The Greatest Love Story Ever
A his Saturday the State Theater and
-Flicks play host to Hal Ashby's
charming, hilarious seize-the-day romp
"Harold and Maude," starring Bud Cort
and Ruth Gordon. Midnight.
michigandaily.com /arts
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FRIDAY
MARCH 10, 2000
Abort 'Mission': 'Mars' fails
at even minor objectives
By David Victor
Daily Arts Writer
I'm sure you've heard of all those prob-
lems with NASA's Mars program. Billions
of dollars of satellites and probes have inex-
plicably failed near Mars, making the gov-
ernment look pretty stupid. True to form,
"Mission to Mars" is such a horrible mis-
Mission to
Mars
Grade: D-
At Showcase
t, *,
take, it makes director
Brian De Palma look
equally stupid. This
movie is chock-a-block
full of poor writing,
contrived situations and
just awful moments that
fail to engage the view-
er.
The film takes place
in the year 2020. A
manned Mars expedi-
tion is launched, and
four astronauts begin
surveying the red plan-
et. Luc, their leader, is
movie like this if your name is preceded by
"and" in the opening credits. Anyway, back to
the film. Luc is the only survivor, and he
radios Earth for help.
A rescue mission is quickly assembled.
They are led by Woody (Tim Robbins), who
brings his scientist wife along with him.
Woody is joined by his pilot best buddy, Jim
(Gary Sinise) and the requisite technical
engineer, Phil (Jerry 0' Connell of TV's
"Sliders"). This is where one of the larger
flaws of the film comes to light. You never
see any spacecraft launches or landings in
the film, just the crews floating through
space with captions like "Mission day 173."
It's as if this film was composed of only
middles, with no beginnings or ends, and
lends itself to a very unsatisfying narrative
structure.
Well, surprise, surprise. After countless
months of uneventful space travel, just as
they are about to land on Mars, disaster
strikes. Tiny little micrometeorites manage
to completely destroy their zillion dollar
spaceship, and they are forced to evacuate.
No wonder NASA screwed up their Mars
program; they evidently build their ships
out of aluminum foil and Elmer's glue. They
float through space to another ship placed
in orbit around Mars, but manage to kill
someone along the way. I won't spoil it for
you, but viewers wise to the ways of
Hollywood will know who this is in the first
five minutes of the film.
The remaining three make it to the
Martian surface and find the now hairy and
crazy Luc. They clean him up and the four
set off to find out what caused that deadly
tornado. In doing so, they find out the
amazing story of the relationship between
Earth and Mars. Gripping stuff. No, really.
A lot of the film's shortcomings are "lit-
tle things," but they sure add up to one bad
movie. First of all, the product placements.
These guys are alone on the surface of
Mars, and their land buggy has Kawasaki'
and Pennzoil logos on it? They also use
products like M&M's and Dr. Pepper to lit-
erally save their lives. I hope to God that
wasn't in the original script.
The immensely cheesy expository mater-
ial makes no sense. Apparently, in the year
2020, everyone videotapes their dinner par-
ties, so when you voyage to Mars, you can
watch them and listen to your tragically
dead wife talk about the grandeur of explor-
ing Mars all over again. You also incessant-
ly talk about your past, just in case your best
friends forgot your life history. This is
screenwriting at its worst.
The scientific aspect of the film leaves a
little to be desired as well. Paper-thin space-
ships aside, there's enough to make any sci-
ence-minded person cringe. When in a
place where they aren't sure if they can take
off their helmets, someone takes a reading
and says "It's 60 percent nitrogen and 20
percent oxygen!" to which another person
smugly replies "Otherwise known as air!" I
was waiting for him to wink at the camera.
It feels as if they're talking down to us, the
illiterate, dumb audience, rather than to
played by Don Cheadle of "Boogie Nights"
and "Out of Sight" fame. There is also a
Russian (to prove we're still at peace with
the Soviet Union in 2020) and a British
woman (because women with British
accents are smarter than other women).
Their names are unimportant because they
die really fast in a huge Martian tornado.
You can tell it's a bad movie right off when
they instantly kill off the shallow, stereotyped
characters. By the way, you will also die in a
Courtesy of Touchstone Pictures
Jerry O'Connell, Tim Robbins and Connie Nielsen star in Brian DePalma's latest, "Mission to Mars"
each other. Gee, thanks, Brian.
The ending is absurd to say the least. Let's
just say there's lots of hand holding and tears
shed. The audience I saw this with laughed
throughout the movie, even when characters
were dying and/or getting teary. The only
reason "Mars" doesn't join "Supernova" in
the ranks of F-dom was the pretty Martian
landscapes, some nifty special effects, and
Jerry O'Connell, who seems to be the only
actor aware he is in this cheesy, hackneyed,
overbearing movie. Do yourself a favor and
wait for the other Mars movie of the year,
"Red Planet," starring Val Kilmer and
Carrie-Anne Moss. It has to be better than
this dismal, disappointing film.
'Sims' full of realistic, exciting role-playing fun
Maxis, the masterminds behind the
Simcity series, have been making
simulations for a long time, but none
-f them are anything like their most
*ent release "The Sims." The easiest
way to convey "The Sims" Gameplay
is...well...imagine creating a living
you (or anyone else for that matter) on
your computer. You tell your Sim to
eat, drink, go to the bathroom, watch
its hygiene, get a job, and much,
much, more.
Before sitting down to play "The
Sims" my first concern was in regards
Grade: A-
The Sims
Maxis
For PC
Reviewed by
Daily Arts Writer
Eduardo Baniff
to the game's
control. I imag-
ined it would be
fairly difficult to
create a user-
friendly interface
for controlling,
for all intents and
purposes, a fully
functional
human. But to
my pleasant sur-
broken down into three modes:
Living, buying and building; the liv-
ing mode is where most of the game
takes place because this is where you
control your character. Most com-
mands are broken down into left
clicking on objects to bring up an
assortment of options to choose from.
For example, after selecting Virtual-
Ed, you can left click on the radio and
a group of choices circles it. You can
turn it on; play jazz, funk or even any
MP3 you have previously placed in
the music file in "The Sims" directo-
ry. The buy mode is pretty simple as
well, you basically select a category
of product ... furniture, lights, appli-
ances, and then purchase it, assuming
you have saved up enough money, and
place it in your house. That's it, very
easy. Lastly, you have the build mode,
this mode is most like Maxis's other
sim games because this is where you
can design and build your house. This
interface is a little more complex then
the other two but it is no harder than
any other Maxis game, which brings
me to my main gripe with this game.
Despite its simplicity and Maxis'
well-done interface, it is still very dif-
ficult to manage everything that is
going on. I understand that life is hard
to manage and so it is fitting, but
when you are playing a video game
there should be more of a buffer zone.
All but the expert gamer should start
with just one character because play-
ing with two is quite nerve racking.
This steep learning curve for using
two Sims might have been solved had
luck music plays as your kitchen
catches on fire Quite humorous,
though inappropriate) found in most
Maxis' games but does a nice job at
amending this problem with the MP3
function I described above. And
while the game, in many ways, seems
like nothing spectacular, as you play
through it and see all the little
nuances, accuracies of social interac-
tions and their graphical representa-
tions, you won't feel short changed.
Oh yeah, and if you are straining to
understand what the Sims are saying
stop trying, they don't speak English,
but rather, in a stroke of genius, they
speak gibberish and use tones and
speeds to help distinguish thoughts
allowing "The Sims" to get away
from that repetitive sound bite prob-
lem found in most games using a lot
of non-linear speech.
www.thesirns.Corn you can download
a slue of add-ons and features for the
game. Recently I downloaded a pro-
gram that allows you to make any
GIF or JPEG into functional wallpa-
per to put on your house and a face
editor that allows you to even closer
mimic your friends and family. "The
Sims" also has a very complete web
creator that allows your Sims to have
g a better web site then you do.
Overall all, "The Sims" is an
absolutely ground breaking game
well worth everyone's attention. It's
creator spent a mammoth amount of
time perfecting everything so you,
the player, would find yourself
spending almost the same amount,
often late at night, trying to perfect
your Sim's stature. Also, I have never
played a game that has given me the
ability to gain major points with my
girlfriend by proving that I can manage
our two virtual-selves, our newly adopt-
ed child and our digital household.
Courtesy oft"esifs.com
One of the many scenes possible in the new Maxis release "Sims."
*ise, Maxis did a very good job of it.
the start of the game you have
many options to choose from. You can
start playing with a pre-made family
in a pre-designed house or create your
own character and then allocate your
funds to building your own house.
However, regardless of what you
choose I highly recommend that you
play through the in-game tutorial that
"The Sims" offers because this is the
lst way to come to grips with the
gaming interface. Without going into
unnecessary detail the controls are
the game's creator, Will Wright, opted
for a multiplayer mode or online play.
In a recent interview with
DailyRadar.com, an online gaming
web site, he replied to a question on
multiplayer plans for "The Sims" with
"Actually I'm spending most of my
time right now studying just that. I'm
trying all the multiplayer games I can.
But with a lot of the multiplayer
games out there, I'm not exactly com-
pelled to have social interaction with
the other players. I don't mind blow-
ing them up, hacking monsters side
by side, but I don't really want to talk
to these people. I need to figure that
out first. To me that's the primary
thing. I need to figure out why I
would want to go online and interact
with total strangers."
Graphically, "The Sims" looks
very tight with sharp textures and
well-made player models. I tested the
game out on many machines and it
runs very smoothly at the 800x600
resolution setting on most but even
on my personal computer, a PIII
600Mhz with 256Mb of RAM, the
1024x768 resolution mode becomes
very unplayable because of choppy
frame rates. In terms of sound "The
Sims" disappointingly resists the
temptation to move away from the
monotonous town melodies, (which
in many cases don't match the
action; such as when this happy go
It is also
Sims" has
developed a
go to
worth noting that "The
almost instantaneously
cult following and if you
the official site
"A MAGICAL, MUSICAL,
ANIMATED MASTERPIECE!"
David Sheha, CBS-TV
"IMAX Is THE WAY To SEE IT - NOT JUST As A FILM, BUT As AN EVENT.
RogprEbert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES OR EARS.
THE NEW 'FANTASIA 2000' Is ARGUABLY
THE GREATEST DISNEY FILM EVER:' .
lim Svejda, KNX/CBS RADIO
"'FANTASIA 2000' INTRODUCES SEVEN NEW <
SMUSICAL MOVEMENTS WHILE KEEPING
'THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE'
Two THiuMBS UP!"
RWp Ebert anid Harry Knowles,j
5<ROGER ill & THE MOVIES
WWW.MICHIGANDAILY.COM
The Daughter of
A _the Regiment
Camp Michigania
Alumni Association of the University of Michigan
orking at the University of Michigan alumni camp is a rewarding and
exciting opportunity. Since 1961 Camp Michigania has been a treasured
experience for thousands of UM alumni and their families. Those who
serve as staff members have countless opportunities for personal and pro-
fessional growth.
Make lifelong friendships.
Develop leadership skills.
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A spirited comic opera by
Gaetano Donizetti
Sung in French with
English dialogue and supertitiles.
Directed by Ned Canty
Conducted by Martin Katz
March 16 -18 at 8 am
FANTAS-IA
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