MOVIE REVIEW Going the distance — or not?
Like Crazy is perhaps one of the most ill-fitting titles for a film. When I first heard of the movie, I cringed a little inside and vowed that I’d box that title away into a corner of my mind and hopefully never touch it again. The title, coupled with the two young leading actors and a been-there-done-that long-distance sob story, seemed to reek of adolescent angst. Dubiously eyeing Yelchin’s peach fuzz, I scoffed and thought to myself, What would this high school movie know about love?
CONCERT REVIEW New talent, stale rhymes
I’ve been meaning to see Wale for a long time. As an immensely talented, aspiring rapper from the D.C. area myself, it means a lot to see a native from the tri-county blow up the way that Wale has. Now, our average young, rapless MIT reader should understand: for such a big city, D.C. is quite a different beast than a place like New York or Los Angeles. Sure there’s still plenty of hood projects, drug corners, crime and poverty to talk about. But on a day-to-day basis, people worry more about the temperature of their Chinese food and lines at the DMV than getting a bullet in the head or their mild but burgeoning crack addictions. After all, D.C. is the nation’s capital, surrounded by modest but serene suburbia on all sides. The most I’ve ever feared for my life in my 12 years of residency was the summer I interned at the Naval Research Lab and had to take a metrobus through Anacostia — I did crossword puzzles.
DOCUMENTARY REVIEW Reviving a culture through language
The Wampanoag people of southeastern Massachusetts, who helped the Pilgrims survive 400 years ago, had no spoken language to call their own until about 20 years ago. Anne Makepeace’s newest documentary, We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân, delves into the fascinating linguistic — and consequently, cultural — revival of a tribe.
BALLET REVIEW Elegance in anguish
The curtains rise and we see a young girl teasing her nurse, pushing her this way and that, pulling at her dress, running circles around her. The girl turns shy when her mother walks in, but then can barely contain her excitement when she is given a lovely new dress to wear to her first big party.
THEATRE REVIEW J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan takes on CGI
Since J.M. Barrie’s inaugural London stage production in 1905, countless iterations of Peter Pan have graced film and the stage. Each form has its charm; the intimacy of Wendy caring for the Lost Boys shines on the small stage, whereas the majesty of cavorting through the London Sky on the way to Neverland seems a feat best left to cinematography. All of these iterations form a collective memory of the Peter Pan story, but no one adaptation can stand alone.
INTERVIEW Sylvia Deaton
Sylvia Deaton, 20, has been dancing since she could walk, and knew she wanted to be a professional dancer from a very young age. At age six, she began taking ballet, jazz and tap classes, and was soon participating in dance competitions and winning regional and national titles. She was inspired by Broadway shows and local ballet performances her family would bring her to, and would practice the moves at home, using her sister as a male partner and rows of stuffed animals as her audience.
THEATER REVIEW In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
The MIT Shakespeare Ensemble’s production of Macbeth summons such a strange intensity that the suspension of disbelief is hardly “willing”: we have no choice as the audience but to accept the truth of the tragedy taking place before us and partake viscerally in the trials of its characters.
MOVIE SHORT How is your research?
Jorge Cham’s Piled Higher and Deeper — Life (or the lack thereof) in Academia, aka PhD Comics have been capturing the grad student life in a humorous but always accurate way. The original newspaper and web comic strip started in 1997 when Jorge himself was a grad student at Stanford University. The comic deals with the topics that govern grad student life like struggles in research, the relationship between students and their supervisors, and most importantly, the constant quest for free food. Much material was built up over the years, and it almost seems that the movie version was long over due. Filming started in March 2011 and was a colaboration with a theater group at Caltech.
MOVIE REVIEW Tour of a painting
It starts with a sound and ends with a painting. Creaking. Voices. Echoing footsteps. The soft swish of fabric. Above all, darkness. When the scene opens, the camera slowly pans back and forth across an evolving painting: The Mill and the Cross is centered around Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Way to Calvary (1564), so what better way to open the film than with a tour of the painting itself?
EXHIBIT REVIEW Whirring into motion
Tucked inside a dim corner of the MIT Museum, a fun surprise awaits the viewer, or more accurately, the participant — for Arthur Ganson’s motionless sculptures spring alive at the touch of a button or the push of a pedal with seemingly little more effort than a whir of gears.
MOVIE REVIEW The Thing is …
In the 2011 prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film of the same name, paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is called to Antartica for what could be the discovery of the century: an alien ship buried deep in the ice and a frozen organism that seems to have died when the ship hit Earth. Kate and her Norwegian colleagues perform experiments on the organism in the name of science but, to their utter horror, unleash an alien nightmare; this “Thing” engulfs and transforms into anything it touches. So here we have a bunch of Scandinavians and righteous Kate isolated in a cluster of wooden cabins in Antarctica, each of them vulnerable to becoming the Thing. That’s essentially the entire plot — now how do I begin to discuss The Thing?
MOVIE REVIEW Hey, does this haircut make me look like Voldemort?
50/50 is ultimately a film about friendship through hardship. When Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns that he has a malignant tumor, his friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) and new girlfriend Katie (Anna Kendrick) try their best to help Adam deal with his emotional and physical pain. Unfortunately, Kyle isn’t the most eloquent character, and only has his mind on gettin’ some. Screenwriter Will Reiser depicts this story brilliantly — a story based on his own experience with cancer and his friendship with Seth Rogen.
INTERVIEW A chat with Philip Cohen
Sloan student Philip Cohen G has a new project — and with its original melodies, smooth bass, and powerful lyrics, it lies far outside the traditional business realm. Leaving, an album of 14 songs written by Cohen, was pre-released last month and is available on his website for free.
Born to be pink
On Saturday, Oct. 15, Betsey Johnson presented her Fall Winter 2011/2012 Ready-to-Wear collection at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. The models strutted down the runway in playful tartans, stripes, and animal prints to “Run the World (Girls)” and “Sweet Caroline” (with the crowd singing along to the latter). After the show, Betsey performed her famous cartwheels and splits across the runway and danced around with the models, who sported bright pink “We can do it!” tanks. The subject hits close to home for Betsey, who is a breast cancer survivor. Proceeds from the night went to the South End Community Health Center, of which her brother Bob (pictured) is president.
INTERVIEW On YouTube, musicianship, and guitars
Andy McKee is one of the best fingerstyle guitarists in America, currently signed onto the Razor & Tie record label. He is famous for achieving over 40 million views on YouTube to date for his signature song, “Drifting.” McKee is currently on the Guitar Masters tour, along with fellow fingerstyle players Antoine Dufour and Stephen Bennett. I sat down with him to chat about the tour, being a guitarist, and life in general.
EXHIBIT REVIEW From time to time
It is quite an ambitious project to create a 24-hour film. More ambitious yet is to create one without main characters, without a plot, and which comprises entirely of scenes involving clocks from other films. Yet that is precisely what Christian Marclay has done — and very effectively, too.
ARTS AROUND TOWN Staying in Boston this weekend?
In celebration of the Red Sox winning the American League in 1912, a distinguished woman attended a performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra touting a headband with, “Oh, You Red Sox” splashed across it and caused quite a stir in the media. This is one of many stories, both true and false, about Isabella Stewart Gardner, or “Mrs. Jack.” She did nothing to deny or affirm these claims about her, and is often quoted as saying, “Don’t spoil a good story by telling the truth.”
ARTS AROUND TOWN One City One Story, more than one Scarlet Letter?
This morning I rollerbladed to Harvard to get some breakfast from Darwin’s. Paying the cashier, I noticed a little pamphlet entitled One City One Story: “The Whore’s Child.” My curiosity piqued, I picked it up and began reading it as I waited for my sandwich. I found myself drawn in instantly, and I had thoroughly devoured it by the time I had similarly finished off my sandwich.
Can an elegant book be transformed into an elegant film?
The Hedgehog proves that a film is best enjoyed if you watch it with low expectations at the outset. Admittedly, I read Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog this summer and enjoyed it so much that I was convinced that the film adaptation would be an absolute failure. After all, aren’t all movie adaptations of books at least something of a disappointment? Morbid curiosity is what drove me to watch The Hedgehog, and, well, thank goodness for morbid curiosity.
The Hedgehog explores the similarities between three very different Parisians
The Hedgehog is a French-language movie directed by Mona Achache based on the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. In the movie, unlikely encounters develop in the setting of an affluent Parisian neighborhood. The film explores the interactions between Paloma, an 11-year old girl, Renée Michel, an apartment concierge, and Kakuro Ozu, a Japanese man who recently moved to the apartment complex.