4 8A -The Michigan Daily - Monday, February 2, 2004 ARTS .. ... _,. _ ___ Garcia Mirquez u nveils memoir By Bonnie Keliman Daily Arts Writer I 4 By Jennie Adler Daily Arts Writer MOVI ERE E ** taking the SATs is probably a memory in the not-so-distant past for many students in Ann Arbor. Tl test itself remains hauntingly fresh in the minds of most, but does the significance of those three letters still linger? "The Perfect Score" attempts to unearth deeper meanings The Perfect behind the feared entrance Score exam and shows it to be every- At Quality 16 and thing from sick and twisted to Showcase profoundly revealing about Paramount lifelong truths. Director Brian Robbins ("Varsity Blues") wastes no time breaking into the film's heist plot. On top of school, college application essays and the ACTs, the fears of the SATs can naturally drive kids to crazy extremes. With the anxieties of persistent parents and possibilities of (gasp) attending community college, six high school seniors plan to steal the SAT answers but eventually realize that their ultimate goal is not a 1600, but instead standing up to whomever they can - even themselves. Ringleader Kyle (Chris Evans, "Not Another Teen Movie") and best friend Matty (Bryan Greenburg), sick and tired of being standardized by the SATs, assemble a team of students including almost every clique in high school in a fashion similar to that of "The Breakfast Club." There's the alternative rebel, an over- achiever (sans the hidden drug addiction), the star basketball player and the slacker/stoner, all of whose personalities clash, resulting in comi- cal banter. With such typical stock characters, one would assume that the roles would be easy enough to por- tray; the script doesn't cry for Oscar-worthy talent. But, for example, the slow-talking and emotionless star basketball player - portrayed by real-life NBA forward Darius Miles - only furthers the dumb-jock stereotype and adds little to the film. Courtesy of Paramount Are you the two morons from "Dude, Where's My Car?" I was nominated for two Golden Globes. The only glimmer of hope is the rabble-rousing Francesca, played by Scarlett Johansson ("Lost in Translation"). There seems to be a trend with actors taking not-so-noteworthy roles after an Oscar performance, and Johansson follows suit. Despite the less than challenging role of a cliched outcast, she proves her versatility as an actress and flawlessly delivers sharp-tongued insults reminis- cent of those she spat in "Ghost World." The plot is adventuresome but with all-too-pre- dictable characters, the dialogue is left to suffer. Self-reflexive at times, the cheesy inspirational speech overpowers witty references to "Dawson's Creek" and Old Navy and what would any movie be without an overused reference to "The Matrix." "Score" is ultimately not gritty and honest enough to convey its potentially profound and bru- tally honest message to the SAT board: Testing is hellishly competitive and a poor judge of academ- ic potential. Instead, it flounders in sub-par, soph- omoric dialogue and worthless camera time spent One afternoon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is sought out by his mother in the cafes of Baranquilla. She has two requests: to help sell their house in Aracataca, Colombia, and to return to law school instead of wasting his life as a journalist. In all practical terms, her journey is a failure. The house is too decrepit to sell and her son is too stubborn to return to school. Against all expectations, Living to Tell however, the the Tale epoch becomes By GabrielGarcia "the most impor- Marquez tant of all the deci- Knopf sions I had to make in my career as a writer. That is to say: in my entire life." Garcia Marquez is so inspired by the ghosts of his past that he spends the rest of his life trying to relate them. So begins "Living to Tell the Tale," trans- lated from Spanish by Edith Gross- man, the first in a trilogy of memoirs that recount the life story of one of the most respected writers of our time. In long paragraphs and winding sentences, Garcia Marquez confiden- tially tells the reader the most intimate details of the first 27 years of his life. He begins with the pivotal trip to sell the house, jumps back to his earliest memories of following his grandfa- ther around the streets of Aracataca and then meanders through his youth in Colombia. He covers everything from family legend and his schoolboy years to the beginnings of his journal- istic career and daily life in his favorite brothels. He also tracks the course of Colombian politics, reacting to the assassination of liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitin - which sparked the country's current civil war - with mild surprise before returning to lunch with his brothers. At times, it seems as if Garcia Marquez has become lost in his almost stream-of- consciousness writing style, but in the end he always finds his way back to the point. Along the way, the reader can easily recognize many people and events forming the basis for Garcia Marquez's greatest works of fiction. The story of his parents' forbidden love affair is told in "Love in the Time of Cholera" while the name on the gate of a deserted banana company, Macondo, inspires the town's name in his Nobel prize winning "One Hun- dred Years of Solitude." The most striking aspect of the memoir is Garcia Marquez's vision of everyday life in Colombia. With rich details and unexpected touches of brilliance, Garcia Marquez reveals a world where young intellectuals argue about literature and politics for days on end in cafes around Baranquilla. Brothels are the writer's paradise due to their wild nights and quiet morn- ings and his mother, with 11 children of her own, takes in her husband's illegitimate sons and daughters because they share some of the same blood as her offspring. Throughout most of his youth, Gar- cia Mirquez is sickly, shy and so poor that he cannot afford more than two changes of clothing. Around him, blood is continuously spilt in an end- less civil war that tears his country apart. But he lives to tell the tale, keep- ing his sense of humor and love of life throughout it all. Garcia Marquez's first memoir is a strong, rich story of human life and perseverance. on guys who wood, not the1 should earn1 big screen. their keep on the hard- Keys succumbs to sophomore slump By Hussain Rahim Daily Arts Writer MUS ICREVIE How do you follow up an album that you spent your whole life writing? If you're Alicia Keys, you do a little bit of the same but with a little less than a lifetime to replicate the original. The pressure of an already overrated debut looming, Keys knows that she has much to live up to, however unfair those expectations are. That in mind ,she launches into the familiar. With an audacious title and intro- duction that flirts with self-importance, it's clear that this is an ambitious album. Her fusion and hopping between various genres - which made her so popular and captured the ears and wallets of ______________ fans worldwide A .iKe - is on display Ala eys yet again. From The Diary of "Heartburn," Alicia Keys which is a bit of J Records throwback funk, to the piano-drenched classic soul of the lead single, "You Don't Know My Name," she is still reaching across the spectrum. Her technical talent is obvious, but what also becomes clear as the album plays out is her lack of songwriting ability. At her most bizarre she talks about her medulla oblongata being electrified, but more often it's just flat. There is a feeling of redundancy in the writing displayed on the album, espe- cially when compared to Songs in A Minor. "When You Really Love Some- one" sounds like a diet version of "A Woman's Worth" from her first album in both melody and lyrics. Beside the Kanye West-produced lead single, nothing is immediately grabbing and her attempts at concept songs don't particularly work either. "Samsonite Man" and "Dragon Days" come off as trite and disposable. She seems to have set a tonal quality to her sound and it almost backs her into a corner. It becomes the "Alicia Keys" sound and it stagnates into mood music. Keys clearly has found her niche in the popular music scene, but she's not quite there artistically. As a disciple of the singer-songwriter tra- dition, she is trying to find her own unique voice, but realistically it would- n't be the worst thing if she decided to outsource some more of the writing, since that is when her album is at its strongest. When the pressure is on, artists usually resort to internal materi- al. Moving away from the overly per- sonal concept of diary entries to a more extroverted style of music would do wonders for Keys. FOLK Continued from Page 1A However, the show's peak came early with a stirring acoustic set from 22-year- old troubadour Jackie Greene. Running through a brief, five song set that drew mainly from his latest album Gone Wanderin', the Sacramento, California native has been surprising audiences across the country while opening for blues luminaries Junior Brown and B.B. King over the past two years. A last minute addition to this year's festival, after a powerful set opening for Brown at the Ark in November, Greene is a mature, focused artist whose depth and understanding of music excels onstage. His taut, bluesy performance drew comparisons to an early Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie. Receiving the largest ovationof the evening, Greene is marked by an innate ability for folk music and an overarching artistic accomplishment. The festival continued through Sat- urday with performances from Seattle- based trio Uncle Bonsai, Peter Mulvey, Ruthie Foster, Jo Serrapere, Delta 88 and School of Music student Jeremy Kittel. The weekend came together with performances from two of folk music's finest - Ralph Stanley and the legendary Emmylou Harris. Both evenings were emceed by jazz-vocal- ist-cum-folk-singer Vance Gilbert. I ' June 19-August 27, 2004 (3-, 5-, 6-, and 9-week sessions) " From our new business curriculum, take accounting, marketing, and organizational behavior " Take one of 16 ancient and modern languages " Stay in modern dorms and exercise in the new sports and aquatics center . Join Field Museum paleontologist Lance Grande on a dig for prehistoric fossils " Learn from distinguished faculty in small class sizes * Transfer a wide range of undergraduate courses for college credit 4 -C - ~ r4 ~r,,x4- C. C~~~i . --.,.ti a~l i~:2.25#'x 2 $"~ a ~uetch atn to r, yv y, * s, ,c , 7 - ~--VM- (74C