and joins forces with a well-armed gang of prostitutes led by Gail (Dawson) to fight off a force of corrupt police aiming to take over their turf. The final chapter is That Yellow Bastard, in which Hartigan (Willis), an ex-cop, comes face to face with Senator Roark’s son Junior (Nick Stahl), while protecting Nancy (Alba), a girl he rescued from the family’s clutches when she was just a child. Nick Stahl steals the show as the creepy, maniacal Yellow Bastard along with Elijah Wood as the equally insane Kevin. Owen and Willis are spot on with their characters, but the real hero is Rourke’s brutish Marv. A movie that actually takes advantage of Mickey Rourke’s skill and beats the lovable hobbit of Elijah Wood into a creepy villain is a movie worth seeing.
While the performances are top-notch across the board, the city itself becomes the film’s true star. It lives and breathes just like the characters, driving the violent narrative to its film noir roots. The rich, seedy environment provides the perfect atmosphere for the vicious characters that roam its streets. By using the latest in digital filmmaking technology, Rodriguez built the city from the ground up, making the actors fit and react with the nonexistent surroundings.
Sin City moves a long way from its film noir predecessors in its narrative and technological aspects. Fritz Lang didn’t have today’s modern computer technology when he helped pioneer the genre with his film, M, in 1931, and neither did Carol Reed or Stanley Kubrick when they perfected it with their respective films, The Third Man and The Killing. Even so, these films withstood the test of time, and so will Sin City; not for its astonishingly accurate comic book adaptation, but for its complete reinvention of film noir for the twenty-first century. Here’s hoping they adapt Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns next!
AN ALBUM IN THE SUN
CD Review: Of Montreal-
The Sunlandic Twins
9/10
by Bobby Ellis
It’s a wonder that Of Montreal haven’t become even more successful in the mainstream recently. With the onslaught of current indie surf-rock acts, Of Montreal have unfortunately almost become an afterthought. Bands like The Shins and Pas/Cal are taking their music out of the basement and into commercials and popular movies; and why not? Their songs are, by nature, catchy and easily accessible. Of Montreal started off as a similarly straightforward pop band in 1997, but have progressed so much over eight albums that their newest album, The Sunlandic Twins, is simultaneously familiar and groundbreaking with its melding of indiepop and electronic production mastery.
Picking up where their previous album, Satanic Panic in the Attic, left off, The Sunlandic Twins begins similarly with the song “Requiem for o.m.m.2,” one that could easily have snuck itself onto Satanic Panic without anyone batting an eye. On Satanic Panic this song would get lost, seeming like an older Of Montreal song, but updated electronically in a slightly awkward way. The song fits perfectly on this album, however, kicking it off with a recollection of Of Montreal’s past while directing the lyrics to a slightly more mature vein, reflecting on a past love whom lead singer Kevin Barnes just can’t seem to shake.
The album’s tone establishes itself in the second track, “I Was Never Young.” The song is an electronic ‘80s pop orgy where Barnes croons the beginning of the line, “I was never young, even as a child” with a faux-Bowie sneer, before finishing with a Brian Wilsonesque harmony. The next few tracks are equally inspired, at times combining disco-funk bass riffs with dripping-wet electronic drums. These tracks set the album apart from Satanic Panic; the band finally seems fully confident in their own new and adventurous sound.
Outstanding album tracks include “So Begins our Alabee” and “The Party’s Crashing Us.” “Alabee” begins with a disarmingly interesting minute-long musical intro mixing synths, beats, and twangy guitars before bursting into the most catchy chorus that the ‘80s new-wavers sadly never got the chance to experience. “The Party’s Crashing Us” is similarly catchy, but with a strangely darker edge, almost musically depicting the downfalls of the disco-era, throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude. Barnes overly emotes, “We made love like a pair of black wizards,” before the song eventually takes a turn into a synth solo that can only be described as similar to the fuzzed-out ambulance sirens heard as you’re being driven away from the intoxicated car crash in your head.
With The Sunlandic Twins, Of Montreal finally fully delivers on the promise of their earlier straight pop and more recent experimental music, combining the two into a beautiful and mature symphony of electronic pop extravaganza. The music is simultaneously behind and ahead of its time, and mixing the two more confidently than ever before. As well, Kevin Barnes’ lyrics have become more genuine; they seem to ache for his youth and are concerned with how age is treating him. With the urgency he and his band have been putting out excellent albums like The Sunlandic Twins in mind, it seems like they’re not taking any chances of letting their best years get behind them too soon.
RYTHMIC WORDS OF SUBURBAN CONTENT
CD Review:
Jackson Square Cartel - HouseBroken
7/10
by Michael Dedek
Jackson Square Cartell, a self-proclaimed suburban hip-hop group from Western New York, bring 34 combined years of vocal experience to their newest album HouseBroken. Like an early middle aged professional, JSC is on the verge of perfecting their trade, as they deal out a smooth flow that mixes seamlessly with the beats, but also like a middle aged professional from the suburbs, JSC often lacks something substantial to say.
Beginning with “Haters,” Krazi-Q, A2J and Mad Dukez of JSC display their vocal abilities but do it using thematic vehicles that drag on their ostensible verbal skills. The introductory track turns a cell phone message, which relays the information to an unsuspecting boyfriend that his girl has been around, into a rap about sexual exploit: “I let her feel it the power. Your girl wanted it, don’t deny it, your girl got on my dick and she knows how to ride it.” In “Chaffin,” JSC returns to similar themes with background vocals that found their impetus in a pre-first track, a pre-“Haters,” experience.
In “They Never Saw It Coming,” JSC alludes to “Killer Instinct”—one of the many combat games that every suburban boy had in his Nintendo collection in the ‘90s. Though “Killer Instinct” was a good game, providing teens with hours of distraction, references to “Killer Instinct” and the aimless themes of “Haters” and “Chaffin” make the suburban inspiration, or lack of inspiration, apparent and reveal how the suburbs too often fail to provide experiences that are translatable into satisfying art.
There remain, however, certain luminous moments on the album in tracks like “Troublemakers” and “Confessions,” when JSC lights upon more worthy subjects, though still subjects consistent with suburbia. In “Troublemakers,” JSC conveys the divide between the American dream and insatiable ambition combined with reality, which too often, in JSC’s opinion, is populated by people who work against another’s success in order to satisfy personal doubts. “Confessions” takes the subject of “Troublemakers” and repaints the portrait of a musically ambitious youth as an adult who has not achieved the fame he supposed to be his destiny; the confessions are the lines that bleed out the failed lyricist’s pen.
If HouseBroken is an indicator of JSC’s fecundity—the trio is exceptionally prolific given their ages (Krazi-Q, 21; Mad Dukez, 22; A2J, 20)—we can expect to see many future albums with more developed themes and with the same fluid verse. Even for its deficiencies in content, HouseBroken is a compilation of notable lyrical skill, worthy of investigation, and is on sale at the SBI ticket booth in the Student Union with downloadable tracks available on www.jsc.name.
OH MERDE
BOOK Review: A Year in the Merde
by Stephen Clarke
10/10
by Todd Natti
One of the most popular pastimes today in the United States seems to be the love of making fun of the French. Not the actual country of France, mind you, but the actual French people. This resurgence in French-bashing occurred when Chirac put his foot down and said France would not support the United States in its invasion of Iraq. Come on, we all remember Freedom Fries and the like. We all know one guy who feels that the reason we cannot win in Iraq is not because of the idiocy of the administration, but because of France in some way or another.
Stephen Clarke plays upon the biases that exist against the French in his novel A Year in the Merde (translation: a year in the shit), which debuts in the United States on May 9. The author originally wrote A Year in the Merde just for fun and self-published it in France in an English-language edition in 2004. Weeks later, it had become a word-of-mouth hit for expatriates and the French alike. With translation rights now sold in eleven countries and already a bestseller in the UK and France, the book is a bonafide hit overseas, and I was lucky enough to pick up a copy while in Paris over Spring Break.
A Year in the Merde is not the normal French bashing that we in the states are accustomed to, even though it does take place during time directly preceding the invasion of Iraq which is chronicled in the section “Février: Make amour, not war.” Iraq is not the issue in A Year in the Merde, though. What is the issue is a man, in this case a British man, having to become accustomed to life in Paris as he takes a year-long job setting up a line of British Tea Cafés.
Merde is author Stephen Clarke’s first novel, and is based largely on the true stories of what happened to him during his first year of living in France. His alter ego in the novel, Paul West, learns that everything he feared about the French while living across the Channel, is true. They eat a lot cheese (some of which smells like, well, merde), they don’t wash their armpits with garlic soap, going on strike is the second national participation sport after pétanque, and, yes, they do use suppositories.
Clarke’s style of recalling his year in Paris, is laugh-out-loud funny. From his need of wearing plastic bags over his feet as to not step in the dog merde in the streets of Paris to his phonetic examples of how his French coworkers speak English, which appears quite early in the novel: “Alok for wah toowa king wizioo,” one of Clarke’s coworkers says, to which the author muses: “Hang on, I thought. I don’t speak any Central European languages, but I got that. He’s looking forward to working with me. Holy babel fish. It’s English, Jim, but not as we know it.”
Clarke’s other misadventures in the realms of dealing with grumpy Parisian waiters, Parisian women, and the French 35 hour work week (which he is still grateful for today, as he still lives in France). Clarke’s musings are a good representation of friendly rivalry, one that the French and English have had for a long, long time. It’s not the malicious hatred that many Americans seem to have, but more the type of “we don’t like each other, and we can handle that and still get along.”
A Year in the Merde also discusses the various tourist areas in France, and people who have visited the City of Light will recognize the various destinations that Clarke visits. In a visit to Montmarte, where, as Clarke reminds us “Amélie Poulain’s boyfriend looks down at her through the telescope.”
A Year in the Merde is a novel for both French lovers and haters alike. It’s lighthearted, comical, and for the most part, true. I read 100 pages the first day I got it, and trust me, it reads fast. When it is released on May 9, I suggest you go pick up a copy and quickly learn why you will immediately be anxiously awaiting the sequel Merde, Actually, which is due out in September overseas. Putain, that’s half why I’m going to England for grad school next year.
Other books to be on the lookout for this Spring are Lewis Black’s Nothing’s Sacred, Raymond Federman’s My Body in Nine Parts, and, this summer, of course, the sixth Harry Potter book, due July 16. Happy reading.
QUITE PICARESQUE
CD Review:
The Decemberists - Picaresque
8/10
by Michael Torsell
Since The Decemberists debut album Castaways and Cutoffs came out in 2003, the band has gained ever-increasing critical acclaim and a devoted fan base. By using a unique theatrical style in their live shows, the group carved a niche for themselves: folkish indie rock of about the nineteenth century. While their theatrics certainly set the band apart on a superficial level, their talent for song writing is where the band truly shines. Picaresque, their latest effort, is certainly no exception and represents a giant leap forward both lyrically and musically.
The band released its first two albums in quick succession, churning out Castaways and its follow-up, Her Majesty, in 2003. A two-year break saw the band release only one EP, an off-the-wall 20 minute single called The Tain, that only hardcore fans could love. The extra time the band took to record Picaresque is evident in a more mature sound than previous albums. While their focus remained largely on theatrics in the first two LPs, it sometimes bordered on gimmickry. In this album, The Decemberists honed their style and focused their song writing. Picaresque opens with “The Infanta,” an exhilarating piece possessing their trademark style of story telling while at the same time showing a much greater musical complexity than their previous works. The Decemberists have filled out the sparseness found on earlier records with a more epic sound, encompassing a broader range of instrumentation. Sweeping melodies are found throughout, and their ability to capture the various moods found in the mini stories of each song is impressive. Those who loved the band’s spare production values will love tracks like “For My Own True Love (Lost at Sea).”
Lead singer Colin Meloy’s unique sense of story telling is another strong point. Each song tells a tale using varying tones and on various topics, from a mariner’s revenge to a romantic tryst with a spy. While fanciful tactics such as these often fall flat in the hands of lesser songwriters, Meloy plays with the imagination while not bowing to cliché. Lyricism and the tighter direction steer away from pirates and street urchins of earlier albums while not completely forsaking these early motifs.
Picaresque is a solid and enjoyable LP. Colin Meloy and Co. have solidified their unique sound and added a great deal more focus. Each track is filled with their expected lyrical masterwork, while only the faintest overtones of theatrics and gimmickry remain. And all of this while maintaining a work of fantastic journeys through long ago worlds.
EXTREMELY CLOSE TO INCREDIBLE PROMISE
BOOK Review:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
By Jonathan Safran Foer
6/10
by Christopher Ahearn
Jonathan Safran Foer, the young writer who made literary waves in 2002 with the publication of his brilliant first novel, Everything is Illuminated, had a daunting task in avoiding the sophomore slump with his second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Not only were literati hyping him as the heir-apparent to the American literary throne, but he also had to deal with the fickle legion of readers who were already tired of his book’s subject before it even came out. Yes, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is one of those novels, a post 9/11 narrative set in the backdrop of a healing New York.
The story centers on Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy whose father was killed in the World Trade Center that fateful Tuesday morning. Under its surface, however, there lies a cathartic biopic of a city still coping with a silently screaming tragedy that haunts every moment of their lives, even four years after the fact. Oskar is a borderline prodigy; insightful beyond his years to the point of speaking in aphorisms, fluent in French, and full of imaginative and intellectual curiosity.
The book follows the story of his finding a key in his father’s closet within an envelope marked “Black” and then crisscrossing the five boroughs in an attempt to locate the lock that will fit it. As with his first work, these are only the bare bones of a Foer plot. There is so much more to the book, including a distant mother, a loving but needy grandmother who lives across the street, her estranged, mute husband, the old man who lives upstairs but never leaves his apartment, and a slew of other vividly idiosyncratic characters.
Depression is the major theme of the novel: Oskar’s depression, or “heavy boots” as he likes to call it, his mother’s despair, and indeed all of the characters’ depression are in constant attendance. Everyone is dealing with some sort of post-traumatic pain, a point that begins to wear a little thin when the all-too-obvious parallels of Hiroshima and Dresden are introduced, but it works nonetheless. What saves the book from an overpowering darkness is Foer’s flair for whimsy and a fantastically vibrant writing style; his talent lies not necessarily in the way he can spin a story, but in the sheer warmth and earnestness that he is able to bring to the page.
As a device, the protagonist’s age is interesting if not a bit contrived. Foer pulls off what not many authors are able to do by creating a complete and complex psyche within the shell of a child. It allows his narrative to take flight in the realm of magical realism without actually losing touch with reality, no small feat for even the greatest of writers.
In terms of voice, the novel is written in the language of today, infused with not only standard text, but images of all sorts, going as far as to use blank pages as well as ones that are so completely saturated with words that they become black. The only real problem with this is the same problem that plagues the entire novel: one gets the sense that Foer is trying too hard to impress us. He is using so many gimmicks and pulling out all of the literary stops so that we are faced with the age-old problem of not being able to see the trees for the forest. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close fails to live up to the promise of Everything is Illuminated, but it is not a complete failure. If nothing else, it allows us to see that the immense talent that he displayed in his first novel was not a fluke, and that with a little honing, he can truly become a master of his craft.
