'Breathless' ... Jean-Luc Godard's master- piece about ex-patriots and mobsters. Natural Science building. Saturday at 7 p.m. 0 michigandaily.com/arts ARTS FRIDAY OCTOBER 19, 2001 5 David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' challenges viewers' convention and perception Orbital brings own techno to Detroit By Sonya Sutherland Daily Arts Writer By Todd Weiser Daily Arts Writer When David Lynch's aters back in 1997, its "Two Thumbs Down! - "Lost Highway" hit the- advertisements bragged - Siskel and Ebert; two more great reasons to see 'Lost Highway."' This decla- ration reveals Lynch's opin- ion of critics, especially Mulholland their thoughts on his own Drive mysterious, challenging A- films. While "Lost High- Grade: A way" may have been an At Showcase intense test of the limits of and Michigan Theater weirdness and inexplicabili- ty, "Mulholland Drive" treads similar territory but this time there is meaning - shining through the darkness and maybe even a coherent structure depending the interpretation one adopts. Whatever meaning lies behind the madness, it is still exhilarating to sort out (or just plain view) the amazing puzzle of scenes and images that constitute Lynch's latest film. "Mulholland Drive" originated as a pilot for a show on ABC, but after completion ABC execu- tives passed on the strange episode and no other network picked it up. Lynch went on to make "The Straight Story" and then later filmed new footage to craft "Mulholland Drive" into a fea- ture film. Lynch shared the Best Director prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival for his modern masterpiece. After one of the most entertaining and bizarre opening sequences in recent memory (don't worry, its inclusion will make sense later in the film), comes a violent car crash that leaves one survivor. The dazed and confused woman (Laura Harring) wanders into an empty apartment to rest and shower. At this same time, Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives in Los Angeles to achieve her dream of being an actress. When Betty arrives at the apartment of her aunt, who is in Canada shooting a movie, she finds the woman and instead of calling for help, she gives help herself. The car accident has left this woman with amne- sia, not knowing who she or even what her name is. After she adopts the name Rita, Betty assists her in searching for her true identity. Meanwhile, young successful director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) is recasting his lead actress role in a new film. The eccentric Brothers Castigliane, apparently affiliated with the mob, pressure Kesher and the studio to cast a certain Camilla Rhodes in the part, or else. Stripped of assets by these powerful men and then finding his wife locked in an affair with none other than a pool cleaner (Billy Ray Cyrus, of "Achy Breaky Heart" fame), Kesher's future in this mad world of Hollywood looks dreary if he does not succumb to their demands. There are various side plots as well that tie together the lives of Betty, Rita and Adam and may or may not shed light on who Rita really is. Several supporting characters pop up in scenes never to reappear; it must be assumed that these are the faces that would have populated the con- tinuous story lines of the TV series. However, even with a running time of two and a half hours, we only briefly witness the extraordinary world that might have been. The largely no-name cast pulls off their roles with excellence. The unfamiliar faces leave no It's debatable whether techno is harder in Detroit or theU.K. but last Tuesday night, those in attendance at Orbital St. Andrews Hal October 16, 2001 St. Andrews had the pleasure of witnessing the union of both. Numbering in the earliest of electronic pio- neers, Orbital packed up their p r o j e c t i o n screens and sequencers and traversed the lar among electronic masterminds Roland-808 through a massive list of old favorites, including "Halcyon," "Satan" and "Chime." The set, decked out with a barricade of electronic equipment - drum machines, synthesizers, keyboards and mixers - proved to be more than a frivolous demonstration of a record label's tour budget. Hiding behind their equipment with only coal miner headlights indicating their position; these masters were not simply mess- ing around. From the second the first drumbeat dropped to the easy listenings of the set winding down, Orbital elicited a fanatical response from the crowd, who cheered the boys on through every track change. With a strong U.S. fan base, Orbital is hoping their sound will catch on and carry through their DVD release of a Dolby 5.1 surround sound musical accomplishment accompanied by short video essays. Experimenting and pushing the envelope established Orbital as pre- miere forefathers of the modern elec- tronic movement and from their performance they demonstrated that they don't plan on stopping anytime soon. courtesy of Studio canal Justin Theroux wants to recast you, baby. room for character connotations, they must be judged purely on the material presented. The anonymous status of each role enhances the mys- teriousness of the characters and the situations they encounter. Limiting "Mulholland Drive" to only one theme or narrative interpretation is a viewer's shortcoming; this film has the capacity for a dif- ferent understanding after each viewing. Is it a satire of the manipulative and corruptive world of Hollywood as seen through the initially inno- cent, ambitious Betty and the film-auteur Adam'? Or does it plainly question what is reality through the use of dreams and/or amnesia? Both? Neither? The point of the film is that there are no easy answers to these questions, and whatever a viewer takes from it is his own unique version. Lynch spends his spare-time painting, some- times incorporating dead birds and raw meat. Like his paintings, Lynch's films can be contro- versial, abstract, but also endlessly intriguing. Art should not always be easily comprehensible, that is what makes it art. high seas bringing arguably the best beats Michigan has heard since the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. Consisting of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, Orbital bassed and boomed through the greater portion of a two- hour set, delighting all fans with a crossover of thoughtful imaging and the support of crunchy break beats. Orbital began the night with "Ten- sion" from their new album All Together and carried on out through- out the night, tweaking the ever-popu- Linkin Parktames, pleases- at Palace By Sonya Sutherland Daily Arts Writer Piano prodigy Kissin takes stage at Hill One would like to assume because a band sells more than a million records that they should be automatically elimi- nated from any cool playlist. Well, leave By Alexis Zhu For the Daily Arguably two of the greatest musicians of this cen- tury will have come to Ann Arbor by the end of the life, "Evgeny Kissin, The G Kissin began playing the six, he entered the fam Moscow, where he found Pavlovna Kantor. He firstc month. If you missed Claudio tion at the tender age of 1 Abbado and the Berlin Philhar- Chopin Concertos with the monic, ydu do not want to miss That much talked-about fe Evgeny Kissin, the newest the New York Philharmon Evgeny Russian mastermind of the out U.S. debut under the b Kissin piano. You can find him at Hill collaboration was strikin Hill Auditorium Auditorium on Oct. 24th, where Grammy nomination. Wednesday at s8p.m. he will take to the stage the He has been playing to s rarely performed "Pictures at an wide ever since and has a Exhibition," by his fellow coun- orchestras led by the likesc tryman Modest Mussorgsky. He Herbert von Karajan, Seija will also be playing works by Kissin easily caters to 55 c Schumann and Bach. Besides taking to the sta At the age of 30, Kissin has quite a daunting record cat already taken his undisputed discography includes wor place among the likes of his Haydn, Liszt, Prokofiev,I Russian predecessors, Horowitz, Richter and Gilels. Though often criticized for His musical sensitivities, bold temperament, near per- choice of repertoire, it wil feet technique and his capacity to produce such a var- he develops and what he ied range of color in his playing have helped to label from now. In that time, he him as a prowess of romantic- literature. PBS has porary realms and amaze u determined his contributions to the music world sig- The public simply can't nificant enough to film an entire documentary on his overtly tall and gangly Ki Ethereal exhibition Sift of Music." piano at the age of two. At ed Gnessin Institute of his lifelong teacher, Anna came to international atten- 2 when he performed both Moscow State Symphony. eat was later repeated with ic when he made his sold- aton of Zubin Mehta. The ng enough to earn him a old out concert halls world- ppeared with all the major of Claudio Abbado, the late Ozawa, and Zubin Mehta. oncerts a season. age, the pianist has created alog as well. His extensive ks by Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov and others. r being too traditional in his 1 be interesting to see how chooses to play 25 years may explore more contem- s in those areas as well. seem to get enough of the issin. Seemingly rigid and awkward when approaching the stage with his mas- sive hands and equally massive Afro to match, percep- tions instantly change when Kissin produces the first sonorous note. In one instance, he was called back for no less than 15 encores. It is a remarkable feat for such a young pianist, any pianist for that matter, to be able to feed his audience in this way - to serve and stun over and over again without fail. The audience can expect nothing less than another legendary perfor- mance Wednesday night. Linkin Park Palace of Auburn Hills October 15, 2001 Al? it to a group with two lead singers and a turntable to surpass the stig- ma of sell-out and make the cut with over six million sold. Hailing from California, Linkin Park. joined Staind, Static-X and the Stone Temple Pilots for the Family Values Tour, warming up Bennington providing the singing and the Mike Shinoda supporting a slick rap- ping style. The vocal mix that distin- guishes Linkin Park from the recent fad of harder rock boy bands was only made that much better with string support from Delson and Phoenix, the rather hidden but energetic flailing hands of drummer Rob Bourdon and the boys' obvious delight for live performances and their fans. Opening with "Papercut" and contin- uing onto "Pushing Me Away" and new single "In the End," Linkin Park rallied the mostly disaffected youth into a rough and tumble mosh pit, with Bennington and Shinoda periodically reminding the crowd just how sweet they were. Intro- ducing a special guest for the evening, Ann Arbor's own Stephen Richard's of Taproot, while Bennington hopped on his back for a short piggyback venture across stage. Winding down their set with the over exposed but still extremely enjoyable single "Crawling," Linkin Park made it quiet clear that they aren't joining in the trend of one-hit metal wonders, rather that their new album is something to look forward to. Energetic, entertaining and audibly pleasing, Linkin Park took their sound beyond the more common attempts to reproduce a studio sound on stage, and provided the essential flavor to the Family Values Tour, leaving Staind and Stone Temple Pilots a wicked platform from which to play. the sold out Palace of Auburn Hills. While taming a crowd is easy, pleas- ing a crowd takes ability, and rocking it is another story. Despite tighter security and the overall recent feelings of unease, Linkin Park came out in top form, their guitarist Brad Delson still playing despite his broken foot. On second after a stellar performance by Static-X, whose loud crunching guitars and indecipher- able hoarse vocals certainly started the rock 'n' roll party off right, Linkin Park throttled the crowd with their trademark mix of smooth vocalization -Chester Kissen ticklin' the eyebrows. studies cigarettes By Marie Bernard * Daily Arts Writer With the constant warnings from the surgeon general; Donald Sultan UMMA Through November 25 Donald Sultan, in1 and the slow bar- ring of smokers from all public locales, the American public has managed to blithely ignore all which remains appeal- ing about smoke. We have forgotten that alluring image of white through black air, those seductive rings floating in space. his exhibit "The ethereal nature. The exhibit, which runs through Nov. 25th at the Univer- sity Museum of Art, pays a stunning tribute both to his subject and his tal- ent. Sultan has been a popular figure in contemporary art since he arrived on the scene in the mid-'70s. He received a BFA from the University of North Carolina and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is in collections all over the world, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art all in New York. Sultan is now in his mid-50s. "After I left school, I decided it was impor- tant to start putting imagery back into abstract painting," he said in an inter- view with the Phoenix New-Times. "I got a call from a gallery in Chicago saying the tiles were falling off. Underneath the tiles was the black glue you use to adhere tiles to the floor. I decided I liked the black. When I put these two together, I thought it was such a breakthrough in abstract painting because it adhered to everything that was interesting to me - flat painting that purely portrayed, materials and yet it had a depth of being a real seascape." He has experimented with many kinds of media, including painting, prints and sculpture. " The Smoke Rings" reflects Sultan's continuous interest in modernizing the classic form of still life. To create the paintings for this exhibit, Sultan first cut shapes into 12- inch vinyl floor tiles, which were applied to masonite panels. He then filled the cut-out space with plaster or tar, and then painted over the entirety of the work. These massive paintings, which are held in the main room of the Museum of Art, are confrontation- al both in size and subject. In the end, his "still lifes" are almost surreal, an effect reached by both the unique medium and his transitional subject. British writer Max Bragg has also contributed to the exhibit. In the past, Bragg has collaborated his poetry with the photography of Ralph Gib- son. His words, which pay attention to our own associations with smoke - be it Marlene Dietrich, smoked fish or hash -- enhance Sultan's achieve- ments. linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington is "Crawling" around the stage. Smoke Rings," has reclaimed this I_ LIVE AND LEARN JAPANESE!