Ministrys By Ted Watts Daily Fine Arts Editor Ministry has wriggled itself into the hearts and minds ofagood many people in this nation, not unlike the Kennedys or tapeworms. But the band doesn't know why that's happened, exactly. "I don't .know what accumulates a 'fan base,'" explained bassist Paul MINISTRY * ker. "Or what makes people in- THE YOUN( terested in music. Where: The State Or the music we in Detroit. do, specifically. When: Thursday But it seems that p.m. Thursday's we have a pretty Call TicketMast hardcore follow- ing, and we're thrilled about that, espe- cially considering this album does not nd like Psalm 69. Yet people are WI buying it. We're happy that people want to go where we take them." The band's new album, "Filth Pig," is a fairly new rection for them. It's both slower and simpler, while it re- icIhTgaan ig Thespians kick it at Shaman Drum ... Always impressive Theater Prof. Ari Roth joins others from the University's theater department to act out scenes from Roth's play "Oh, the innocents," at 8 tonight at Shaman Drum Bookshop. ,A-WeWnesday April 10, 1996 Psalm' offer tains the essential elements ofMinistry's music. A lot of people are wondering why this is. "I don't know. Because all of our fast music we wrote over the past few years just was so much more Psalm 69, and we didn't want to do that. We weren't interested in treading over well-trod- WITH G GODS e Theater and Friday at7 show is sold o er at (810) 64 den ground, so to speak. So we threw those songs out, and we're wholly satisfied with the music we 7:30 ended up with on ut, this record, and the fact that it's slow is primarily a byproduct of us not wanting to repeat ourselves. I mean, we love fast music, no question about it. It's just that I consider albums to be a snapshot of a band as it is at that time, and not the be all end all," Barker said. There's even a cover of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" on the new album to s a change give you an indication of the direction Ministry has been going in recently. "Al (vocalist Al Jourgensen) really wanted to do the song, so we struggled through it, and I think it's a good ar- rangement and so forth. But it's not one of my favorites on the record or any- thing." Barker has had a good long time to consider what he likes about the album, considering the inordinate amount of time Ministry went without a new record. "Yes it's true, it took a while for us to get the record out. But, we've been busy aside of that, maybe not musi- cally, but we have lives. Yeah, I apolo- gize for that because it's pretty pitiful when a band can't put a record out in three and a half years. That's the way the ball bounces, I guess. I'm not happy about it, but things happen for a reason, and it happened with the record, so ..." In addition to lives, band members have had plenty of side projects, from Lard to the Revolting Cocks. "Our side projects are by and large inactive right now. We've been concentrating on Min- istry, and that's been a handful. When we were doing all the side projects, it seems like ... I don't know what to say. I guess I want to say we were more capable of being satisfied with what we were doing. Perhaps less critical and therefore willing to let things go." And after such a long time slogging through the music business, Barker certainly deserves to be able to have some easy work. But the time spent in the trenches has soured him a bit on the work going on in his genre. "It's so narrowly defined. If it's industrial, it's gotta sound like this. To me that just is not interesting. The parameters of what that music is, what will be defined or could be defined as indus- trial music is just so narrow. You have to have blinders on, and to me it's just not interesting. I love the energy behind it, and the fact that people are doing it, but musically, it's just not challenging me personally. I can only speak for myself, and only want to speak for myself." Well, it's all probably part of a natu- ral evolution. And finally, it's even bled over into the band's aesthetics. "I'm so thrilled 'cause our crew has long hair and the band doesn't, so we hope everyone gets mistaken." Remem- ber that at the concert. "Look babe, the name is Chazz, not Chuckle. Call me Chuckle again, and I don't know what." Chemad Chazzfal tosprke TWO big stars can't save 'Faithful" from constantly dragging By Christopher Corbett M azursky's direction, the visual movement of "Faithful," Daily Arts Writer comes off like smooth sailing during the hostage sequences. Two minutes into "Faithful," Maggie (Cher) and her hus- He doesn't use quick cuts and choppy editing; in "Faithful," band dance at their wedding. Their faces appear fat and he often gives us one continuous, slow-moving shot that contorted. The camera closes in on them. With the distorted follows them through the sandy, hardwood corridors of the images, the pair not only seems uncomfortable with each enormous house. Cher's and Palminteri's arguments com- other, but also remains indistinct to us. bine with the gliding pans and steady dollies ofthe camera for We don't get an up-front, clear picture of the characters. some slick, lavish moments. We don't know why the husband hires He may be a technical whiz, but a hit man to pop his wife after 20 years R EVIEW Mazursky ("Enemies, A Love Story") of marriage, except from the most basic sure dn't get the emotions of the film of explanations: Cher, 40-ish, has that Faithful right. Too often, the characters are not-so-fresh trait, whereas the husband's straight when they should be silly, and assistant (emphasis on those first three silly when they should play it straight. letters) is bouncy and bountiful. Directed by Paul Mazursky I Eventually, Palminteri calls his We don't feel confused, though, as with Cher and shrink and tells him he is going to kill the killer (Chazz Palminteri) ties Cher Chazz Palminteri Cher. The shrink only tells Palminteri up and waits with his gun tucked under I he should have read "The Celestine his belt for the phone to ring twice and At Showcase Prophecy," as he recommended. Be- the husbandto secure an alibi: Not know- cause the shrink comes across as out- ing much about the players propels the film. Does Cher tell landish, we don't take Palminteri's craziness, his murder- the killer a few sad stories about herself to seem more human ous side, seriously anymore either. We don't feel tension. so he won't kill her, or because she feels lonely? Is she lying Instead, we see he can't do the brutal job; we see he can't or sincere? We try to find some hint. We watch her, looking tear Cher's clothing, rape her and put a bullet in the back for some revealing sideways glance or move of the hand: of her head. Cher, not desperate but literally laid back and subdued in a Likewise, the seriousness of the ending - the husband chair, holds our attention. comes home - works our nerves because the strained-- The relationship between victim (we get high-angle shots husband and wife really want to shoot each other: Mazursky pointed down at Cher, revealing her helplessness) and domi- gives us anger and hatred at a time when he should have tried nator (Palminteri hovers over us, glaring down, letting us feel for more playfulness. his control) becomes perhaps the most enjoyable part of the The smoothness of the film wears thin after awhile: The film. Waiting for the signal in boredom, Palminteri scares her confrontational climax, a long-winded argument, seems to a little when he describes how he dissociates himself from his last for 40 days and 40 nights. Watching "Faithful" is like murderous job -"I follow them, I watch them, I get inside having someone feed you grapes: You feel pampered, but if their mind; I see theirmurder in my mind and then I do it." We someone is rude and keeps stuffing them down your throat, can feel the energy between the two as they play back and you reach the point where you just want to grab the grapes forth off each other. and smash them in the person's face with, "Enough!" Everyone's favorite sacred musicians - Mi Cast of'Les Erin Crowley or the Daily Playwright Eugene lonesco once wrote, "the unusual can spring only from the dullest and most ordinary daily routine and from our everyday prose, when pursued beyond their limits." Director Jen Kuhn's production of ionesco's "The Lesson" in the Arena Theater this past _- weekendmighthave t irted with the lim- of the ordinary, y m!T but never quite man- aged to push past those margins. As a result, the play re- --- - mained confined to the plane ofthe "usual" and, in the end, flattened rather than ani- mated the chilling rifts in this piece of absurdist theater. The title of lonesco's play, "The Les- n," first produced in Paris in 1951, qggests routine. A young woman arrives at a professor's home for a tutorial. The circumstances of the tutorial become im- mediately suspect when the professor commences the arithmetic portion of the lesson with the question, "What do one and one make?" As the professor ex- claims his approval at the pupil's correct answer, the mundane begins to masquer- ade for the extraordinary. Let the ofessor's zealous praise be our first 'ruing that this play intends nothing less than to push the banality of this arithmetic lesson well beyond its limits. As we find out soon enough, the elementary exercises of adding and sub- tracting-which elicit inordinate praise when performed correctly - invoke a disquieting menace when miscalcu- lated. The pupil's failure to compre- hend the principles of subtraction sends Ae professor into a mounting fury of Tustration and of sadistic illustrations "You have two ears .... I nibble one off. How many do you have left?" From here, the lesson transforms into After all th ' - son' has much to learn nothing less than an interrogation of torturous proportions as the professor's fierce, tautological quizzes ofthepupil's command of philology paralyzes her in a spell ofhelpless agony. He has trapped her so completely in his cruel imagina- tion that to give the final fatal blow, he simply crafts the image of a knife with his words and sacrificially stabs her through. The maid REVIEW as our informant, we discover that he Lesson this sadistic ritual Arena Theater happens every hour- each time April 5, 1996 a new pupil rings for the professor. While Kuhn's choice to open the play with the maid methodically clean- ing the wreckage of the professor's book-strewn office effectively estab- lished this playing space as a war-torn battlefield, the motion lacked urgency and set a tone of complacency which crept into the dragging momentum of the rest of the production. Beth Shaw's portrayal of the preco- cious, vivacious pupil who has arrived for her first lesson with the professor lacked the subtly of expression and easy vulner- ability needed to keep the dynamic be- tween her and the professor alive and compelling in its many mutations. As the saving fixture ofthe production, Troy Sill-the distracted, ostensibly shy professor - endowed his character with the kind of quirks and emotional realness needed to restore dimensionality to the production. His appropriately understated speech and ever-mounting vigorpeppered the dramatic movement of the play with variety and even added a hint of the humor. Sill's comic pacing as he com- manded his pupil to perform her addition tables brilliantly strummed the ironic fu- tility of this mundane ritual. However, as Sill's tongue sharpened and quickened, Shaw remained utterly unaltered by his stinging words. The pupil's toothache- the pain of his words made manifest - rather than causing her to shrink in agony as the professor sapped the life from her, became only a gratuitous distraction. The sexual dynamic Kuhn tried to de- velop in the final moments of the murder fell flat, as Shaw never fully surrendered herself to the seductive torture of the professor's language. Sill found himself twisted in the spokes of his own elocution as he valiantly but unsuccessfully tried to save the dramatic crescendo of what be- came a one-man show. In the final moments of the produc- tion, as the grandfather clock ticked and signaled the return to a kind of artificial order "in a world that now seems all illusion and pretense - in which all human behavior tells ofabsurdity," this particular production, unfortunately, became its own exercise in banality. Free stuff from the new 'Kids in the Hall' movie, 'Brain Candy!" Everything from real 'Brain candy' to the shirts off our backs! (And you can see the new 'Kids in the Hall' flick for free.) Mmm ... "Brain Candy." It's that time again, folks. You know what we're talking about - ENTER TO WIN time!!!! Just stop by the Daily Arts office (2nd floor of the Student Publications Building, 420 Maynard St.) between 12 noon and 5 p.m. today toenter. Put your name in the box to receive some prettyhcool (and did we mention FREE?) prizes and passes for that new Kids in the Hall movie "Brain Candy." We've got plenty of'stuff for you - CDs, shirts, tongue depressors (how can you skip out on this one?) and even depression medication (actually, they're only jellybeans). And if you're lucky, you'll be at Showcase on opening night, this Friday, with your free tickets, laughing at the people who have to pay, Remember, supplies are limited ... so get here! O F YAM P I ONS STUDY ABROAD! London..................$504 Paris.............................610 Madrid ....... .........738 " Unmatched academic programs " Internships with world-class firms " Business courses in three countries * Generous grants and scholarships - 1 1